Jessica Phillips: Awkward Family Photos

When we were growing up, my Mom had one camera. Like one camera for my entire childhood years. I think it cost something like $35. It was a "super fancy" 35mm camera. Some of you thirty-somethings remember those. The flash was nearly blinding. And it had like some sort of crank that you cranked after you took each photo. And it was copied to film that had to be dropped off at Walgreens or Walmart to be developed. These are all words and concepts that make it sound like I'm from 1910!

And back then, we didn't know that we weren't supposed to look disheveled, unkept, off-guard and awkward in every picture. We had not yet figured out what the cool, young hipsters have now mastered..."the easy pose." The "best side of your face" pose. The "stick this leg out slightly to look thinner" pose. The "put your hand on your hip, but turn your arm ever-so-slightly forward so you look gaunt" pose.

Nope. Back in my day the pose was "Look at the camera and say 'CHEEEEESE'" and cheese is what we got.

But my beautiful sister, Jenni, and I try REALLY hard to be photogenic now (since most photos of us from age 7 thru 18 show ragamuffin clothes, bad hair, bad teeth, bad skin (and bad Sally Jessie Raphael red-rimmed glasses for Jenni).

NOW, we do the Kardashian pose - you know, suck in, put on spanx, tilt the head to make the nose smaller, the cheek bones higher and the lips thicker & poutier.
The go-to smile begins with slanted, smoldering eyes that seem to twinkle or flirt; your lips are softly closed accompanied by a side-smile (as though you're smirking to your self about the inside joke that all these other fools aren't in on). Option #2 is the teeth smile - this is when you smile wide enough to show teeth. This smile is tricky because it must not be wide enough to show your 33 yr old jowls. You know jowls, it's when your cheeks fall and land somewhere around your chin line. So when you smile and you have jowls, it makes you look like you're carrying extra weight. Jowls suck!

If you're totally lost right now, that's okay, probably a great sign that you have not experienced "vanity run amuck".

But we do live in "vanity run amuck!" And we do try to take the gorgeous "No, I'm not posing, I always effortlessly look like a movie star standing in weird, uncomfortable shoes, and spanx so tight that the only way I'm going to the bathroom tonight is if I have a pair of scissors in my hand so I can cut my way out of these suckers!"

Yep, we're the new posers. Sometimes we get it right.

And other times, the outcome is just.....AWKWARD.

Enjoy the AWKWARD (and a few of the pretty) at our expense.