I don’t consider myself a “beauty girlie.” I’m not subscribed to skin care-focused subReddits or YouTube channels. I never learned how to contour the first time it became popular in the 2010s, let alone new-wave techniques like underpainting. I can’t remember the last time I wore mascara or eyeliner—which, to be honest, are the only makeup I own.
But I’m still a woman in my mid-30s on Instagram, and the algorithm is hellbent on convincing me that I should be doing more. It’s a constant reminder that my everything—skin, hair, ass—could be smoother, longer, tighter, better. One second, I’m pausing mid-scroll, entranced by the seemingly poreless glass skin and visibly toned figure of a stranger in a video about their daily routine; the next, my feed is filled with ads for bio-collagen face masks and glute-growth workout programs.
Someone is always trying to sell us something on our feeds, and our desire to purchase is amplified by insecurity. I’d like to say I’m above the influence of such manipulation, but being served that kind of content daily has still had an impact. Sometimes I catch myself pausing in front of my full-length mirror a little longer than necessary, comparing my nose and thighs against the filtered faces and fitness influencers that inhabit my phone. The only way to avoid it is to avoid being online altogether, which isn’t in the cards for a writer like myself, whose income depends on keeping up with what’s relevant and engaging in self-promotion.
Little did I know that the antidote to my self-conscious doomscrolling would be as simple as sitting still long enough to be truly witnessed.
It wasn’t exactly a confidence boost I was seeking when I booked a live portrait session with Portland-based painter Tyler Bingham. It was the end of a beautiful, brutal summer. I’d come out the other side of a breakup that had emotionally devastated me, so I flung myself around Oregon, checking off all the boxes that had been on my to-visit list since I’d moved to Rose City six years before: Crater Lake, the Alvord Desert, the Wallowas.
I was in a season of wanting to be captured, of wanting to look closely at the woman who’d endured a heartbreak she thought she could not. I wanted permanent images of the in-flux person I was, especially in the midst of the constantly, instantly changeable social media landscape. Somewhere along the way, I had new headshots taken and even did an outdoor boudoir photoshoot in the Columbia River Gorge. Dressed in nothing but lingerie, I glanced back at the photographer’s camera while the sun set against the mountains behind me. It was an homage to the newfound freedom that accompanied my sadness.
Then I learned about the opportunity to be painted from life via Bingham’s Instagram stories (yes, I see the irony). He said to think of it like a tattoo session: up to eight interactive hours during which we’d collaboratively fashion an artistic heirloom in real time. Having sat for more than 20 tattoos, I immediately understood what he meant: Each artwork is like a time capsule, a fleeting moment of life permanently etched onto my body. The portrait session would externalize that process—and at $800 would cost less than some of my biggest tattoos. That it wouldn’t require needles digging into my skin would be a nice change.
It was a chilly morning in early October when I arrived at Bingham’s studio space, a warehouse walk-up with exposed brick walls and high windows that opened onto the gentle traffic sounds below. The room lacked temperature control, forcing us to stay bundled in our Pacific Northwest layers as we opened with a getting-to-know-you chat and a guided meditation. The session’s focus: gratitude. When I opened my eyes, they landed on the facing wall where Bingham had painted the same word in bright blue, all-capital letters, underlined and punctuated like a sentence. A short distance away: OUR ATTENTION IS MORE VALUABLE THAN OUR TIME in no-nonsense black. I settled into a brightly painted chair across a folding table from Bingham, the canvas that would become my portrait propped up between us. I was about to be the subject of some very intense—and valuable—attention.
