Get over yourselfie

Today is a sad day, my friends. For today, I logged onto an online dictionary, looked up the word “selfie,” and there it was: A definition. The surest sign that the term, and the phenomenon, are here to stay. 

 

In my head, funeral trumpets blared. Of course, in my head I’ve got six-pack abs and can shred on guitar like Van Halen, so maybe that doesn’t actually mean anything.

 

The death I’m mourning is of a time when people actually took photos of things other than themselves. I say this sanctimoniously, having taken plenty of photos of myself over the years, looking in most of them like a perfect jackass, which I guess is unavoidable. But here I’m going to attempt a rather daring feat of logical gymnastics: I’m going to defend my own selfie-taking, blast that of others, and try to avoid sounding like a hypocritical windbag. Can I actually do it? Start making your bets. Vegas odds are against me, two-to-one.

 

In case you’ve spent the past year carving soapstone chess pieces in a Turkish dungeon, a selfie is a photo someone takes of themself with a digital camera or smartphone, with a telltale camera-holding arm snaking out of the frame, giving us pristine views of biceps clad in Hello Kitty sweatshirts. These selfies typically end up on some social media site, usually Twitter or Facebook, and most capture the subject in one of three facial expressions: 1) I’m awesome, so deal with it; 2) I’m really awesome, so deal with that; or 3) someone just clocked me in the noggin with a cinderblock and I don’t know where I am. Number three is generally a little closer to the truth.

 

They’re ubiquitous, these selfies, more prevalent than the clap at a weekend music festival. It’s a shame, too, because even though it’s a mostly mindless time-suck, I actually don’t mind Facebook. It’s a nice way to keep loose tabs on old high school acquaintances without the added burden of having to give a crap. Plus you can take a quiz to find out which Star Wars character you are. I’m Obi-Wan. Word.

 

But while it makes for an entertaining five-minute excursion, I can’t log into my Facebook feed without scrolling through a bazillion throw-away snapshots of friends with sunglasses larger than their actual heads. These are people I love and respect, good friends with whom I’ve shared memories, laughs, and in some cases, monstrous hangovers. Swell folks, these friends of mine. Yet for some of them, when you stick a camera in their hand, they become a one-person fashion studio, a photographer and model at once, except they’re not very good at being either. Photographers generally don’t take blurry, overexposed portraits in front of a Target, and you don’t see many models who look like they’ve just taken a sip of curdled milk. Actually, strike that last bit. You kinda do.

 

Selfies are so pervasive that they’re actually spawning their own vocabulary. Professional portrait photographer Peter Hurley made headlines recently on several entertainment and lifestyle blogs when he revealed a supposedly hot tip for looking better in one: He calls it “squinching.” While it sounds like something you do to put the brakes on an impending bowel movement, squinching is a way of controlling your eyes which apparently makes you look more confident and attractive. Without full-on squinting, you sort of narrow your eyes from the bottom, tightening your lower lids to give the impression that you’re a wizened sage, or a quiet cowboy gazing off into the middle distance. Hurley said it’s a trick employed by celebrities on the red carpet, which explains why many of them appear as though they’ve just been pelted in the face with a handful of angel dust. 

 

As if selfie-takers needed more encouragement. It’s bad enough they outnumber the population of Zimbabwe; now they’ll bear the look of people trying to read the bottom line of the eye chart at the DMV.

 

If there’s a way that selfies aren’t rooted in narcissism, I haven’t found it. The closest they come to not being borne of an unhealthy self-interest is when the subject is documenting weight loss; even then, the line is a fine one. A friend of mine whose fake name is “Janet” has lost an impressive amount of weight over the past few years, and when her fitness journey first started, she would post periodic photos of herself so we could track her progress; this inspired friends, myself included, to encourage her with positive comments and various forms of affirmation. That I get. It was a self-esteem boost for Janet, and a means for her circle of acquaintances and confidantes to provide an electronic support system, a cyberspace army of cheering multitudes. It was nice getting those updates.

 

At first.

 

Thing is, Janet’s been super fit for a couple of years now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful that she’s attained her goal; but we still get updates. And they’ve gotten more salacious. I’m talking lingerie, sexy mood lighting – the kinds of images that would get me in trouble at the public library. Now ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind these kinds of photos, for obvious reasons. (Ahem.) But at this point it’s no longer the chronicle of an inspirational journey. It’s hey-look-at-me.  Which, when you get right down do it, is what social media is mostly about.

 

So sure, I’ve done it. Of course I have. I’m under 35 and I own a digital camera; I can’t beat those odds. Here’s how I justify it, though: I’ve been taking them since before social media existed, beginning with an old 3.1 megapixel dinosaur – one whose photos looked like they were taken at dusk through a window coated in volcanic ash. Christmas, 2003. I opened the box, saw the camera, and since that moment I’ve been shooting absolutely everything. Every social gathering. Every holiday. Every birthday. And when appropriate, myself. What I’ve built, over the past 12 years, is a photographic record of my life, and it would be strange if I wasn’t occasionally in it. Does that make me a narcissist and a hypocrite? I don’t know. It’s not for me to say.

 

But it’s my defense, and I’m sticking to it. I’m not certain whether I beat those Vegas odds, but I’m sure I’ve got a legion of Facebook followers who’d love to tell me. They just need to put their cameras down first.