Would everyone please start smiling in their pictures?

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It takes less muscles to smile than to frown. Therefore, smiling is for wusses.

cheeky smile

Have muscle problems in your mouth?

You just said it seems off, you just admitted you can do it.

And YOU can lift a ton! I mean you don't have muscle problems, do you? You just can't get past a certain point.

My muscles work fine. I don't have ceberal palsy or bells palsy. Any other conditions out there that stops people from moving their mouths? I can walk and run. I can chew, I can make noise with my mouth, I can frown and smile, I can narrow my eyes.

Hi millie, you didn't offend me at all. I always love reading your comments. You are one of my WP friends too.

I may have to dig out an old seventh grade school portrait where I tried to smile for the camera---talk about a disaster. I was horrified when I looked at it in the classroom after the teacher passed them out. All the other kids were busy cutting out wallet size photos to share, and I was like hiding underneath my desk. It had to be the world's worst smile. Mom was shocked when she saw it and arranged for retakes. She said "smile naturally." For the retakes I tried to smile naturally. Well, it still didn't work. I said, "no more trying to smile in portraits."

I did have some wonderful laughs today which resulted in smiling expressions. I was listening to some old cassette tape recordings I made when I was in school. On one of them I was doing impersonations of Alfred Hitchcock (with English accent), Tattoo on Fantasy Island (Da Plane...Da Plane), Droopy the cartoon dog, etc. I had almost forgotten about doing those. Then, in an earlier recording (elementary school age) I was doing something where I was trying to sound German I think.

baas baas ...di plen has lunded....................

NTs look silly to me smiling all the time in pictures, "Oh, let's smile and pretend we are having fun!" they may be even really mad and just had a big argument and they smile, the smiles look forced and fake to me. At least when an aspie takes a picture the facial features are not being forced into an emotion that they are not feeling.

i think you look great with a cheeky smile, pensieve

You're right. They just look pissed off and bitchy all the time instead.

'You people'? what do you mean by 'you people'? Look, if I don't want to smile in my picture, I won't.

And, if you hadn't noticed, none of us are NT's anyway, so why should we have to fake it?

Besides, let me tell you about how I 'try to be a little neurotypical'. I have a social worker's meeting every two weeks, a respite worker comes once every week to teach me life skills and get me out of the house, I have a psychiatrist, a ASD support worker visits my school every few months to check on my progress, I have social groups which teach me about NTs, A job coach to help me hold down a career like all the 'normal children', I have a occupational therapist who helps me plan for post secondary education and TAs who help me out in class.

I have to get up every morning and remind myself not to flap my hands in public, not to wipe my face on my sleeve and to look at people and say 'hello, how are you?' -the world will not collapse if I do not smile for a picture. In fact, I think I've earned it.

Not true.

Okay...granted, but the forum says 'The online resource and community for Autism and Asperger's' And most of the topics are geered towards autistics and their responces.

All of which is really beside the point. The OP brings up a valid issue. The responses have been remarkably varried: From the trantrumous, "I don't wanna, I don't wanna!" to the more amiable "Would it kill ya to put on a happy face?" I mean, with a varitable army of people helping you out each week, a smile is a very small price to pay, don'tchya think? Certainly you have the right, we ALL have the right, not to smile. All you haveta do is ask yourself how you want to be perceived: As a friendly person or a b i t c h?

Not smiling doesn't nessisarily make someone unfriendly. My argument was more towards the idea of being told to be more like NT's after all the hard work put in, which is why I quoted that part.

I know, right? Like check out this French orphan girl:




WHAT a b i t c h!