anime
the other day my son inadvertently changed my life forever. we were sitting around and he took a selfie of us, but when he showed it to me we were in “anime” like a japanese cartoon. i have to say… we looked AMAZING… especially me. my eyes were huge, i had no wrinkles, my neck was perfectly smooth, you couldn’t tell that my hair was frizzy or that i was in my jams and i was even a bit tan. i couldn’t believe it.
“this is incredible… let’s take some more!” i exalted. “let’s get a better background, let’s get lucy, let’s try with hank… i LOVE this!”
“mama - you are being so weird - it’s not meant for this… it’s just for a quick snap for friends with a filter.” (turns out the filter is on snapchat, which i don’t have.)
“i don’t care… this is the BEST thing that has happened in 2020… so easy to get a good photo with this.”
we took some more together with various backgrounds in the house. he was grumbling the whole time and telling me that i was using it “wrong” - it wasn’t meant for family portraits or intentionally posed shots - just for quick, spontaneous ones. but i am too vain and controlling for impromptu pictures. i like to make sure things are well balanced and that the backdrop is pretty. i am also picky about the subjects’ expressions… after several quite serious ones i said, “theo… please SMILE! i can’t see your teeth in any of these.” (he is waiting to get braces and i thought he was trying not to show his crooked incisors.) “mama,” he sighed, “you CAN’T smile in anime - the filter won’t let you.” so there is that.
* he WON’T let me post any of the animes i took with him… he can be boring like that.
then i wanted to add lucy and hank. turns out only two people can be anime at the same time, which is a bummer because we have so few photos of the three of us. and for some reason, it doesn’t convert hank into anime at all. i suppose he already looks like a cartoon character anyway. i think it’s still cute to have hank in the anime photos when he is “normal.”
(i realized that anime only seems to give you brown eyes - lu and i are both blue IRL…)
(and sometimes anime cuts off the top of your head …)
(in front of our beloved kelly degnan painting)
of course now i want to take ALL of my photos in anime so i never have to worry about having pretty hair or good lighting or an accordion neck. i asked theo to download the snapchat on my phone so i have it as a permanent setting. for some reason this really upset him. “no mama, you will NOT be able to handle this. you can use my phone whenever you want, but you will FREAK out if you try snapchat yourself… you’ll just get overwhelmed.” i have to say i was a little offended. i acknowledge that my techie skills are not tip top AND that i don’t have a whole lot of patience, but i DID think his reaction was a bit extreme. perhaps he was just trying to help me hang onto whatever sliver of sanity i have left in this time of corona or maybe he is being naughty on the snapchat and doesn’t want me to see that…. anyway lucy then took my phone and started downloading it, which really threw theo into a tizzy. the evening devolved from there so we had to leave it and just go to bed, which is pretty much my solution for any problem.
a few days later i DID manage to download it on my own AND i even made a little emoji character of myself. (i’m pretty sure that snapchat is based out of boulder because 90% of the clothing choices were exercise gear. i typically toggle between sundresses and pajamas so it was hard to find anything that represented me with any accuracy… i would NEVER wear those peppermint patty sandals, but if i wanted sneakers i had to wear a sports bra without a tank top over it and i would REALLY never do that.) then snapchat invited me to look for “friends” … i saw theo and loads of his pals on there, but i refrained from “snapping” any of them, even though i really wanted to.
(i can’t seem to control the phrases that go with the bitmoji…)
(i think the peppermint patties are inspired by birkenstocks)
finally i found the coveted anime filter which was super exciting. there is so much FREEDOM in taking anime photos… i just feel carefree and adorable. so from here on out all of my fb and insta posts will be in anime. and if i ever get to travel and go on a beach holiday again i may even share a bathing suit shot… anime has made me that daring! now if i could just figure out how to use anime on zoom (where i typically look horrendous) my life would be near perfect.