About Face

I was thinking about the expression saving face. Don't know why. Perhaps it was staring at my 40-plus face in the mirror. While what we see in the mirror is the physical, in this expression, our faces reflect of our identities. We will want to save our face—or safeguard our identities. Or someone may be two-faced—not being true to their identity, but rather posing one identity in one situation, and an alternate identity in another.

Facebook defines itself as "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them". This virtual world easily allows for multiple faces and there are no mirrors for true reflection. We can update our status or show our photo albums and be as transparent as we feel like. We can also be as untrue as we wish. I am not knocking Facebook. It just made me think of our digital society, and our social networks, and how they allow us to truly mask ourselves even further. Or allow us to express ourselves from behind the mask of the monitor.

Surely we all want to look our best and take care of ourselves and our appearance, but when it gets down to it:

• Will we be seen without our makeup?
• Are we comfortable in our own skin?
• Do we only want to be "photographed" on our good side?