I have a dubious talent; I look terrible in almost every photo I’m in.
Please note, I am not saying, “I think I look terrible.” I know I look terrible. Almost every photo I’m part of is the proverbial driver’s license photo for me.
But I think it’s funny because I know I don’t look bad in real life, the people who love me know I don’t look like that, and because people value an excellent posing game so much.
In our current age of heavy social media presence, apparently, it’s most important to look amazing in every photo. Like “I’m-actually-a-model-so-have-all-my-poses-down-perfectly” amazing.
Don’t get me wrong, when I occasionally get my face angled just right, eyes open, with an intelligent (or attractive) look on my face, my mouth pleasantly smiling, or lips parted perfectly, chin exact, shoulders back, arms relaxed, and it’s a good photo, that one is my profile pic everywhere. For months.
The rest of the time however, I have mastered the art of catching the most unflattering light and turning to the wrong angle to make my face look like a single blob of shapeless flesh. I have perfected the momentary slouch that makes me look like a rectangle with half-open drunk eyes, and my mouth contorted like I’m in the middle of saying a word I am unsure how to pronounce.
All this despite my best effort to stand slightly angled, hands and arms posed naturally, with my chin out a touch, not looking too far up or down.
Guys, I really think I am doing all the right things!
It’s made worse by the fact that I know how to pose. I was an on-set and event make-up artist for years, so I’m very familiar with posing, I know it’s also a game of lighting and angles, not luck. I just can’t quite manage to pull it off. And I can’t take it seriously enough to remember to practice.
I have studied photos that I look good in, and attempted to memorize those angles, but whenever someone is pointing any sort of camera at me I’m a deer in headlights and although I think I pull myself together enough to do the right things, the evidence dictates otherwise.
According to me, there is too much emphasis on the superficialities of looks anyway. I know what you’re thinking, of course, the woman who looks bad in photos would say that, but it’s true.
Recently, I came across a John Mayer tweet from 2017 (yes I know my Twitter skills are not on point either) but he said: If you’re pretty, you’re pretty; but the only way to be beautiful is to be loving. Otherwise, it’s just “congratulations on your face.”
And that sums it up for me. I’ll take loving any day.
I have always been more interested in my connection with another human than how fabulous we looked in the photos we took to mark the occasion. After growing up in the 70s and 80s and taking photos with relatives and other people whenever you saw each other (or just meeting them for the first time) to have to get photos developed and then put them in an album, seemed so time-consuming and hollow, now we just have 10,000 photos on our phones stretching back years, that still need to make it into a book or something. I mean what are we doing with the thousands of photos stored on our phones?
Although I admit, I still experience a micro-moment of shame when I see a terrible photo of myself that’s posted to social media with me tagged, because inevitably, the other person looks gorgeous. I find it interesting that my fragile teen ego still has influence 30+ years later.
But that only lasts for a curious moment, and I remember that was long ago, before I was a make-up artist, before I worked with professional photographers and on set for t.v and film productions, before I learned how many people it takes to make one person look amazing. Before I learned how “fake” so much of what we see is.
That was also before people close to me died, their lives cut short unexpectedly, and finding a forgotten terrible photo, either lost on my phone or an actual photo, brought back such a pang of surprised emotion, it took my breath away. Forever looking the same, never aging, their time on this earthly plane done.
At least when people meet me for the first time in person after seeing my work pic or a friend’s social media page, they say with surprise, “Oh, you’re much better looking in person!” Let’s just say I choose to be a surprise of the good kind.
We are all familiar with the glamor shots people use for years after they should update their photos.
Is that even them? And it’s only privately do you think (or maybe say out loud to someone close), “I barely recognized them, they look nothing like their photo!” It sets up an expectation of deception, however.
I don’t know why people perpetuate this fallacy. Sure, we all like to remember our youth and beauty, but just because your looks change, it does not mean you are no longer beautiful. I think older faces are the epitome of real beauty, beauty that is deeper than the skin.
The beauty that comes from living and loving, and losing and evolving. A true beauty that those people close to us see and appreciate.
I say let’s embrace our real faces, without duck lips and spider eyelashes, and along with it, embrace our human-ness. I love seeing all these body-positive posts, it’s a great start but let’s spread the trend to our faces, shall we?
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