Every so often I need a recent photo of myself for something. A family newsletter, a facebook profile that is remotely honest, a family calendar. It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to find a picture of myself that isn't a complete embarrassment. Talking to some other moms I know and looking at the photos of myself from the past year or so, I am starting to put together why this is. First of all, husbands, for some reason, are not as trigger happy with the camera shutter as moms are. I can't think of a time that my husband has been like, "what a precious moment! wait. hold it there a moment, you adorable wife and children, while I fetch the camera and preserve this delightful scene for posterity!" I am almost always behind the camera, and by the time it occurs to me that this could be a good photo op of ME, specifically ask my husband to take a picture of me, spend a minute negotiating about whether it's a waste of time or worth the effort, he will get the camera and humor me but by then I've lost my sense of humor, and somehow cameras have a way of capturing that (okay, I might be exaggerating this scene a little, but still). Anyway, mommy pictures almost always fit into one of 5 categories, and I'm posting them here with examples, to embarrass myself once and for all.
The "I Am Looking At My Child and I Have 15 Chins"
The "I'm Trying to Hold and Arrange All My Children, But They're Pulling My Hair/Earrings/Shirt and I Am Trying to Adjust Myself Between Shots But Of Course That's When The Shot Was Taken. Yay."
The "I'm So Tired And Wearing No Makeup And This Could Have Been a Good/Fun Picture, But Honestly, Do You Think I Want People To See Me Like This?"
The "Snort-Laugh" (no explanation necessary)
The "I'm Mid-Sentence/Bite/Sniffle and I Look Like a Stroke-Survivor"
Unfortunately, my fear is that if 99% of pictures of myself look like this, maybe I just look like this 99% of the time. Perhaps it is time to come to terms with the fact that I will inevitably decline in hotness as I age, even as my husband gets hotter every day (curse the inverse-gender-age-to-hotness-cultural-bias!). I may have 15 chins when I look down (which probably IS 99% of the time), but I have inner-awesomeness, and my super-hot-only-getting-hotter-as-he-ages-and-gets-more-rustic-wrinkles-and-distinguished-gray-hairs husband, fortunately, seems to appreciate that.
8 comments:
This just made me laugh so hard! I'm not sure I am brave enough to post all of the not so great pictures of me...AND, Dave really is the exact same way with the camera. I love the way you described this.
This is awesome. :)
And what's wrong with 15 chins? Go big or go home!
Hahahaha! So funny! It's SO SO true about the husband camera thing! I'm hardly in anything and when I am I'm not prepared! But I do think you are amazingly beautiful! And hilarious!
This was great- thanks for posting. It made me laugh. I fortunately DO have a camera-happy husband, who is great at capturing "moments", and I'm pretty camera-happy myself, so between us we get some pretty good shots (and plenty of not-so-pretty ones, which I promptly delete.) My only complaint is we hardly ever get shots of the whole family this way, or even just shots of Bryce & I together.
HA!! This is the best post ever. I totally laughed out loud. I completely agree with you, it is so tough to find good, or any pics of myself.
Thanks for showing all of those "special" moments of yourself. :)
This post rings so true. I love it! Thanks for making me smile.
Hysterical. Very brave of you to share the shots that most of us promptly cringe at and then delete.
Here are some other types of pictures that never make it to the facebook page:
The "darn it, honey, i told you to count to 3! i wasn't ready. next time, will you please - CLICK - oh c'mon!" shot
The full body shot in which you are not posing like a super model and realize that your thighs/rear/waist are much chunkier than you remember.
The full body shot in which you ARE posing like a super model (or trying to) and realize that your thigs/rear/waist are much chunkier than you thought
Oh my goodness, I absolutely LOVED this post! This is SO my life. I laughed out loud-- I totally have tons of pictures like that. Dave is not a picture-taker so I have a half-dozen lame-o pictures of me to choose from each year.
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