Tricks and photos

I think the reason I am so obsessed with making fake photos of myself as a woman is because it's sort of like playing with dolls-- but as an adult. It is also sort of like giving birth to a real human being, except I'm doing it inside a "fake" photograph. I swear, I have been frequently downloading pictures that women post publicly on the Internet, and cutting out their face and inserting my own, for about 2 years now, and it never gets old.

Every new photo I create is just as fun and intriguing --- like going to Toys R'Us as a kid and coming home with  a new doll or action figure. I am convinced that, by creating these photos with my face on their body ,  I am at least getting somewhat close to the rush they must feel when they themselves look at the pictures. You would probably be surprised how real some of them look. In fact, some of them are photoshopped so nicely that I have sent them to friends, and then later told them they aren't real photos, and my friends don't believe me. "There's no way the person in this photo isn't real..and there's also no way it's you....looks nothing like you."

Of course it looks nothing like me! It is me with the lips and the jaw of some random woman from San Antonio, Texas. It is me with the breasts and the body of some Puerto Rican woman from Florida. It is "me" lying naked on a bed about to get some sex action. Yet ... it is also not me. At first anyways. It definitely isn't me at first, but sometimes after a few months, it starts to get weird. I have written of this before but, you know how sometimes you look back at real old photos and you forgot you ever took them? Or maybe someone took it of you when you didn't realize, and you look at it and say "oh shit, I vaguely remember that day?"  That is sort of what it is like to look at these old photos I have made of myself now, with my head perfectly photoshopped onto a beautiful womans body. I wrote this down before once because it's so unusual, but sometimes I look at the pics and I get a little jolt. "Wait a second , is that me? Was it me? Is my memory just fucked up? Have I been accidentally turned into a man? Am I a female to male trans who was never told?" I look in the mirror checking for scars under my former 'breasts". "Did someone rip them off me?"

I think I am starting to grow increasingly uncertain myself that all of these pictures hve merely been "edited" and "doctored". They seem to look that much more real after time has passed, I have noticed. For example, some of them I remember creating better than others, and often the ones I remember creating most of all are the ones that I think don't look "real" enough. The ones that are obvious fakes and almost look creepy, when I first make them, because you can see that my lips are too big for the head, or that my eyes are too high up on the forehead, or that the jaw is not shaded like it ought to be - due to the light. Initially, when I make these and then save them, just to save them, these are always such obvious fakes and I hate looking at them, I really hate it. Sometimes, though, after 10 months go by and I look back, suddenly they look real. I just lie there on my bed staring at them on the iPhone, and I can remember that "when I made this there were definitely flaws..." but now those flaws don't seem to be there. It just looks like me, with my face painted in wondrous cosmetics, with a beautiful body,wrapped in a beautifully expensive dress. I am at some enormously rich looking party, holding a glass of wine I could never really afford, wearing $2500 high heels. It looks real. Completely real. It doesn'tl ook doctored. I get almost a little shaken. Are these images of some alternative universe I am living in being sent to me? Are these images of some past life? Photos taken inside my dreams? What are they?

One has to imagine the trick of modern life, and how much of it now revolves around photography and keeping "records" with photos. People these days are basically the photos they are able to make. If you go to France and have a vacation, you get the memories to yourself -- but all the rest of us get are just a bunch of photos that tell us you were there. So , from an outsiders perspective, the traveler becomes more of an interesting person just based on phtos alone. Well, imagine how absurd that all sounds once you realize how easily doctored photos can be? Why, you can start doctoring photos tomorrow and you can make the shits on your Facebook believe that you've seen every country on Earth -- assuming you're able to edit well enough. You can make them believe you've worn the greatest and mst expensive suits, ridden in the most expensive cars! You can even trick them into believing you are meeting people you are not really meeting. Presumably people they can't themselves confirm one way or another. "Ah, look...here I am with Billie Joe Armstrong...ran into him in NYC! Imagine?" How can anyone confirm this? It's just a brief photo. Billie Joe himself, a famous celebrity who probably takes thousands of photos, might not even be able teo remember he took it or not! Imagine?

And this is why I say that looking back at these edited photos of myself with the body of a woman -- often pornographic photos -- are so absolutely bizarre. These photos are basically just as "Real" as the photos of myself that I hardly remember taking , years ago, at places like Disney Land and the shopping mall and random house parties. I don't remember the photos from Disney Land...nor do I remember "taking' these photos. They are just here, in my personal album, when I wake up. They just appear to be traces of some past I have been living. I don't know why they're there, and like I say, I'm sometimes beginning to believe they are, or, I should say, were, the reality. I was a woman at some pint, it's clear enough to see, in fact I was a fairly popular porn star , but something happened. Maybe a wizard cast a spell and I got cursed. I keep waking up as a man now. Damn't. It's inexplicable but its what is happening. All the wizards have left me with are the PHOTOS to remember the glorious past life they stole from me. The series of past lives, in fact...

I am looking at one now that I just made four nights ago. I am wearing a red tank top with a backwards American flag on it and I have a bright pink pistol tattoo facing downwards on my waist. My hair is long and blonde. I am wearing a short black skirt very high above my knees with red fishnet stockings. Behind me there is a very extravagant looking leather sofa and many big paintings hanging on the wall. A strong muscular man's hand is reaching, about to grab my leg. The photo looks totally real. My face has been cut into the photo perfectly....can't tell it's a fake at all. You especially can't tell if I decide to run the image through a Photoshop filter , like if I make it black or white. Looks completely real. It is my whole face, too, my lips, my nose, my eyes, my earrings, etc. It is me. In fact, it feels more like me than this next picture here, with my so-called "real body"....

 One wonders what the future of this all might be. Could one day a problem I guess, cause folks will be making fake pictures of people doing real bad things -- and how on Earth can they really be authenticated? In fact, to take it all a step further, and to tie it in with my new favorite topic, robotics, one imagines that the machines will be able to make these photos for us, automatically, in the way that I am now just forced to do manually. It's very easy to imagine a program that will take your face and put it on the body of your choice --for a photo -- with no easily discernible flaws at all. You will probably be able to do it with thousands upon thousands of photos at once, too, so you will be surprised. I  can imagine this will be used for enjoyment, just like I am using it now, by way of my own hand. A woman, or someone that is beginning to want to identify as a woman, will be searching for dresses to wear, wondering which she will look best in. She will insert a photo of her face to the computer, the computer will take it and automatically put her face & head onto a thousand different photos of models in dresses. The woman will sort through these photos just like you or I now sort through "real" Facebook photos, or old photo albums. And them too of course, it won't stop there. Why should it? The machine will also help you to see yourself in all the different places you can only dream of seeing. Perhaps it will even make fake videos. "Computer, make a video of me kicking around a soccer ball in Kingston, Jamaica...I want to have dreadlocks and big double d breasts...wearing a pink tshirt with Lauryn Hills face on it... make me look happy..." The computer will start to work its magic, and it will ask you what song, if any, you want to play as background music for your little video. "Play 'Lost Ones' by Lauryn Hill. Thanks, computer."

To your friends, this video will basically be a complete representation of you, just like a real video of you is to them now. How on earth will they know it is not something that really happened for you or really took place in their memory? Who cares? All that matter is it is there on video, and seems real. Isn't that enough?