I’ve been thinking a lot about fabulousness lately. Mostly for a couple of articles I’ve been working on, but as a perpetual shifter (not in the True Blood sense, but in the sense of one who is always making minor adjustments to her life) I guess it’s something I think about a bit anyway.

As I’ve written here before, one thing I believe quite firmly is that we’re sold a lie that through changing our appearance, we can change our lives. That if only we lost weight, had “better” hair, the “right” clothes, we’d be able to access that certain, indefinable magic we’re convinced the people who do have that aesthetic possess.

I’ve been speaking with women who do have that magic - that capacity to make amazing things happen to them - and unsurprisingly, what I’ve found is that it isn’t about what you wear or how you look at all. Much of your capacity to make magic comes from your openness to it: the frequency and vigor with which you throw yourself into new situations, your expectation that the people around you will be good rather than bad, your ability to spot a good opportunity and make the most of it.

It also, I think, comes not just from the material facts of what happens in your life, but how you make sense of those facts. If you have the capacity to find excitement in what others would find mundane, your life will become proportionately more interesting - if only because that’s how you experience it.

None of these things have anything to do with how you look.

But let’s be honest - that they do is a very seductive idea, and erasing it entirely isn’t easy to do. It’s what the advertising industry is predicated on: this idea that certain types of aesthetics connote a certain type of existence. Image and attribute are sewn together so intimately that in recognising one, we automatically assume the other.

Digital cameras, photoshop and Hipstermatic have given us the tools to create those images ourselves, so that any cursory flick through Tumblr or Flickr uncovers image after image of outwardly glamorous people. (“Oh fuck,” I think to myself. “Maybe I should wear more eyeliner. Or high heels instead of flats.” Knowing full well that neither of the above would make me happier in any substantial way. Particularly not the heels, which hurt like holy hell.)

Seeing such images of ourselves can be quite reassuring, providing visual proof of how beautiful we once were (conveniently forgetting that we took 15 photos until we captured the one that made us look beautiful), of how much fun we had that one night. But while there is fun to be had in dressing up and modifying your appearance - last Tuesday I donned my black boots, purple wig and cats ears to attend a Harajuku-themed party in Camden - those images?

They’re just poses and lighting and angles. People take more of them, I suspect, when they’re less content, and more intent on getting external validation. They don’t represent what we are, but our fantasy of what we would like to be.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t take or delight in such images. If part of leading a “fabulous life” is looking at it through “fabulous” eyes, perhaps image manipulation is one way to achieve that. But if those images make you feel lousy (and I know they make me feel lousy from time to time), perhaps it’s worth remembering what Penny Arcade had to say when I interviewed her about Andy Warhol’s famous “Factory” back in 2006: “What the Factory does is fulfill the longing people have that there’s something going on that they weren’t part of.”

Related: Making magic: you are not your wardrobe
How do I look from *this* angle? Nightlife blogs and narcissism
Sorry, that dress/jacket/pair of skinny jeans won’t turn you into Chloe Sevigny/Mary-Kate Olsen/Rachel Bilson/whoever the glossies are pushing this week.

Image: Still from Bright Young Things.