I have a long history of skin problems. There are times it looks like my bare skin was dragged at high speed along a gravel road.
It doesn’t happen too often, but there have been times when my skin is cracked, raw, and oozing. When eating causes the skin around my mouth to split and bleed. When even a small smile is excruciatingly painful, and, again, leads to blood trickling down my chin.
Not to mention the infamous abcess requiring surgery that was immortalized here in one fo the TMI threads.
I do NOT want my picture taken with blood running down my face, or puss oozing out of canyon-sized gashes in my face. I do NOT want my picture taken when I have rashes, eruptions, and other blemish disfigurations. I do not want these things immortalized, preserved, or graphically documented. I do not want the reminders of those times. When my skin is clear and healthy I want to pretend it has always been that way.
This had made me very leery of picture taking in general. I do NOT want ambush photography done. My husband is very considerate of my issues, and when he photographs me he makes the effort to present me in the best light and minimize whatever skin craziness is going on. I find very few other people do this. Indeed, it seems the more I say “no” the more they want to pursue the “capture”.
Mind you, I’ll pose for group photos at events and so on… but it is necessary to my sense of safety and privacy to have some control over photographs of me.
Fortunately, as time has passed my skin problems have dimished. But just because I may appear in public with whole, unirritated skin doesn’t mean my past never happened. It’s not enough to say someone’s reaction is “irrational” or out of proportion. If someone was afraid of snakes, would it be OK to lock them in a room full of harmless garter snakes? If someone is afraid of water is it OK to throw them into a swimming pool?
No means no. It’s that simple.
