FYI The standard funny picture for girls here in China (and S Korea, I gather) is to puff out ones cheeks. Such an image might show a sense of humour, were it not seen in approximately 50% of all personal photos.
…actually, thinking about it, I think it’s related to the selfie phenomenon. People seem much more likely to pull funny faces for selfies. I’m sure there’s a thesis topic there of exactly why.
They do it because they see other people do it.
I’m outta here before someone calls “Rabbit Season”…
You guys are missing the point. I’m not talking about just the HotOrNot website. I’m saying that website is just one small aspect of the wider culture of judging women by their appearance. Women don’t get a choice over this. Society judges their appearance whether the women want it or not.
Women must get tired of society ignoring whether they’re talented or professional or intelligent or competent and just jumping to the issue of whether they look good. Doing a duckface or something else like it is a way for a woman to say “I’m not here for you to judge how I look.”
Wait, what? You mean you don’t find ducks attractive? Um… nevermind…
Anyway, a) I don’t see how the mere act of making one’s face look like a duck communicates that it is being done “ironically”, and b) it’s definitely a stereotypical model sort of thing. See, e.g., Tyler Breeze, a wrestler w/ (more or less) a model gimmick.
I always interpreted it as trying for a pouty look, but without the requisite hours of practice in front of a mirror, to get it right.
If that were the case (it isn’t) wouldn’t they at least stop doing it in a situation where they are specifically trying to be judged by there looks?
I can guess why.
Funny faces are funny. It doesn’t matter that everyone is doing it. “Everyone” still does the rabbit ears bit too, but that doesn’t mean it sometimes isn’t funny. People pose in crazy ways in pictures to entertain themselves more than anyone else.
I don’t do selfies, but if I did, I’d be the type who’d reflexively make a ridiculous face. Because a “serious” selfie may communicate that I’m the type who cares about creating a perfect selfie and looking cute all the time. And that would be false advertising. While I care about how I look, I’m not that insecure or serious that I can’t look silly. I like poking fun at myself. If someone doesn’t like my funny faces, then they aren’t going to like me.
It’s also a lot easier to make a funny face than trying (and failing) to be photogenic.
I think it’s a combination of this and the slight awkwardness of having a photo taken. I think people deliberately exaggerate the expression to avoid accidentally making a stupid one. Unfortunately, it just makes them look even stupider.
Exactly this. A look at my FB photos shows a large portion of them I’m making some sort of stupid face, including the old duckface from time to time. I feel self-conscious having my photo taken and my reaction to that is to do something silly (along with doing a “thumbs up” for reasons I can’t understand but can’t seem to stop). And, no, I’m not under the impression it looks sexy. It looks silly. I’m cool with looking silly.
I think they do. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman doing a duckface when they’re flirting with somebody they’re attracted to.
A duckface is what you do when some guy in a bar wants to take your picture. You’re not trying to impress the guy taking the picture and you’re not trying to impress the people who are going to judge that picture online.
Sure, its a self-deprecating thing, but doing it in your profile pic on what has now, overtly, become a dating/hookup site, is self-defeating and dumb. In this context, not only does it make the women who do it look uglier than they otherwise would, it makes them look like idiots too (unless, I suppose, they are deliberately trying to preferentially attract men who like their women stupid, but are there really any women who actually prefer such men?).
Photos posted or presented in different contexts are a rather different matter. (Although I would still, in almost any context, tend to lose some of the respect that I would otherwise have for a woman, and think her immature and probably dumb, if she insisted on doing duckface in photos.)
You say this like you know for a fact that a woman who posts “dumb” pictures isn’t getting any play. I’m betting she’s getting all kinds of play. If she wasn’t getting play, she’d likely have a different profile pic. People do stupid things sometimes, but on the whole, they are rational creatures and do stuff for a specific reason. Girls post pictures of themselves duckfacing because they get hit on by guys whether they are duckfacing or not. Most guys can recognize a “hottie” despite how (or because of) her lips are formed in a picture. It’s not any more complicated than this.
This board sees plenty of guys talking about their sadsack “girl” troubles. But amazingly, there aren’t a whole lot of threads in this board’s history where women have shared their struggles with acquiring male sexual partners. What that tells me is that female attractiveness isn’t nearly as important as some of ya’ll would like to think. A woman can have half her head shaved off, weigh 500 lbs, and have a face like a Mallard duck and there will STILL be a man somewhere saying she’s “hawt”. So I find all the attention on women’s looks to be ironically hilarious.
The site is called Hot or Not. The entire point of posting you’re picture is to be judged on your looks. If they didn’t want to be judged on their looks they wouldn’t post their picture.
I’ll admit I’ve never been to Hot or Not. Is it designed so that people can only post pictures of themselves? Or do people post pictures of other people?
monstro there may be a lot about having acquired male sexual partners, but your point is taken. IMO you carried it somewhat to the extreme but did not completely bury it in hyperbolic imagery.
You should have titled this one “The Moderator Purses his Lips.”
Remember that we’re all more smarter and sophisticated than your average bear, here on the SDMB. 
If girls who sport “duckface” are getting “play,” it’s not because men out there are smart enough to see past it to the beauty beneath, or because the girls believe it’s a non-factor so why not, it’s because the guys for whom those women are making the face find it attractive.
FWIW, my hypothesis on the origins of duckface is that it makes a young woman look less like a girl. Smiles can give off a youthful happiness, and duckface masks that; no vulnerability, and ready for bad-ass “adult” things like sex and partying.
Doesn’t Penny do a lot of duck face on BBT? Still a lot better than Miley Cyrus and her tongue. Thank god that hasn’t caught on (afaik).
I used to date a hot little minx that duck faced and planked at the same time.
