About 10 years ago, I was driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most glorious stretches of asphalt in the country, when I decided to take a picture of myself. I had a Polaroid camera then, which I carried in the front seat of my Honda Accord along with a high-zoom Nikon bought at a specialty store for more money than I’d ever dropped in one place. I must have looked bizarre, pulling my sedan to the shoulder of the road and perching in the wildflowers with that big, boxy plastic eye held in front of me, as picture after picture spit out like an angry tongue. Polaroids are expensive to screw up, by the way. About a buck a misfire.
But I am a short girl, and a vain one, and I could never get my arms far enough away to find a flattering angle. Pictures I took of myself were often blasted with flash, or marred by the funny mistakes of a photo aimed blind: Here is your left eyeball. Behold, your forehead. Still, it was worth all the effort to have some souvenir of the moment—an instant image!—which I could tuck into an envelope and slide into the trusty rabbit tunnel that was the U.S. Postal Service, where it would wind 1500 miles back to my parents’ place in Dallas and find a new home underneath a magnet on the kitchen fridge.
The word “selfies” didn’t exist then. It would take at least another three years—and the advent of digital cameras—for the word to become necessary. In 2005, Jim Krause used the term in his manual “Photo Idea Index” to describe the kind of on-the-fly snapshots he and his friends were taking, unburdened by the cost and labor of traditional film processing. The “selfies” tag grew on Flickr, and later flourished on social media sites, where #selfies and #me became an ever-trending topic. In 2010, the iPhone introduced its flip-camera feature, allowing users to see and frame a shot of themselves. In the selfie origin story, this was the eureka moment.
These days, the sight of someone pulling over to the side of the road—or standing at a bar, or flashing a peace sign in front of a building, or waiting at the drive-thru in the front seat of the car—and taking a picture of themselves is not bizarre at all. We live in the endlessly documented moment, and the arm outstretched with that small, omnipotent rectangle held aloft is one of the defining postures of our time. We’ve had selfie scandals, from Weiner’s weiner to Amanda Bynes’ meltdown. We’ve had a million billion cautionary tales about sending erotic selfies, though it doesn’t seem to stop anyone. Criminals take selfies and so do cops. The presidential selfie surely could not be far behind. (On this, Hillary was first.)
But people are also worried about the selfie. Well, worried and irritated. Several trend stories have pondered the psychological damage on a generation that would rather take a picture of their life than actually live it. A recent study found that posting too many selfies annoys people (for this, they needed science?). Last month, the word made its way into the Oxford Dictionaries Online, but it has also become something of a smear, another tacky emblem of a culture that has directed all possible spotlights toward its own sucked-in cheeks. “Are you going to take a selfie?” a friend asked with mock derision when I pulled out my phone at dinner to check the time. And it was clearly a joke, but I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of people who do such things, or the fact that I was one of them.
But I am a short girl, and a vain one, and I could never get my arms far enough away to find a flattering angle. Pictures I took of myself were often blasted with flash, or marred by the funny mistakes of a photo aimed blind: Here is your left eyeball. Behold, your forehead. Still, it was worth all the effort to have some souvenir of the moment—an instant image!—which I could tuck into an envelope and slide into the trusty rabbit tunnel that was the U.S. Postal Service, where it would wind 1500 miles back to my parents’ place in Dallas and find a new home underneath a magnet on the kitchen fridge.The word “selfies” didn’t exist then. It would take at least another three years—and the advent of digital cameras—for the word to become necessary. In 2005, Jim Krause used the term in his manual “Photo Idea Index” to describe the kind of on-the-fly snapshots he and his friends were taking, unburdened by the cost and labor of traditional film processing. The “selfies” tag grew on Flickr, and later flourished on social media sites, where #selfies and #me became an ever-trending topic. In 2010, the iPhone introduced its flip-camera feature, allowing users to see and frame a shot of themselves. In the selfie origin story, this was the eureka moment.
These days, the sight of someone pulling over to the side of the road—or standing at a bar, or flashing a peace sign in front of a building, or waiting at the drive-thru in the front seat of the car—and taking a picture of themselves is not bizarre at all. We live in the endlessly documented moment, and the arm outstretched with that small, omnipotent rectangle held aloft is one of the defining postures of our time. We’ve had selfie scandals, from Weiner’s weiner to Amanda Bynes’ meltdown. We’ve had a million billion cautionary tales about sending erotic selfies, though it doesn’t seem to stop anyone. Criminals take selfies and so do cops. The presidential selfie surely could not be far behind. (On this, Hillary was first.)
But people are also worried about the selfie. Well, worried and irritated. Several trend stories have pondered the psychological damage on a generation that would rather take a picture of their life than actually live it. A recent study found that posting too many selfies annoys people (for this, they needed science?). Last month, the word made its way into the Oxford Dictionaries Online, but it has also become something of a smear, another tacky emblem of a culture that has directed all possible spotlights toward its own sucked-in cheeks. “Are you going to take a selfie?” a friend asked with mock derision when I pulled out my phone at dinner to check the time. And it was clearly a joke, but I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of people who do such things, or the fact that I was one of them.
by Sarah Hepola, TMN | Read more:
Image: Danielle Julian Norton, Everything is Fine, 2012. Image credit Shannon Benine.
Image: Danielle Julian Norton, Everything is Fine, 2012. Image credit Shannon Benine.
