Zoom Zoom Zoom or how my relationship with my face changed forever

How online meetings made us study our faces more than was necessary

I feel like the last few years have been weird in my work life. They probably have for many people. We had the pandemic and for some of us work became a positive constant (if we were lucky enough to keep your job), but we also perhaps had doubts around work. Like should we be spending our time doing mundane stuff if the world was ending soon? Should we be shouting at our children because they were unable to concentrate on the home school lesson and were instead painting the cats claws with nail varnish?

Or should we hire a camper van and go and live in a forest far away from all of it and go off grid for the foreseeable?

I digress. Whatever happened during the pandemic work changed. Some of this was positive. Like for some professions, WFH meant more flexibility for working parents (but also some challenges in the shape of actually living with work 24/7 and washing/tidying/cleaning being shunted in around our work life making it feel like we were only working with nothing else).

The other thing it bought was online meetings. It was amazing how quickly we became assimilated to these really. In my old market research agency they did a weekly ‘fun’ meeting with over 100 employees in attendance. Everyone was put on mute but one colleague accidentally came off and was heard saying to her partner:

‘I know it’s going on forever but it’ll hopefully be finished in a fucking minute so just piss off will you?’

It was an online quiz. A jolly online quiz that nobody wanted to do because the world was ending or we thought it was. Quizzes are never fun anyway but in our pandemic fearful brains we adopted them as perhaps a way to mitigate how afraid we were. Like singing Agadoo on the Titanic as it slowly plunges into the murky depths.

These online meetings, the non quiz ones where you were expected to talk about ideas and solutions had a strange impact on the way we saw ourselves. It was like holding a mirror up to your face for 8 hours a day. And observing a fearful and tired face staring back.

On a normal day at work, if you were going into the office, then you’d maybe check your reflection when you went to the loo, perhaps apply a bit of lipstick and leave and not consider it for a good few hours. This was different.

And it wasn’t just your face as you pulled your best pout and applied lipstick. No instead it was your face staring into the green light of your laptop. Adjusting your face to appear calm and relaxed. Then your face as you tried to gather together an intelligent and articulate reply. And your face when you said your reply, but said it at the same time as a colleague, and decided that it wasn’t worth saying but your boss asked you what you were saying, so you said it but by this point it really wasn’t of any value because the moment had passed. You saw that face too.

We became hyper-aware of our faces. The texture of our skin. The unique geometry of our nose and its relationship to our mouth and eyes. The facial ticks that perhaps we hadn’t even been aware of (I have a penetrating stare in meetings but it is only because I am trying to focus on what is being said). If we park all the downsides of online meetings- the way it’s hard to read the room, to tell how people are feeling, how it can feel monotonous if the energy isn’t read right or the meeting goes on too long…well the main thing I noticed was how old my face looked.

Last year I worked in a start up. It wasn’t pandemic anymore but the online meetings were still in full effect. I’d say that the majority of the team were under 40 and a couple were under 30. Their team skin was good man. It was flawless team skin. I would try and maybe rearrange the windows so my face wasn’t next to the most flawless face. I also noted that their teeth were really good and I had two gaps where my pregnancy had resulted in teeth being removed (nobody told me that this can happen when you’re pregnant so you end up with a destroyed smile forever).

Whilst people discussed data collection or how to build seamless purchasing journeys, I’d be staring at my face. I’d be repeating the words in my head. WHAT ACTUAL TOM FUCKERY IS THIS RIGHT NOW? The corners of my mouth and how they turned down even though I wasn’t feeling too bad. The bulging eyes. The neck. Oh the neck and the way there was an inch of flesh that hung down like a little empty purse.

There was also a glitch with my laptop so each time I dialled into a Google meeting it would throw me out every 3-4 minutes. It was usually when something very important was being shared. Some people believed I was doing it on purpose but I wasn’t. However I was sometimes secretly relieved as this would give me a few seconds to ready myself for the face comparison exercise again. It would give me a bit of time to stretch my face out before I went back in for another round.

‘What do you suggest Anniki? Do you want to go through your OKR’s right now?’

‘What?’

‘Oh you’re back again. Are you okay? You left the meeting and came back in. Anything to share?’

I wanted to say the truth.

I am too old for this Zoom. My skin looks pretty shit. What kind of cream to you use because you all look so hot right now? Why are your teeth so white? Is that one of those Instagram brands that I see sometimes? Don’t your teeth hurt afterwards? And your cheekbones are so polished! Do you use CC cream or is it glow enhancing highlighter? Or is it just because you’re 25 and I’m almost 50 perhaps?

I know. Wrinkles = wisdom and we should be proud of our years of hard won experience but it’s a tough world when an older woman is forced to stare at those wrinkles for hours every day. Bring back the 5 second appraisal in the toilet I say. Bring back the days when you only realised you had salad in your teeth at hometime. Bring those days back!

Some of them even had ring lights to make their faces look better (I didn’t realise this right away but when I did it made me feel slightly relieved- that the glow wasn’t entirely coming from their souls and into my eyes).

Needless to say that this continuous focus on my ageing face convinced me to have Botox. I would like to say that I’d never had it, and was like a Botox virgin who only rubbed hemp oil on my face, but the truth is I wasn’t. Afterwards however I noticed that the Botox made my stare more penetrating. It made my eyebrows more pronounced. I no longer looked quite as downtrodden and defeated, but I didn’t look glowing either. I looked surprised. I looked awake. But not beautiful.

The lesson? Well I think there’s a few packed into this. The first is never compare yourself to others. The second is that too many online meetings are not helpful. This isn’t just because of the wrinkles I live with, BUT they are also not good for team morale. Too many of them and we all lose our minds. I’m not advocating we all go back into offices again full time but they should be scattered liberally throughout the week like rock salt on a salmon steak before it gets popped into the oven. The final lesson is that you need to make sure you look away from your screen and don’t feel the need to stare all the time. This isn’t a natural skill this continuous staring thing so don’t feel ashamed if you have to close your eyes and take a break (as long as you don’t fall asleep).

Finally if you’re feeling particularly vulnerable, like E.T. where he’s lying wrapped in a sheet on the bathroom floor, and the space-suited-up-guy comes to drag him away, then request that your laptop throws you out of the meeting. Or just throw yourself out and lie on the floor and recall happier times. Remind yourself that you are beautiful.

Like really. You are.