The one who gives birth to herself.
November 19, 2015 10:41 AM   Subscribe

The revolutionary potential of your own face, in seven chapters. "Nothing destabilizes power more than an individual that knows his or her own worth, and the campaign against selfies is ultimately a crusade against widespread self-esteem. What selfie-haters fear, deep down, is a growing army of faces they cannot monitor, an army who does not need their approval to march ahead."
posted by Phire (39 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
We're rapidly running out of things we can dislike without shaming, policing or marginalising someone, somewhere, somehow. Which is good for encouraging a more thoughtful, less judgmental society, but absolutely dreadful for stand-up comedy.
posted by pipeski at 10:53 AM on November 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


For stand-up comedy that relies on shaming and policing behaviour according to arbitrary social standards, maybe. For making room for stand-up comics who can make light of experiences that have never previously been granted space on stage, and who can bring empathy and compassion to heretofore entirely ignored segments of the audience, it seems to be going alright.
posted by Phire at 11:00 AM on November 19, 2015 [20 favorites]


Decent comedy doesn't require being an asshole.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 11:02 AM on November 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


200+ years of selfie-hate, yikes.

I don't think we're yet at "peak selfie" though. There's still room for it to become more ubiquitous. Camera drones, a retail version of those roller coaster cameras (tied to the appropriate store app with location services for checkout-queue-photo-tinkering tagged with a subtle store ad/logo), or a sort of "gevulot" agreement with other people to obtain stills of ourselves from their phone/glass perspective... I feel like there is still a lot of ground to uncover/exploit.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:03 AM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've never associated selfies with self-esteem and I'm still not fully convinced of the relationship there. But whatever, I'm also not really a selfie hater so who the fuck knows what the haters are thinking? Her guess is as good as mine.
posted by Hoopo at 11:13 AM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think there's room for a reasonable critique of the narcissism and apathy of a lot of internet culture, it just has to keep in mind the positive aspects that marginalized people draw from it too. One thing you cannot be, no matter what your opinions are these days, is glib. (Shuts browser window and runs away from computer for 6 hours)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:14 AM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't know - I notice that the actual selfies used to illustrate this piece are almost all of young, conventionally good-looking people. The discourse about selfies always seems to assume that the self-takers are beautiful and desirable, or at least able to work themselves into a state of beautiful desirability, and that the question of selfies is a question of getting to control your own already-present desirability. (There's always an aside about how it's powerful that the fat and the old and the plain can take up space in the visual field, but the fat and the old and the plain seldom get actual turf in the articles.) (This is just like riot grrrl, actually, where the assumption was that women's primary problem was getting sexually harassed by men; those of us with other problems were invisible, because the assumed subject was a young slim pretty woman.)

On the one hand, yes, I understand that by controlling the distribution of one's image, one is in a sense controlling and demystifying the nature of beauty and womanhood. One is controlling one's "working conditions", so to speak.

But at the same time, it's still about the social requirement that women be consumable as images. Make your own image, yes, but don't deny the image; show us exactly, precisely how beautiful or not-beautiful you are; conceal nothing of your body or your process so that we can know you exactly and in detail, even though we know you exactly and in detail through multiple images. Your art must be your self, your body, your face; that's what women's art is supposed to be. Only women are required to show themselves in order to be taken seriously.

And of course, it's important that women be consumable as images so that we can create ever-more-detailed hierarchies of women - who is the most desirable of all; who is the most desirable in this category, in that category? Who has the best smile, breasts, skin, hair dye? Don't hide, of course, because when you hide we can't rank you. Give it your best shot - perhaps you'll win "best blue pastel streak, November, south side of Minneapolis" division.

But I don't think it really interrupts the way social power and appearance work; if anything it intensifies them and renders them more pervasive while also giving them a cover of deniability - you see this on tumblr all the time, even in progressive communities, in terms of whose images get reblogged, who gets the fake affirming comments that boil down to "you tried - good job! - but I'd never want to sleep with you" and who gets the "would gnaw off a forearm to get next to her" comments.

I think it's misogynist and stupid to get upset at people taking selfies. People seem to have fun with them, it's nice to be able to see photos of friends, it's silly to expect everyone to carry a pocket camera and not use it. But I really do not buy into this utopian modality - it's no more utopian than Uber or instagram or telecommuting or drone sandwich delivery.
posted by Frowner at 11:41 AM on November 19, 2015 [40 favorites]


If you hate things other people are doing, like taking selfies or sporting man-buns or whatever, I think it's productive for articles like this to make you examine that hate and find out what's really behind it. In most cases you'll find you don't really have a basis for your hatred.
posted by rocket88 at 11:41 AM on November 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


I adore the fact of totally owned Personal PR. I also like people becoming familiar with their projections, honing their projections. I like the idea people are not owned by photographers and their visual biases also. Good photographers are valuable but for the act of reflexive self awareness, not so much. We watch our own experiment, and release the results as we care to. 2
posted by Oyéah at 11:50 AM on November 19, 2015


My image is very difficult for me. I'm interested in thinking about how controlling our own image makes us less or more...self-conscious, aware, self-actualized? Not sure whether negative or positive, just interesting.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:55 AM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I kinda leaned toward selfie-hating for a long while, for the usual reasons (Get off my lawn you Narcissists!), although lately I've come around to the idea that selfie-culture is more or less a direct carry-over from other, real world ways in which many of us present or perform ourselves in public (manners, appearance, speech, all that cruft), with more or less the same baggage bound up in it (-ists and -isms) and surveiling it from outside. Syme's view that the Selfie is a radical or revolutionary development is probably a step too far.
posted by notyou at 12:06 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've never thought of selfies as being particularly narcissistic, primarily because the people that I've known who take the most selfies all seem to hate themselves and want to die.

In conclusion, self-portaiture is a land of contrasts.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:15 PM on November 19, 2015


If you hate things other people are doing, like taking selfies or sporting man-buns or whatever, I think it's productive for articles like this to make you examine that hate and find out what's really behind it.

What's behind it is that the painting I was looking at is now behind you.
 
posted by Herodios at 12:15 PM on November 19, 2015


If there's one thing that selfies aren't it's narcissistic, since they're obviously about participating in this complicated economy of images. Maybe it's narcissistic if you are the one woman in the whole world who has always gotten positive attention and adulation, especially for your appearance, and you're only doing it because you expect more of the same as your automatic right.

The whole misogynist critique of selfies is based in the idea that women have too much power and that their bodies are the source of their power, and therefore merely showing their bodies is unfair since any power that a mere woman can wield is base and unfair in itself. Selfies are like the liberal reformism of patriarchy - patriarchy wants women to have no power and to manage their appearance 100% to meet men's desires; selfie ideology wants women to have power through control of their appearance. I would prefer a world where women's appearance isn't their primary way of being in the world and their primary political weapon, but as with any "reform or revolution" question, you can certainly see why "reform now and material improvement now" wins over "revolution someday, maybe, if the stars are right, perhaps".
posted by Frowner at 12:28 PM on November 19, 2015 [17 favorites]


Does anyone actually 'hate' selfies, though? I would suspect that the main reactions non-selfie-taking people have are either "meh, whatever", or "selfies - huh, I wonder why people do that?". I've mostly seen selfies via Facebook, where a few acquaintances (both male and female, but skewing female) seem to post long sequences of photos of themselves, sans caption, and their friends respond by telling them that they're looking pretty, or 'buff' or whatever. The selfies I see there come across as a kind of ritualised transaction where peers exchange affirmation, rather than having any kind of ideological underpinning. I don't know - I take a lot of photos and yet don't have a single picture of myself from the past 35 years, so it's really hard for me to get into a selfie-taker's mindset. I do find myself feeling a little sad that outward appearances have come to mean so much to people, because for a while I was sure that that was one of the things we were fighting against. Frowner: on preview, your comment is food for thought.

(Sorry if my attempt at humour at the start of the thread came across as dismissive - I do find this stuff genuinely interesting)
posted by pipeski at 12:48 PM on November 19, 2015


The point the author makes about airbrushing selfies being less detrimental to self esteem than edited magazine covers because you control them falls a bit flat in an essay that also uses societal pressure and internalized shame to dismiss criticisms of selfies.
posted by Ferreous at 12:54 PM on November 19, 2015


Does anyone actually 'hate' selfies, though?

Yes, with a passion. Or rather, I hate hanging out with people who want to take non-stop selfies. It's not fun.

Our reaction to selfie-culture might be a reflection of who we know. I see mostly buff gay boys and straight muscle-heads posting daily photos of themselves on Facebook. Some days I have a very pretty, and very vacuous, news feed.

Based on what I see, I agree that there's a strange mix of narcissism, insecurity, and a fierce need for constant affirmation behind the phenomenon.
posted by kanewai at 1:34 PM on November 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


A month or two ago I shared a pretty mild but unequivocal "Selfie-hating is misogyny" thing on Facebook and, like the 3:15 train pulling into the station, my one friend who thinks he's super-liberal but is actually a hot mess cruised by to drop a little bit of "unless she's doing it all the time" poop as if that was a reasonable argument.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:38 PM on November 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


I don't take many photos of myself. My Instagram and Flickr are uneven at best. For awhile my daughter loved it when we took a selfie and then tweaked it with the "big eyes" and other over the top effects so we looked like uncanny valley aliens.

Perhaps time for mefites to share a recent selfie just for the thread?
posted by clvrmnky at 1:40 PM on November 19, 2015


"Based on what I see, I agree that there's a strange mix of narcissism, insecurity, and a fierce need for constant affirmation behind the phenomenon."

I'm assuming you didn't read the fine article? She actually discusses many, if not all, of these assumptions. Worth reading if only to try and understand what I agree can be a tiresome ritual if you aren't interested.

I'm probably in one of those categories she provides that ought not to do selfies. I already knew, but nice to see it on Medium.
posted by clvrmnky at 1:52 PM on November 19, 2015


I'm assuming you didn't read the fine article?

Wrong assumption.

I read the article, and I don't agree with the conclusions. Or rather, I don't think that her conclusions are universal. We are also dealing with a very different baselines, so I wouldn't argue that my conclusions are universal either.
posted by kanewai at 1:58 PM on November 19, 2015


To clarify: the misogyny the author talks about is horrifying. That's not the part I disagree with!

The examples the author gives are interesting, and offer a nice perspective. However ... I know about half a dozen people - all guys, mostly gay - who will post a new pic of themselves, usually shirtless and with muscles popping, every single day. And this is where I absolutely see the mix of narcissism and insecurity.
posted by kanewai at 2:04 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love Instagram. I'm a visual person. I love waking up to a bunch of gorgeous images from all over the world. I don't follow people who take mostly selfies though because I find them boring. I think they are meant for an audience who has some vested interest in the person in the shot.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:27 PM on November 19, 2015


By elevating the very act of selfies to this near immaculate level that has such deep import and protective significance, the author also ignores how mundane an act it is. All her examples are of how selfies are expressing gender identity, documenting illness, making profound statements. These are certainly things they can do, but at the same time it ignores lots of the banality and uniformity of how people use selfies; the self perpetuating memes and following image ideals it breeds.

Selfies are almost always not actually candid. They're self selected, edited moments then projected out as if they're the norm.

"The app I use is called Bestie, and it combines the two types of apps into a one-stop experience. It opens onto a front-facing lens, and then immediately applies a smooth veneer, airbrushing in real-time. Under-eye circles magically disappear, the complexion goes luminous. After I downloaded Bestie, I realized there is a world in which I never again need to keep an unedited version of my own image on my camera roll; there could be no faulty negatives to protect from the cloud, nothing to leak, nothing to wince at later."


When you look at a feed and only see people at a false best there's an insidious body image projected out; that this is how other people look all the time. We know celebrities are edited in photoshoots yet we can still object to the standard that perpetuates. Why is it wrong to apply that objection to perceptions of regular folks?
posted by Ferreous at 2:44 PM on November 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


There's a certain balance to be had between direct experience and spending that time with an experience recording it.

What stood out for me in the stories of chapter 4, was that the main activities were in capturing images rather than being present in the moment. Presence becomes performance rather than experience. Hours and hours of performance and labour, in the case of that Australian teen. I used to drag cameras with me on hikes all the time. I had a lot more fun hiking though when I stopped experiencing the outdoors through a viewfinder.
posted by bonehead at 2:51 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


There is zero intersect between "photos I like" and "photos including me." I truly hate photos of me. I only take photos of myself when there is a larger purpose - i.e., for a dating site.

Every photo I've ever taken of a place I've been or a thing I've done seems to benefit from my absence. So I really don't understand selfie culture. It's exceptionally alien to me.

I take pictures to document things I see and do. Why do I need to put myself in the frame? I'm taking the picture, so of course I'm there.

So yeah, I don't get it. Different strokes, yo.
posted by yesster at 3:00 PM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's interesting; as someone who doesn't have a smartphone or a Facebook account (SORRY TO BE THAT GUY), the supposed ubiquity of selfies is just not something that's a thing in my world. Sure, I see people taking them from time to time, but I'm not sure I quite even understand what the channels of communication are by which folks are being exposed to an undesired amount of others' selfies.
posted by threeants at 3:20 PM on November 19, 2015


I largely agree with yesster. I've only ever placed myself in the photo at someone else's insistence or do a selfie with other people either ironically or to show that I'm normal, I take selfies too! I'm not some weirdo loner! I still despise it, though, when all of a sudden my FB wall or IG feed is just selfies after selfies, and then I just go "ugh" and step away. I don't dislike my friends for doing that, but it's the very idea of just seeing their faces with things instead of just those things that bothers me. I just can't explain that.

Otherwise, I feel like there's a strange sense of new media self-exceptionalism. I've always thought it was a generational thing, that older folks don't care to take selfies. But from my recent vacation, I've realized otherwise. When you really watch people, you'll see that everyone of all ages do not hesitate to turn the front camera on and extend their hand at every tourist attraction. The nationality doesn't matter either, as I've seen older folks from every ethnicity do it. But the irony is that as I was surrounded by everyone taking selfies, I was more comfortable doing it too, albeit with my companions in the photo. Sure, there's an empowerment to it, but I'm wary that it's more of a "everyone is jumping off the bridge" type of thing and not something more positive. (Again, that probably has more to do with my need of wanting to feel normal and that I do belong.) Perhaps technology has only just caught up to how people feel about their place in the world. That everyone have always wanted to say: I am here, look at my glory. But instead of carving "[name] was here" into a bench, and only exposing that fact to those who are there, now one can proclaim it to the void of the cloud, knowing someone out there will recognize it, and give you a heart, a thumbs up, or formerly, a star.

A more specific point: people who hold up tablets for photos/videos/selfies annoy me something fierce. It grinds my gears, rattles my chains, burns my bacon, bugs my code, decafs my coffee, chaps my ass, flips my wig, pushes my button, and generally irks my nerves, and I don't know why aside from maybe because they're blocking whoever is behind them.
posted by numaner at 3:38 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I posted a selfie after reading this article. I can't help but think of this image.
posted by chatongriffes at 3:45 PM on November 19, 2015


Unhuh, if the author wasn't paid by the face-recognition group of the NSA to write this, they're probably all 'Hey look at this -- and it didn't cost us a cent!'
posted by jamjam at 4:06 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


The assertion that being concerned with one's own image is necessarily "narcissistic" is a remarkable failure to understand what it is to be self-conscious. And as a case for what selfies can mean to people this is really good.

This argument on the other hand:

It is bad then for the lust-economy to have people reveling in pictures they take themselves; it is very difficult to control consumers who do not need to look at the media to know what to value, what to buy, who to honor and protect.

Is extremely unconvincing. It's okay though, capitalism loves some of my favorite things too.
posted by atoxyl at 4:30 PM on November 19, 2015


And yeah, jamjam, the dismissal of that aspect as a "sci-fi concern" misses the actual point by a mile but it would make a lot more sense to argue that the surveillance edifice doesn't really need a thousand self-portraits to know what you look like.

I seldom find it worthwhile to take pictures of myself for the same reason I seldom find it worthwhile to take pictures of anything. Give me a few to remember the people I love and that's it. Plus I'm more than happy being as invisible as possible. But that's strictly personal preference.
posted by atoxyl at 4:41 PM on November 19, 2015


The sarcastic snarl at “duck face,” a way of posing for a selfie that involves pushing out the lips and is therefore coded as hyperfeminine

I've seen "duck face" used to describe a wide variety of poses, the only common factor among them a woman who isn't smiling. But apparently there is also "fish gape", which is any picture in which a woman isn't smiling and her mouth isn't completely closed. Either way, smile, sweetie! It would be narcissistic not to.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 4:46 PM on November 19, 2015


On the other extreme from duck face ... is there a name for an open mouth smile, like this? I've been seeing it a lot this past year, especially among the young 'uns. It seems to be a thing now.
posted by kanewai at 5:16 PM on November 19, 2015


This is a fantastic article. I love reading selfie thinkpieces and this may be one of my favorites.

I've never associated selfies with self-esteem and I'm still not fully convinced of the relationship there.

I will attest to this being absolutely a real thing. I spent so much of my life loathing, loathing myself because I thought I was so ugly. My extremely poor self and body image issues had a pretty profound impact on my life. Feeling ugly and fat and like people would point and laugh at me, or make fun of me, prevented me from doing things, from speaking up, from going out - from lots of things. When I was younger I struggled with anxiety and depression and it is no lie to say that my feelings about my physical self was a very big part of that. And the things is - I'm pretty average, objectively speaking. I know that now. But for years, I couldn't internalize it - I just couldn't. It was impossible for me to see it. I hated how I looked.

I subscribed to Sassy magazine for the short time it was in existence and it was the first place that I actually saw images of girls who looked a little bit like me. Girls who were a little chubby around the middle, or short, or had crooked smiles, or pasty skin. And they looked normal and cute and happy. And ever since then, I've tried to seek out other images like that - images of girls and women who don't look like the idealized version of women and womanhood that's shoved down our throats every waking minute from the goddamn day we're born. Because when I see images of women like that, it's validating to me. I see those images and I think - hey she kind of looks a little like me, and here she is in a magazine and I think she looks good and other people must think she looks good too because they put her in a magazine. Maybe I don't look as bad as I thought.

It's also inspiring to me, as I learn how to dress myself in a way that's flattering and which is based on my actual body type/height/skin color and not that of a model. Because when you're a 5'3" size 10 teenage girl and literally every single piece of clothing you see is advertised, modeled and photographed on a 5'10"+ size 4 model, that starts to do a number on your self image. Not to mention that clothes that look good on models often look patently ridiculous on me. So good luck if you don't have the fashion sense to put together creative and cool outfits based on your body type (as I didn't), because then you'll end up wearing something ill-fitting and awkward and endure teasing and social exclusion at school, yay!

Now imagine all of the above, except that you're not white and/or aren't able to generally blend in, as I did. If I thought I was miles away from the narrow beauty standards we're shown, imagine what it's like for girls and women of color (to give just one example).

Now we have twitter and tumblr and I have at my fingertips an endless well of women of all sizes shapes and colors looking absolutely fantastic and any woman and girl can pull these up and think to herself - hey, she looks cute and happy and she looks like me. Maybe I don't look so bad. This endless well of positive images of women of all types is almost 100% selfies. That is the power of selfies. It's not about vanity. It's about seeing images of women who not only look like me, but who are also getting an enthusiastic reception from other people for looking that way. It's about not feeling ugly, not feeling freakish and not feeling alone in your body and your skin and the world.

I don't like that so much of our validation is based on how we look and how we present ourselves, but I also don't know how much that can really ever change, given our media and image-saturated society. And as long as we have to live in this kind of a world, I will always come down strongly on the side of women being in control of our own images and ensuring that the images we're flooded with are diverse and inclusive, rather than the narrow white/tall/thin/blond standard. Not to mention that, for me anyway, there has been real value in taking selfies, even if no one else ever sees them, because when I get to place myself in flattering positions in nice lighting at good angles, I've been able to capture images of myself that I love. And this has done wonders for how I view myself, regardless if anyone else ever sees the picture.

Anyone who hates selfies outright is likely in the position of privilege to never have felt invisible. They fail to perceive the value that a new way of seeing can bring to so many lives.

I spent so many years staying out of any camera's eye because I hated how I looked. It's one of my few regrets - that I don't have that many images of when I was younger, doing fun things, going to fun places and enjoying my life. I really envy kids today, who get to grow up in the age of the selfie, who will one day be able to look back and have their whole like documented in photos looking just as happy and beautiful as they want to look.

Finally, I've posted this article (about Kim Kardashian's selfie book Selfish) here before, but I'll keep posting it because I love it and I think it speaks to how powerful the relationship between control over our own images and our self-image really is:

A year and a half ago I started dating someone who, not knowing anything about how I felt about myself, believed I was worthy of documenting, whether the world—whether I—thought I was beautiful or not. Learning to relax in front of the camera in my late 20s, for the first time in my life, resulted in some truly beautiful photos. Now, I want my photo taken. Now, I want to be as visible as possible, even if I still can’t stand my nose. I was already on the road to understanding what happens to your self-image when you take control of the presentation; Selfish suggests this is an actual superpower in a patriarchal world.

My instagram's in my profile. There you'll find mostly selfies, cute dog pictures and photos of flowers and things I've baked. :)
posted by triggerfinger at 5:43 PM on November 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


Also from the same author of the FPP article - A Sea of Faces. About selfies that people have sent her over the last six months and the stories of the people who took them, in their own words.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:55 PM on November 19, 2015


the selfies that i do post online is actually more about makeup check and roadtesting. but because of that i really don't like front-facing cameras because the airbrushing features get in the way. i did start from a perspective that dismisses selfies but i see the utility for them esp when I orient my thinking that it's for no one but me.
posted by cendawanita at 7:32 PM on November 19, 2015


But apparently there is also "fish gape", which is any picture in which a woman isn't smiling and her mouth isn't completely closed.

Jesus, you weren't kidding. That "pose" is literally just, like, having a mouth.
posted by threeants at 8:12 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I adore the fact of totally owned Personal PR.

No problems with selfies here, but I think social media's actually making people more casually judgemental and prone to being dissatisfied and having unrealistic expectations of their peers. Really, it's like socially, we all get the celebrity treatment now--people see each other more as products than as actual, messy, complicated human beings. One friend's girlfriend physically assaulted him over an innocuous comment he made on the Facebook. A cousin's wife left him and his kids because she got so engrossed in sexual fantasy through social media acquaintances, she just drifted away. I've personally known several people whose lives were directly negatively impacted by their social media habits in the last few years, and my own marriage is ending after nearly 20 years at least partly due to problems directly and indirectly related to social media compulsions and the added social complexity of having hundreds of followers who don't really know you but think they can figure out who you really are by reading between the lines or otherwise scrutinizing your online presence. It's not the playfully forgiving and socially consequence free internet it seemed to be throughout the late 90s and early oughts. People stop being friends with each other IRL over simple disagreements about relatively trivial things pretty much routinely. Everyone being obsessively PR-minded is just late stage capitalism gasping for breath, all the serfs dressing up like the Lords of the Manor, imitating the rituals of those who actually have power in our society, and maybe feeling a little better for the moment, but not really accomplishing much of anything meaningfully revolutionary or even helpful to any genuinely revolutionary change.

But I've got a chip on my shoulder over this right now, so YMMV.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:43 PM on November 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


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