By HTE founder, Erin Hughes.
There is a particular vulnerability in having your photograph taken.
The camera turns towards you and, almost instinctively, the adjustments begin. A chin shifts. A smile changes. A body angles. Someone mentions their “good side”.
Photographer Cait Miers has watched it happen for years.
After 12 years working as a surf and fashion photographer, Cait began noticing how often women responded negatively when they saw photographs of themselves.
“I constantly saw women talk negatively about themselves when they saw the photos back,” she says.
Cait had always loved photographing people naturally, documenting them “as is”. So she began wondering what might happen if she took that idea further.
What if she photographed women without makeup?
Not because makeup was the problem, but because taking it off might start a much bigger conversation.
It was never really about the makeup
“It’s not really about the makeup,” Cait says. “It’s about women removing the layers and layers of pressure society tells us to be.”
That distinction matters.
Laugh Lines isn’t telling women to abandon makeup or stop enjoying beauty. It is asking us to think about our relationship with what lies underneath it.
How comfortable are we simply showing up as ourselves?
“When women show up ‘as they are’, we tell the world, hey, this is me and I’m comfortable with this,” Cait says.
But photographing hundreds of women has also shown Cait that getting to that place isn’t always easy.
“Every person has come in with their own story, and it’s in both ways beautiful and heartbreaking to hear.”
Behind each portrait is a relationship with a face and body shaped by years of experiences, expectations and messages about how a woman is supposed to look.
Laugh Lines gives women a moment to question them.
Who said wrinkles were bad?
Perhaps nowhere are those messages louder than when it comes to ageing.
We correct wrinkles. Cover grey hair. Rejuvenate skin. Talk about “turning back the clock”.
Cait wants women to question where that fear came from in the first place.
“I think it’s more about seeing it as a privilege rather than something to be scared of,” she says.
Then she asks the question at the heart of Laugh Lines:
“Who put that fear in you anyway? Who said wrinkles were bad?”
Perhaps a laugh line doesn’t need to be something we erase.
Perhaps it can simply be evidence.
Of years. Of expression. Of emotion. Of being here long enough for life to leave a mark.
The Mirror Minute
Cait has also created a deceptively simple way for women to explore their relationship with themselves without ever stepping in front of her camera.
It takes just 60 seconds.
The Mirror Minute is an online challenge that asks you to look directly at yourself for one minute.
No moving. No posing. No searching for your good side.
Do it and the timer restarts.
Cait laughs that it began as “basically a PR stunt” to get people talking about Laugh Lines, but the concept taps into something deeper.
Most of us look in mirrors every day, but how often do we simply look?
We inspect. Adjust. Assess.
The Mirror Minute asks us to do something surprisingly unfamiliar.
Stay.
1,000 women was just the beginning
When Cait started Laugh Lines, her goal was to photograph 1,000 women.
At the time, it felt enormous.
Three months later, she was already around a third of the way there.
So the dream grew.
“Now our goal will be 10,000, 100,000, maybe even a million one day.”
Imagine that archive.
Thousands of women. Different ages, faces, backgrounds and stories, photographed without being asked to disguise the evidence of living.
Not before photographs. Not after photographs. Just photographs.
But Cait’s biggest ambition isn’t really about numbers.
It is about the generation coming next.
“I’d just love the next generation to grow up not caring about what they look like and really loving the skin they’re in,” she says.
And perhaps that starts with what they see us doing now.
Children notice the photographs we delete. They hear us complain about getting older. They watch us examine ourselves in mirrors.
Changing the conversation for the next generation may require changing the one we’re having with ourselves first.
Then I became #210
I understood the idea behind Laugh Lines when I spoke to Cait.
But I think I truly understood its impact when I saw it happening in front of me.
I was recently at an event where Cait was photographing women for the project. What struck me was how little hesitation there was.
Women were wiping off their makeup and stepping forward.
No elaborate preparation. No searching for the perfect angle. No attempt to become a more polished version of themselves.
They simply wanted to be part of it.
There was something incredibly moving about watching woman after woman choose to show up exactly as she was.
And then it was my turn.
I wiped off my own makeup, stepped in front of Cait’s camera and became Laugh Lines woman #210.
I’m proud to be #210.
Not because one photograph suddenly changes a lifetime of messages about beauty and ageing.
But because, for that moment, I didn’t hide, adjust or improve anything. I just showed up.
And perhaps that is what Laugh Lines is really asking of us.
Not to stop wearing makeup.
Not to stop enjoying beauty.
Not even to love everything we see in the mirror every single day.
Just to question why we so often feel that what is already there needs changing.
Be part of Laugh Lines
Cait now wants to take Laugh Lines around the world, but photographing more women, travelling to new communities and documenting their stories requires financial support.
The project is raising $100,000 in 100 days to help take Laugh Lines global.
If this story has made you think differently about the face in the mirror, you can help Cait keep the camera moving and the conversation growing.
Support the Laugh Lines GoFundMe:
https://gofund.me/4c1f45c04
Discover Laugh Lines and learn more:
https://www.laughlines.com.au
And perhaps, before you go, give yourself a Mirror Minute.
No posing. No finding your good side. No searching for something to fix.
Just look.
