No more good pictures

I am not quite to the halfway point of my Throwback Thursday pictures:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/01/43-photographs.html

The last good one was already posted. I'm not sure which that one is. The Santa one is okay, but the one in the Redwoods is not horrible. 

After that, from the 5th grade TAG picture forward, there is not a photo of me where I don't notice and hate how fat I look.

I know that's not necessarily what other people see. A lot of people liked the TAG picture. 

I liked my pictures before first grade. I thought I was cute. I wasn't positive, but people would respond positively to the curls sometimes, and I liked looking at old photos. After I started school, and was told that I was fat, I started being nervous about pictures. I wouldn't like new school pictures at first, but I could go back the next year and think it hadn't really been so bad.

After that, whether it was because the adultery had happened and that sent some shock waves through the family, or because other teasing had built up, or puberty gave me a reason to be more self-conscious, I don't like how I look in pictures ever.

The inner voice wonders why I tucked my shirt in, or why I wasn't wearing bangs to cover my enormous forehead, or marvels over how even my hands look fat. One of my older sister's friends made a beaver joke about my teeth many years ago, and even though my smile gets more compliments than any other physical attribute of mine, I think of myself as buck-toothed so sometimes my teeth bother me. Still, it's mostly the fat.

One thing I hate about the TAG picture is that it's where I really see the resemblance to one of my aunts. I have been told many times that I look like her. I do not find this flattering. But one thing I can see is that I am not relaxed. I am concentrating, but there is also that tension that became a thing any time there was a camera around because I am so ugly in pictures. So maybe my aunt's problem is just that she was never happy. I mean, there can be some satisfaction in looking down on other people, but it's not really joyful.

And for all of the lack of self-esteem and discomfort with photos, I wasn't unhappy all the time, but cameras make me unhappy. They still do.

Of course, that's why  I'm doing this. If I keep forcing myself to post the pictures as they become even fatter, I have to get used to that. When I transition to doing regular selfies, I will have to get used to that look. I mean, other people do not hate the way I look, though it could just be that they're less invested.

Anyway, here are some pictures that I didn't use, but thought about. I didn't want to use too many studio portraits because they seem kind of artificial.

I think this one kind of looks like the Gerber baby.

Actually, my understanding was that at the Wilsonville school parents could bring younger siblings on picture day and get packets for them too, and that's why we were able to keep up with the pictures pretty well.