Me, Myself, and I
NARCISSISTIC OR NURTURING? AN EXAMINATION OF SELFIES AND SELF-WORTH.
story & photography by MEGAN ORR
I
“But first, let me take a selfie!” t was The Chainsmoker’s 2014 club anthem and a word added to Webster’s dictionary in 2013. Selfies have been making eyes roll and likes grow for nearly a decade, if not longer. Whether it be a pic of that bangin’ new outfit, your hair doing that thing you like, or just a #feelingmyself moment, we are all guilty of snapping the occasional selfie. It is a cultural phenomenon, and like most popular trends, it has people worried. Selfie-takers are narcissistic, self-obsessed and addicted to social media, or at least according to popular discourse on the topic. However, it isn’t all bad. The selfie can actually be used in a variety of positive ways, including boosting self-esteem. The majority of research on selfies and social media usage tends to focus on the negative effects. Arguably, while this research is not entirely flawed, it does seek to invalidate the reason why people take a selfie in the first place: because they think they look good. Another way of thinking about selfies is to treat them like they are a new concept. While it’s true that, with smartphone technologies and social media,
34 still
MAY 2018
photos are easier to take and share, the selfie itself is not revolutionary. From cave drawings and oil paintings to Polaroids, disposable cameras and cell phones, people have been creating images of themselves with whatever tools they can find since pre-historic times. You could argue that narcissism is just a part of human nature. The selfie, as it currently exists, is only a modern, digital representation of it. In many ways, the negativity surrounding selfies comes from a place of fear and misunderstanding. Like anything, people may be doing it too much or for the wrong reasons, but no other person has the right to make that judgement call. Scientific research is quick to make the correlation between selfies and narcissism as well as lowered self-esteem and diminished life satisfaction. The dialogue surrounding the topic tends to be polarized. Take two different articles from Psychology Today, one from 2014 titled Selfies Are About Self-Love, and another from 2017 titled, Do Selfies Make Us Self-Conscious? Neither article really tells a full story about what it means to take a picture of oneself, and the academic research is no better. Most selfies are taken in artificial or fleeting settings,
and it’s difficult to accurately gauge how people feel about themselves by simply researching their picture-taking habits. Mads Kania-Paquette, a non-binary transgender person (meaning they do not identify as either male or female and use the gender neutral pronouns “they/them”), uses selfies as a form of recovery. It was a big step for them in overcoming the body dysphoria that they’ve struggled with for their entire life. “I never thought I would not wear a shirt anywhere,” says Kania-Paquette, “let alone put that online, but that I feel comfortable enough to is big. For me, anyway.” Their use of the selfie isn’t a singular example either. Tags like #selflove, #nomakeup, and #feelingmyself posted with selfies online are meant to encourage users to post pictures of themselves. While research does back up the theory that taking selfies can be an inherently narcissistic act, other research provides evidence that self-photography plays a vital role in empowering individuals and reclaiming physical identities. As Kania-Paquette states, “If you’re happy, and celebrating that, and [feel]
