Passport photo nothing to grin about
A somewhat shocking discovery earlier this week dropped me into the world of United States passports. I emerged, hours later, worried and anxious – but mostly feeling bad about myself.
Not that I plan any air travel soon, but the deadline for the REAL ID travel requirement has arrived, and gathering all the historical documents needed to get one of those is more than I can manage. And so I decided to go for Plan B, renewing my passport. And for once in my life, I was able to open a drawer and find what I’d gone in there to find.
Not one passport, but two. The first was from 1990, quickly secured with the help of the TV station where I worked; they’d planned to send me on assignment somewhere overseas, as I recall; the photo must have been taken in humid mid-August because I look like I’m wearing a furry rodent for a hat.
The other passport was taken the year after my cancer chemotherapy treatment; my hair had just started to grow back and was scrubby and dark and partly gray. I’d gotten the passport so that my son and I could travel to Costa Rica for a volunteer trip. I was happy and excited about the adventure, but I look grumpy because the guy who took my photo told me not to smile.
I looked at the date next to the photo: June 16, 2010. Passports can be renewed only if they were issued within the last 15 years. Had I waited another week or so, I would have missed the renewal window and had to start all over again to get a new passport.
The clock was ticking. Off to the post office I went for a new photo, sans makeup or hair primping.
“Sit there,” said the man who took my $15 fee. “Look straight ahead.”
Three minutes later he handed me two small, glossy snapshots. I peered at them gingerly, from the side, as I tend to do when seeing myself these days because nobody wants to see that.
Is that what I look like? It’s the same feeling I got the first time, as a kid, I heard my voice on a tape recorder: some embarrassment, and a feeling of disconnectedness. Is that what I sound like?
This new passport photo: frizzy hair, yes. Grumpy expression – you bet. And when did I get so droopy? Surely this was just a case of terrible photography. There was no flash on that digital camera, and the room had hard fluorescent overhead lighting. I looked like a mugshot of a late-in-life George Washington who had grown out his hair.
“We women are so hard on ourselves,” said my friend when I whined to her about the photo. “We have to stop the battering.” Our youth-obsessed culture likes to remind us that we really ought to do something about those wrinkles.
To be honest, when I looked at the photo some thoughts of Botox and fillers and even face-lifts crossed my mind. Maybe there are things I could do to “young things up” a bit. But the thoughts were fleeting. I’m 66; I’m going to either look more or less that age, or I’m going to start down the path of needles and surgery. I wouldn’t look younger – just different or weird.
Oh, who cares about passport photos, anyway? They’re only seen by TSA agents who see 1,000 of them a day. I attached a photo to my application, wrote a big fat check and sent it off to the passport office with hopes it will get there in time.
So now I wait, and it’s not easy. I’m not getting any younger.