Note: I originally posted this on Reddit, but the sub I posted it to went private so I couldn’t access my own post anymore :(

I feel this. I got a promotion at work, and I had to send them a picture to include with the company-wide announcement, and it was such a pain to take a picture that didn’t look weird or creepy. Funny enough, the first one that I took ended up being the best out of the 15 that I took…

what are you supposed to do with your hands???

It’s just a cultural norm in certain parts of the world, to be supposed to force-smile on photographs. Jst smile naturally, be as beautiful as a Mona Lisa.

… and by the way, not all cultures recognise a friendly face by how the mouth is grinning. The easterners tend to look at the eyes. That’s why the old Japanese smileys (in ASCII or unicode characters before emojis were introduced) focus on the eyes, rather than only on the mouth. kaomoji (wikipedia) – At least that’s what i learned once. (^_^)