Vanessa Carlton Exposes Herself — Scars and All — to Illustrate ‘Faux Perfection’ of Social Media
Vanessa Carlton (Photo: Getty Images)
Vanessa Carlton has killer pipes and a family so picture-perfect they could be in an ad, but neither her life nor her body is flawless.
The Liberman singer, 35, risked “mortifying” herself on Monday to post a less-than-flattering photo of her abs, including a scar, to make a point that social media is a curated look at someone’s life — not an actual representation of it.
In a Portland Holiday Inn — the brunette, who has a 1-year-old daughter, Sidney, with Deer Tick singer John McCauley — decided to “get real” with her 15,000 followers. “Normally exposing myself like this would feel mortifying and inappropriate,” she wrote, “but given what I’ve been seeing online and knowing the way young girls and boys are affected by what they see, well, I feel moved to do this.”
Carlton revealing how photos can show different things. (Photo: Instagram)
Along side two photos of her abs, Carlton continued, “I’m not judging the people that want to portray themselves as beautiful, organized, perfect outfitted, and skinny, [but] what you see on people’s Instagrams and Facebook is never the whole picture. People that post photos of their bodies and faces online, have almost always taken about 9 photos in hopes of getting that perfect angle, that perfect look and then they filter it. Then you see it and you think, ‘Wow, she looks amazing,’ meanwhile the girl that posted it is frantically checking her ‘likes’ and comments.”
She admitted, “I’ve done it myself. We are all guilty.”
But Carlton urged her followers to “take themselves out of this cycle,” saying, “I’m a 35-year-old woman. I’m in good shape. I can fit in a sample size sometimes. I’ve had a three abdominal surgeries. An appendectomy when I was 12, a tubal salpingectomy (look it up) when I was 33 [after a heartbreaking ectopic pregnancy] and a C- section at 34. If you look at the photo on the left you can see my scar. These photos aren’t filtered and if I tried really hard I could make my abs look perfect and then post it online and make a bunch of young girls feel like s**t about their own abs. But my abs can also look like they do on the right. I’m presenting the whole picture. I carried an over 8 pound baby for what felt like 16 months. I’d say I earn both of these shots.”
She concluded by saying, “Life online can be adorable and funny and connected and it can also be a manifestation of deep insecurity and faux perfection. In my opinion we are beautiful when we are kind and empathetic and curious and laughing. Explore the world. Get off your damn phone. Spoken like a mom right? Ps. This is a message to myself too.”
Carlton isn’t afraid to say that she’s a work in progress. When Yahoo Celebrity interviewed her late last year, she talked about bringing her young daughter with her on tour for the first time and admitted, “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m learning on the fly.”
She may have no idea what she’s doing, but when she posts things like this, she’s working to make her daughter proud.
