LOVE YOUR SELFIE
Hi humans today I'm here to talk about something very near and dear to my heart and that is, selfies. Selfies are probably one of my favorite things to exist. I see selfies as a positive and empowering thing, something to lift you up and bring people together. However, some see selfies as; narcissistic, self centered, and shallow. Back in my senior year of high school I became a self named "selfie queen" and really began to embrace them. During this time I was also in the middle of writing my senior Capstone and decided to throw in a few pages about how much I loved selfies. This led me to do some research on the anti-selfie side of society. I read an article on the “Feminist Current” that described the defense of selfies as, “confirmation that this era will forever known as the stupidest of all eras.” This honestly and obviously infuriated me. To says that selfies are just a cry for attention, and for the male gaze is ridiculous. It reinforces the idea that everything a woman does is for male attention(which totally fine but not the intention of all). The author writes, “It’s simply not possible that, if we put images of ourselves, or really, if we put anything at all online, that it’s ‘for ourselves’. If it were just ‘for ourselves’ we wouldn’t put it on the Internet.” When I read this I was appalled, to say that females in particular post pictures of themselves (on their own terms) for the attention of males is dumb. Especially since this is coming from a ‘feminist’, condemning others for doing something that makes them feel good and accusing that they’re brainwashed is ridiculous. I honestly don’t understand why some see selfies as “unfeminist”. I see selfies as something great, something empowering. I don’t see anything unfeminist about them, if anything I find them extremely feminist. There’s nothing wrong with taking a selfie for affirmation, or just taking one because you feel like it. Selfies are a way to feel good about yourself, a way to feel confident, even if it’s an “unattractive” or silly selfie. Feeling good about yourself does not make you shallow, the more selfies you take does not make you increasingly self centered. Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend talked about selfies in his interview with The Rolling Stone in November 2013. Here he talks about how he is “pro-selfie”, “"I’m definitely pro-selfie. I think that anybody who’s anti-selfie is really just a hater. Because, truthfully, why shouldn’t people take pictures of themselves? When I’m on Instagram and I see that somebody took a picture of themselves, I’m like, ‘Thank you.’ I don’t need to see a picture of the sky, the trees, plants. There’s only one you. I could Google image search ‘the sky’ and I would probably see beautiful images to knock my socks off. But I can’t Google, you know, ‘What does my friend look like today?’ For you to be able to take a picture of yourself that you feel good enough about to share with the world – I think that’s a great thing." I agree with this quote 100%. Why shouldn’t you take pictures of yourself? What’s the problem with letting the world see what you look like at any given moment? He also brings up a really good point, that you can Google pictures of nature, but you can’t Google to see what your friends look like, and the fact that being able to take pictures of yourself is so easy and accessible is amazing. I myself take a lot of selfies, and it makes me feel really good. There’s something about taking any sort of selfie that makes me feel good about myself. Taking selfies is fun, the fact that I can scroll through my phones' camera roll and know what I looked like on January 5, 2015 is incredible to me. I absolutely adore when I'm with friends and we take selfies together, it creates memories. So I encourage everyone to take as many selfies as you damn well please. Relish in them, post them everywhere or nowhere. Love your selfie.
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