I Created a Diva

On Sunday in a fog of automaton I did what I normally did. I did it by rote. My daughter had arrived home after staying over with her grandparents. They all stayed for a Sunday roast lunch. And our daughter wanted to tell them of her new ballet classes.

I grabbed hold of the opportunity, one which I’d been looking for for several days since purchasing her new ballet costume. I asked her to put it on to show Grandma, which she quickly did. And once she was in her leotard and skirt and little ballet slippers, I then did what every scrapbooker out there will do - the many thousands of us. Perhaps at this exact point in time in the world, perhaps one hundred of us were doing the same thing. Perhaps the world turns and nods knowing that in Texas, England, Holland, Australia, Singapore and South Africa, scrapbookers are turning to their children at exactly the same time and saying -

“Just stay there and I’ll get the camera”

And perhaps the world also knows that for 90% of the time our long-suffering children will return the request with an outright groan.  

My daughter has been brought up under this torture. I have attempted many different methods in getting that precious photograph. I’ve bribed, cajoled, threatened, pleaded, shouted (especially when a dog is involved), sighed, asked for help from an unwilling partner, pretended I wasn’t doing it, run into the room hoping for the power of surprise, tried different positions, tried commands, tried ignoring the bad faces, tried taking hundreds of photos until even I was bored, and on some occasions given up.

Over the past few months my new photographing tactic has been to tell her to be a “model”. You have to say the word, “model” with a certain accent on the ..del to get it. It’s a British thing where there is an undercurrent against the many blank-eyed reasonably pretty teenagers who announce to the world that they are going to be a model and make a lot of money.

Our daughter doesn’t know what a model is, mind you. I like to take credit for this niavity from a parenting perspective. Despite the page 3 girls and copious Model searches on T.V., I have somehow so far sheltered her from this side of the world. Good on me, until I needed her to pose for those photographs that is.

To be a model, she was adviced of several poses which might work to bring the highlights of her face out, or the length of her body. Don’t ask me where I got these particular positions from - I have no modelling background myself, and my body can’t get in those contortions very easily anyway. But being a five year old, hers can.

She has a hands on hips pose, with one hip out. She has a sitting down, with hands clasped around knees and head up at an angle to the camera pose. She has a running pose. She has several heads cocked poses (helpful in getting her wispy hair out of her eyes). If I could wing it, she’d have a cartwheel at a standstill pose too.

Getting her to do these photographs and modelling sessions was quite henious until the other day. Obviously, I wanted to take many shots, because the majority of mine come out blurry somewhere. And she always utters the children’s sigh of, “Have you finished yet?” by only the second shot.

Smiling has always been a problem too. Her forced smiles always looked like that of a gargoyle contemplating eating something rancid, and for a few years I was convinced she was doing it on purpose. Last year I took a series of shots where she was legitimately thinking she was smiling, and on looking back at the photographs now, she asks me why she was so grumpy. Um, I responded, somewhat guiltily - You were grumpy. You never like having your photo taken.

Sunday the world changed for both of us. I asked Ms Ballerina to wait there while I went and got the camera, and returned to find her posing gracefully in Model Pose No. 1. Hands on hips, she was cheekily grinning with head cocked up at the camera. Pose No. 2, No. 3 and many more came in quick succession. She even added in some ballet moves. And after the session, she rushed me into the study to load the jpegs up onto the computer.

I’ve created a diva.

Which might make me sadly, a digital scrapbooking mother-come-papparazi.