F ³: Introducing a New Holiday

I think I’m going to create a new holiday, a new cause, a new movement. Let’s start today.

Women Getting to be Normal Humans in Group Photographs Day. October 23rd. Why not?

A group of men in a photo is a group of men. Period. A group of women is coached into the most ridiculous and juvenile kinds of poses. Someone somewhere must think it’s cute and adorable. It’s not.

In addition, women are bombarded with advice on how to stand or present their bodies in such photographs in order to appear slimmer, more appealing. There’s a rather hilarious moment in the BBC panel show QI where Victoria Coren Mitchell decries a certain kind of pose featured on Page Three which somehow manages to “get the bum and the tits in the same shot.”

Sandi says it is difficult to know what to do with your hands if you are being photographed. Victoria once read that if you put one foot forward when having your photo taken you look thinner. Victoria says she was amazed about how Page 3 girls seemed to have photos of their tits and bum in the same shot, leading to Sandi to replicate the pose.

To be clear, she’s only able to replicate this ridiculous pose by employing another panelist to be the backside while she does the top part.

I sometimes wonder if all the little quirks foisted upon women in group poses are to make them appear less threatening to men. No one ever suggests that a group of men should make themselves appear smaller and more decorative. They are not there to be judged for their appeal.

So why must we submit? What is the point of being in a photograph, anyway? Are we merely items in a catalog or on a menu to be drooled over, ranked, or purchased?

Let’s normalize women getting to be themselves in photographs - - especially in group photos. Fully, beautifully human - - not miniaturized caricatures out of someone else’s fantasies.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about this post by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:

What if we just didn't make fun of what people looked like

(or their size, or ability, or hair or clothes or makeup or plastic surgery even or any of that shit)

Because actually what matters is what you say and what you do

words

and

actions

and their impact on other people.

Happy Women Getting to be Normal Humans in Group Photographs Day. You don’t need to celebrate with a group photo, but: it might be fun. Smash the stereotypes. Be yourself.

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