News Flash: The Duck Face Has Been Replaced by the Fish Gape

Before: The Duck Face pose; After: The Fish Gape pose

(Image credit: Getty, design by Katja Cho)

published 1 October 2015

Now that social media is no longer about sharing your authentic personality and experiences with people who authentically care about you, anybody can be a model starring in her own nonstop editorial. To deepen the illusion that life is just one big fashion spread, we've been trained to 1) smize, 2) duck face, 3) squinch, and now, 4) fish gape.

Following the Suzuki method, first, we shall observe the pros so we know what to copy.

*the world's salmon population weeps, overcome by J.Lo's beauty*

*walleyed pikes bow down to Gigi Hadid*

*random fishes everywhere rejoice bc Keira Knightley*

Half derpy, half the expression one makes when examining an establishment's Seamless menu, the fish gape, as the Daily Mail has anointed it, is the Megazord of photo poses because it combines all its predecessors into one extra-flattering Super Face commonly seen in magazines that come with perfume samples. (More precisely, it is like the yellow Power Ranger because it refers specifically to the parted lips, but you can only give yourself the full RHW treatment, analyzed below, if your eyes and neck are in on the action.)

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a study in fish-gaping

Most of us would be Instagramming the living daylights out of a #selfie that turned out 40 percent as well as this, but duck face is dead, and RHW can do even better.

Fish Gape How-to Pose: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

It's like a switch flipped, right? Here, she's added parted lips, slightly sucked-in cheeks, and a subtle chin tilt on top of her master squinch.

All it takes is some practice positioning your tongue against the back of your teeth/the roof of your mouth to get the proper slimming effect. Watch out, Rosie. We're gunning for you.

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Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at Marie Claire. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.