Not smiling in pictures and autism

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I keep hearing about not smiling in pictures being correlated to autism. I have to disagree. While there is Aspies who don't smile in pictures, I know plenty of Aspies who smile and plenty of NTs who don't. My mom barely ever smiles in pictures and she is pretty NT. She does have ADHD and dyslexia, but no autism.

Assuming they were asked to smile, or knew that the photo was of them, then I can only see that correlation making sense if the autistic in question had extreme difficulty with facial expression (lower functioning especially may not be able to, or fail to understand it etc), or if they were too uncomfortable as a result of autism (i.e. sensory issues) in the situation to smile. Any other situation I can envisage could be seen in individuals without autism as well.

I don't smile in photographs because if I'm forced to smile I look like some horror movie icon. I can't pull off a fake smile to save my life. I smile normally but only when it's naturally induced.

If you make me laugh you have a 50-50 chance that you'll get a somewhat decent shot or me looking really strange, although midlaugh pictures do that to anyone.

It's pretty rare to find me smiling in a picture, unless it is a candid shot of me laughing.
A lot of the time I'm not even really looking at the camera.

However... In all the class/school pictures I have of the autistic kids I went to school with,
plenty of them are looking at the camera and smiling.

Me personally, I smile in ALL pictures that I'm in. I love smiling. I think smiles are beautiful and so happy looking. It makes me feel good to smile and see others smile.

I don't usually smile in pictures....I don't think I generally smile much at all, doesn't mean I'm always in a bad mood or anything, just doesn't really come naturally. Unless of course I'm laughing about something or if I find something exciting then I might smile a bit, so if someone gets a picture of me in those situations I might be smiling.

Also though my teeth suck, they are rather misaligned...I had braces but that didn't help because its a jaw misalignment or something, apparently to actually correct it I'd need surgery and I don't want surgery on my face. It probably doesn't matter, doesn't really matter to me...but it seems at least in the U.S its a big deal to have pearly white perfectly aligned teeth, seems to be part of what is commonly considered 'attractive'. I don't really get it myself as teeth are probably the last thing I would consider when deciding if i find someone attractive or not.

My parents always fuss at me saying that my smile looks fake in photos. Well, if I understand what they mean by that, it has to be fake, because nothing enjoyable is making me smile.

Me too

Actually, this reminds me of something. I used to work as a kitschy photographer and parents had this uncanny ability to pick out "fake smiles". I mean, unless the kid was like shoving this crazy grin or something I had no idea lol. It just looked like a standard smile. It was weird how parents didn't want candid shots of their kid. Like, this is actually who your kid is lol. I dunno, parents are weird about that whole picture perfect thing, if I took pictures of my hypothetical children it would be them doing funny stuff.

I'm infamous for not smiling when members of my family want to take photos. I have to actually be happy to smile, otherwise when I try to make a smile, it is completely forced. I've tried some improvement techniques like thinking about a funny moment to get myself to smile, but this can also backfire.

I smile in pictures, and prefer if other people do too. A smile is one of the few expressions I can read, and so I interpret it as "I'm a reasonably friendly person, and I accept you, and everything's okay."

Whereas a frown or a blank expression, I have no idea. Are they grumpy? Angry? Sad? Bored? (And why would they want a picture of themselves looking like that?)

As for the trendy 'fish lips' pose... I seriously don't get it! Haha

I actually find it difficult to smile when asked to for photos. Many of my childhood pictures were forced smiles, because I had not been laughing at the time. If they capture it at the right moment while I'm very happy, then it looks natural!

I agree with everything you said.

I agree with the OP. Not smiling on pictures and Autism have nothing to do with each other. I know NT's who usually don't smile on pictures. I have no trouble with smiling.

You simply can't judge if someone is autistic by a picture. Autism doesn't have a specific look as far as I know.

This is true. Like I said I used to take pictures of kids for a living and a lot of the little buggers wouldn't smile no matter how hard you tried.

I just hate how I look when I fake smile though. I seriously have this creepy stare going on.

Same with me. When I try to smile I look kind of creepy. I might be able to smile if I wasn't so depressed.