#Selfies: Nose Dive into Narcissism?

The human desire to permanently capture our likenesses is not new or unique to the smartphone-wielding generations. Human beings have felt the need to capture and create images of ourselves for centuries; whether in cave paintings, or intricate sculptures. The fantastic photo of a group of men on a roof top in Manhattan way back in 1920 taking what can only be described as a group Selfie. Selfies have become such a part of our cultural consciousness that “Selfie” was named “2013 Word of the Year” The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” I was delighted to find that the earliest known usage of the term is Australian in origin from a message board in 2004. It seems like exactly the sort of word an Australian would come up with, doesn’t it?

As a teenager, I dodged photographs with ninja like skill. The very hint of a camera had me diving behind friends and ducking under tables, protesting that I hated having my photo taken. The few photos of me that do exist from those years show me with a pained closed mouth smile, hiding a mouth full of metal, with hunched shoulders silently expressing my extreme discomfort. I loathed being photographed because it meant that I was expected to smile. Photographs meant the permanent capturing my braces along with the awkwardness and ugliness that I felt. When I look back at those few photos, I look so uncomfortable but I can’t see what I hated so very much about my appearance. I feel sad that I spent so much time hating myself and photos. My family and I missed out on capturing important memories. Now at any and all family gatherings, my mother and I pull out our iPhones with zeal, capturing memories as if we can replace the ones we missed when I was a teenager. Some of my favourite photos are selfies with my mother.

There are many articles musing over whether Selfies are causing a nose dive into narcissism for my generation. Loads of people argue in support of Selfies as a tool for confidence boosting and others find them just plain annoying. Prolific Selfie taker Kim Kardashian recently found out even baby elephants are not without an opinion as one chased her away when she tried to take a Selfie with him. What do Selfies actually say about the person who takes them? Personally my experience has lead me to the opinion that Selfies can be a legitimate outlet for self-expression and can certainly be used as a deeper examination of ourselves, our lives and they are a great way to document our personal narratives.They can be a brief but harmless moment of vanity rather than a sign of a generation’s growing self-obsession. George Vasey calls Selfies “networked self-portraits” in his article entitled Self-Portraiture and Feminist Art for Art Monthly. If I started using “Networked Self Portrait” to describe the sleepy looking pictures I take of me lounging in bed eating fruit loops bed with my cat on a Sunday morning while binging cartoons on netflicks, perhaps people would feel more comfortable in believing that “Selfies” were art.

When I was given a digital camera at nineteen, a hulking beast by today’s standards, I fell in love with both the camera and Photoshop. Perversely, my favourite subject for photography soon became myself, fascinated with the different types of images I was able to capture. The photos I was able to take were so different from the frozen pose and tight smile I was used to seeing. I took and deleted hundreds of photos, free to pick the best of them and then edit them in Photoshop before another person ever saw them. Over-exposed images did not begin with Instagram, as my catalogue of photos on a DeviantArt back in the early 2000s demonstrates. When “Selfie” was declared word of the year, Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan labelled them harmful, arguing that they were a reaction by “girls” to a world that teaches us that our most valuable feature is our looks. She called the proliferation of Selfies a “nightmare”. This examination leaves out women's ability to critically examine society’s expectations and places us in passive roles in our own lives. It assumes the reason that people post Selfies is because they want likes on social media to boost their self-esteem and places a value judgement on that boost. She also seemed to imply that because people are posting Selfies, they lack the ability to think critically about their effects. Pamela Rutledge writes in an article for Psychology Today that Selfies are taken for many reasons, including to facilitate self and identity exploration among others reasons and points out that Selfies are not all about seeking external validation. Rutledge also writes that we all seek validation, so why is seeking validation through Selfies so awful? Ryan says that it’s because it prioritises women’s looks, however while women are the dominant participants in Selfie-taking other genders are not left out and by taking Selfies people are taking control of their own images and normalising society’s ideas of what people look like. To say that seeking validation is automatically an evil is doing a disservice to those who are using Selfies to overcome a society that says we must look a certain way, dress a certain way and be a certain way. Selfies are both a form of self-discovery, self-exploration and introspection.

Human beings are complicated creatures and their reasons for taking Selfies may change from day to day. One day, I may post a picture because I have a bunny on my shoulder, and another I because I got my eyeliner razer sharp and I feel badarse. To try and pin down the reasons that any one person takes a photo of themselves and posts it to social media is as complex and varied as the people who take them. Whilst we have millions more people today taking Selfies than back in 2004, I do not think my generation is in danger of en masse developing a dangerous obsession with how they look through an Instagram filter. I am a member of a generation that is as capable to think complexly about themselves, trends and what the world expects of them as any that has come before them. In taking photos of myself, I learned how to like my image in photos but in the mirror as well and I am going to keep taking photographs of myself. They make me feel good while also helping me to think critically about the world I inhabit and how I exist in it.

REFERENCES:

The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 is…. (2013, 18 November 2013). 2014, from http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/11/word-of-the-year-2013-winner/

Boyle, Alan. (2014). The Science of Selfies: How Pictures Help Us Claim Our Identity. 2014, from http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/science-selfies-how-pictures-help-us-claim-our-identity-n45086

Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull., 34(9), 1159-1170. doi: 10.1177/0146167208318601

Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull., 34(9), 1159-1170. doi: 10.1177/0146167208318601

FEENEY, NOLAN. (2014). Why Selfies Sometimes Look Weird to Their Subjects. 2014, from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/why-selfies-sometimes-look-weird-to-their-subjects/359567/

Jennings, Susan. (2014, 03/02/2014). Are all those selfies making us narcissists? , 2014, from http://dfm.thereporteronline.com/article/are-all-those-selfies-making-us-narcissists/f24fba99b04073358546bd26a2f7df5c

Muller, Melissa. (2014). Selfies Are More Dangerous Than You Think. 2014, from http://www.totalbeauty.com/content/blog/selfies-dangerous-think-140401?cid=nav_diethealth_featured_position1

Rutledge, Pamela. (2013, April 18, 2013). #Selfies: Narcissism or Self-Exploration? , 2014, from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positively-media/201304/selfies-narcissism-or-self-exploration

Ryan, Erin Gloria. (2014). Selfies Aren't Empowering. They're a Cry for Help., 2014, from http://jezebel.com/selfies-arent-empowering-theyre-a-cry-for-help-1468965365/all

Schuessler, Jennifer. (2013). 'Selfie' Trumps 'Twerk' As Word of the Year.(The Arts/Cultural Desk)(ARTSBEAT)(Brief article) (pp. C3).

Vasey, George. (2013). Self 2 selfie.(Features 01). Art Monthly(371), 5.