My sister recently sent me the cutest photo of my little niece. She is four years old and has the delicious dimples. She has an impish grin as well in the majority of her photographs. In that cute photo, I also noticed that my little had the pose.

Here’s the thing my sister loves posing for photos.  She does the hand on hip pose that almost every woman in my family does when facing a camera. I say almost all family women, except for me. Ever since I was a young girl I’ve hated that pose and rebelled against it. I firmly believed one shouldn’t pose for photos unless you were being paid to do so. I believed in being authentic and free. Of course, all photos are essentially posed. I was just being a silly rebel back then. We all try to rebel against something when we are young.

After seeing my my niece’s posed photo, I realized that my sister was already teaching my niece that pose. I wondered how she went about teaching my niece. Did she actually grab her hand and place it on the hip? Or did she just continuously role-model the pose?  I’m fascinated by this very small, relatively unimportant part of culture.

Recently, five supermodels from the 1990s reunited for a Versace show and there was the pose. The pose is back. Well, it never really left. However, I was under the impression the padt five years that the selfie had killed off the pose.  People on tours hardly ever ask for someone else to take their phone. They delight in the art of selfie-taking. It’s supposed to be authentic to nust take a selfie in the moment. So why does the pose still exist? We can go from an authentic moment to a posed second for all to see thereafter.