Without fail, every time I step into an elevator, I am immediately consumed by two dark thoughts. The first intrusive idea that pops into my head is thinking that the machine's cables are going to break and I’m going to plummet to my untimely death, the second is the fear that the last time anyone will ever see me will be under atrocious overhead lighting. I can envision it so clearly: My friends and family are presented with the elevator’s security footage — I pray that I meet my demise in someplace that’s at least classy enough to have a working elevator camera — and see me standing there, washed out under fluorescents. “Are you sure that’s him?” they’ll ask. I don’t remember him with such deeply set undereye circles and massive pores. He always had so much joie de vivre, and you’re telling us that this man, who has clearly been so beaten to a pulp by life’s cruelties that it wears on his entire face, is our Coleman?”

If lighting is something you’ve never found yourself thinking about so intensely, congratulations: You’re already functioning at a more productive level than I am. But oh God, what your selfies must look like!

It’s a monologue so incessant that it has kept my thighs in great shape by convincing me to take the stairs whenever possible, but lately, I’ve been trying to trace this loathing for terrible overhead lighting back to its source. When I think about it, I’m blinded by memories of “the big light,” the dreaded overhead fixture in our family’s computer room that I sat under for hours, rotting away playing Neopets on a hefty desktop PC. That light droned down on me for years as I moved from computer games to MySpace, illuminating whatever sins I was committing as a guinea pig in the days of early social media. If I were to undergo EMDR therapy, I’m sure that all my mind would conjure would be images of an atrocious light fixture that looks like one single boob hanging from the ceiling.

Related

Regrettably, I’m seeing a whole lot of ceiling boobs these days. For a while, the content creator boom on social media meant that everyone from amateur videographers to bonafide influencers would be bathed in flattering lighting in the form of a ring light. Somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, the ring light seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. (Maybe a large shipment was lost in that Suez Canal blockage a few years back?) In its place is a terrifying regression to glaring, profoundly unflattering overhead lighting, often from a single source. Scroll through TikTok for one minute and you’ll surely find some creator clocking in at the Content Mines to record a video of them whipping up a recipe or dressing themselves for a get-ready-with-me under the most unforgiving overhead lighting you can imagine. As someone who has spent a fair chunk of their adult life being probably too concerned with the proper lighting for every occasion, I can’t stand to see this backslide go any further. So, please, allow me but a moment of your time to illuminate the benefits........

© Salon