I’ve always hated being photographed. When I was a child, it was an ongoing and never-ending battle. “Just smile to make your mother happy.” “Please?” “Do it for me?” Oftentimes, I would. The will to fight was there, but it was not strong. It was broken easily. Every family reunion or vacation or milestone in my life, the camera came out to pin me into a frame like a butterfly; my wings stretched out taut like the grin they demanded of me.
If you were to look back at those photos, you’d see me smiling in almost each one. That was, after all, the point - to cultivate the image of a happy family like a garden of flowers. It wasn’t often my parents would allow me to bare my own face - usually, on those occasions, a tired or angry one, and one that is hard to put on christmas cards and unlikely to garner many likes on Facebook.
If you were to look back at those photos, you would see a whole lot of smiling people, not just me. My father told me the story once of how he was taught to smile. His mother would repeat to him the mantra “fake it’ till you make it”, and so he did. He spent his life following that advice, as a matter of fact, and, well, he certainly made it somewhere, I suppose - if late stage alcoholism can be said to be a place.
You wouldn’t see that in the photo though, just his smiling face. You wouldn’t see my mother’s depression either; wouldn’t see her passed out on the couch all day; just the smile. You wouldn’t see the bitterness of parents who had driven away their own daughter. You wouldn’t see the tears of a spurned child; and that is, after all, the point.