On to the Head Shot

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
Joseph Conrad
(1857-1924)

No, Joseph, you're wrong. The great foe of reality is a picture.

Ok, take two of the head shot is approaching. This is becoming a very expensive endeavor as the last one cost me $150 and I looked like a doberman on speed. It was right around the time I was leaving my job after a few months (ok, a year) of intense stress and if you looked at those pictures you'd think that someone had stuck a poker of some sort up my butt.

So, take two.

This better be good. It's being done by a talent photographer in Seattle (just saying the word talent gives me shivers) and I was advised to hire a makeup artist. A makeup artist? Yeah, you heard me right.

Let's just pretend for a moment that they'd actually seen me before they made that suggestion. I'm not the young chicken I used to be. My eyelids swell. Sometimes a lot, thank you processed wheat. I do have a very fleshy neck (nothing a little surgery couldn't fix right up) and I tend to look tired. I won't tell you what that's about because telling you about my wheat allergy put me way out of my comfort zone, but just imagine for a moment a middle aged woman (as my children starting calling me when I reached 35) with puffy eyes. Can a makeup artist fix THAT?

Probably not. But thanks to airbrushing, I can wipe at least ten years off my face. That, a bottle of Miss Clairol, the new moisturizing I'm test driving for a friend, a haircut, and a good night's sleep might make me photogenic.

Or, it could be a disaster. When I think of photo disasters, I think of my husband. Whenever we have a family portrait done, he manages to somehow be looking at the ceiling, the fat lady in the corner of the room, or at the floor. He has shifty eyes, they're always looking somewhere else, but certainly not in the camera. No, that would be too easy.

I don't want to look like him. But I have these lips that turn down. It's a family trait. We look mad if we don't have a big smile on our faces. We are the maddest looking bunch of people you ever met and if you didn't know me, you would probably think I was very stern.

I'm not looking forward to this.