Discontent

It’s an aesthetically pleasing photograph that definitely fits into a particular design ethos and palette. The walls are white, the wide window sill is lined with small plants, and a gorgeous mustard-colored quilt with a white geometric design is stretched out over one workspace while the other, a table set on wooden sawhorses with large wicker baskets underneath, has been neatly laid out with measuring tools and cutting supplies. The quilter who took the photograph of her studio was delighting in the way the sunlight hit a disco ball-like, mirrored planter that cast a constellation of light across the ceiling.

The rest of her Instagram falls into the same vein of photography. Earth tones, minimalism, geometric shapes, and photographs of women dancing through creeks or a perfectly laid out photograph of a tent set against a rugged vista, the tent flap wide open to reveal a beautiful quilt spread across the air mattress. Who wouldn’t want to camp in that place and that moment?

Her life is beautiful, and she works in serene, sunlit places making beautiful things. Your life could be like this...

There are many beautiful things about sewing Instagram, not least that it’s a community that draws in people of every size, age, and skin tone. You don’t have to be young, pretty, and white to draw followers - although I can’t deny that that helps. But if you have a flair for the distinctive and some skill with a needle, a phone camera, and a few good hashtags, other sewing folk and would-be sewing folk will eventually stumble on your work and probably be inspired by it too. I’ve been inspired by it: in between coursework, I’ve been finishing a small sewing project and I’m planning to finish another. I’m dreaming about touching bolts of linen and anxiously comparing fabric colors and scrutinizing florals.

But there are so people in this community who are selling things. Classes, fabric, patterns, the items they make. And to sell those things, they’ve rigorously, carefully built a custom-tailored Instagram presence that’s also selling a dream. Like the dream of the quilter’s studio and her camping trip: “I don’t just sew - I live a beautiful life! Look at my rustic minimalist space. It’s so peaceful!”

I look up from my phone to see a mess of computer cables, my homely tower of craft bins labeled with my dope but industrial labelmaker instead of the fairly steady, romantic Copperplate hand that I’m capable of producing, my kitchen island that I’ve been dreaming of clearing off since I moved in, the mishmash of furniture that’s functional and comfortable and adaptable and even sometimes downright nice to look at but rarely cohering into a peaceful design scheme. 

It’s not peaceful, in spite of my best attempts to present a de-cluttered space. It’s sort of sunlit, sort of white, but I don’t mess with plants, and I’ve gifted my cat a giant piece of crunchy packing material that’s strewn across half the kitchen floor. My studio apartment will never be a wonder of artistic arrangement.

Or rather, it’s an artistic arrangement of a totally different sort: the current detritus on the aforementioned kitchen island includes a cutting mat, a half-sewn laptop sleeve, my metadata textbook, a bin of dried fruit and nuts that doesn’t fit in any of my cabinets, and my Mr. Beer 2-gallon keg of fermenting saison. I sew, I cook, I brew beer, I bind books, and this space is not pristine because I’m often in the middle of any number of projects that won’t tidily be packed away out of sight in the space that I have to work with.

And it reminds me, as I’m looking at all of it, that it takes a lot of work to present a space or a face in a particular way, which Instagram influencers will usually not show you. They’ll tell you, as a caption to a photo of an un-made-up face (foundation doesn’t count!) that was probably chosen out of 700 photos taken in different lights and from different angles and is somehow never unflattering, that their process is messy, that they get frustrated, that they had to rip out all their seams and start over or dump three batches of sourdough before a loaf actually turned out, but somehow, even the mess is curated and controlled.

As someone who couldn’t maintain a single aesthetic on my Instagram page if I tried, I respect that. They have to apply a lot of skills and effort to maintaining their followings and selling their brand. It’s a full-time job. 

Is it a good work? (Like: a truly good thing to do) I don’t know. It seems like it’s predicated on generating and monetizing envy and dissatisfaction. But they’re also often fairly skilled and genuinely inspiring, and they show what I could do, if I put in the time and effort to learn certain skills. That inspiration may be empowering for me. When it comes to sewing, it’s undeniable that well-fitted clothing makes me feel great about myself and my body, and seeing so many people making beautiful, well-fitting clothing suggests to me that it’s something I could do too.

For me, it’s mostly just helpful to be clear-sighted about what these people are doing. I understand why heavy Instagram use correlates more highly with depression than use of any other social media platform. When you scroll uncritically, you’ll be fed a steady diet of images that depict how great life could be - if only.  There’s plenty of ink spilled in critical theory about the illusion of the photograph as objective, real, evidentiary. At the end of the day, even an exact replica of a moment is framed, both physically and temporally, and the viewer cannot see what’s outside the frame. 

I think that being aware of the motivations and efforts of the people behind the photographs, and adding that filter to everything you view, can ultimately be critical to healthily enjoying, engaging, and being inspired by these communities. That picture of that studio was beautiful. But it’s also staged, and it’s okay if my process or my space doesn’t look like that: my job is not to convince people on Instagram to buy my life, and as far as I’m concerned, the reason I live the way that I do, with some caveats, is because this is how I like it to be. I’m grateful for what these people show me, and I’m grateful for what they create. I’m also grateful for the life that I have, and I hope that amid that gratitude, I can be content and let the beautiful things simply be beautiful without needing them to be mine.