I Hide When the Camera Comes Out

As a mom, stay-at-home or working, you sometimes feel like you only have the energy to make your little ones look good before heading out of the house.

I know for my part I’m lucky if I get a shower before throwing on some clean clothes, putting my hair in a pony tail or bun, grabbing the kids and heading to the grocery store.

Being a mom, you can forget that you are also a woman, an individual whose needs should be met. But honestly who has time to hit the gym or do full hair and makeup when you’ve got a kid/kids running around being crazy?

As a result of not taking care of myself, I’m almost always not happy with how I look in pictures. Sure, I slap on some makeup when I know we are going somewhere/doing something special and know pictures will be taken. The face might look okay, but the body almost never does.

I hate my arms. I hate my hips and thighs. The other week we went on a family vacation and when it came time to take pictures I found myself trying to hide behind just about anything to keep my body from showing. After seeing the photo results – me hiding behind my husband or a sign for a ride or a bench – I opted to sit some photos out. There wasn’t a big enough object to stand behind to hide my insecurities.

Then I got to thinking. I have only a handful of pictures of my mom from when I was growing up.

She never wanted to be photographed; she hated how she looked. When we went to the beach to play in the water, she kept her clothes on because she was embarrassed about her weight. In home movies, she opted to stay off camera, only playing with us once the camera was turned off.

I have great memories of my mom playing with me and my sisters when we were little, but I have no photographic evidence to show for it. That upsets me.

I don’t want to upset my kids by letting my vanity get in the way of cataloging our fun times together. I decided then and there to get in the picture, put a smile on my newly wrinkled mom face, and accept how I look for the sake of my kids.

I’ll get working on my body issues. Hopefully I’ll feel better about that by our next trip.

What about you? Do you stay in the pictures? Do you want to?

Media Mama78 spent more than a decade as a TV network affiliate news reporter and anchor in cities across the country. Now, this two-time mommy is taking a brief hiatus from the 24-7 news cycle to actually live her life. How she is handling the pause, daily musings on mommy hood during and after TV, and a typical bitch-fest on what has happened to broadcast news, and media in general, can be found on her blog Confessions of a Media Mama.