Why, in my fantasy life, Annie Leibovitz is my best friend and travels with me everywhere I go

I was spending the day with a friend of mine recently when she showed me some pictures from a recent family trip. I noticed almost immediately that there weren't any pictures of her, and when I asked about it, she said, "I don't like having my picture taken."

I get it. I really do.

Because that was my attitude most of my adult life—until a few years ago, I HATED having my picture taken and looked pretty awkward almost every time I was forced to do it, which I talked about in my "Who is the girl in the picture" post. I'm still not great about posing for photos now, but I'm working on it and try my best to have a good attitude, which I think is crucial to taking a good photo.

Lately, though, I'm beginning to wonder if it's about more than just having a good attitude. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to have my picture taken by more than one professional photographer, and I am always shocked by how good the results turn out. (The photo of me above was taken by one of those pros.)

As a result, it started to occur to me that maybe the reason I hate having my picture taken is because I don't have a professional doing it all the time. In fact, it's usually my husband or one of my friends taking my picture, and they usually do it quickly—in between talking and hanging out—without really thinking about it.

All of this had been in the back of my head when I saw a new photo of a friend on Facebook and actually thought, "Wow, that doesn't even look like her. She is so much more attractive than that." And that's when it hit me—the reason our photos don't look as good as the ones we see in magazines is simply because we don't have a professional photographer following us around all the time.

Maybe this sounds obvious, but I have witnessed too many people—men an women—bemoaning the way they look in pictures for me to believe that people understand this is the case. I think we all want to look like a celebrity every time we have our picture taken even though we don't have half the resources that most of them do.

And then I saw something that made me sure that taking a good photo doesn't usually happen by accident but rather requires some serious effort as well as a professional photographer.

I was watching Letterman a few weeks ago when Courtney Cox was on the show talking about a recent trip to St. Bart's. While she was there, Letterman held up this photo of Cox from that trip:

Letterman oooohed and aahhed over Cox's amazing physique, but she resisted the compliment, explaining that she doesn't normally look like that and that she was doing everything she could to look her best when the photo was taken.

"Well, Dave," she said. "You know when the paparrazzi are there, so that's not real . . . I mean that's real, but I was working it pretty hard . . . We made a joke about it. Let's see how Sports Illustrated we can get. And I really was like . . . I sucked in, I moved my body, and my arms are streched out. I don't walk like that!"

Cox even claimed that Letterman would be horrified if he saw the way she sits on the beach when nobody is looking and imitated herself seaside, hunched over and limp.

Whether you believe it or not, her message was clear: people don't normally look the way she did in that photo. And for some reason, I believed her. I believed that she could suck in her gut and pump her arms and legs in such a way that put her best features on display.

Do I believe I could strike the same pose and appear as hot as Cox does in her string bikini? No way, but I do believe that trying to look good and believing you can look good goes a long way towards accomplishing that goal.

And while writing this post, I decided to Google "Courtney Cox at the beach" to see if there were any pics of her looking the way she described, and believe it or not, one of the first pictures I came across was one of Cox looking the same way she imitated herself looking on Letterman . . .

Is she still beautiful? Absolutely. But she also looks real because she's not posing for the paparazzi.

It's easy for us to imagine that the beautiful people look beautiful all the time, but the truth is, when they're just being normal and goofing around with their friends and an iPhone, they take crazy photos too.

The only difference is that their bad photos never show up on Facebook.

Who is the girl in the picture?

About a week ago I had to have an official author photo taken for my upcoming book by the lovely and talented Victoria Taylor, a photojournalism student here at WKU.

Like most women, I'm not a big fan of having my picture taken, but over the years, I've tried to have a better attitude about it. After spending my entire life watching the women in my life groan every time they see a photo of themselves—and immediately pointing out their worst flaw—I grew tired of the pessimism and negativity.

For that reason, I have tried as much as I can to have a good attitude when my picture is taken. It's never easy, but I do my best, and for a few years now, I've been pretty good about noticing what looks good rather than what looks bad when I see a snapshot of myself.

I do the same thing in my daily life—when I look go shopping or even just when I look in the mirror each morning—so I had naively started to believe I had kicked the low self-esteem habit.

But while sitting in front of a high definition camera with a professional photographer, all of my insecurities came flooding back to me. When I looked at the images on her three-inch screen, all I could see were the flaws—why was my nose so big? my hair so flat and dark? my lips so thin? After years of teaching myself to focus on the positive, I was suddenly and completely only able to see the negative.

Not only was my inability to see my assets gone, but so was my ability to see myself at all. When Victoria showed me the images she'd captured, I could not even recognize myself. I looked that strange and unfamiliar. It was as if I was suffering from a severe case of amnesia except that the only thing I couldn't remember was what I looked like.

I would glance at the images on her screen and frown. Who was the person staring back at me? Where was the person I saw in the mirror every morning? The person with a few stray blonde highlights from her youth? The person with a normal-sized nose?

Poor Victoria had to put up with my inability to see the pictures clearly for two hours before she was finished. Every time she showed me a new shot, my face would drop, and she and Dave would have to reassure me that the pictures were good.

Now, over a week later and after posting the new photo on Facebook (and getting a dozen positive responses to it), not only do I know that the photos are good, I also know they really really do look like me.

So why couldn't I see this while they were being taken? What happened to make me so unable to see my own image?

I'm really not sure, but I think it has to do with how slowly we change.

Whenever I look at anyone in my family—my husband, my parents, or my sister—I don't see them as they are now, in 2011. Instead, I see a compilation of who they've been over the years. I see my husband's longer hair and too-big concert t-shirts, my parents' young faces and rich brown hair, my sister's glasses and pigtails. I don't see them as flat images. I see them as fully developed people with complex pasts and interesting histories.

And I think that's also what I see when I look in the mirror—the little girl with the boyish haircut, the teenager with the perfect bod, the young woman with blonde highlights. So when I looked at the photos Victoria was taking I was confused—where was the girl I used to be, the young woman I was only a few years ago?

In the end, I'm thrilled with the photos Victoria took, but I have to admit, it's also a little bit scary to realize that I've let those parts of me go. But it's letting them go that allows me to see that beauty can change and evolve just as we do as people.

Real Beauty

"I think if you believe you are beautiful, you will appear beautiful to the world."

—Brenda (pictured above)

An amazing student turned me on to this award-winning portrait series by photographer Jodi Bieber called "Real Beauty."

When describing her work on this series, Bieber says, "I felt a strong need to create a body of work that goes against what the media has depicted as beautiful. Even within a complex society such as South Africa, across all communities, women hold unneccesary perceptions of self doubt around themselves and their beauty from an early age.. The work deals with reality but also touches on fantasy. The common ground for my work is both myself and the women I photograph wanted to make a stand for Real Beauty."

To see the rest of Bieber's stunning "Real Beauty" portrait series, click here.

Photoshop of Horrors

198 pounds
In case you haven't heard, I want to tell you about the latest controversy surrounding "plus"-size supermodel Crystal Renn (pictured above).

As you may remember from my "Real is the new sexy" post, Renn wrote a memoir called Hungry about her early years in modeling—how she struggled to stay below 100 pounds when she first started modeling and how she now rejects that time in her life as unhealthy.

Because of this, the fashion world was a bit taken aback when this photo of Renn appeared a few weeks ago . . .

I have to admit that when I first saw the photo, I was angry with Renn who battled anorexia during her early days as a model. I felt like she had given up on her promise to live in a healthy manner and accept herself the way she is—curves and all. But I was wrong to blame Renn, and it didn't take long for the truth to come out.

In reality, Renn is actually not as thin as this photo makes her look. The photo has actually been altered to make her look much thinner.

Here is one of the the original photos from that shoot (in color) and the altered photo (in black and white). . .

(If you'd like to read a detailed analysis of how this dramatic change occured, go to Jezebel.)

What's most appalling is that the photographer, Nicholas Routzen, defended his decision to shrink Renn's thighs and waistline. He said, "I'm paid to make women look beautiful."

Uh, what did you say???!!!

Crystal Renn IS beautiful. You don't need to do anything to "make" her look beautiful.

And, besides, hasn't this guy heard that beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes? Or that thin does not necessarily equal beautiful?

Simply put, what an ass.

Renn clearly agrees. She told Glamour magazine, “When I saw the pictures, I think I was silent for a good five minutes, staring with my mouth open . . . I don’t know what was done to those photos or who did it, but they look retouched to me. And listen, everybody retouches, but don’t make me into something I’m not.”

She's obviously right—we have simply got to stop making models and celebrities into something they're not. And this side-by-side comparison proves that magazine photos are altered WAY more than any of us realize. I think it's safe to say that most of the images blasted at us in the media are about as real as Jessica Rabbit. Something to keep in mind next time you're flipping through a celebrity-laden magazine at the checkout counter.