When you proudly post pictures online of your fitness and nutrition results, you naturally hope for positive responses. Usually, you get them, but unfortunately, there’s always someone who feels the need to spoil your celebration. A little envy needed? Post pictures of your six-pack online, guaranteed success.
“I don’t like mountain climbing at all”
Imagine you’ve been preparing for months to years. Your goal: to become the 19th Dutch person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. No easy task considering the countless failed expeditions that preceded you and the frozen bodies still on the mountain. Fast forward: After enduring all hardships, you’ve reached the summit. You take out your half-frozen iPhone for a selfie at the top, which is barely possible due to your numb fingers. After a successful descent, you proudly post your selfie from the highest point in the world on Facebook. Soon, the comments start pouring in: “Congratulations”, “amazing!”, “what an achievement”. You glow until you read the comment from an uncle: “Honestly, I don’t like mountain climbing at all”.
It’s a free country, and by posting photos online, you’re literally inviting people to comment.
Yet, at the last remark, you think: “Who asked you, jerk?”
Proudly showing your six-pack online
The above might be a bit of a weird metaphor. However, I hope to have conveyed the feeling you can get when you’ve achieved your goals after hard work, but someone has no appreciation for that effort and criticizes your goal. I’ve experienced it personally, but now I regularly see it in the comments my models receive on the photos they share online.
When I, as a budding fitness photographer, first took photos of myself that I liked, my wife proudly showed them to colleagues. The reactions were all positive until a male colleague looked over her shoulder and said: “What are those weird bumps on his back? Looks deformed.” My wife responded with: “Those are muscles, ever heard of them?”. I could laugh about it. I couldn’t be offended. I’ve looked like this for years, so it didn’t feel like I had worked particularly hard or long for it. It was just the result of a lifestyle.
However, if you’ve just gone through that first transformation and the motivation and discipline still need to turn into habit, then you’re much more aware of the effort you had to put in. Then such a comment can be painful.
Last week, a model posted some photos online that I had taken of him earlier. He was, rightly, extremely proud of the result, and so were many others. Actually, everyone except that one vague acquaintance: “To be completely honest, I don’t find it attractive”. To which the model thought: “Who asked you to be honest?”.
Personally, I of course respect everyone’s opinion and as said, you naturally invite reactions when you post (such) photos online. But couldn’t that acquaintance have first acknowledged the achievement before expressing his taste?
Don’t hate the six-pack, hate the game
Before I started with fitness photography myself, I regularly posted the work of other photographers on my blog and Facebook page for motivation and inspiration. At some point, out of nowhere, I received a message from my oldest sister indicating that she was getting a bit tired of all those photos with muscular models and tight ladies.
“Then don’t damn well look!”, I thought. “I put a lot of time, passion, and energy into my blog, and all you can do is complain about photos of tight ladies and muscular men. Who asked you?”. Once I cooled down, I tried to figure out what could have prompted such a remark although you don’t have to be a psychologist to understand. It was no secret that my sister was not entirely happy with her own physique, and the photos I posted constantly reminded her of that. A bit like the kid who keeps saying “I got a ten, I got a ten” while the rest of the class failed the test, or the lottery winner who parks his Lamborghini next to the 1980 Lada of the neighbor.
Sometimes it’s purely a matter of taste when someone says they don’t find your lean body attractive, in many other cases, it’s pure envy or a manifestation of dissatisfaction with their own physique. You can, of course, be upset after all your hard work. On the other hand, you can consider that tall trees catch a lot of wind. Especially trees with a six-pack.
