CHAPTER SEVEN

Be Wild

Your Unmodified Self

Try counting how many times a day you alter yourself in some way to please other people.

It happens a lot!

It could be smiling when you’re angry or holding back from speaking your mind. I used to stay quiet when my friends were talking politics because I knew they wouldn’t agree with my opinions. And whenever I was around a certain boy, I would laugh at his unfunny jokes, because I wanted him to think I was fun and not too serious. We feel a lot of pressure to contort ourselves just to fit in.

We badly need to let go of this pressure and, instead, tap into our wild side. When we’re being wild, it means we’re not changing ourselves for other people. It means embracing our raw and unmodified selves, just the way we are.

Your Wild Self(ie)

It’s easy to fall into the self-altering trap every day, but social media makes it even easier. With a few taps, we can completely alter our appearance. The formula for getting a lot of likes on Instagram—a heavily posed, sunlit selfie with some retouching help from Facetune—is one of the most toxic examples of the pressure to alter ourselves. When that altered photo gets more likes, filtering and retouching become a reflex.

We need to stop this artificial craziness and start hanging out with our wild selves. A great way is by posting unretouched photos. Once you start doing it, you might notice that you feel better about yourself. An added bonus is that your friends may be motivated to post unaltered photos, too!

Try this approach:

1. Pose for selfies the way you’re feeling. Don’t contort your body or face to look a certain way if it doesn’t feel natural. If you feel happy, smile! If you feel excited, jump in the air! If you’re mad, yell!

2. Post the photo directly from your camera roll. Don’t zoom in and look at every detail of your appearance. Steer clear of smoothing or brightening filters, and don’t open any retouching apps.

3. Write your caption, post the photo, then exit the app. I had a bad habit of refreshing my photos for five minutes after posting them, to see how many likes they got. Now I post and immediately quit the app.

When you post an unretouched photo, you might not like the way you look. That’s okay. That discomfort is the feeling of wildness in action!

Q&A

Q: Posting selfies is one thing, but it feels way harder to express my “wild” self in real life. Won’t people just judge me if I’m super different than everyone else?

A: You might be surprised how powerful it can be to flex your unmodified self.

Take the example of Sibyl Buck, who braved the cookie-cutter world of fashion modeling in the 1990s. Sibyl is a free spirit who later became a rock musician. She told me that when she was younger, she squelched her vibrant personality to become a model. But she started to feel terrible when she saw that she was part of a toxic culture that was hurting young girls by making them think they should look a certain way.

So Sibyl chopped off most of her hair and dyed the rest bright red. She began embodying different wild aspects of herself each time she walked down the runway. She might grin at the audience or stick her tongue out at the end of the catwalk, instead of the usual deadpan look. This was all unheard of in the modeling world, so Sibyl worried that designers would stop hiring her.

To her surprise, the opposite happened. She started getting more and more jobs. Her career took off. As it turned out, the industry was not annoyed by Sibyl’s wild style. They were intrigued by how bold and confident she was.

This doesn’t mean that being wild will always lead to greater success. But we might end up with an unexpected bonus if we own our wild nature—for example, we might make a new, like-minded friend.

Here are some ways you can express your wildness:

Dress to express. If you have a certain style you love, try incorporating it into your daily wardrobe. I love finding inexpensive, unique clothes at a local thrift store that I’ve never seen anyone else wear.

Listen to the music you love most—even if it’s unpopular—and share it with others. I have a thing for Irish folk music. I never used to share that fact with people because, well, it’s not super cool. But recently I played my favorite Irish song for someone I had just met and it turned out they liked Irish folk music, too! We hit it off. Who knew?

Identify what makes you unique. Is there something that makes you different? Maybe it’s a certain way you speak or how you walk. Whatever might make you stand out, try owning it instead of hiding it. Accentuate it, even!