Being Un-Photogenic
Being un-photogenic doesn’t mean being ugly. Being un-photogenic just means there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the camera expects of your face and what your face is capable of doing under pressure. You could be the most beautiful person in the world, with a face so astoundingly symmetrical that it baffles even the world’s most acclaimed mathematicians. But due to forces outside of your control, the second there’s a camera pointed in your general direction anywhere within a thirty foot radius of you, your facial muscles start to spasm and you forget how necks look on normal people and the final product ends up looking like a bizarro version of you in some alternate parallel dimension where all your facial features have been shifted just slightly down and to the left.
I assume the muscular thought process goes something like this: Oh hey, we’re just some face muscles. Pursing lips, wiggling nostrils, raising eyebrows inquisitively, doin’ the shits face muscles do. What’s that over there, is that a dog wearing a sombrero running through the park? Holy shit, face muscles! We’ve got work to do! Eyebrows, UP! Mouth, OPEN! Quick, somebody message the left arm and tell it to point!
Ok, you can all relax now. The dog’s gone. Blink blink blink. Upper jaw, stop biting lower lip. You’re going to make a canker sore and we really hate those little bitches. OK it’s business as usual guys so let’s just relax and JESUS HOLY MOTHER OF HOTDOGS IS THAT A CAMERA? Somebody check with eyes, is that a camera? EYES. COME IN EYES. DO YOU READ, EYES? CAN YOU CONFIRM CAMERA SIGHTING AT 140° NORTHWEST?
This is it, people. This is what we’ve been training for. Lock and load! Left eyelid, droop! No, more! MORE, GODDAMNIT THIS ISN’T KIDDY PLAYTIME, THIS IS THE REAL DEAL. DROOP LIKE YOU MEAN IT. Bottom lip, make yourself all janky like she just got a cavity filled and you’re mostly numb. There you go, good work soldier! I want to see TEETH, people, LOTS OF TEETH! Upper lip, snarl! Right eyelid, take one for the team and close!
Is that it? Is it over? Good work, face muscles. Very good work. I think we have effectively fucked up that photo. Until next time, guys.
Being un-photogenic means coming to terms with the fact that for some reason, the universe doesn’t want you to look attractive in pictures. Your God can’t help you here: you have been marked at random by the cosmic powers-that-be for a lifetime of facial wonkitude. You can practice making perfectly presentable faces for hours upon hours in the mirror, realize with genuine surprise that you’re actually pretty okay looking, and the second you slip your iPhone between your face and the mirror, everything will tense up and you’ll snap what looks like a coked-out mug shot, despite being entirely convinced you didn’t move a single muscle. You compensate for your handicap by only taking silly photos, so God forbid some future alien species happens along the charred ruins of Earth’s dominant species ten billion years from now, and for some reason the only remaining archaeological evidence is your life’s collection of photos, because they’re going to think we were total idiots.
You’re not ugly. You just end up inadvertently accentuating all the parts of yourself that are just a little bit off in real life. In photos, they’re way off. Do you lack a substantial depth of chin? In a photo, your chin will melt straight into your neck like some doughy horror movie Adam’s apple. Is one of your eyes ever so slightly (infinitesimally, microscopically, we’re talking two or three quarks’ difference) higher than the other? In a photo, the linear difference will be so astounding it’ll look like lefty is up on your forehead and righty is butting up against your nostril and Sloth from The Goonies will shake his head in shame, having been bested by you. Teeth you didn’t know you had will suddenly appear, the freckle right on the edge of your lip won’t not look like a zit, and oh hey did you know you have a forehead dimple? Because apparently you do.
It doesn’t even matter if you aren’t aware of a camera near you; face always knows. Pictures you didn’t even know had been taken will pop up on Facebook, some poor citizen having had to hover his cursor over your bewildering visage long enough to tag you in it. “What rancorous beast is this I see before me?” He surely will cry, shielding his eyes from the screen lest it should cast some dark curse on him. You look from photo to mirror. Mirror to photo. Photo to mirror to photo to mirror to photo to mirror to why the fuck? Who the fuck is this? Who is this person? Is this what people see when they look at me? How do I have friends? How have the bowels of hell not devoured me, taking me back from whence I clearly came?
Cameras can go fuck themselves. You’re not ugly. And it’s not your fault. People are not cameras, and when they look at you they see something even better than what you see when you look at you. Because aside from the harsh cold soulless gaze of the camera lens, you are your harshest critic.
Photo: My friend TJ, taking what probably ended up being a terrible picture of me.