Technology-obsessed teens and pre-teens are accused of being more self-centred, more used to instant gratification and less involved in the world around them than previous generations, and the phenomenon most commonly used to represent this moral decline is the “selfie.”
“Selfie” was recently declared the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2013. It’s defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social-media website.”
Of course, people have been taking photos of themselves ever since the age of daguerreotypes, but it’s only recently that people have had access to both picture-taking and picture-sharing technology en masse. Posted to Facebook or on image-sharing sites such as Instagram and Tumblr, selfies seem to typify (to a certain type of cynic, at least) everything that’s wrong with this generation, and young girls in particular, since girls are the primary manufacturers and consumers of selfies. Selfies are often presented as proof of these girls’ narcissism: They’re more interested in taking their own picture for reasons of vanity than in exploring the world around them.
Certainly, smartphone overdependence has real and proven dangers, such as heightened anxiety when a person doesn’t have access to their phone. The dangers of sexting (the practice of people sending explicit photos to one another, or sexy selfies, if you will) has also been causing us a lot of worry, especially in a culture that too readily sexualizes young girls and objectifies women.
So photo-sharing is hazardous and smartphone overdependence can cause stress, but I don’t think selfies should be seen as symbols of either of these dangers. On the contrary, selfies are a new kind of self-presentation, one that we should be excited about. Selfies allow people to take charge of their image — and that’s a good thing, especially for girls and young women, who live in a world that tells them implicitly and consistently that the most important thing about them is how they look.
For decades, photographers and publishers have had near-universal control over our images. Now, however, a girl can take and share her own photo: she’s now the one in control. She can choose how she photographs herself, how she wants to be seen and who can see it. The act of taking and posting a selfie online is an act of affirmation, because the individual is in control of every step of the process. Posting that selfie to Facebook says: “Hey guys, here I am. This is me,” without being derided for her confidence.
As Rachel Simmons recently pointed out in the online magazine Slate: “The selfie suggests something in picture form … that a girl could never get away with saying. It puts the gaze of the camera squarely in a girl’s hands, and along with it, the power to influence the photo’s interpretation.”
I don’t for one moment think this allows teenage girls to escape the crucible of criticism or the painful search for validation based on looks, but increased agency is always a good thing. Women are judged on appearance, and since it’s facile to pretend that “please magically stop caring about your looks while we continue to judge you because of them” is sensible advice for a teenager, let’s embrace the good stuff that selfie culture can do.
We’re so interested in proving that teenage girls are being narcissistic and opening themselves up to victimization (for some reason, we’re really attached to that narrative) that we’re not looking at what selfie culture is really telling us. If a professional photographer does it, it’s OK, but if a teenage girl does it to herself, it’s narcissism?
Nah. Not buying that. I think it’s great that girls are standing up and saying: “Hey, look at me!”
Selfies aren’t going to overthrow the entire weight of beauty-industry standards, but in a world where women’s images are modulated past the point of grotesque (we’re not even allowed to have pores any more), is it really so bad for a girl to be in charge of her own image? This is not vanity — this is confidence and control.
