Remember watching The Muppets when you were younger? Which characters are the first that come to mind? For me, I think of Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, Rizzo the Rat, and Beaker. Now picture Beaker. According to Wikipedia, “Beaker has bulging eyes, a shock of red hair, and a drawbridge mouth… Beaker is a magnet for misfortune; his appearances typically involve him being blown up, electrocuted, eaten by large monsters, or losing body parts. Beaker communicates in a nervous, high-pitched squeak that sounds like ‘Mee-mee-mee mee’.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_(Muppet))
“stank face” and “deuces” (another random phenomenon) with Catherine at graduation
Now picture a hundred girls impersonating Beaker’s facial expression, the corners of their mouths turned down in a pouting expression. This expression – called the “stank face” – was captured in hundreds of photographs throughout senior year. Why, you may ask, would you ever want to make that face in a picture? I honestly don’t have an answer to that question. I have absolutely no idea how or when it originated, but for whatever reason, it caught on and spread like wildfire. It’s weird and bizarre and I’m not sure why we found it so funny. Before starting this week’s blog, I asked my friend Catherine how the stank face originated because I couldn’t remember. “I have no freaking clue,” she responded. “You can write about how its origins mysteriously appeared and then slowly incorporated itself into our lives.”
“stank face” even made it to prom
Catherine was absolutely right. The stank face was mysterious, and I still don’t know its purpose, but our senior year would not have been the same without it. It’s not an attractive expression at all, but there are at least thirty pictures on my Facebook of me making that face, and hundreds of others of my classmates making that face. I guess, in a way, it was another humorous way of uniting our class. What other school would think that impersonating Beaker was a good idea? Certainly not Penn State.
Hahaha the stank face. My high school was also pretty into that. At least my friends were. I’m the kind of person that gets nervous in front of the camera and don’t like to take real pictures so I often resort to the stank face for comfort. When you think about it, that’s probably why its so popular. When you make the face, you are expected to look bad, so you can’t possibly have an unintentionally bad picture. The face is great for those unphotogenic people like myself.