When the baby was only a month or so old everyone kept saying, “Oh wow, he looks like your husband. He looks so much like your husband!” And now he is six months old and at a family gathering the other day I had at least 10 people say that he looked exactly like me.
And here is the thing: No. He doesn’t. He doesn’t look exactly like me because I am not a small, fat, round-headed baby. At one month he did not look “so much” like my husband because my husband is not a tiny, shriveled alien-like creature with no hair who constantly cries. I cannot even stress how much he didn’t look like my husband. If the baby had committed a crime at that age (let’s say he robbed some old women) and was brought into the police station for a lineup next to a bunch of other newborn babies, there’s no way they would also choose to include my husband in the lineup. And if they did, there’s no way the old women would squint through the glass, looking at the 5 or 6 disgruntled newborns and would say, “Oh wait, maybe it wasn’t a baby, maybe it was that fully developed adult in the button-down shirt and the glasses. I just can’t choose because they look so much alike.”
He does not look just like either of us. At this point when people ask, “who does he look like?’ I respond, “All the other babies on the internet.” Which is true. A few times a day a picture of a baby will pop up in my newsfeed and often my first knee-jerk reaction is, “How did someone else get a picture of my baby!’ And then 9 times out of 10 it turns out it is a totally different baby that looked almost exactly like our baby. (And 1 time out of ten we have to take him back from my mother, who has kidnapped him.)
But people don’t like when I say he looks like all other babies. They say, “Yes, I know to some extent all babies look alike, but who does he LOOK like?’ And the answer, which no one wants to hear, is he looks like a smaller version of ALL BALD WHITE MEN. That being said, here is the list of answers I am going to give you when you say:
“SO WHO DOES THE BABY LOOK LIKE?”
1. J.K. Simmons
The baby looks a LOT like JK Simmons, which is not an issue for me because I really like JK Simmons. His character in “Burn After Reading” was so wonderful it made me wish everyone in my family looked like JK Simmons, although in fairness, that might be a bit overwhelming. Most of the time when people ask who the baby looks like, I pick Simmons and then have to spend ten minutes thinking of a movie or TV show they know with him in it so that they can go, “Yeah. Ok. I guess.”
2. Michael Chiklis
Chiklis is a little intense-looking, which is why I was hesitant to use him at first, but in fairness, he does sort of look like a super-intense giant baby. If my baby were really intently focusing on something, this is sort of how he looks, which is I guess the roundabout way of saying, “My baby looks like Michael Chiklis when he’s pooping.”
(And obviously, that’s when the baby is pooping. I have no idea what Michael Chiklis looks like when he’s pooping, but odds are there’s a GIF of it on the internet somewhere.)
3. Patrick Stewart
I love Patrick Stewart. He doesn’t have any hair and he looks happy. The baby also has no hair and also seems pretty happy. Both of them make me happy. There’s a lot of happiness going on in this post. The main difference between Patrick Stewart and the baby is that the baby wears fewer dark turtlenecks and doesn’t have a little friend-baby that looks like Sir Ian McKellen.
4. Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel walks this impossibly fine line of being extremely good looking and also looking EXACTLY LIKE A BABY. I have no idea how this works. My brain explodes when I look at pictures of him too closely because that is how much I cannot wrap my mind around this dichotomy. I assume most of his roles involve guns and tattoos and explosions so that people don’t stare at him going, “Wait– is this a giant version of the kid from ‘Baby’s Day Out?” He’s an action hero and yet I have no trouble picturing him in one of those Sears photo setups with a blanket draped over his smiling head.
5. Mr. Clean
Look, I’m not saying that I’m thrilled about it, but I’m saying I’ve definitely picked up the baby and gotten the “Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean” theme song stuck in my head. Luckily babies this young can’t really cross their arms like this yet, and I’m not sure Mr. Clean is capable of being photographed in any other stance.
6. John Malkovich
Can you even look at John Malkovich without picturing him in an enormous onesie? I can’t, which makes watching his movies difficult. Although in fairness part of it is that he’s such a great actor that if Hollywood were looking for an adult actor to play a baby in a movie (due to some dramatic change in child labor laws) he would be everyone’s first pick since he’s a.) totally believable as a baby and b.) can carry a film. Not only does he have those kind, mournful eyes, he could embody the soul of a baby– I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled a Daniel Day-Lewis and stayed in character even while the cameras weren’t rolling. Also, he was so good as Lenny in “Of Mice and Men” I cried like a giant, John Malkovich-sized baby.
7. James Carville
James Carville looks like a man but also exactly like a baby but also a little bit like an alien. I’m not positive how someone can have all three going on at once but he clearly does.
8. Bruce Willis
Ok, so Willis looks a little bit less like a baby than some of the others and I think if I had to guess it would be the sharp features. He has very delicate, adult features, with none of that childish doughiness. Still, if you were to photoshop his teeth and his wrinkles away, when you were finished being terrified by the image you created you’d agree that he looks pretty much like a baby.
9. Uncle Fester
Uncle Fester looks unnervingly like most of my son’s baby pictures. When I sent out birth announcements I considered sending them out with a bald picture of Christopher Lloyd just to see if anyone would even notice.
If someone wants to photoshop this photo into a crib and wrap it with a Winnie the Pooh swaddling blanket it’s probably not even going to look weird.
10. All of the Guys in Blue Man Group
They’re bald with enormous eyes. None of them speak. And their entire show is basically just them making an enormous mess. The similarities are so striking that if you’re on the fence about having a baby I might just recommend your getting tickets to this show because it’s great and when it’s over you don’t have to put any of them through college.
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