Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Tuesday, Mar. 21, 2006 - 6:28 p.m.

3 passport-size photos with clear background. Check...and, ouch.

When you apply for a long-stay visa to France, you have to have 3 ID photos with everything else because they divide all your triplicates into three packets and attach an ID photo to each one. I suppose this is so that if you a) break the law, they can circulate an image of what you look like to the police, b) are wanted for something, they can circulate your image to all the customs people, etc. so you can get caught, or c) die, they can identify your body. That, and I suppose they just want to know who the hell is walking around their country, which is certainly understandable, especially in light of world events of the last 5 years or so.

I got that taken care of today, and the passport photo guy and I decided a "clear background" meant just plain white. So I climbed up onto the slanty stool in front of their camera with my carefully, messily-casual coifed hair and painstakingly applied makeup, took off my glasses, peered blindly at the camera, and smiled gamely while he slowly counted to 3 and then snapped my picture...twice.

Now, what you need to know for the purposes of this story is, I hate having my picture taken.

I used to not mind. That was back when I was 6 years younger and weighed 35 pounds less. Before I developed jowls and this fucking wattle under my chin that makes me feel dumpy and froudy more than anything else on the planet ever could. I am too fucking young to have jowls and a fucking wattle, people. They shouldn't be there, and I don't know why they are, and it sucks, sucks, sucks like nobody's business. I can't even think about it all that much, or I'll cry, because I really am too young to have them, by like, 20 or 25 years, and it's not like I'm pushing maximum density or qualify for heifer status, so I really don't know where the fuck they came from, but there they are, and I don't know what to do about it. If they don't come off when I lose this weight, I'm having them sucked out, and no, I am not kidding.

But anyway. I used to not mind having my picture taken. Now, I just hate it. It's miserable. And the reason is, it totally intrudes on the picture of myself I still carry around in my head of me as a 20-something girl, with a size 5 ass and great bone structure. Because seriously, nothing kills that image faster than jowls and a wattle. So I view photos with serious trepidation, and today was no exception.

So the guy prints and cuts my ID photos and then comes over and shows them to me, and when I grimace in pain at the second one (the first one doesn't suck *too* much), he says "What? Those aren't bad." So I say yeah? they're not good, either, and I show him my old passport. He takes my passport out of my hand and squints as he compares the best of today's photos with the 1998 me, and then he says, "Well yeah, I can see some aging, but they're not that bad," snaps my passport closed and hands back to me as he cocks an eyebrow and tips his head in the universal guy look of 'there goes a hot chick', and says, "I mean, we can't all look like that."

Ow.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, OUCH. I did look like that. That was ME. And not that long ago. And I don't want to lose it. I don't want to be dumpy. Or old. I dont' want to look like a mom when I'm not one. Or have jowls. OR A FUCKING WATTLE. I want to be beautiful, with a great ass, and be the kind of woman that guys (at least the ones my age...and okay, maybe a few of the younger, hot ones, too) tip their heads to the side for and raise one eyebrow and go "damn".

::sigh:: :( Dude. Stake me now.

Peace out,
Katie

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