My girlfriend’s silly selfies are posing a dilemma

Sometimes my girlfriend and I send each other funny selfies. She always purses her lips and does what she calls “noot face”, inspired by Pingu, the animated penguin. I no longer find “noot face” funny (let alone attractive). Is it my business to tell her to stop?
O.M., Newtown, NSW

Pingu was my kids’ favourite TV show in the 1990s. His videos did about 65 per cent of my parenting, with Rugrats making up the rest, and I’d pop in now and then with snacks and eye-drops for their tired, bloodshot eyes.

So I’m very familiar with “noot face”: that honking-beak expression that Pingu does when he makes his noot-noot noise – a bit like a pushed-out trumpet or the lips of every woman in every franchise of The Real Housewives.

For this reason, I can understand why you no longer find “noot face” funny or attractive and, if your girlfriend keeps doing it, why it might have a disastrous effect on the relationship: you could actually stop desiring her or, worse, you could start desiring a claymation penguin from a Swiss children’s TV show. But I have a solution: if “noot face” is killing your feelings of romance, maybe romance is the way to kill “noot face”. Tell your girlfriend that you love her, you adore her, and the two of you should invent a special, unique “new face” that you can do as a couple for all future selfies. Suggest pushing up your nose and calling it “snoot face”. Or puffing out your cheeks and calling it “fruit face”. Or pulling a Clint Eastwood grimace and calling it “cheroot face”.

And if she still insists on doing “noot face”, either tell her she looks like a Real Housewife, or mock up a cease-and-desist letter from Pingu’s legal representation and see how she goes with “lawsuit face”.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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