AIBU or are candid photos just fucking brutal once you’re middle aged

[candidlyappaulled]

AIBU or are candid photos just fucking brutal once you’re middle aged? 😂
DH and I are away abroad and he’s been taking candid photos of me without me realising. I’ve just seen them and honestly, fucking hell. Bent over, double chin, hair scraped back, no make up, covered in sunscreen( my forehead looks like a frying pan) and about 20 massive mosquito bites on my legs. Basically every possible thing you wouldn’t choose for a photo.

DH thinks I’m being ridiculous and says not every photo needs to be posed and he was just capturing the moment.This has infuriated me some what.
So genuinely interested — are other middle aged women perfectly happy being photographed completely candidly from any old angle, or do most of us require at least a fighting chance?!

YABU- get over your mid life look, feel happy to be alive
YANBU- it’s ok to want to look nice when having a photo taken

Helen Gurley Brown of Cosmopolitan fame wrote a book about the challenges of ageing. She was firmly of the view that you shouldn't forward unflatterinfg people to similarly older people even if it was the sole memento of some shared holiday. Frankly, I want my hair clean and combed, and some make up on and a decent outfit before I woulde even contemplate a photograph. Given the ease of taking photographs these days, I think people should just delete the unflattering photographs. It's not like the old days of keeping unflattering negatives. My husband knows better than to proffer a hideously unflattering shot to me.

My dh actually takes really flattering pics of me but never shares them with me. My parents seem to take the worst photos of me and my Mum usually pics the one where I look most like a spotty dumpling with my eyes shut to share on the family whatsapp.

This thread has made me laugh so much. My 21 year old DD takes 'candid' pics of me. The last one was me hunched over a cream scone in a naice cafe. 😅😂 I looked bloody terrible and greedy but did enjoy the scone after 😆

My husband took an awful one of me and my sister on my birthday - we were in a restaurant leaning over the table deep in conversation, so mouths open, backs hunched, boobs drooping, and it was from the side which flatters no one. Fortunately we had posed for one outside before the meal started (my top tip - if you're going out to eat or drink always get a photo before you start!) which was much nicer.

My husband meant well as he knows I value photos with my sister as we don't live close to one another.

At least nowadays you can take another photo easily. Not like in my youth, when you'd eventually finished the film off and sent it away, the disappointment when your photos came back from TruPrint, you looked hideous or they were blurred and the occasion was long gone.

I have always looked awful in photos even when I was young. Or maybe I actually look how I really look and my mental image of myself is seriously off. The only person I like taking photos of me is my daughter because she's a brilliant photographer and could make anyone look amazing. When she takes a photo of me I look 15 years younger. I'm never going to fall out with her 🙂

Yanbu but we have been away all summer, I have a photo album of 1000+ photos. Not one photo I was taken of me so when the DC look back at this summer it'll just be my shadow they'll see as I take the photo.

My 16 year old niece does this the little bugger. Cracking photo of me on The Tube, during a heatwave, on the way back to the train station to go home. Lank hair, pissed off look, hot and can't be arsed face.

Another sly side on shot walking in London with a rucksack and an umbrella as a parasol too made me look mental. I thought I looked good in my cropped trousers, nope made me look shorter, dumpier and the side of my face look like it had melted.