Say cheese
WHY are we asked to say cheese when posing for a photo? And why are there so many senses and phrases of cheese? And why do many of them express disdain, seeing that cheese, the thing, the noble foodstuff, is vital to personal diet and the New Zealand economy?
Saying cheese
To say the word ‘‘cheese’’ you put your mouth into a wide grin, suited to the setpiece photographic smile. But beware: if you prolong it a fraction too long, your mugshot records a fixed, toothy, or falselooking expression. Tough luck; or, as some of us say, hard cheese.
Historically
It hasn’t always been cheese.
Early photographers required
prune: was it for the more endearing forward thrust of the lips? Or folkmemory of saying
prunes and prismsto make the mouth look good (1854, in Little
Dorrit)?
Elsewhere
Nonetheless, much of the world says cheese or its soundequivalent, like Japanese chizu or Czechsyr. Italian just bids you ‘‘Smile!’’,
sorridi. For French, I was taught to say petite pomme
(‘‘little apple’’), which puts the lips into a positively pleasing position. Trust the French to know. But don’t take my word for it. Go to the mirror, try out all these words, and discover your own best smile whenever you ‘‘watch for the birdie’’.
Regressive
Why ‘‘birdie’’? And how come Italian sorridi is the familiar intimate imperative, the
tuform? There’s something childish in these commands. And in say cheese, as if the photographer wants us to relax, and regress to childhood, when we didn’t think about our social face. So saying cheese may help.
Selfies
And when you’ve finished at your mirror, consider selfies. Do you say something towards the selfiepole? Are you more concerned not to make your nose look bulbous? Readers who take selfies, tell all. Do you suck in your cheeks, for the recommended ‘‘ducklook’’?
Back to cheese
How does any smile resemble cheese? Because smiles look alike — your own in an album, all of them in the team photograph. And so with blocks of cheese — uniform, yellow, bland, same from every viewpoint. Similarly, alas, with that ubiquitous ‘‘smile for the camera’’. It’s the inward essence which counts, for faces as for cheeses.
Cheesetalk
Cheer up, though, cheesetalk has variety. Cheeserolling, cutting the cheese, chalk and cheese. To cheese off: to bore, disappoint, anger. To be cheesed ‘‘off’’: does the off line up with being
brassed off, put off, and other such offputting offs, to mean thwarted, disappointed, or
fobbed off — cheated out of what you want, and given cheese instead?
I like it
No! I like cheese! I admire Wallace of Wallace and Gromit.
When he’s trying to win back the love of fair Wendolene, he offers her cheese and crackers. She declines. He plays his trump card: Not even
Wensleydale? And this has passed into legend, for (so I read) the recorded punchline helped rescue Wensleydale cheese products from bankruptcy. And even that’s not all: Captain George Mainwaring’s unhappy married state was summed up when Mrs M (never actually seen on Dad’s Army) refused to emerge from the airraid shelter, not even when offered a toasted cheese supper. I rest my cheese, sorry, case.