A Lighter View
Picture imperfect
By K.E.H. Stagg

Feb. 18, 2010

Thank God for Photoshop! Remember the olden days of family portraits when everyone—and the dog—were contorted into strange positions, threatened with bodily injury if they should so much as twitch and then crammed under broiling hot lights for hours as the photographer attempted to find just one frame where everyone’s eyes were open? It didn’t matter if half of the group looked like escapees from the looney bin; you just picked the one with everyone looking in the same direction and that was it.

Now, thanks to the advent of modern technology, it’s possible to extract Jimmy’s normal, smiling face from pose A and import it into pose B where he’s leering like a drunken sailor, but everyone else looks safe to travel abroad. It’s incredible!

Unfortunately, there’s only so much Photoshop can do. This past weekend while posing for pictures, my sister and I were reminded of that sad fact. It’s not like I secretly view myself as a model. It’s just that I’m not accustomed to seeing my flaws magnified by a zoom lens.

It didn’t help that I’d recently been told that my eyes are “set too close together,” and that I really need to “open them up,” whatever that means. My eyes are open every waking moment, and unless I use the same plastic surgeon Al Pacino and Robert Redford did, they will never open any wider.

Not only that, I have “apple cheeks.” Thanks to the Clinique saleswoman from my teen years, I already knew that. In theory, I could be skeletally thin—although a close relative once told me I’ve “always been sturdy,” a carefully chosen description to avoid the deadly word f-a-t—and would still look sturdy, thanks to those round cheeks.

As unnerving as all this proved for producing an unstiff, relaxed pose, my sister and I kept asking each other, “Which is my good side?” Time alone revealed that I don’t have a good side. I have a bad side and a worse side. The worse side being whichever one is facing the camera at the moment.

The photography session also revealed that I blink a lot, so there are plenty of options not to choose from as I squint at half-mast, or do my best impression of the old Clairol ad: “She conked out, but her hair held up.”

Except that my hair didn’t hold up. It was so amazingly flat on one side, it looked as though I’d forgotten to inflate half of my head. My sister’s suggestion that I brush my hair “the other way” just traded which side appeared flat. But she was headed in the right direction; once I poofed out the flat side, it appeared normal volume.

Don’t even get me started on chins! Neither my sister nor I possess half the number that showed up on the preview screen. I pulled her aside and made her swear that she would tell me if I ever got that many chins in real life. Then I went back to the sitting asked the photographer how many chins she could remove in Photoshop. She laughed.

Maybe if I pay her enough, she’ll import a whole new face onto my neck. One with wider-set eyes, a shorter nose and only one chin. You never know, and it can’t hurt to ask!