First, you need to know about the hand-me-downs. I was the younger of two girls, three years apart, so I inherited my sister’s clothes, which were immaculate and pristine when passed down to me, but not necessarily clothes I would have chosen and, given our age difference, never in style.
In third grade, I either had a growth spurt or I wasn’t tall enough. At any rate, I got to buy a whole new wardrobe for school, instead of just a few pieces. There was a rust-colored corduroy jumper that I believe was my first-day-of-school outfit. But my favorite was a boat-necked green paisley dress. I wore it for school picture day, which happened to fall after I had been out of school with the flu. So, in the resulting photo, what appears to be three yards of sickly white, skinny neck rises from a paisley green base, leading to a game grin in the middle of a pinched “I’ve been throwing up for five days” face. The crowning glory was my crowning glory — an Alfalfa-like cowlick.
My mother loved it. “So natural!”
Other school photos come back to me. Sixth-grade, where I’m a dead-ringer for the Partridge-Family era Susan Dey, only with a faint mustard moustache. A candid from seventh grade, where my utterly square, waistless body has been encased in a horizontally-striped sweater dress and I’m scratching my bedhead of hair with a pencil. First or second-grade, where I look utterly adorable for once. Of course, I’m missing a front tooth.
Yesterday, I spent three hours in a New York photographer’s studio, having a new author photo taken at my publisher’s behest. (In the eternal battle between my vanity and my laziness, laziness always wins.) On the one hand, I had the good sense to be amused that a “hard day” consisted of getting up, taking a train to New York, being made up and coiffed, then posing in various permutations of my own clothes for three hours, taking the train home and hustling to a family dinner.
But in this brave new world, digitization means one can instantly see all the results of a photo shoot. So there I was, expertly made up, expertly lit and, damn, if I didn’t look like myself, but actually worse than the image I carry around in my head. There’s the beginning of the neck thing, which has made Nora Ephron a #1 bestseller. There’s the slight Elvis sneer on the left side of my face when I try to smile “pretty.” There’s the uneveness of all my features and the size 10 body that photographs more like a plus-size model’s. (The Project Runway fans who come here will remember that size 6 is “zaftig” for a runway model, and that’s according to the always-generous Tim Gunn.) (About whom I have had one dream to date.)
There were some wonderful photos, thanks to the photographer, Jann Cobb, Richard, the art director from HarperCollins and — I’m not sure of the spelling — Roanna, who did my face. They did the best with what they were given. But all I can say is, bring back the skinny-necked, cow-licked geek in the paisley. She was, I see in hindsight, adorable. Even against that fuzzy blue backdrop.
Memories of school pictures, painful or pleasant, or about photographs in general and how they mess with the images we carry of ourselves.
An early school picture, maybe around third grade shows me with two pigtails on each side of my head, looking like twin J’s. Then there is the 7th grade picture I will never forget because it was taken right before I got braces. Yuck! My high school senior picture was taken at a portrait studio and the photographer always touched up those photos. Needless to say I look sophisticated in my helmet hair and unblemished complexion (thanks to air brushing).
Why did I think it was funny to hold two fingers behind people’s heads in class pictures over and over? I mean really by tenth grade, it’s quite appalling.
Until you’re 40 and then it gets really funny again. Trust me on this. Try it at Bouchercon.
After I was born, my father warned my mother not to buy anything from door to door salesmen (I guess they used to use birth announcements in the paper to find customers). My mother promptly purchased the first thing presented to her – a huge leather bound photo album and x amount of portrait sittings to fill it. Thank goodness, because those are some of my best pictures. My kindergarten picture is the last good picture for a while (elbow length sausage curls) because by first grade I had super short hair and looked like a boy. The buck teeth came later, then braces. I finally looked like a female with nice teeth somewhere in high school.
One of my favorite pictures is a candid one where I’m a toddler sitting on mom and dad’s bed laughing while wearing a hair dryer – the kind that came in a little suitcase with a hose connected to what looked like a shower cap. We call it the bubble-headed baby picture.
Oh ho, the Ettlinger has been retired?
I’ve been around cameras since birth – first picture ever taken of me was when I was approximately half an hour old, resembling a calm alien spaceship – and still regret that my dad dismantled the downstairs darkroom before I got interested in learning how all that stuff worked. Typical to take such things for granted as a child.
But I think the best pictures of me have been taken by those I love. Somehow that comes through in the captured expression…
I know you didn’t ask this, but when you said “how they mess with the images we carry of ourselves” I immediately thought of mirrors. All my life I have been tall and thin. Now, at 64 and on drugs for a transplant (thank goodness it is possible), I am no longer thin and, because of aging, no longer as tall. I still think of myself as T & T but the mirrow says otherwise. School photos reflect as mirrors.
Oh, God, I hate having my picture taken – I think those cultures who believe photos steal your soul are really on to something.
Looks-wise, I inhabit that vast usually-not-too-bad-and-sometimes-pretty-decent middle ground that exists between looking like a gargoyle and looking like Heidi Klum (and I adore Tim Gunn, too, and I can’t decide whether I want Michael or Laura to win – love ‘em both). But I just don’t often photograph well. The photos I remember fondly are ones taken when I was a sprout: there’s one of me, wearing a onesie, reclining on my father’s shoulder as we watched football. There’s another of my mother and me sitting in a garden. And there’s my father’s all-time favorite: pixie cut with a cowlick, cat-eye glasses with my left eye crossed (had surgery for it shortly after that), missing tooth, grinning like a fool.
The only school photo I remember is my high-school graduation portrait. It was one of those soulful, gazing-up-at-heaven poses. Every time I see it I wonder how I could ever have been that young. And how do I get that skin tone back, dammit. (And I refuse to have turkey-neck. I just won’t do it.)
Our senior pictures were taken during the summer. I decided to wait until they did retakes in the fall in hopes that I would have the braces off of my teeth. The top ones came off in time but not the bottom ones. But, right before picture time, I got Mono! The dreadfully swollen lymph gland in my neck is very visible, even though I was wearing a turtleneck and in the “painting” (remember when you got black and white wallet sized pictures and one hand colored portrait?) the artist very painstakingly painted in each tiny metal barb on my bottom teeth!
I have one good picture third grade, pigtails, with a very michievous smile. That is the picture I will use for everything
Yes, the Ettlinger has been retired. Four books, four years. I quite loved it, but I agree that it gets a little spooky, the same photo year in, year out.
At my 35th high school class reunion (now nearly 15 years ago!), the name tags had our graduation pictures on them (like Barbara’s and Jackie’s, with soulful expressions and airbrushed perfect complexions). It eliminated a lot of lack of recognition of old friends, and cut way down on the “you haven’t changed at all” comments.
My dad was a commercial/industrial photographer and took many pix of my brother, sister and me to use on the New Year’s cards he and my mother sent out each year. I remember those rather than school pictures — until my senior year in high school. That one had hair fixed just so, retouched, and then hand-tinted to turn b/w into ‘color’. In my prom pic that year the ‘I’m so mature’ look was on my face — my date was on leave from the Air Force and was wearing his uniform. Now that I know less than I did then, it’s amusing to wonder “How young can a mature person be?”
I was coming home from having my senior picture taken for the Pitt yearbook, driving my brother’s long, safari-type Land Rover, hair just so again, and came to a stop sign. The man driving in the opposite direction, as he came past me, did a triple-take. Back in the late 60′s women ‘all dressed up’ just didn’t drive that kind of vehicle. Now, particularly here in the south, no one would give it a second thought to see a women, all made up, driving a Land Rover or pick-up or Hummer.
As I get older, many pictures seem to be taken on ‘bad face’ days and don’t look (what I consider) particularly good. And that always reminds me of a friend from Ireland who didn’t like her picture being taken, never seemed to be satisfied with them, and whose mother asked her once, “…what do you think you look like anyway?” When looking at photos I don’t care for, I always think about that.
One school picture I can vividly remember is my 5th grade portrait, having just gotten braces. The photographer told me “you can choose not to smile if you don’t want to show your braces”. It hadn’t occurred to me before that point that perhaps I wouldn’t want to show them. So, being 10 years old and fearful of my own opinion, I did what he suggested. I think it’s my cutest picture. But I still remember him telling me not to show my braces, and how odd I felt.
I was also a horrible picture subject most of my life. I have these eyes that go uneven when I smile. One gets lazy. Until a couple of years ago, I hated almost every picture ever taken of me (like everyone else, I suppose, but mine I think were particularly bad). But because of the invention of the digital camera, and as you touched on, the ability to see yourself IMMEDIATELY after the picture is taken, I learned how to smile in pictures and not look like some sort of freak.
Two school picures come to mind. Seventh grade, where my nose grew to it’s adult size before my face had time to catch up. My parted-down-the-middle-hairdo really accentuated that. Then my senior portrait where I decided to try on a non-permanent perm by setting my hair in perm rods. I looked like an old woman- what was I thinking?! Even when I picked up the photo a few weeks later the woman was surprised it was the same person.
Christin,
Having seen many photos of you, I can’t believe you ever take a bad one.
You’re obviously getting karmic payback for that fabulous Ettlinger portrait, which makes you look like some exotic blonde sex machine in a peacoat.
But of course I don’t believe a word. I think the new picture will be great.
The only school pictures of me that survive are the bookends — grade one and grade 12. In the first I have some dorky hairdo, a very scared-looking expression and a dress with hand-embroidered (by my mother) smocking. In the latter, a Jane Fonda shag, the beginnings of a sneer and, mirabile dictu, a clear complexion. It was my first experience with retouching, and it changed my life, or at least my yearbook.
(Isn’t it awful how size 10 looks in photographs? You wonder, why bother?)
The print-outs arrived today. If my dentist hadn’t already persuaded me to fix my front teeth, I’d probably be on the phone to her. But there is no help for the missing upper lip.
However, whenever I feel weak and consider surgical intervention for anything on my face or body, I just study Dia on “Million Dollar Listing.” (I had insomnia last night, and between the zombie movie on HBO and Dia’s immobile features, I didn’t want to get back to sleep. Popped in Episode 9 of The Wire instead. But I’ve promised to stop sneaking episodes and watch the last four as the rest of the world watches, respectively, 4, 5, 6 and 7.)
Wait — I’m NOT a blonde sex machine in a peacoat? I remain blonde. I still have the peacoat. In fact — this is rather scary — I had it dry-cleaned recently and the woman said: “Isn’t this the coat you’re wearing in your author photo?”
Only, this being Baltimore, it sounded more like Arthur photo.
ah, but Laura, you’ve only seen pictures of me in the last couple years…see? I try to keep the rest hidden, but for they will surely terrify you… (the hair, the hair! No one told me I had an afro, and two caterpillars masquerading as my eyebrows…)
Laura, I’ll miss the Ettinger photo. That’s always been one of my favorite author pics.
As for my childhood, I was the third of three girls. I’ve got the school pics but nothing from infancy. When my husband and I married, the videographer asked for baby pictures to insert as a photo montage at the beginning of our video. I had none! My mother “found” one for me. I flipped it over and saw my oldest sister’s name scrawled on the back.