Afraid to Look, So I Become

Giving up on reference photos feels ridiculous on paper, but it's real to me. I want to draw a male boxer, a character who exists so clearly in my head that I can almost feel the weight of his shoulders, the stretch of his back when he throws a punch. Every tutorial says the same thing: "Use references. Study male anatomy. Look at fighters' bodies." And every time I even think about opening a folder full of shirtless men, something in me freezes. My brain whispers: If someone sees this, they'll think you're a creep. So instead of scrolling, I close the tab and sit there, stuck between what my art needs and what my shame allows.

The solution I've come up with is strange: I want to go to the gym and turn myself into the reference. If I can't look at them, I'll use me. I'll train my shoulders, my arms, my back. I'll watch how my own body moves in the mirror when I throw a punch or hold a guard. I'll feel the burn in my lungs and legs and remember it when I animate the Fighter breathing after a round. It sounds almost noble: dedication, immersion, method acting but for drawing. The truth is less glamorous. I'm not just doing it for realism; I'm doing it because I'm terrified of being seen as dirty for studying the male body like any normal artist.

There's a weird double standard inside me. I know other artists fill their Pinterest with abs, torsos, muscles, fights. They call it "anatomy board" and move on. I know, logically, that bodies are forms and volumes and movement, not automatic proof of bad intentions. But my own gaze feels dangerous. I imagine someone grabbing my phone, seeing pictures of men, and instantly rewriting my character into something disgusting. It doesn't matter that my interest is mostly technical: where the shoulder sits, how the ribcage twists. The fear wins. So I choose the gym as a safer battlefield. If I'm only looking at myself, nobody can accuse me of anything.

Of course, that choice isn't neutral. The gym is not just a place of study; it's a place of comparison, of insecurity, of pushing limits. My body isn't a blank canvas. It's a body with its own history, its own fatigue, its own medical warnings. When I say "I'll become the reference," I'm also saying "I'll ask this body, with all its scars and softness, to pretend it's a cis male boxer." There's a kind of tenderness and violence mixed together in that. On one hand, I'm involving myself in my art in a very intimate way. On the other, I'm demanding that my body carry the weight of a character who was never meant to be me.

Still, the idea pulls me forward. Because there is something powerful in imagining myself learning this language of movement, not just stealing it from images online. Feeling the rotation of my own hips when I shadowbox in a mirror. Noticing how my chest moves when I run, how my breath shortens, how my legs threaten to give up but don't. All of that can feed the Fighter's animation in a way that's more honest than any photograph. My embarrassment becomes fuel. My discomfort becomes data.

I know this plan won't magically fix my relationship with references. I'll probably still flinch at every search result that looks too intimate. I'll probably still worry about what people would think if they saw my tabs. But at least I won't be completely paralyzed. Going to the gym for this reason is my crooked compromise: I can respect my own boundaries and still move closer to the character I want to bring to life.

It isn't heroic. It's messy, scared, and a little bit obsessive. But it's mine. And if, one day, someone looks at the Fighter and says, "His body feels real, his movements feel lived," they'll never know that what they're seeing is my awkward solution to a quiet fear: the fear of looking, the fear of being seen looking, and the decision to put my own body between the two.

The Art Of Giving Up

Giving up is one of those phrases loaded with shame, yet almost everyone who is honest with themselves has wanted to do it. "Don't give up" is plastered everywhere: in motivational posters, gym walls, school speeches. Quitting is treated as a moral failure rather than a human reaction. But giving up is more complex than a simple lack of courage. Sometimes it is avoidance, yes. Sometimes it is self‑protection. Sometimes it is an invisible survival strategy that no slogan can summarize.

There is a version of giving up that is pure exhaustion. It appears slowly, after months or years of trying to fix a situation that refuses to move: a toxic friendship, a hostile work environment, a body that does not respond to our demands. At first, we call it perseverance. We tell ourselves that all meaningful things are hard, that pain is proof of seriousness. But there comes a point where effort stops being noble and starts becoming self‑erasure. When every attempt confirms the same dead end, continuing blindly is not resilience; it is denial. In that sense, giving up can be the moment someone finally believes their own pain and stops throwing themselves against the same wall.

There is also the giving up that is actually a shift, not an end. A student abandons a prestigious degree to pursue a path that fits better. An artist stops chasing an algorithm and returns to small, sincere work. From the outside, people say, "She gave up." From the inside, it feels like, "I stopped insisting on hurting myself." The effort does not disappear; it changes direction. The person is no longer fighting to keep a role that crushes them; they begin fighting for a life that resembles them. This kind of giving up is often the first step of real agency, though it rarely gets celebrated.

Yet, not all giving up is healthy. There is a darker form that settles when fear convinces us that trying is more dangerous than failing by default. A child mocked once for singing may never open their mouth again. A writer whose first story is ridiculed might close the document and decide they have "no talent." Here, giving up is not a conscious decision after reflection; it is a reflex built on shame. The person is not choosing peace; they are choosing numbness to avoid humiliation. Over time, this kind of withdrawal can calcify into a story about oneself: "I'm just not the kind of person who does that." The loss is quiet but immense. Entire futures shrink to match the size of one painful memory.

The difficulty is that from the inside these different forms of giving up feel similar: a release of tension, a drop in pressure, the sudden absence of a demand. Relief is not a reliable indicator of wisdom. That is why the question is not "Did I give up?" but "What did I protect when I gave up, and what did I abandon?" If the answer is that we protected our dignity, our health, our faith, or our sanity, then stopping was an act of care. If we realize we mainly protected our fear of embarrassment or discomfort, then the giving up may be a thief disguised as safety.

Modern culture does not help us make this distinction. Productivity rhetoric glorifies those who "never quit" and hides the cost paid by people who stayed too long. At the same time, algorithms and instant gratification encourage us to drop anything that does not bring quick reward. Between those extremes, a more realistic ethic would say: some things are worth enduring for, and some are not. Knowing the difference is a skill we rarely teach

Perhaps the most honest way to think about giving up is to separate what we are releasing from who we are. Abandoning a project, a relationship, or a dream is painful, but it does not mean we have abandoned our capacity to care, to create, or to try again in another form. People confuse the end of one path with the end of their worth. In reality, a life is made of many attempts, many versions of ourselves that do not reach the finish line. Their value lies not in their success, but in what they revealed about our limits, our desires, and our illusions

Giving up will happen, whether we like it or not. We will drop habits, projects, relationships. The important question is whether these renunciations are made in panic or with lucidity. To pause and ask, “What is this costing me? What is it giving me? Who do I become if I continue?” is already to transform giving up into something else: a decision rather than a collapse. And if one day we realize we let go too soon, it is worth remembering that returning is not forbidden. A path can be left and rejoined. Giving up on something once does not doom us to give up on ourselves forever.