About

Sturgeon Face refers to a participatory media meme that involves turning down the corners of one's mouth so that it forms an excessive frown, resembling that of the sturgeon fish's facial expression. Popularized in the late 2000s, the term was applied to a range of photos consisting of original or found images resembling the face and became a slang expression similar to the "Trout Pout."

Origin

On May 27th, 2007, a single-serving site known as Sturgeonface.com^[1] was created by a person only known by the alias "guy" from the email address listed on the bottom of the homepage (example from 2011 below). Its sole purpose was to compile several pictures of individuals, animals and other miscellaneous things frowning in a similar fashion to the sturgeon fish. The name of the site originally dubbed the facial expression "Sturgeon Face."

Spread

The term then spread into usage elsewhere online, such as a post on August 25th, 2007, when Flickr ^[2] user Veronica Belmont attempted to make the face for a photograph uploaded to her account (shown below).

It was later referenced on the website TrèsSugar^[3] under the title "Sturgeon Face: It's Not Pretty" on August 29 of the same year, and again sporadically in 2008, reaching peak popularity sometime around 2009.

On March 5th, 2009, Uncoached,^[6] a men's website, hosted an article titled "Know what a Sturgeon Face is? Well Here’s a Whole Gallery of Them" that linked to the original site and explained the phenomenon (examples seen below).

On March 13th, 2009, The Atlantic^[4] published an article discussing the slang term and trend alongside numerous examples of various faces. On April 28th, 2009, the term was then added to Urban Dictionary^[5] by user fishyrace, becoming the top definition for "Sturgeon Face" with 72 likes in roughly 12 years (shown below).

The term and trend continued to spread, getting referenced on other blogs and websites such as The Chive,^[7] Presurfer^[8] and UKCS,^[9] all in the same year. It was also referenced by MemeFactory^[10] around the same timeframe.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References