Putting on Your Best Face

It is probably because I am vein but am I the only one who hates having their photo taken. Photos never live up to my expectation of myself, I find my self saying "That's not what I look like" and my friends say "Yeah that is, exactly what you look like".  I see myself as tall and slender when in fact I am only average and rather round.  It doesn't help that the camera is meant to add ten pounds.  This being the case, I can ignore the back fat and rolls that seem to be showing through my T shirt when someone kindly takes a photo of me from behind.  At least with digital cameras and phones we can just delete what we don't like and pretend we look exactly like the good shots, you know, posed perfectly, smiling with your teeth slightly apart and standing just at a slight angle so you look your slimmest.  I always tell my husband he has to stand in front of me (the person up front looks the biggest) after so many horrible pictures where he looks tiny in the background and I look like Big Bertha in the foreground.  The Egyptians had it right.  The kings and queens we found out when studying their Ancient customs during our homeschooling years, would only have themselves painted slim.  They wore wigs for all their official occasions and had shaved heads to be cool for the rest of the time, hence all the Egyptians looking slim and with the same cleopatra bob hairdo in all the historical records.  At least back then they got to have some honest artist put down if he dared paint what he really saw, now we have no chance, the minute anything the least bit embarrassing happens to anyone, there it is on facebook or You Tube.  I can only be glad that I am not famous, so not many people care what I am doing, but just imagine for a moment that you are Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, no ducking down to get some milk without doing your hair for them.

I have this monkey magnet on my fridge that says "They suit you - really!"

I personally would like to do something quite nasty to the person who invented mirrors, (cameras started out with mirrors in them, so it is all linked) but, I don't think they really know who did invent them, we progressed from looking into still water, ( if you didn't like your reflection you could stir it up a bit and blame the wind for the wrinkles) to shiny metal.  When I checked google I found out that apparently when the Biami people of Papua New Guinea were first introduced to mirrors by an anthropologist they reacted to their reflections with terror.  The Biami's aren't the only ones.  My reflection is getting scarier and scarier the older I get, especially that first look when staggering out of bed in the morning with my hair standing on end.  The only options I can see is to get rid of all my mirrors, never look at pictures taken of myself, never look at Facebook or You Tube or stop wearing my glasses so everything looks fuzzy but lovely or maybe I could just be glad I have made it to sixty two and know that when I am eighty I will wish I still looked like I did now and be grateful that I have my eyesight, all my arms and legs and my faculties are still in tact (I heard that laugh).