SELFIES SELFIES MY GUILTY PLEASURE
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veryone has a guilty pleasure that no one knows about. Mine is watching reality TV shows, the most annoying and snobby ones (and of course this isn’t real since a guilty pleasure by default isn’t meant to be shared, but point illustrated). Then there are the guilty pleasures that some people know about, just our closest friends, like the fact that we can eat a whole Nutella jar in half an hour or that we actually like eating caviar with tomato flavored chips (in our dreams, because we can’t afford caviar, but still). Then there is the guilty pleasure everyone knows about because we post it on social networks.
me, you used to mercilessly make fun of all your friends who took selfies until you started doing it yourself, that is. Now, all that follows is a discussion of selfies in a moderate amount. A moderate amount means that you are not even close, not by a hundred horrible un-posted selfies, to having your motto be “BUT FIRST, LEMME TAKE A SELFIE”, because as entertaining as that song is you got to admit that (nearly) nobody would appreciate that sentence being used in an actual serious, non-mocking, conversation.
Anyhow, are selfies that bad? I mean, we live in a generation where we are SELFIES. surrounded by images of people, everywhere, blown up and shrunken down, Now, selfies are not always a guilty pleaenhanced and edited and with people sure, but to many – they are. Me includoveranalyzing every crinkle, wrinkle and ed. Why guilty? Um, because it feels bulge. Selfies are, to an extent, a way to very weird to pose for myself and then take back the role of presenting yourself proceed to ten different photographs of to the public – if people are going to be myself from five different angles, after displayed out there for everyone to see which I edit and “filter” the chosen one, and judge, each person might as well be and then post it on a page that is devotin control of what others see. ed to myself so others can see it. (Also, because even my grandmother now Selfies for women are a tricky concept. knows what a selfie is, and that makes If a woman posts a selfie of herself fully me feel guiltier than anything else). It is, dolled up, she would get snide comhowever, a pleasure. Now, not everyone ments and judgments along the line agrees with the guilty part, and even of, “your self-worth isn’t dependent less people don’t agree with the pleaon your selfie filter, by the way.” If she sure part. But to the guilty-pleasure-takposts a selfie of herself without make ers out there: maybe selfies shouldn’t up, au natural, #nofilter, she would find make us so guilty anymore. Unless, like herself faced with either hateful comGULF ELITE 34