{"id":1518,"date":"2013-11-12T21:17:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T21:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikemalonedds.com\/blog1\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2015-08-26T21:04:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T21:04:17","slug":"why-do-we-say-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camelliadds.com\/blog1\/why-do-we-say-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Say ‘Cheese?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a strange phenomenon that saying the name of a dairy product would trigger people to smile. When did the first photographer decide to utter this word in order to produce a smile on the faces of his subjects?\u00a0 The answer to this question is unclear; however we can examine the history of \u2018smiling for the camera\u2019 to find out more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why do we smile in photographs?\u00a0 It just makes sense somehow, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 You almost can\u2019t smile when someone says cheese.\u00a0 According to TodayIFoundOut.com<\/a>, the phrase \u201csay cheese\u201d first appeared in The Big Spring Herald<\/i> in 1943.\u00a0 The news snippet quotes former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who shares with the reporter a formula he learned for smiling when your picture is about to be taken:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s simple. Just say \u201cCheese,\u201d It\u2019s an automatic smile. \u201cI learned that from a politician,\u201d Mr. Davies chuckled. \u201cAn astute politician, a very great politician. But, of course, I cannot tell you who he was\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The politician being referred to is assumed to be Professor Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which case FDR would be the genius being \u201csay cheese,\u201d yet there is no evidence of this.\u00a0 But let\u2019s return to the question of why we smile in photographs to begin with.\u00a0 To be honest, smiling for a photograph is an American 20th-century concept.\u00a0 If you look at a photograph from the Victorian age, you\u2019ll notice stony, serious faces, as it was considered beautiful to have a \u201csmall, tightly controlled smile.\u201d\u00a0 In order to achieve this affect, photographers would ask their subjects to say \u2018prunes\u2019 instead of \u2018cheese.\u2019<\/p>\n

Getting a portrait taken was very expensive at the time and limited to the upper class.\u00a0 A photography session<\/a> took a long time as well, even after the daguerreotype was invented in 1839 and exposure time was sped up to 15 minutes.\u00a0 This still was too lengthy an amount of time to ask subjects to hold a smile without tiring out.\u00a0 It was a big production treated with seriousness, and so the mood often would not lend to smiling.\u00a0 \u201cSmiles during this time were typically captured on children, peasants, and drunks,\u201d according to TodayIFoundOut.com.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the biggest reason people didn\u2019t smile in the Victorian era was due to — you guessed it — poor oral hygiene!\u00a0 Dental care was still not widely available in the 1800s, even amongst the rich.\u00a0 If someone had tooth pain or a broken tooth, the answer would often be to yank it out.\u00a0 Thus if you were going to have a photograph taken and were missing some teeth, you probably wouldn\u2019t want to smile.<\/p>\n

At the turn of the century, Kodak introduced the $1 Brownie camera in 1900.\u00a0 Accessibility to photography spread like wildfire throughout America, and soon anyone and everyone was able to take a photograph.\u00a0 Kodak\u2019s slogan at the time was: \u201cYou push the button, we do the rest.\u201d\u00a0 They advertised their cameras \u201cwith photographs of smiling faces.\u201d\u00a0 Soonafter, because taking photographs became so commonplace, the advent of casual photography lent to a culture where smiling became more appropriate. (Mentalfloss<\/a>).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today, nearly 3,500 photographs are uploaded to Facebook<\/a> per second. \u00a0People don’t think twice about whipping out their smartphones to photograph daily aspects of life. \u00a0Now that’s casual photography.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"about_doc_\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. Mike Malone\u00a0and his\u00a0team<\/a>\u00a0practice expert cosmetic dentistry in Lafayette, LA. Dr. Malone is the former president and current accredited member of the\u00a0American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry<\/a>. He\u00a0is also the official Cosmetic Dentist of the Miss Louisiana USA and Miss Louisiana Teen USA pageants. Check out his\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0for more information.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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