Like any proud Mummy, I do like to take the odd photo of my gorgeous baby girl. Usually if I want a photo of the two of us, I have to resort to the Selfie. I have to push passed my repulsion of this fad on a regular basis, otherwise there would be zero photographic evidence of my existence.
I was really hoping this trend would go away. I am not the most photogenic individual and I have to take about 20 shots of my mug before I can find one that I am actually OK with.
For me, selfies just highlight areas that need improvement and quite frankly I don’t need that level of honesty about my face in my face! Without makeup I look rough and with make-up I can just about pass as a human being. I have never achieved that flawless finish, forget liquid eyeliner flicks and contouring. I am still mastering makeup 101, the right foundation for your skin type. First of all, I have no idea what my skin type is. It’s combination, oily, dry, blotchy, sensitive and prone to redness. It’s skin…I have skin! My time is at a premium so everyday, I blend my foundation, settle for looking fractionally less crap and make for the door
The dawn of the Selfie means that you don’t just do one mirror check in the morning and get on with your day. You can have your stress levels and mediocre makeup skills fed back to you in a rather unflattering photo. At any time. Taken by you! Bugger that. I do whatever I can to avoid this but you can’t always escape the craze.
My WhatsApp and Facebook page are filled with candid and spontaneous Selfie snaps of my friends and family. Nights out, nights in, festivals, holidays…one thing remains a constant. No one seems particularly thrilled in any of them, very few people smile now. They get the perfect background and strike a pose. Enter Duck Face and Fish Gape. Both looks don’t really show any emotion and yet here we all are breaking out our Zoolander!. You are at an amazing gig, or holidaying in an exotic location, dining somewhere fabulous or just hanging out with your best ones. You are loving life and living in the moment then someone reaches for the camera phone. It’s on, that 5 second race to that perfect pose. What to do! What to do! OK I am going to pout, no gape, no pout…balls! Delete that one!
The most bizarre aspect of this whole issue, is that now fully grown adults are adding cartoon cat ears to their Ben Stiller tributes. To each their own, I just never thought I would be taking a photo of my face, airbrushing it and then sticking a dog tongue to it. Just because you can people, doesn’t mean you should.
My husband is not a fan of the Selfie so he applies the only cringe worthy alternative. He approaches random strangers and asks them to take a photo. I find the whole thing awkward so the finished article looks staged and wooden. Forget Duck Face and Fish Gape, under the pressure of a strangers eye, I end up supporting a somewhat less attractive expression. My husband and daughter look naturally beautiful and happy. I can only assume by looking at my pained expression, that I was thinking ‘oh bollocks, I have just sat on a bee and simultaneously wet myself’. All is not lost. When I get home I can superimpose some Disney all over my face. #WINNING!