Pages

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Images that make the opposite point of the article they're dressing up

I can't remember why I was searching for this, but I must have googled "presence" or "charisma." Up popped a link to an instructional site whose preview promised me all kinds of tips on how to increase the effectiveness of my personal presentation. These folks also promised me that their tips would be enhanced "WITH PICTURES!" Like nobody had ever done that before.



So I clicked on it (why?) and found myself reading this super long article about how to have presence. The article wasn't so bad, but the images were pretty awful. Aside from the fact that they're poorly executed (looking like tracings of crappy stock photos rather than real drawings), they're  strangely out of sync with the points the article is making.

This lady is  supposed to be a woman with extraordinary presence and ideal body language.  But what's with the hands?  They're clasped and held just below her boobs. All the body language guys since time immemorial will tell you that hands placed in front of the body telegraphs coldness and a need for self-protection. Which is of course the opposite of the open, warm, vivacious quality a woman with "presence" should actually have. This is a woman who's ill at ease, with a smile that's actually a grimace, and to me (maybe because I have introvert tendencies myself), she looks like an introvert trying desperately to disguise it. I don't think there's anything wrong with being an introvert, by the way. I just think it's nutty to hold up a portrait of panicked introversion and present it as the epitome of ease and confidence.

No comments:

Post a Comment