There Is No Need For Instagram

I was knee-deep in the Pacific Ocean. It was freezing. No one was in the water except surfers in full wetsuits. It was 75 degrees out, but it was still late November, essentially winter. Winter in SoCal, the only kind of winter I know.

What is a coat? Pants? Why?

In Japanese culture, people practice a ritual called Misogi. Water is purification. Submerging yourself in a natural body of cold water is said to clear the mind, leaving the body alert and the mind clear.

I dive headfirst into a wave, rising up on the other side, floating free, my body in total shock. But then it adjusts, and it feels amazing.

My soul has been cleansed. I am reborn.

I am Fraulein Maria. I am Amal Clooney. I am Achilles.

I swim around in my delusion for who knows how long. I think about what would happen if I encountered a shark. I imagine the sharks teeth piercing through my leg. I imagine losing my leg.

In the ocean, I feel alive. I feel connected to nature, like I am fully experiencing what it means to be human on this planet.

Once on land, it all gets desperately bleak.

I cannot live in the ocean floating around forever, so eventually I have to ride a wave out of it. I walk back to my towel, shivering but hopeful.

In my absence, two girls have settled in next to my towel. A little too close. So close that it could look like I am the third girl in their group, the friend who was invited but hates her friends and put her towel off to the side.

Do I move my towel?

I imagine myself picking up my stuff and moving it three feet over, or even walking down the beach away from them.

Is that rude?

Because I am me, I just lie down on my towel a few inches behind them.

I am cold. I am so cold.

I need the sun to warm my body, so I lie very still. If I am still enough, all the UV rays will reroute themselves, their destination now being only me, the lifeless cold fish lying face down in the sand.

The girls are taking turns photographing each other. One poses, sucking in her stomach and positioning her body in such a way that the camera must capture her flawlessly. Otherwise, why would you be twisted into that shape and holding your breath on the beach?

“My legs! You can see all the cellulite! These are terrible!” one of the girls exclaims while reviewing the photos her friend took.

“Girl, you need to talk to yourself the way you talk to me,” her friend responds.

“But I do not look the way you do!” her fat-legged friend challenges.

A few inches away, I lie there, a wet, dead corpse.

Thirty to forty-five minutes of posing, retakes, and analyzing what could be photoshopped in a realistic way, and then finally, celebration.

They got the shot.

They look hot, and they are ready to post their hotness for everyone to enjoy and indulge in.

On the other side of me, a girlfriend is asking her boyfriend to snap a picture of her.

“Horizontal or vertical, babe?” he asks diligently.

“Horizontal,” she says while crossing one leg over the other, standing on her tiptoes, and flipping her hair to the side.

What about him? I think.

Why does she not want a picture of them together? Or even if he takes one of her, why does she not take one of him?

That could be sweet, photographing one another.

But that is not what is happening.

I understand that perhaps I am incredibly bitter. Me, alone with my book about a disgruntled female FBI agent attending her victims autopsy, assessing the precise way the organs were punctured. No one to photograph me. Just here trying to baptize myself in the ocean and be reborn as a newer, improved version of myself.

No one wants to photograph insanity.

It does not present well in a still image.

It is better left roaming, wild and untamed.

The couple leaves.

But the girls pull out a pack of Camels and begin to chain-smoke while reveling in their beauty through Instagram.

I am not upset about their smoking on the beach. I probably should be, but that is not what is troubling me.

“I make every guy take an STD test before I sleep with him,” the brown-haired girl says to the other brown-haired girl. It is hard to distinguish between them. They seem like identical twins.

Yes, girls, I think, my face buried in the sand.

Men are filthy animals. Test their sinful body parts.

I start thinking about movies where people fall passionately in love and begin ravishing each other. It would not be the same if, just before a belt was unbuckled, someone said, “You need to go to the doctor and get tested. Once I know you are clean, we can do this again.”

But this is where we are.

Before romance comes a clean bill of genital health signed off by an authorized member of the medical community.

Movies really need to start incorporating this into their plots.

“Michael liked my picture!” one of them screams giddily, and the other is just short of high-fiving her.

It reminds me of bros, but the female version. Manipulating men with smoke-and-mirrors thirst traps that took nearly two hours to create.

“He just texted me!” she squeals.

Both of them are getting drunk on the power of their bodies, their beauty.

It worked, I think.

“It worked!” the other girl screams, and they put on a Miley Cyrus song and light another cigarette.

I enjoy the Miley Cyrus song.

I make a mental note to add it to my iTunes later.

I try to think of a time when men had to tell women, “I think you are beautiful,” instead of liking some contrived photo online.

I think about life. I set social media aside. I make it irrelevant.

You are driving together on an ordinary day, heading to the grocery store. The sun catches them at just the right angle, lighting up their eyes and revealing colors that cannot be captured unless you witness them firsthand. Colors that can only survive in memory.

They are beautiful, you think.

You have no proof.

It is only a feeling you will carry every time you look at them. Even when they are old and wrinkled, you will still see it.

They are sleeping beside you, their profile perfect, their eyelashes resting against their cheeks.

You remember it.

You see it every time you look at them.

There is no need for Instagram.

There really is not.

Many months later, it is summer and I am at the beach in my favorite spot, one I come to every Thursday and Friday, my days off. I am so tan at this point my brown bathing suit is lighter than my skin and my hair is completely bleached out. My friend Lucy snaps a picture of me, laughing mischievously and then commenting, “how have you had a baby? Your body doesnt make any sense to me,” she says shaking her head in disbelief. Lucy has had two beautiful kids. She understands what it takes to be a mother. The cost your body pays in order to bring life into the world.

I look at the picture. I study myself. There I am. I kind of look like a brown skeleton, but I’m not posing. I’m just standing, the camera angle looking up at me-not flattering at all, the wind blowing my hair, the sunlight behind me casting weird shadows, bones popping out where they probably shouldn’t. Flat chest, broad shoulders, dark eyebrows and deep brown skin contrasting bright golden hair. Thin lips. I look strange, wild and exotic like I belong somewhere that doesn’t exist.

There are many different poses, lighting, ways I could look better. “Lucy don’t take my photo!” I could have objected, running away from the camera, avoiding my body completely, so ashamed of it that I need to reject its existence.

Or “Lucy take another one!” And begin an entire armature photoshoot.

There’s a lot I could photoshop to make myself look more attractive, more like a Kardashian or Love Island contestant, but I don’t. That would erase the body that trained all those years running competitively, that grew and gave birth to Noah, the most beautiful little human in the world. The body that has endured and overcome pain, that has grown stronger with age, that is uniquely mine. It’s not a thirst trap, it’s a relic at this point.

I think of the girls back in November twisting their bodies, sucking in, hating their legs that allow them to walk everywhere and experience life. I think of them shrinking their waists, resizing their lips, all to post pictures out into the void in order to appeal to other people. To feel worthy or fulfilled. To get “likes.” To hide behind.

And it makes me so sad.