Are You Allowed to Smile?

We’ve seen a version of the mug-shot drama many times before, almost daily in our newspapers. But it is precisely our fluency with it that makes us sensitive to departures in form, and compels us to seek out, promiscuously, every variation on the theme: A tear running down the cheek of a young woman, suggestive intrusions from the world outside of the frame, poses of miraculously unruffled prettiness, the smile in all its varieties.

The New Yorker’s Culture Desk calls us out in “Hotties, Hunks, Beat Up, Celebrities: The Allure of the Mug Shot.” Now, right back to looking at mug shots: these have a little story attached and these don’t.

Photo by Least Wanted.