There is a clear distinction between men and women in photos – men don’t smile, yet women love to smile. Men don’t move, yet women love to jump – why is that? Perhaps it’s because men have testosterone and women have hormones, or maybe it’s because women have simply been trained to smile like a ‘good woman should,’ in photographs, but either way it works tremendously well for the camera.
Women are naturally photogenic – they have beautiful hair, makeup, and clothes that screams ‘LOOK AT ME!’ And nothing speaks louder through photograph when all that hair, makeup, and clothes is for just one moment floating in the air. There’s something beautiful about the suspension of time, and if a camera can capture the beauty of a floating woman, even for an instant, that feeling can last forever. That is what cameras are, right? A time machine built to carry emotion. Only with cameras can you see an image, even a moving picture, of the beautiful Marylyn Monroe, a woman who is both eternal and gone.
Now I don’t know about men, but maybe women love to jump in the air so much because they know this fact. They know their beauty is fleeting, moving along like a bird ready to migrate for the winter. Or maybe it’s something more simple. Maybe girls love jumping in the air so much because it’s just so gosh-darn fun! People go to theme parks and scary movies so that they can get a thrill, right? Well, it’s not every day that you get to jump in the air and express yourself, which is exactly what makes the act so important: it’s rare.
Some may say it’s annoying to express yourself so externally, to show a part of yourself to people who didn’t ask to see that side of you, but the anonymous girl jumping in the air would say to this critic: “Who cares? I’m jumping in the air – obviously I don’t care about life right now.” And you know what? That girl would be right. As stupid as it looks, jumping in the air makes a girl happy. It makes us feel like we’re part of the world, like we belong in some way, even if it’s for just a little bit.
Like an autumn leaf wiggling off a branch, the forever-floating woman in photographs shall remain just so – that gorgeous shade of beauty clinging on for just a moment longer.