I`ve been enjoying this thread since its stormy opening; like a lot of the best discussion threads, the idea of this one is quite simple.
What I particularly like is that not only are people describing themselves, they are also choosing the way that they describe themselves. This gives me a great excuse to ramble on about types of description :-
Spoiler for a literary digression:
Marshall McLuhan enjoyed considerable fame when he reduced one of his more graspable ideas to the succinct but slightly baffling mantra, "The medium is the message." Does anyone remember that ? The essence of this idea was that when you sit and read a book, the process of sitting alone and absorbing a lot of written words affects your behaviour more than the content of the book itself. Have you ever woken up after a night slumped in front of the tv, unable to recall what you watched the previous evening ? Then you are living proof of McLuhan`s idea.
Armed with this little intellectual snippet, that the method is as significant as the content, I started thinking about descriptions in fiction:
Jane Austin probably revealed more than she intended about women`s attitudes to men . She frequently introduces her male characters by explaining their financial circumstances; how much land they have, what they might inherit, baldly stating how much they earn a year. To me it shows with unpleasant clarity how, at one level, women of the time viewed men in very materialistic terms.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr had a lot of fun with descriptions in one of his books. He started out by using conventional physical descriptions, "Mr. X, a tall red-headed man..." , by the middle of the book he was focusing on small bizarre details, "Mr.Y, a American with a bad back and unusually smelly feet ...". By the end of the book, he`s really enjoying selecting information at random; " Mr. Z, a 21-stone man with yellow skin and a six-and-a-half inch penis ..."
Vladimir Nabakov wrote one of my favourite descriptions; "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Of course this dazzling display doesn`t really describe much, but it does tell us straight away, "In this book, me and my style are more important than the characters themselves."
So, we have a big range of things to choose between when we describe ourselves, and what we select is probably quite revealing too ...
Several people felt comfortable enough to explain a lot about their situations or their psyche; I think it`s great that they trust the MB audience enough to do that.
Rjinn is the only person who used colour to describe herself, which I think indicates a rather off-beat way of looking at things.
I liked
Vanilla`s approach, mentioning her room and some of her possessions. For me she really came to life when she said that her favourite magazine was
Marie Claire because a friend I respect a lot reads that too.
Freebase also made an excellent observation :-
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I don't totally believe my own fabricated self-image. I think self-images on their own are probably inherently flawed, because they're based on the assumption that other people think the same way you do and have the same information and emotions about yourself that you have, which is never.
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So, baring in mind some of the above, this is how I would describe myself:-
I grew up in a kind of stiff-upper-lip culture and have inherited an aversion to self-analysis; fine for others but I don`t want to do that to myself. So I`m going for a mixture of colours and possessions instead.
I think irl I`m best described as non-descript. I always try not to draw attention to myself. If I were a colour, I`d be grey, although the people who know me best might say,
"Wow, his greyness is actually shot through with splashes of beige." I`d rather be in the hills than at the beach, and the possessions I`d like to mention are second-hand books, which I`ve been accumulating, and sometimes discarding, since the age of about 12. Since that age I`ve been a chain-reader; finish one book, start the next. So from that, feel free to infer:-
- I like reading
- I`m not particularly affluent
- something obscure from the past appeals to me more than today`s mainstream.