I Am Not the Tiny Sloth

And other thoughts on self-image.

There’s a decent chance you’ve seen the hilarious renderings of viral account Things I Have Drawn, where a dad turns his son’s drawings into realistic renderings. The creatures are charming (and sometimes a bit creepy), with bizarre proportions and exaggerated features that almost get it right.

See? Creepy.

Last weekend, I came across it for maybe the dozenth time, and as I scrolled through the images they struck me differently than ever before. I didn’t just see a horse with the silhouette of a warthog or a swan with a neck like a thumb. I saw…myself.

Drawing skills aside (decidedly not my gift) my own self-portrait would be just as skewed. Some features would be exaggerated while others went ignored. It’d likely appear more caricature than portrait, more biography than its surface might belie.

While the inaccuracies in a first grader’s scrawl are downright enchanting, an adult who paints themself as “too this” or “too that” in as many ways is decidedly less so. Yet find me a person who …