Fat Pics Reponse...

My friend Sarah left such a great comment last night that I had to share it:

It's funny that you made this post because I have just recently begun to embrace those "ugly" pictures of myself.
My students have taken numerous pictures of me at various events, many of which I never see again, but some I hear about later. I particularly hear about how badly they came out.
I used to let these sorts of photos bother me, but have recently decided that bad pictures happen to everyone. No matter how you might look in everyday life, someone has immortalized you making the least flattering facial expression, sporting the outfit that makes you look enormous, or in lightning that makes your face reminiscient of something from Night of the Living Dead.
My bad ones generally include my nose looking really bizarre.
Maybe we should all collect those "bad photos" and rather than burning them, make a photo montage, or post them on a website and stare at them until we become unphased by them.
The fact of the matter is the more fluid you are, the more active and expressive, the less wonderbread and milk toast-boring you are, the more likely it is that you will be caught making a strange face in a photograph. It's only folks that practice their smile in front of the mirror and avoid their inner need for Lucille Ball and Lon Chaney moments that look the same in every pic, and who needs those people anyways.
You photograph beautifully, so I can't imagine you looking bad in any pic, extra weight or not...but then again you're not exactly whitebread, so BRING ON THE BAD PHOTOS!

I think this is a great idea; if you have some ugly photos of yourself, you can send them to me and I'll post them alongside any ugly ones I have of myself. Then we can laugh at each other knowing that how beautiful we really are, despite bad lighting, angles and outfits.

Here's the worst one I have right now. You can see my problem -- it's really not ugly enough dammit! Ashley laughed her butt off when I sent her this one. So please, help a sistah out and send a bad photo. At least in this one though, you can see my shirt straining and my chubby round face. I just want to pinch those cheeks!

-x-
aarti

p.s. stef: good luck to you too. And calories don't count when you're out having fun dontcha know?!