Objection One: Your SLR Looks Like A Gun. A matte black SLR with a massive lens looks like a weapon. It's the same kind of visceral response that gets war photographers shot. I know this from direct experience working with the UN in Africa. A tiny pink point and shoot, on the other hand, resembles a vibrator.
Objection Two: You Have the Power to Make Me Look Bad. When primitive peoples first encountered photography, they said that the camera could steal your soul, and they refused to be photographed. Guess what? It only took a couple generations of paparazzi to prove them right. When an unflattering picture of someone gets published, it's like character assassination on the cheap: a bad picture is worth a thousand nasty words.
Objection Three: I'm not Photogenic. Most laypeople who are not professional models have only ever had pictures taken of them by other laypeople who know very little about portraiture. Most lay pictures are snapshots using direct on-camera flash; and as every photographer knows, front flash is the most unflattering light there is. So most laypeople are conditioned to think that they look bad in pictures, that they're not photogenic, whatever that means. They don't think about the fact that pictures in women's magazines involve professional models who have posed for hours, under professional lighting, with the assistance of professional makeup and hair experts, for hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures, which were later carefully culled and Photoshopped.
Some people respond to any picture of themselves with horror. Everybody around them could be saying "hey, that's a great picture of you" and they'll say "oh my God, I look fat/ugly/imperfect/unhappy/weird, delete it, delete it, delete it." Is there a name for this phenomenon? Surely there must be.
Yet some people seem quite immune to photography. They do not fear the camera. They are preternaturally self-possessed. They really don't care what other people think of them. They have come to terms with their self-image and have given up trying to control it. They know that looking bad in pictures doesn't mean they're a bad person. False assumptions, mean-spirited criticisms, and inaccurate impressions do not concern them. They are water off a duck's back. They meet Paul Graham's test of adulthood: they respond to challenges not with defensiveness but with composure. In Status Anxiety Alain de Botton refers to this as the shield of reason in response to criticism. Some people, when criticized, raise an eyebrow and say, "is that justified?" Other people bare their breasts to every wound.
Your reaction to having a camera pointed at you shows what you think of yourself.
The camera is a reliable barometer of confidence, maturity, self-esteem.
Each of the above objections can be answered rationally.
Yes, an SLR looks like a gun. But a 200mm lens with good bokeh is much more likely to take a good, professional-looking, frame-filling portrait than a point-and-shoot that's fixed at 28mm.
Yes, you might look stupid, and I just might take your head and photoshop a naked body onto it, and if you were a teenager, had low self-esteem, and were at the mercy of the poisonous opinion of your equally insecure peers, then you might be afraid that your classmates might giggle and you might feel dreadful, but actually, that has nothing to do with my camera and everything to do with the fact that you're fifteen.
Yes, you might not think you are photogenic, but that is because you have had fewer pictures taken of you, in your entire life, than a professional model has taken of her in a single day. Nine out of every ten pictures will be crap. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take any pictures at all. That means you should take a hundred, hoping to get ten good ones. It's like investing: you have to diversify, spread the risk, get the numbers working for you and not against you.
The reason I take so many pictures of you, the reason I rip film, the reason I spray-and-pray, is because I'm after the best picture of a hundred, not the worst. I'm on your side. That vicious brat you know who thinks it's funny to take bad pictures of you? I'm not him.
When people take my picture, I hope they take more pictures, not fewer.