SELFIE OR NOT SELFIE
WHEN THE SELFIE MOMENT BECOMES THE MOMENT OF SELFIE INDULGENCE
The present day advent of modernization has transformed itself from one pole to another. This is not just in the figurative sense of sexuality and self indulgence having traveled from one dimension unto another, but also very literally. Manifested plainly, indulging in pole dancing as a means to exude sex-appeal is now demode. Today’s technological holders of the smart phone have embraced a new pole in the quest for indulgence : behold, the selfie pole.
There are many ways to further divest the ramifications of such a shift in selfitude but first… let me take.. a step back.
The origins of self-indulgence began when the mirror gave people the opportunity to meet face-to-face a representation of themselves (albeit an inversed one).In this historical scenario the self viewer would apprehend a vision of how they existed in that one moment. Having made perhaps a few adjustments in appearance, the mirror would be stepped away from and left at home. The viewer would proceed into a world relatively void of opportunities for self appearance re-evaluation. Given the relatively inconvenient efforts that one would have to make to locate a mirror, it suffices to suggest that people were less aware and less obsessed with their image.
However, now the holder of the smartphone pockets more than just the power to check emails, news or the weather. They can check on themselves; their image, that is.
While our predecessors looked into mirrors and procceded with their day, the selfie phenomena propels a sudden interrupion in the flow of reflected image. We do not walk away. Rather we behold this device accountable for enabling us to strive towards not merely the perfect representation of ourselves but moreover, the perfectly incapsulated moment. The moment frozen essentially into the shutter speed of a split second. And to attain this perfect representation of this one split second we have become obssessed.
Perhaps twenty shots later, after having captured this moment, the question becomes — for what all this trouble ?
While it may seem that a self captured portrait is empowering there is a lot to be said about how much power is detracted from ourselves when we take a selfie. The options to add a filter diminish a blemish, or augment a skin tone gives us freedom that exists only in seemingness. Not reality. This need, this almost desperation, to always transform ourselves is dizzying. Powerful is he or she who stops at one click. Or who feels not the magnetic pull to better today’s selfie in report to that of yesterdays. And thus this alleged freedom of selfie expression is essentially emprisoning. Once again, while we might be able to turn away from the mirror before us, we struggle to overcome the pull of that small camera on the corner of our screen.
We fail to be satisfied with our self-image unless it is the exact one we are in love with. This failure is one for which our historic counterparts had no such strife. No such metaphoric filter existed between the glance in the mirror and the glance of the prospective and looming lover.
Today we have an added filter. We feel that before we are even worthy of having somebody fall in love with our beauty we must add yet another stamp: our obssessive selfie approval.
My challenge is not to diminish the concept of the selfie but rather for you to take out your phone, and take that shot. Tuck your phone into your pocket and know that in this fractal of a second and in this shutter this is your selfie. And while you might feel the temptation to retake it a thousand times or to employ the endless opportunitues of editing it, I challenge you to embrace selfie acceptance and faith in the organic and natural capturing of yourself. Here lies the new conception of what is presented to you as the selfie which no longer emprisoned you but reflects you… Albeit in albeit inversed but true moment. I dare you to press send
Videos by Juliette Seydoux
