For Christmas this year, my aunt gave everyone a collage of old pictures of our family. Mine has pictures of my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my mother, her sisters, myself and my siblings—all snaps of time over the last five decades. One of the pictures was taken on the day of my great uncle's funeral. They were taking posed photos, since relatives were there from near and far. This one, I assume, was supposed to be of my great-grandmother and her two surviving children, but for inexplicable reasons, they called me into the shot, maybe because it was common knowledge that I had been Great Uncle Roger's favorite niece.

It's a strange picture for me to see because I remember it being taken, remember looking at the tableau that is behind the camera. My slender mother is standing just out of camera range, next to my stepfather and her very weight-conscious sisters who were coaching the subjects while my great-grandfather snapped away. My uncle's kids, who are very cool and beautiful and have exotic Texas accents (even though they grew up in Wisconsin, which is a very perplexing mystery and allowed me to imagine that there is hope for me yet) are also there, watching from the sidelines, waiting for their own posed photos. My great grandmother is staring just behind the shoulder of the photographer, my surviving Great Uncle is looking there too, shooting is beaming his Hollywood smile. I called him my Rockford Files uncle (and my Uncle Roger was my Hugs and Kisses Uncle, until he got sick and couldn't touch anyone because of germs) and my grandmother looks off to her right, where her daughters were sitting.

I remember her saying something before this shot was taken but I don't remember what it was. Clearly, it's directed at them. This is the second of two pictures, a redo because apparently I had made a funny face the first time. It's hard to think back to the days when you had no idea whether a picture turned out or not and film and processing was expensive, so you made sure to get it right the first time. I remember being horrified that I had been the cause of a retake, that it had been that obvious.

Before the first picture, one of my aunts had shouted, "Weetabix, suck in your stomach!"

At that moment, with your entire family surrounding you, what can you do? What do you say? You are eight years old and everyone is on the verge of tears already, having just attended the funeral of a beloved man who had spent the last three years wasting away with every cancer known to man (linked somehow to his service in the Korean war) and a grown-up just told you to stop being so fat for a brief moment. For Uncle Roger's sake, try not to fail everyone just this once? Wouldn't you try? Wouldn't you suck in with all your might until your eyes get big and you hold your breath so that you won't lose control? Yes, you would. I did. I've seen that picture before, stowed in my grandmother's keepsakes. It pains me every time I see it, and when I received the collage, for a brief second, I held my breath again, expecting to see myself with a self-conscious look on my face, chest pushed out and shoulders stick straight as my eight-year-old self tries desperately to meet the audience's approval.

What's notable about the resulting retake is that I'm the only one looking straight into the camera. I'd like to believe that I'm looking defiant, that I'm telling everyone to just suck it, this is who I am, this is the girl who Uncle Roger thought was awesome and hilarious and wickedly clever. I'd like to believe the little half smile is because I know something that they do not, that they caught me off guard with the demand to suck it in, but now I was onto them and I would not be fooled again, the cocky head tilt that says, "Go on, hit me with your best shot. I dare ya." I'd really like to believe this, but there is something in the way I'm holding my shoulders, something in the way my arms want to swing forward and cross over the breasts that shouldn't be there already but are anyway. Yes, on first glance, I look as though nothing they say will ever affect me but there's just something in the eyes that says that this incident, like all of them, will be remembered. This moment in time would be preserved forever for posterity, on photostock and also off. —Weetabix