Hands, Looks, and Expectations.

Social media is, if you ask me, both a blessing and a curse. It's a wonderful way to keep in contact with others, or to get into contact and discover new people and new things or possibilities. However, it also has a tendency to eat up inordinate amounts of time.

It also has a tendency, or an inherent danger, to foster unrealistic expectations. That came up a while ago in a chat with a friend and colleague, who told me about another colleague being the aim of harsh criticism regarding the look of her hands - which she had happened to post on social media.

Years ago, I remember seeing a gold ring for offer on etsy. The artisan himself had taken the photographs, and one of the images showed him holding the (very well-made, really beautiful) ring. Now... goldsmiths are metalworkers. Metalworking is not a job that has a reputation for being kind on your hands, or skin. The photo, consequently, showed a worker's hand, and you could see a bit of grime and a lot of abrasion and the nicks and cuts and scars that years of working metal had left.

To me, that was a very impressive picture, and beautiful in its own way, as it showed both the product and the most important tool to make it. The hand was not "pretty" or "beautiful" in the sense of someone being a hand model, but to me, the contrast between the shiny clean ring and the battered hand also made it clear that this piece was hard work to make, and had a cost beyond the materials and the time invested.

Someone of the potential customers actually complained about the "ugly" picture, and that it would be offensive to post dirty, ugly hands like that. To which the artisan replied that these are his hands, they look ugly like this because that's the cost of making beautiful things, and she's welcome to do her shopping elsewhere. (Or something roughly along these lines. It's been a long time ago.)

My own hands also tend to look a little battered. This is normally nothing that I much care about - unless it's something that gets in my way when working, such as exceptionally rough skin that silks will snag on, or something that causes pain. Other traces? My hands are tools, and tools will sport traces of their use after a while, even if used correctly and treated properly and with care. When they do so, to me, they have their own very special kind of beauty, So, to me, have a dyer's hands stained bright blue or red, or a shoemaker's hands with its calluses and short nails, or a goldsmith's hands with calluses and scars and metal dust caught in the cracks of skin.

If you ask me, hands that bear the traces of work should never be something to be ashamed of. On the contrary!