I’ve been working remotely for 3 years now, and all of my meetings are done via Zoom. Remember back when Zoom rolled out the background-blurring effect? It was supposed to function like a privacy filter, so no one else on the call would be able to see what your home/workspace looked like. Everyone at my company started using it. However, when I tried it out, I discovered that it really does not work well when you have curly hair.
The filter just can’t tell the difference between my frizzies and curls and empty space, so it just cuts them out, and makes my hair look incredibly weird.
Unfortunately, blurring one’s background seems like it’s become the “professional” way to handle meetings. But in my case, I think the weird helmet hair it gives me is far more distracting than any glimpse into my personal life that actually seeing the background might give.