Reflections of the Self

So y’all probably heard the hullaballoo yesterday about the anti-selfie post on that bastion of white-lady fauxmenism, Jezebel.  No, I’m not going to link to it, it’s a big stinky pile of poo poo written by a privileged thin, white, able-bodied, cis-het woman who seems to think it’s only acceptable to post pics of yourself online if you’re flashing how you’ve bought new shit (not that I have a problem with people sharing pics of stuff they’ve bought – I do it myself, it was just her attitude, ya know?)  and that if you do post pics of yourself online, it’s a “cry for help”.  Yeah I know, puke-city right?  If you really must see it, you can go find it on Jezebel.

So born from the backlash to that awful Jezzie piece was a Twitter hashtag #FeministSelfie born of this twitter conversation between @convergecollide and @thewayoftheid:

@thewayoftheid I kind of want to take a million selfies and tag them #feministselfie now.

— kate a. (@convergecollide) November 21, 2013

Not only did the hashtag inspire a plethora of awesome selfies by women all over the world, from all walks of life (most notably a lot of marginalised women awesomely self representing – PROPER diversity!) but there have been some very good posts about how selfies are important and how women should not be shamed for sharing selfies.  I’ll post some links at the bottom of this post, and please share any others that you know of.

I wrote about the power of selfies back in June (what can I say, I’m a visionary :-P) but I was thinking about how I’ve grown since I started posting selfies, and I got to wondering what my first selfie was.  I went back through all of my digital photos this morning to see what I could find.  The first thing I discovered is that I have digital photos going back to my first digital camera, which was 2001.  My first phone camera kicks in about 2003.  However, my first selfie doesn’t happen until December 2009!  Which tells you just how long it took me to be comfortable with a) willingly having my photograph taken, and b) posting a self portrait of myself online.

Here’s my first ever selfie:

December 2009

I remember just why I took this photograph.  I was trying to capture in my camera how my hair looked at the back with my awesome new colour (thus the mirror behind me) and I snapped this photo.  For the first time ever, I liked a photo of myself.  My hair was an awesome colour.  I looked comfortable and happy.  I was learning to be comfortable in my fat body (I had started blogging about being fat about six months before) and I wanted to share this photo to show my friends my new hair colour, especially my friends overseas.

Forward through to last week, and a countless number of selfies since, and here one of my most recent selfies:

November 2013

Snapped while I was sitting up the back of a meeting room, waiting for my turn to give a presentation to a bunch of my colleagues.  I see something very different in myself and in my expression in comparison to the first sefie.  My confidence is stronger.  I gaze into the lens far more relaxed than in the first photograph, and I didn’t bother to try to make the angle “flattering”, just tried to get the shot composed with good light and not chop half my face off.  Even in my choice of hair style and glasses tells me how I’ve changed over the years.  My style is now for me, not to appease others.  I scrape my hair back off my face to keep me cool and comfortable instead of using it to try to “hide” my fatness.  My glasses say “We’re here!” not “I want to disappear.”  I let my double chin be seen.

This didn’t happen by magic.  It happened because I took selfies and got used to seeing myself from all different angles, and more importantly, I saw other women’s selfies.  I saw women represented by themselves who are NEVER represented in the media.  I saw women of different ages, races, sizes, ability, gender presentation, level of income and sexuality.  I saw some women who looked like me, and many who didn’t.  I saw women who didn’t look like those I saw in magazines and on television or at the movies.  I saw women who are fat, or had wrinkles, scars, or pimples, or are hairy.  I saw women who had no makeup on, and those who use their makeup as expressionist art.

I still love seeing selfies and I love taking them.  I love capturing my moods and moments in selfies.  I like seeing selfies of all the people around the world I talk to but have never met, so I can get to know them a little better.  I even like stranger’s selfies, because I get to see lots of different types of people, and how they choose to present themselves to the world.  Best of all, I love seeing my friends change and grow in their selfies.   I love watching them grow into themselves and into confidence.

The idea that selfies are a “cry for help” or purely attention seeking behaviour is complete bullshit.  Yes, sometimes they might be.  But the overwhelming majority of them are self reflection and self representation.  They are pictorial questions to ourselves, asking “Who am I right now?”  They are snippets of communication about who we are, and how we want the world to see us.

And there is absolutely no shame in that.

Other selfie posts:

• Amanda of Fat Body Politics “For the Love of Selfies”
• Melissa of Shakesville “Selfies”
• The Feminist Griote – “The Radical Politics of #selfies”

A Study of the Self

Well hello!  Welcome to the plethora of new readers I have gained recently.  It’s so good to see that there are more people out there ready to think outside the dominant paradigm when it comes to bodies and weight.

Before I go on any further, a quick zine update – it’s shaping up nicely.  I’m just waiting on a few artworks to come through, and then I can finish work on the layout, with production following after that.  I shall continue to keep you all posted.

So today I want to talk about selfies.  For those of you who don’t know, the word “selfie” is colloquialism for a self portrait, mostly these days taken by smart phone and uploaded to social media, like Facebook or Instagram.  With cameras ubiquitous in phones, especially now that many have front facing cameras, and most of us having connectivity to the internet, selfies have become something of an everyday occurrence.  I’m sure you’ve all seen one.  If you haven’t, here’s one I took yesterday:

Freshly pink haired.

Selfies get a lot of criticism.  They’re considered vain, posing or childish.  They’re ridiculed, especially selfies of women, and in particular selfies of fat women.  I know mine get stolen off my various social media sites and posted other places for ridicule, because “OMG look at the gross fatty, she thinks she’s people!!1!”

But that’s not going to stop me doing it.  People have been taking self portraits of themselves for centuries – be they photographic or other media.  Do I need to list some names of some famous self portrait creators?  Frida Kahlo.  Van Gogh.  Rembrandt.  Da Vinci.  Warhol.  Basquiat. Vivian Maier.  The list goes on and on, and right back through history.  Have a bit of a Google around and you’ll see everything from the brutally critical to the utterly whimsical.

Self portaits and self examination are important and powerful.  There are several reasons why I take and share selfies.

1. Until a few years ago, I never allowed anyone to take photos of me.  I was so used to being shamed by people for my weight that I believed I wasn’t worthy enough to be seen in photographs.  Now I’m proud of who I am and am happy to participate in photographs (with my consent – taking photographs of me or anyone else without our consent is douchey, don’t do it) and part of that is from playing around with taking photos of myself.
2. I don’t see people who look like me in the media.  Fat women are not represented in the media, unless it’s to vilify us.  We’re not represented anywhere in a positive light unless we represent ourselves.  As Junot Diaz wrote “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”*  If posting my selfie on my Tumblr or Twitter or blog gives someone like me some representation, as a fat woman, then it’s worth it.
3. Looking at yourself a lot from different angles and in different lights and colours helps you remove self criticism.  If you never see yourself, you never see yourself as “normal” (because as my dear friend Ian always says, “Normal is what you are.”), so seeing yourself helps you get used to yourself.  I’ve found I’m far less self critical since I’ve been taking selfies than I was before.
4. My friends near and far like to see me.  They like to see what my new glasses look like, or what colour I’ve dyed my hair, or just to see my face.  Just like I love to see them.
5. It’s valuable to have a record of yourself through your life.  It’s healthy to look at how you change and grow through your life.  I look back at old selfies and I realise how far I have progressed in life, both externally, in things like my job and where I live and things like that, but also internally, how I feel about myself and how I present myself to the world.  Selfies tell my story.
6. Because I discovered, on regular self examination in my self portraits, I’m kinda fucking awesome.

Self portraits, be they taken seriously with skill and care, or a spur of the moment capture of yourself for fun, are part of being human.  Since we first worked out how to scratch on a rock face or in the dirt while looking at our reflections in water, we humans have been taking self portraits to tell our stories, to examine ourselves, to share with our loved ones, or just for fun.  It’s not vanity to want to see yourself represented, either just for yourself, for those around you or in the world at large.  It’s part of marking that you are a member of humankind.

Have fun.  Pose.  Share them with your friends or share them with the world.  Get used to seeing yourself.  Find your own awesomeness.

*Thanks Lonie for posting this one on FB this morning and reminding me of an awesome quote.