My mom hated me for a few minutes

Due to my entry ino the photography business, I have been studying the habits and whims of the market. While pondering the other day, I was reminded of a question I asked my mom a couple years ago:

Do groups of attractive friends take more pictures of each other than unattractive friends? Conversely, are unattractive people less likely to want pictures of themselves and their friends than attractive people? I think my original wording was something like, “Do you think ugly groups of friends take fewer pictures of themselves than pretty people?”

There are moments when my mother opines that her daughter is cold-hearted and superficial. Actually, when I asked that, she said, “I am so appalled that you asked that, I can’t even talk to you right now.” We all have our superficial moments, regardless of who we are at heart; my mom is a rare creature in that she is not superficial in the normal sense, although she IS the type to go talk to someone specifically because they’re not attractive, just to rebel against attractiveness-favoring norms. At my core I am not superficial, but I am realistic and am a keen observer of human behavior.

I realize what it must have sounded like when I asked it, but I stand by my question.

It’s true that beauty is subjective, but there are those who are more commonly and universally considered attractive. Furthermore, attractiveness, even if only moderate, becomes more apparent when it appears in groups. A girl might be merely pretty by herself, but when joined by her five pretty friends, their beauties join forces and seem larger, if for no other reason than that statistically it’s not often you see large groups of beautiful people in the real world.

For example, I think I’m just okay-looking. My boyfriend is incredibly handsome–in a universal, movie-star way. I don’t care much for pictures of myself alone (other than to play with on Photoshop and make myself look way better than I do in real life), but I like pictures of me and my boyfriend because, aside from the fact that I love him, I think we make an attractive couple. My best friends are also all pretty. There’s not an ugly one in the bunch. One time in high school my dad asked, “Don’t you have any ugly friends?” I thought about it for a second, and said, “No, I don’t”. He’s not the only one that’s asked that. We love to take pictures of each other because we’re best friends, naturally, but deep down inside we also love it because we think that together we make a hot group of girls.

After that, though, is where I start to have my doubts and why I ask the question in the first place. I imagine that people who truly believe they’re ugly probably don’t want to see pictures of themselves, but when it comes to groups of friends, does affection trump vanity? Or is it the other way around? Furthermore, every person, no matter what they look like, is accustomed to what they look like and judge a picture accordingly, so does attractiveness really make that much of a difference? A beautiful girl might hate a certain image of herself, because she feels it’s not as good as she can look. But a homely girl might love a picture of herself that no one else would look at twice, because it’s the best she’s ever looked.

And is there a major difference between men and women? I think my own theories are probably geared more toward women, with the exception of some gay, very metrosexual, or very vain men. In my experience, most guys just want to look either (a) normal, (b) cool, or (c) hilarious in a picture.

My personal hypothesis is that yes, groups of attractive people probably take more pictures of themselves and each other than groups of more homely people, but I’m putting this question out there because I don’t know and because I’m happy to be proven wrong…well, willing.