Friday, January 29, 2010

Not exactly a dead ringer.

Apparently it was Doppelganger, a.k.a celebrity look alike week, on Facebook. To participate, you were supposed to replace your profile picture with a celebrity whom you have been told that you resemble. I noticed that several of my friends had switched their profile pictures to famous actors and actresses at the beginning of the week which seemed pretty strange. Finally, I was clued in to what was going on.

When I looked at my friend list this week, it was brimming with stars from both TV and the movies. I saw Anthony Edwards, Matthew Broderick, Valerie Bertenelli (the early years), Julia Stiles, Patricia Heaton and Traci Gold just to name a few. I have to say that in one case the resemblance to the celebrity was so close, that it took me a second to realize that the photo was Anthony Edwards and not the boy who I attended grade school with for eight years. In most cases, even if the resemblance to the celebrity wasn't striking, there were certain facial features that were similar once you took a good look at the picture (and maybe squinted a bit).

I have never been told that I looked like a celebrity. At all. Ever. I was once mistaken for an Austrian exchange student, but I was to blame for that one. I decided to french braid my hair and wear an apron style jumper to a meet and greet for some Austrian exchange students that were visiting from our sister city. In my oddly chosen outfit, I looked more like an Austrian than many of the actual Austrian high school students who were in attendance. I think everyone was waiting for me to start twirling and burst into song, "The hills are alive, with the sound of music..."

Other than that, the only person I've ever been mistaken for was another girl who happened to attend the same high school that I did. We both had the same hairstyle, we were about the same height and had the same fair skin that Mr. Crackers lovingly refers to as "fish belly white". Since she was a lot more popular than I was, I was often mistaken for her from a distance, and spent a lot of my high school years hearing, "Oh, I thought you were Molly."

Even though I was a little doubtful of the outcome, I figured I'd see if there a was female celebrity out there whom I might resemble. I thought that the easiest way to start would be to plug in some of my defining physical characteristics into Google Images & see what I could come up with. I narrowed my search to the three characteristics that I thought were most distinct about my appearance


I started with what I think is my most obvious physical characteristic, my height...or lack there of. While I like to think of myself as petite, my sister has been know to refer to me as height challenged. So, to get started I typed the phrase "short female actresses" into Google Images and got pictures of these ladies:


Umm, NO!


She's certainly a cutie (and man she's young), but no...no resemblance at all.



I wish...




So, I moved onto to my next item. Big teeth. Yep, I have big, giant teeth. Especially my front teeth. I try not to smile too widely at young children when I first meet them so as not to scare them. I typed "actresses with big teeth" into Google next to see what I came up with and got images of these ladies:



I think we can all agree that this woman is my exact opposite... the tan skin, the beautiful brown eyes (& let's agree not to discuss the difference in chest size OK?)



Just no.




Well, at least her hair is blondish. But other than that, it's a no.


Finally I decided to try my final characteristic - my fair skin (no Mr. Crackers I did not type "fish belly white skin" into Google Images). When I typed "actresses with pale skin" into Google Images this beautiful picture came up:




She is stunning. I bet Keith Urban never refers to her skin as fish belly white!



I also got an image of Tilda Swinton:






not a very flattering picture...can we do better?





Ahh...much better picture (not to mention the hair color is a little more similar to my own color treated hair). But is it a match?


Well, I think match is really too strong a word. I don't think anyone is ever going to stop me on the street and confuse me for Tilda Swinton (especially since she's probably about 6 inches taller than me while still managing to weigh about 15 pounds less), but honestly it's probably the closest match I'll be able to come with. Pale skin? Check! Light colored eyes? Check! Big teeth? Who knows...let's just wrap this up shall we?

Am I going to change my profile picture in Facebook? Nah, it'll just confuse people who will say "Geez I wonder who told her she looks like Tilda Swinton. I don't see the resemblance at all!"

3 comments:

Mr Crackers said...

didnt uncle G say you looked like the chick on that travel show?

momevers said...

Samantha Brown! Yeah, that's it. Very similar personality, too....

Linda said...

Well thanks for the explination...got on facebook for the first time in about a month and all my friends turned into Fred Savage....very confusing. I can't say I've ever been mistaken for anyone famous either....hmmm...maybe it's a family problem