Well, I agree that you look adorable…BUT, I also know how uncomfortable it is to look a pictures of yourself. I hate seeing myself in pictures. So much so that I will avoid having my picture taken if at all possible. My husband and I have been married 20 years and in all that time I have made it abundantly clear that he is not to take my picture, yet he still gives me a hard time over this. I wish he would just ‘get over it’ already so I could relax around him every time he pulls out the camera.
FWIW I think you are as cute as hell in that photo.
There’s only one way to fight back. 
My mother in law reacts the same way as you. It drives me nuts. People want your picture because they love you. It doesn’t matter much what you think of the picture, because it’s not for you anyway.
He’s not looking at anything but your expression, which is charmingly captured in the photo. He doesn’t see the camera’s distortions. Isn’t this what you want your man to see in you? It’s what he’ll see when you’re old and wrinkly, too.
Few pictures of me. I’m told I’m a pretty good looking woman. I’ve seen pictures of me where I’m a good looking woman - they are rare. Most pictures of me seem to have been taken when I was chewing. Or my eyes are closed. Or my hair is oddly windswept. The flash or the background (or, in one case, the large amount of bourbon) has made me oddly washed out or oddly flushed. Or yes, the camera lens has made my nose too big, my chin too long, added five pounds to just my butt.
I don’t mind my loved ones having bad photos of me, I do mind them having bad photos of me and saying “this is a really good picture of you.” Because then I think “really, I hope my hair normally doesn’t stick up like Alfalfa’s and I normally don’t walk around with my eyes half closed. And what is with that goofy expression - is that NORMAL on me?”
I think the upshot of this becomes a corollary to “never ask a woman when she is due unless the baby is crowning” “Never show a woman a picture of herself and say ‘this is a really good picture of you,’ unless she looks like Audrey Hepburn in it”
I don’t get this. Someone likes a photo of you and you find that offensive?
I think this thread is actually sneak bragging of a nice looking lady 
I wouldn’t say offensive. But I can’t say its a compliment when someone shows me a photo I don’t think is a terribly good one of me and says “oh, this is so you!” - its intended as one, but it isn’t pleasant.
If you hate it so much, why did you share it with everybody?
Are we married to the same man? A good picture of me has not been taken since I was a young n’ hot 20- something. Every picture since is hideous. I’m blinking. I have a double chin. My teeth, hair, and complexion are gross. I look developmentally disabled. ( I look in the mirror and it doesn’t shatter into a million pieces, but photographs are truly dismal (I can’t be that ugly, can I???) Looking through the boxes of photos from the past, one would think that Mr. Sali has been a single dad all these years because I’ve always run and hid when the camera came out.
I feel you. It’s like, if you think this is a great picture of me, I must be much uglier than I’d feared.
It isn’t a bad picture, but I do agree that it does seem to distort a bit. I think if it were one of me I would ask mrAru to stop showing it to people and saying it is good … I really only have a couple pictures of me taken over the past 20 years that I like …
I once had my picture taken at one of those “old-timey” booths at the state fair. Dressed up in a Miss Kitty bar girl costume, sprawled on top of a bar in the wild, wild west. I made one ugly whore, I tell you! But I would have been making good money back then, ugly or not, as I was practically the only game in town for lonesome cowboys, lol!
I went on holiday with a few people who are like this, as well as an aspiring photographer who wanted to take lots of pictures of us in front of various landmarks.
Every time he wanted a photo, it would be followed by twenty minutes of deleting and reshooting, because at least one other person would complain about their hair looking weird, or their nose being at the wrong angle. It really dragged the pace of the trip down, along with it being impossible for them to realise that a departure time of 7pm meant that we were planning to leave at 7pm, but that’s another gripe for another thread.
The point I was dragging myself toward is: how many people will know you only by your photographs? I admit it’s more likely these days what with Facebook and Flickr, but it’s not like people who know you in real life will suddenly reassess their opinion of your appearance because of one photo where you weren’t given ample preparation time. At worst, they’ll think, “Oo, that’s a bad angle,” and move on. If they don’t know you in real life, does it even matter?
But maybe that’s just me and my finely-honed ability to miss the point of all of these types of issues 
(For the record, I’m normally the one who has his mouth at a weird position in photos because I didn’t notice the camera and just kept talking:))
Nah, I’m too vain to believe I’m “much uglier” - just “not as gorgeous.”
I wanted the red doors with bright red geraniums in window boxes. What did you end up with?
StG
A delayed project. My husbands company took away his company car and we had to buy a replacement. When we do replace the doors next year, I’ll show pics. We did get the red geraniums, though.
The whole picture taking thing really needs a set of new etiquette rules. There are plenty of aspiring photographers for whom photographing camera-shy people is a challenge.
Thank god my boyfriend is always the first to tell me when a picture of me is unflattering, and also wants to dispose of all evidence that I am not consistently photogenic (and look like a boy with my hair scraped back) as soon as possible. This is one thing that makes my life much easier.
My dad was always the one who was all ‘No, honey, you look adorable!’ etc even with the most obviously egregious photos, and refused to dispose of them. Drove me (and my mom) nuts! I can totally understand how someone saying a photo which to you, looks like a monster you’ve never seen in the mirror, ‘looks just like you’ or is ‘pretty’, makes your soul shrivel a bit. Because that means that other people think you *always *look that hideous.
I used to feel very self-conscious about photographs where I looked weird/awkward/boyish but I’ve since gotten over it and just have to laugh at the most awful, since I can also look gorgeous in photos. Plus lighting, angle, how close you are to the camera, the technique of the photographer, and a subject’s ease in front of the camera can all make a huge difference. Since I’ve worked on the last thing, in particular by giving up worrying about bad photos, I’ve been taking a lot more flattering photos.