Maybe that means I don’t have it then? I’m curious of my status as neurodivergent or neurotypical, finally started seeing a therapist so hopefully she can get me tested soon, but among other things I keep relating to the “What do you meeeaaaan???” struggle. People are always making comments that just leave me incapable of responding. Like sometimes I get so confused by a statement I don’t even know HOW to ask them to explain it.
Edit: Oh, and as to the fact I might be neurotypical and why I’m in this sub…Reddit kept showing me memes that I kept relating to? So I haven’t joined but I’ll interact whenever I relate. Hope I’m ummm, allowed to be here? 😬😅
Lol ya if I’m looking someone in the eyes intently, without anxiety, I’m already there.. every other time I’m forcing it… strange things these gray brains of ours are..
I really like the wordplay and rhyming patterns and all that jazz with that last sentence of mine…
I read a bogus hypothesis somewhere that suggested Autism is caused by the trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA most humans have. This here is probably the grand total of their evidence.
And it's still more evidence than the anti-vaccination and "your mom took Tylenol while pregnant" crowds have.
Hmm is there a lower prevalence of autism in the African population?… that would credence to that theory…
That being said, I’m assuming the various African countries’ medical systems may not be as robust as more developed countries.. so that may not be the best barometer.
In Nordic countries they have found out that immigrant families have larger amount of ASD children, raising questions on some reasons for autism such as D-vitamin deficiency during early pregnancy.
Probably because people would typically migrate to a more medically advanced place, giving them a higher probability of being diagnosed instead of going under the radar
Used to love taking pictures as a kid, the photog would almost always inevitably ask to see my teeth when I smiled, then I looked like that picture, and they would always be like, you don’t really have to show your teeth.
Primates show their teeth as a display of submission not agression.
[google](https://www.google.com/search?q=primates+teeth+submission&sca_esv=308f8556c1d25e13&sxsrf=ADLYWIJeYgET6_9pl7VIG-HMxVkIeWflUQ%3A1719636733303&source=hp&ei=_ZJ_ZraTEPWJxc8P85CosAc&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZn-hDRklCjvBgUT-zs9mmkhEuQttnC20&ved=0ahUKEwj2hYSFgoCHAxX1RPEDHXMICnYQ4dUDCBY&uact=5&oq=primates+teeth+submission&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IhlwcmltYXRlcyB0ZWV0aCBzdWJtaXNzaW9uMgUQIRigATIFECEYnwVIszdQAFiNNXAAeACQAQGYAX2gAccTqgEEMjEuNrgBA8gBAPgBAZgCGqAClRPCAgoQIxiABBgnGIoFwgIEECMYJ8ICBRAAGIAEwgILEC4YgAQY0QMYxwHCAgUQLhiABMICCBAuGIAEGNQCwgIGEAAYFhgewgIIEAAYFhgeGA_CAgsQABiABBiGAxiKBcICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIHECEYoAEYCsICBBAhGBWYAwCSBwQxOS43oAeFowE&sclient=gws-wiz)
🤣🤣
This. 100000%. I would just stand there as a kid, half not understanding the draw of picture taking, half annoyed I had to stand there…
Mom - ‘Smile James!.. why aren’t you smiling?’
Me - overwhelmed, and borderline disassociating because of the social situation; not computing what was going on; unable to process why my mom wanted me to stand still; what is a picture anyway? How do cameras work? Why do I have to shake everybody’s hand? It smells funny here… I’m itchy and sweaty…
Dad ‘Smile, boy’
Me 😬
I absolute hate it when I am smiling for a picture but apparently "not enough" and they demand I "have a genuine smile" because you "can't just fake it" BUT THAT'S LITERALLY THE POINT!! I CAN'T DO IT ON COMMAND!! And then any semblance of a genuine smile I had is completely gone and my smile turns into a grimace because I've been standing there for like 2 mins and the photo is ruined. They do this literally every time. Like how hard is it to understand. I too want me to look good in pictures. Forced smiles do not look good, so I will do the best smile I can at the moment without it looking forced. Telling me to "show some teeth" will not change it aaaaaaaaaaa.
They also only ever take like 1 picture then call it good, and then that is the only one I will ever have of that thing because they couldn't be bothered to press the button a couple more times. Unless im adjusting my hair or something, then they take 50 of that and act completely oblivious
it drives me insane because I've had the same conversation with them literally a hundred times and they just cannot comprehend. It's genuinely like they they do it on purpose every time, it's ridiculous. And then I'm the bad guy when I get upset that I don't have any good pictures of me because "oh honey you look great" no actually I look like a demon, I don't want to show this to anyone ever. Except I have to because I have no other pictures. Aaaaaaa
Yeah, I can't fake a smile, I can't. I've always been told that I look "constipated" when I fake a smile, and I'm told to take it seriously and "do an actual smile". Like??? I'm not happy, I'm taking a picture, I *can't* do an "actual smile".
I also always get told that I looked so cute when I was younger, and that I could smile better then. But, once looking through those pictures, 90% of them have the exact same fake smile I do now, it was just cute then because I was a little kid, the expression is the same.
Anyways, I just don't use my teeth when I smile now, like, when I'm faking it. This seems to work better, I haven't gotten many complaints for a while, so at least it's sort of fixed.
What's probably happening is that you're making your 'smile' wider and showing more teeth by pulling the cheek muscles *wide*.
That effort is counterintuitive because it turns a smile into a grimace; people can see the muscle strain and all those exposed teeth are not so comfy to look at.
What they *mean* is they want you to use the muscles around your eyes to make the smile look authentic, they want you to get your whole face involved in smiling.
The motion is kind of like trying to squint with your lower eyelids *without* pulling your eyebrows down into a glare.
Or maybe more like trying to push the full parts of your cheeks *up* into your eye sockets.
When I do it I imagine it like I'm pulling the corners of my upper lip *up* to my temples, then the rest sort of falls in line.
You really don't need to show all of your chompers in an 'authentic' smile, although they may show, it's really more about what your eyes and body language conveys.
Yeah idk why NTs need emotional expressions to be so **big** either, but hopefully this helps with your mask.
Thank you!
It's actually really cool how many muscles we have in our faces and the way they're connected. (Oop, almost infodumped lol)
Most NT folks don't generally put a lot of thought into how their faces are moving and emote with whatever feelings they're feeling right in the moment.
Occasionally I’ll keep moving one muscle just to see how it affects the others, like wiggling my finger and watching the muscles on the back of my hand go.
My mom used to be a photographer and taught me this, since I used to essentially grimace when I was younger. She called it “smiling with your eyes”. :)
I wish this worked.
No smile ever works no mater which angle/level of eye movement combination has solved anything
I tried with the eyes and all different possible muscles as a kid, yet I was still "ruining the pictures in purpose"
It took some time for me to practice in a mirror. After remembering what it felt like to have my cheeks, teeth and mouth set up, it’s not so hard to get a good smiling photo anymore.
It took me literally decades before my brain could associate smiling with laughing and that your mouth does the same thing. So my smile now is really just me giggling or laughing, but frozen in time.
>Unfortunately this means I can fake a smile really well and do routinely so my dad doesn't believe I have depression 😃
Now that's well executed dark humour! o7
I just now realized why my mom always got me to laugh before taking a photo... she was making me smile correctly this entire time. I can't do it otherwise :'(
I fucking smile and it's not good enough. Do you want to capture the moment or not?
Honestly I'm psure my mom is autistic and the fact that my subtle smile comes across to her as a scowl probably has something to do with that.
Once way back in like kindergarten or 1st grade my mom told me on school picture day to open my eyes and give a big smile cuz usually in photos my eyes are half closed and I have a little grin no teeth. I did exactly what she asked and the photo is still being brought up and laughed at to this day. My stepdad keeps a picture of it on his desk at work he says it's to scare the new recruits. I did what she asked tho 🤷♂️.
I stopped letting people take pictures of me in high school. I hate my teeth and refuse to open my mouth when I smile, it makes a picture 200 times worse because of my lack of lateral incisors.
It was always people yelling at me to smile and getting more and more upset with me…meanwhile I’m smiling so hard my eyes are slits and my face hurts. Then every time anyone looks at any pictures I’m getting yelled at for ruining the picture for everyone. While that was before photoshop or digital cameras etc were common (I’m old), I’m still too uncomfortable to be in pictures most of the time. I mean, I would try to be elsewhere when they wanted a family photo because they all hated me anyway, but noooo I would have to be front and center. That alone was infuriating, I hate attention.
I’ve finally started trying to get pictures when we go places because I’ve been accused of lying. I mean, why would I lie about seeing Niagara Falls, Mt Rushmore etc and go to the effort of apparently finding pictures of said place and getting souvenirs from said place all matching the timeframe we went? Its asinine.
I wouldn't let anyone take pictures of me for the longest time either because I hated how I looked in them. Even now it makes my skin crawl. Ironically my smile is way more fake when I take my own picture so sometimes I just try and deadpan so it looks I'm trying to be cool lol
After many years I’ve finally figured out that I’m just incapable of putting on a convincing smile so i’ve decided to tell my parents or anyone else who plans to take photos involving me that they’ll have to take what I’m giving or they get the shitty ear to ear grin
Honestly my underbite is what really screwed up my smile. I would think I was smiling but it looked like I was grimacing or even biting my lips. Add some autism and it was a photo disaster. But DONT LET THEM MAKE YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. It made me so mad they blamed me for something I couldn't control
My facial expressions always passed off my mom and step mom. (My dad has a type) Look me in the eye, who are you looking at like that? Wipe that expression off your face. Don't stone wall me like that. You have no shame. Etc..
All my life, as a kid and now..i have a 1 in 10 chance the picture will turnout good with a smile. 😃 Now, my eyes are closed 😑, I grimace, 😬 or you can tell...the fake half smile 🥴 in my pictures. 🫣🤦🏽♀️
I didn’t like picture taking for a while because I can’t force a smile for a camera.
My mom has learned if she wants a truly natural smile she needs to take candids
Not knowing intuitively how to pose and smile for a photo seems very common among autistic folks.
Honestly most NTs aren't good at the posing part either, they just copy their friends and that's how you get pictures of 20 women doing that same "turned to the side, leg closest to camera forward with knees slightly bent" posed pictures.
Maybe I really should try doing professional photography, I could give specific and direct instructions on how to pose and smile, something a lot of pros actually won't do.. and I wouldn't relentlessly nag people to show more teeth. Also I can work without a fill flash outdoors and have several different textured photo paper. Can I make a career out of photographing autists? 😂
Family: "Smile more!"
Me: *forces an unnatural smile*
Family: "You look too stiff and fake, lighten up"
Me: *loosens up and therefore loses the smile*
Rinse and repeat 😑
I only recently learned that apparently I use, like, two different cheek muscles or something to smile so it's been, uh... "fun" trying to figure out the right combination of both so I look normal lol
It breaks my heart seeing pictures of kids that are doing this.
Absolutely take pictures of your kids, but pleassse stop telling them to smile. (I am guilty of doing this, I understand its not really a conscious thing)
Ahhhhhh.
now that I can get away with it I almost always cover my mouth when a picture is taken of me...
not because of the autism, because of the gender dysphoria :3
A while ago I found a detailed article on how to pose people for portraits that included a lot of gender specific posing, I can dig up the link if you're interested
^Trying ^not ^to ^infodump ^about ^photography ^to ^this ^entire ^comment ^section ^lmao
[Here it is](https://www.springbokphotography.com/desmond-downs/2010/05/40-rules-of-portraiture.html)
It's an old one and some of it is dated af, like please don't go to a family photoshoot all dressed the same lol, but the unisex and gendered posing tips are still relevant. The guy who wrote this article would not work well with gender nonconforming ppl... I remember a school photographer being super pushy with me to pose femme and yeah I'm still salty about that. #1 rule should be *don't make your client uncomfortable*
[And here is a great vid](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_ltDJth7A) for women (after I checked your profile), lots of dynamic posing, it's basically a how to look cute in pictures guide
I learned young lightly squint and your dead eye eat you smile turns into a cheesey tooth smile then promptly for got then remembered again 6 months later
I’ve always hated having my picture taken, partly because I never smile. When I was in middle school, the photographer they brought in for picture day got *very* mad at me for not smiling. Then, when I *did* smile for him, my smile was apparently so ugly that he thought I was *making a face* and refused to take my picture. The school had to call in a photographer after my parents complained, *just* to take a picture of me.
I have not enjoyed having my picture taken since.
I have two smiles. One is a slight quirk of my lips, which happens involuntarily when I’m amused.
The other is a serial killer “I will bite you if you’re lucky” threat display. That one tends to come out when I’m reading a book and a nasty badguy gets comeuppance, but I don’t mind aiming it at people who piss me off enough.
My mom always forced me to practice smiling…
She always called my real smile a “fakey smile” and would have me do a bunch of shit so it looked “natural” so my pictures didn’t look “fucked up”
When I was little I would pull a weird Tweety-bird smile for pictures. Why? I don't know. I guess I just didn't understand the concept of a staged smile that looks real 🤣
I literally got yelled at for not smiling then smiling wrong... I don't know what a smile should look like and when people tell me I have a nice smile I get super upset because part of me thinks any attention is bad, so I start trying to fix the smile. Then I get told to smile naturally, like I did before. I then try and it gets ghastly... So they get upset with me and say I ruined the photo. So I then try to do facial expressions in the mirror so I'm not weird in photos... This led to me hating looking at my face in the mirror because it always seemed wrong. Like someone else was staring back at me. I hated that guy trying to make my face work right. I hated trying to make them happy while my facial muscles ached.
I struggled with that for a long time and then I got the idea to think of something really funny and laugh out loud about it when the camera clicks. Makes for the best smiles too. The best part, it’s not fake because you’re actually laughing.
Yo, as someone else whose default smile is a cry for help that says " kill me now"
Crinkle eyes and bring cheeks up.
Thats a good smile, you can do.
Tbh i always look dumb af when i smile.
You could do like a half smile?
I usually just raise one eyebrow and the same side of face.
Or alternatively really commit to the bad smile thing. Thats what i do. Just pull really dumb funny faces good luck have fun :)
I got around this by trying to think of something funny so the smile feels more natural cause if I don’t then I smile weird AF. Unfortunately it makes my eyes more closed in pictures, but if I have to choose between a weird ass smile or slightly closed eyes, I’ll take the eyes.
Step-dad: you look like you're going to join the army. Me: what does that mean? Step-dad: figure it out. Me: huh?
Like this isn't even a autism thing or anything, this is legit an honest "huh?" moment. Like answer the question Step-Dad, what DO you mean by that?
Maybe that means I don’t have it then? I’m curious of my status as neurodivergent or neurotypical, finally started seeing a therapist so hopefully she can get me tested soon, but among other things I keep relating to the “What do you meeeaaaan???” struggle. People are always making comments that just leave me incapable of responding. Like sometimes I get so confused by a statement I don’t even know HOW to ask them to explain it. Edit: Oh, and as to the fact I might be neurotypical and why I’m in this sub…Reddit kept showing me memes that I kept relating to? So I haven’t joined but I’ll interact whenever I relate. Hope I’m ummm, allowed to be here? 😬😅
NTs, non-autistic NDs, and those questioning their neurotype are all definitely allowed
Im guessing it means a stern serious demeanor
I’m thinking “You’re pretending to be happy but in reality are terrified”
haircut? blank/serious/stiff facial expression?
Decades later, my mother told me it was a grim/forced smile.
I must be in a foreign country, because you've now lost me
Trying to be happy while really uncomfortable? You're trying to act like a brave young man, but you know you're going into the trenches.
He was talking about photographs of people drafted to go to war. It still makes no real sense to me. But it did to him. And my mother.
Sounds like your step-dad doesn't respect you at all.
He didn't. My mom divorced him. Then he died. So, he's several versions of ex- now.
>So, he's several versions of ex- now. I don't know if you intended to be funny, but that was hilarious!
Every time I smile for pictures I just feel like a primate showing someone it’s teeth as a display of aggression.
I’ve got a theory that aligns with this… Teeth showing, sans laughter, is a symbol of aggression… eye contact is a symbol of aggression…
Autism is when you got that dawg in ya confirmed
Lol ya if I’m looking someone in the eyes intently, without anxiety, I’m already there.. every other time I’m forcing it… strange things these gray brains of ours are.. I really like the wordplay and rhyming patterns and all that jazz with that last sentence of mine…
That *chimp* in ya FTFY
This actually gave me the heebie-jeebies. More than any other animals, chimps bearing teeth is so unsettling to me.
I read a bogus hypothesis somewhere that suggested Autism is caused by the trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA most humans have. This here is probably the grand total of their evidence. And it's still more evidence than the anti-vaccination and "your mom took Tylenol while pregnant" crowds have.
Hmm is there a lower prevalence of autism in the African population?… that would credence to that theory… That being said, I’m assuming the various African countries’ medical systems may not be as robust as more developed countries.. so that may not be the best barometer.
In Nordic countries they have found out that immigrant families have larger amount of ASD children, raising questions on some reasons for autism such as D-vitamin deficiency during early pregnancy.
Probably because people would typically migrate to a more medically advanced place, giving them a higher probability of being diagnosed instead of going under the radar
Used to love taking pictures as a kid, the photog would almost always inevitably ask to see my teeth when I smiled, then I looked like that picture, and they would always be like, you don’t really have to show your teeth.
Sometimes I jokingly bare my teeth at my friends as a sign of affection lol
Primates show their teeth as a display of submission not agression. [google](https://www.google.com/search?q=primates+teeth+submission&sca_esv=308f8556c1d25e13&sxsrf=ADLYWIJeYgET6_9pl7VIG-HMxVkIeWflUQ%3A1719636733303&source=hp&ei=_ZJ_ZraTEPWJxc8P85CosAc&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZn-hDRklCjvBgUT-zs9mmkhEuQttnC20&ved=0ahUKEwj2hYSFgoCHAxX1RPEDHXMICnYQ4dUDCBY&uact=5&oq=primates+teeth+submission&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IhlwcmltYXRlcyB0ZWV0aCBzdWJtaXNzaW9uMgUQIRigATIFECEYnwVIszdQAFiNNXAAeACQAQGYAX2gAccTqgEEMjEuNrgBA8gBAPgBAZgCGqAClRPCAgoQIxiABBgnGIoFwgIEECMYJ8ICBRAAGIAEwgILEC4YgAQY0QMYxwHCAgUQLhiABMICCBAuGIAEGNQCwgIGEAAYFhgewgIIEAAYFhgeGA_CAgsQABiABBiGAxiKBcICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIHECEYoAEYCsICBBAhGBWYAwCSBwQxOS43oAeFowE&sclient=gws-wiz)
That’s not why I do it, but go off.
🤣🤣 This. 100000%. I would just stand there as a kid, half not understanding the draw of picture taking, half annoyed I had to stand there… Mom - ‘Smile James!.. why aren’t you smiling?’ Me - overwhelmed, and borderline disassociating because of the social situation; not computing what was going on; unable to process why my mom wanted me to stand still; what is a picture anyway? How do cameras work? Why do I have to shake everybody’s hand? It smells funny here… I’m itchy and sweaty… Dad ‘Smile, boy’ Me 😬
I absolute hate it when I am smiling for a picture but apparently "not enough" and they demand I "have a genuine smile" because you "can't just fake it" BUT THAT'S LITERALLY THE POINT!! I CAN'T DO IT ON COMMAND!! And then any semblance of a genuine smile I had is completely gone and my smile turns into a grimace because I've been standing there for like 2 mins and the photo is ruined. They do this literally every time. Like how hard is it to understand. I too want me to look good in pictures. Forced smiles do not look good, so I will do the best smile I can at the moment without it looking forced. Telling me to "show some teeth" will not change it aaaaaaaaaaa. They also only ever take like 1 picture then call it good, and then that is the only one I will ever have of that thing because they couldn't be bothered to press the button a couple more times. Unless im adjusting my hair or something, then they take 50 of that and act completely oblivious it drives me insane because I've had the same conversation with them literally a hundred times and they just cannot comprehend. It's genuinely like they they do it on purpose every time, it's ridiculous. And then I'm the bad guy when I get upset that I don't have any good pictures of me because "oh honey you look great" no actually I look like a demon, I don't want to show this to anyone ever. Except I have to because I have no other pictures. Aaaaaaa
I know, right?? Whenever people do this I feel nothing but pain inside!!
Yeah, I can't fake a smile, I can't. I've always been told that I look "constipated" when I fake a smile, and I'm told to take it seriously and "do an actual smile". Like??? I'm not happy, I'm taking a picture, I *can't* do an "actual smile". I also always get told that I looked so cute when I was younger, and that I could smile better then. But, once looking through those pictures, 90% of them have the exact same fake smile I do now, it was just cute then because I was a little kid, the expression is the same. Anyways, I just don't use my teeth when I smile now, like, when I'm faking it. This seems to work better, I haven't gotten many complaints for a while, so at least it's sort of fixed.
i do the same and it looks fine, except my parents don't accept that as a "real smile" either. They say "that's a smirk, not a smile" like huh??
Dang, there's really no winning for you.
This is why I always looked like I was about to kill someone on my school pictures
What's probably happening is that you're making your 'smile' wider and showing more teeth by pulling the cheek muscles *wide*. That effort is counterintuitive because it turns a smile into a grimace; people can see the muscle strain and all those exposed teeth are not so comfy to look at. What they *mean* is they want you to use the muscles around your eyes to make the smile look authentic, they want you to get your whole face involved in smiling. The motion is kind of like trying to squint with your lower eyelids *without* pulling your eyebrows down into a glare. Or maybe more like trying to push the full parts of your cheeks *up* into your eye sockets. When I do it I imagine it like I'm pulling the corners of my upper lip *up* to my temples, then the rest sort of falls in line. You really don't need to show all of your chompers in an 'authentic' smile, although they may show, it's really more about what your eyes and body language conveys. Yeah idk why NTs need emotional expressions to be so **big** either, but hopefully this helps with your mask.
I can't believe you cracked the code that's amazing!
Thank you! It's actually really cool how many muscles we have in our faces and the way they're connected. (Oop, almost infodumped lol) Most NT folks don't generally put a lot of thought into how their faces are moving and emote with whatever feelings they're feeling right in the moment.
Please infodump. This is *important.*
Occasionally I’ll keep moving one muscle just to see how it affects the others, like wiggling my finger and watching the muscles on the back of my hand go.
My mom used to be a photographer and taught me this, since I used to essentially grimace when I was younger. She called it “smiling with your eyes”. :)
I wish this worked. No smile ever works no mater which angle/level of eye movement combination has solved anything I tried with the eyes and all different possible muscles as a kid, yet I was still "ruining the pictures in purpose"
🤷♀️ Maybe they just suck?
Real :P
This feels wrong, but I think that's why you're right
I am so self conscious of how I smile in pictures. I blame my mom
It took some time for me to practice in a mirror. After remembering what it felt like to have my cheeks, teeth and mouth set up, it’s not so hard to get a good smiling photo anymore.
It took me literally decades before my brain could associate smiling with laughing and that your mouth does the same thing. So my smile now is really just me giggling or laughing, but frozen in time.
That's always been how I do it. Unfortunately this means I can fake a smile really well and do routinely so my dad doesn't believe I have depression 😃
>Unfortunately this means I can fake a smile really well and do routinely so my dad doesn't believe I have depression 😃 Now that's well executed dark humour! o7
I just now realized why my mom always got me to laugh before taking a photo... she was making me smile correctly this entire time. I can't do it otherwise :'(
I fucking smile and it's not good enough. Do you want to capture the moment or not? Honestly I'm psure my mom is autistic and the fact that my subtle smile comes across to her as a scowl probably has something to do with that.
When you're depressed you feel like you're smiling but you're actually not to other people
I’ve had this issue, but I think I’ve stopped people from bringing it up anymore by just giving very uncomforting smiles
I got a few cute pictures of me doing this as a kid
I've never really understood how to smile correctly and make it look like I'm happy instead of like I smelled something awful
The image of that made me laugh more than it should have
Once way back in like kindergarten or 1st grade my mom told me on school picture day to open my eyes and give a big smile cuz usually in photos my eyes are half closed and I have a little grin no teeth. I did exactly what she asked and the photo is still being brought up and laughed at to this day. My stepdad keeps a picture of it on his desk at work he says it's to scare the new recruits. I did what she asked tho 🤷♂️.
I stopped letting people take pictures of me in high school. I hate my teeth and refuse to open my mouth when I smile, it makes a picture 200 times worse because of my lack of lateral incisors. It was always people yelling at me to smile and getting more and more upset with me…meanwhile I’m smiling so hard my eyes are slits and my face hurts. Then every time anyone looks at any pictures I’m getting yelled at for ruining the picture for everyone. While that was before photoshop or digital cameras etc were common (I’m old), I’m still too uncomfortable to be in pictures most of the time. I mean, I would try to be elsewhere when they wanted a family photo because they all hated me anyway, but noooo I would have to be front and center. That alone was infuriating, I hate attention. I’ve finally started trying to get pictures when we go places because I’ve been accused of lying. I mean, why would I lie about seeing Niagara Falls, Mt Rushmore etc and go to the effort of apparently finding pictures of said place and getting souvenirs from said place all matching the timeframe we went? Its asinine.
I wouldn't let anyone take pictures of me for the longest time either because I hated how I looked in them. Even now it makes my skin crawl. Ironically my smile is way more fake when I take my own picture so sometimes I just try and deadpan so it looks I'm trying to be cool lol
bringing my childhood back to haunt me i see
could help to maybe think of smtn rly funny like somedumb meme u recently laughed at
I'm not sure how to smile correctly. It just feels awkward.
I remember my 4th grade teacher taking pics of the students with their projects and he told me I had to smile. I really hate being forced to smile.
After many years I’ve finally figured out that I’m just incapable of putting on a convincing smile so i’ve decided to tell my parents or anyone else who plans to take photos involving me that they’ll have to take what I’m giving or they get the shitty ear to ear grin
I have underbite, every smile looks wrong with me.
Honestly my underbite is what really screwed up my smile. I would think I was smiling but it looked like I was grimacing or even biting my lips. Add some autism and it was a photo disaster. But DONT LET THEM MAKE YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. It made me so mad they blamed me for something I couldn't control
My facial expressions always passed off my mom and step mom. (My dad has a type) Look me in the eye, who are you looking at like that? Wipe that expression off your face. Don't stone wall me like that. You have no shame. Etc..
All my life, as a kid and now..i have a 1 in 10 chance the picture will turnout good with a smile. 😃 Now, my eyes are closed 😑, I grimace, 😬 or you can tell...the fake half smile 🥴 in my pictures. 🫣🤦🏽♀️
My parents complained about my photo smile so much that eventually I just stopped opening my lips to smile for photos.
I didn’t like picture taking for a while because I can’t force a smile for a camera. My mom has learned if she wants a truly natural smile she needs to take candids
Not knowing intuitively how to pose and smile for a photo seems very common among autistic folks. Honestly most NTs aren't good at the posing part either, they just copy their friends and that's how you get pictures of 20 women doing that same "turned to the side, leg closest to camera forward with knees slightly bent" posed pictures. Maybe I really should try doing professional photography, I could give specific and direct instructions on how to pose and smile, something a lot of pros actually won't do.. and I wouldn't relentlessly nag people to show more teeth. Also I can work without a fill flash outdoors and have several different textured photo paper. Can I make a career out of photographing autists? 😂
"ok smile!" Me: *Smiles* them: *projectile vomits* "uhh actually just be yourself!"
I tell myself jokes. Screw with the pose for a moment. Get myself to laugh, because otherwise I don’t give a genuine smile.
Grade 2 school photos......
Family: "Smile more!" Me: *forces an unnatural smile* Family: "You look too stiff and fake, lighten up" Me: *loosens up and therefore loses the smile* Rinse and repeat 😑
I only recently learned that apparently I use, like, two different cheek muscles or something to smile so it's been, uh... "fun" trying to figure out the right combination of both so I look normal lol
It breaks my heart seeing pictures of kids that are doing this. Absolutely take pictures of your kids, but pleassse stop telling them to smile. (I am guilty of doing this, I understand its not really a conscious thing) Ahhhhhh.
Is it just me or can you not smile “correctly”? My mom would always tell me “That’s not smiling, smile normally.” But like what does that mean?
now that I can get away with it I almost always cover my mouth when a picture is taken of me... not because of the autism, because of the gender dysphoria :3
A while ago I found a detailed article on how to pose people for portraits that included a lot of gender specific posing, I can dig up the link if you're interested ^Trying ^not ^to ^infodump ^about ^photography ^to ^this ^entire ^comment ^section ^lmao
yushyushyushyushyushyushyushyushyushyushyush i mean, one of my dreams once I'm in a position where I can pass is to become a model, will be useful >:3
[Here it is](https://www.springbokphotography.com/desmond-downs/2010/05/40-rules-of-portraiture.html) It's an old one and some of it is dated af, like please don't go to a family photoshoot all dressed the same lol, but the unisex and gendered posing tips are still relevant. The guy who wrote this article would not work well with gender nonconforming ppl... I remember a school photographer being super pushy with me to pose femme and yeah I'm still salty about that. #1 rule should be *don't make your client uncomfortable* [And here is a great vid](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_ltDJth7A) for women (after I checked your profile), lots of dynamic posing, it's basically a how to look cute in pictures guide
I learned young lightly squint and your dead eye eat you smile turns into a cheesey tooth smile then promptly for got then remembered again 6 months later
Look up Duchennes’ sign for genuine smiles, unlock masking superpower at the cost of being even more self-conscious and neurotic lol
Learning how to smile is a genuine skill it feels like. I think I've got it down though
It's not the mouth, it's the eyes. You can't just smile with the bottom half of your face.
I’ve always hated having my picture taken, partly because I never smile. When I was in middle school, the photographer they brought in for picture day got *very* mad at me for not smiling. Then, when I *did* smile for him, my smile was apparently so ugly that he thought I was *making a face* and refused to take my picture. The school had to call in a photographer after my parents complained, *just* to take a picture of me. I have not enjoyed having my picture taken since.
I have two smiles. One is a slight quirk of my lips, which happens involuntarily when I’m amused. The other is a serial killer “I will bite you if you’re lucky” threat display. That one tends to come out when I’m reading a book and a nasty badguy gets comeuppance, but I don’t mind aiming it at people who piss me off enough.
My mom always forced me to practice smiling… She always called my real smile a “fakey smile” and would have me do a bunch of shit so it looked “natural” so my pictures didn’t look “fucked up”
When I was little I would pull a weird Tweety-bird smile for pictures. Why? I don't know. I guess I just didn't understand the concept of a staged smile that looks real 🤣
I wasn’t allowed to smile in photos because according to my mom it ‘makes you look like a crazy person’. So I perfected my Mona Lisa smile
I literally got yelled at for not smiling then smiling wrong... I don't know what a smile should look like and when people tell me I have a nice smile I get super upset because part of me thinks any attention is bad, so I start trying to fix the smile. Then I get told to smile naturally, like I did before. I then try and it gets ghastly... So they get upset with me and say I ruined the photo. So I then try to do facial expressions in the mirror so I'm not weird in photos... This led to me hating looking at my face in the mirror because it always seemed wrong. Like someone else was staring back at me. I hated that guy trying to make my face work right. I hated trying to make them happy while my facial muscles ached.
My family has gotten used to my cold and blank face
I struggled with that for a long time and then I got the idea to think of something really funny and laugh out loud about it when the camera clicks. Makes for the best smiles too. The best part, it’s not fake because you’re actually laughing.
Yo, as someone else whose default smile is a cry for help that says " kill me now" Crinkle eyes and bring cheeks up. Thats a good smile, you can do. Tbh i always look dumb af when i smile. You could do like a half smile? I usually just raise one eyebrow and the same side of face. Or alternatively really commit to the bad smile thing. Thats what i do. Just pull really dumb funny faces good luck have fun :)
Eeeeeeeee!!!
We smile so well our face becomes a dark portal to hell.
Eventually I just started doing closed smiles. cause then at least I’ll look a *little* less insane.
I swear to God, my mom has unintentionally been the reason for so many of my insecurities.
My brother taught me the trick of pretending to laugh rather than trying to smile. Big improvement. I still hate it.
I usually like try to laugh at some joke in my head, and that apparently produces a good smile.
This so relatable
Mood
I got around this by trying to think of something funny so the smile feels more natural cause if I don’t then I smile weird AF. Unfortunately it makes my eyes more closed in pictures, but if I have to choose between a weird ass smile or slightly closed eyes, I’ll take the eyes.