If someone had told me how much you have to have your photo taken as a journalist, I genuinely might have considered another career. It’s not that I don’t like having my photo taken, I don’t care really, it’s just that you have no control over what photo gets used – and what photo is put on the internet to be looked at by absolutely anyone who Googles you, in perpetuity.
Anyway I Google-imaged myself the other night because both children freakishly were asleep by 7.30pm so the evening stretched on rather and I found myself doing it. And I was a bit traumatised by what I found and like all things I find traumatising, I need to share them.
I was pregnant with Sam in this photo (above) but they didn’t want to show that, because it would confuse the piece, which was a about something else. So had to hold something in front of my stomach and pretend I wasn’t pregnant, just fat. And I hate my make-up here, and my hair. I just hate everything about this picture.
This was taken in the green room at the Ham & High literary festival and then posted online. Thanks guys! I’d just had Sam. Or maybe Sam was a year old, who knows? But I look like shit. Probably because I’d been up since 5am.
Also pregnant with Sam, here. And suffering from some weird facial redness thing around my nose. And dirty hair? Who knows. Grim.
I do love this photographer, Juliette, but why didn’t I put any make-up on for this shoot? Also: I must never get this haircut again.
This is what I really look like!!! No make-up selfie!! Which explains chin-to-fist… (zit).
I think you look FAB in ALL of them. And I have FINALLY found someone who has as many freckles as I have (or dots as my children call them.
You’re more photogenic than you think, none of those are bad pictures. I understand where you’re coming from totally, though – I didn’t feel like I got ‘my’ face back until about 18 months after having baby 2. I’ve got lots of reasons for not going for a third, but spending another three years looking completely knackered is right up there.
Awwww…you are sweet, lovely and more importantly an interesting person who genuinely works hard at everything you commit to. I admire you and I wouldn’t say that unless it was a fact, you have achieved so much have a lovely family yet still understand about stuff. I love those pics, I actually like your hair! They’ve caught relaxed natural moments and are so much better than having a posed groomed to perfection Barbie look! Give yourself some credit! People do always use pictures you wouldn’t though. I have done some press and media and they always ask me to hold a hen. They look for different things in them than you do. I’d just settle for looking human, which you manage to pull off!
None of those are bad pictures! Love your current haircut though. I got mine cut just above my shoulders just before H came along (though 8 months ago now) and I miss my long hair. I’m sick of my “mummy ponytail” but otherwise I’m forever getting yoghurt/Ella’s pouches in it, or having it pulled. Stupid bloody hair.
Your husband tweeted a photo of Kitty yesterday. It’s your face!
I get this. Photos of yourself circulated by other people are *always* misleading and usually crap. I hate having my photo taken and it all stems back to a particularly rancid school photo circa the year 2000. I was fifteen and had just ill-advisedly decided to have my hair butchered into an ‘elfin crop’. It looked great (I say great…I mean, ‘as good as short hair will look on an awkward adolescent with liberal puppy fat and oozing pustules’) for about four days and then it began to grow out. As it grew out I looked increasingly like a ginger Rod Stewart. I tried to tone down the Rod vibes by adding numerous miniature butterfly-shaped hair clips and mousse-ing my bouffant into submission. Unsurprisingly, neither tactic worked. I just looked like Rod Stewart with crispy accessorised hair. Anyway, school photos coincided with this follicular tragedy and I ended up being sent home with an image that would destroy even a Beyonceian-sized ego. My Mum – in a moment of passive-aggressive ‘You look lovely, darling, ha ha ha’ insanity – promptly ordered four hundred copies and dispersed them around the family. Each time I visited a relations house I would be faced with this picture, this bloody God awful picture, peeking out from amongst much more palatable non-scrotum-faced-crooner family photos like the Elephant Man in the room. After four years of tolerating this reminder of looking (ergo feeling) like shit I took affirmative action and systematically removed the photo from every single frame and crisply ripped them in half. The Rod days were over.
Thank you for this highly entertaining comment! Do you know sometimes “coming to terms” with things isn’t the best thing at all. Sometimes it really is just the best course of action to literally or metaphorically just rip up the damn photos.
Exactly! Wisdom can be found in the naffest of places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6PNN4ArlkE
I hate nearly all photos of me. I think there is a special place in hell for people who post unflattering photos of other people onto Facebook (this happens surprisingly often). Having said, that I like your photos – I love your hair colour.
No need to worry, you are very pretty and you have a lovely smile ( nice teeth & lips). Your personality shines thru’. I KNOW these things as I hate having my pic taken! I’ve been reading your blogs forever ( over here in Toronto) and live your writing. Keep going!
My father (who is a photographer) told me once that the camera ‘wasn’t kind to me’. I’ve only had one photo taken since then that I like – and it was a long time ago – and have avoided having my picture taken at all costs
I have problems with my photo face too. But, unlike yours, my self-image problems are rigorously supported by external evaluators. For example, my first school picture was given to my mother free of charge, because I looked so monstrous. Still, the most distressing photo-face moment happened last year, when I appeared on This Morning as a makeover subject (don’t ask, favour for a mate), and they told me to come with no make-up and unwashed hair, ‘don’t worry we’ll make you look lovely when you get here. Leo can’t style newly washed hair’. Anyway, I got rather pissed the night before and went in to the ITV studios, bare-faced, as requested, to discover this was the state in which they would do my ‘before’ picture. I appeared bloated, spotty and deranged under the harsh studio lights. My Nan rang to tell me I looked ‘bloody awful’ and a stranger on twitter described me as looking like ‘the unknown member of Wheatus.’ As you can imagine, my success with online dating has been minimal. Still, it’s nearly Christmas.
fucking hate telly people. no offence to any telly people reading