Selfies: Rampant narcissism or healthy empowerment? – The Sydney Morning Herald

Ally Garrett, a 29-year-old body-positive or "fat acceptance" activist, has a tattoo on her left thigh that helps explain why she's so passionate about posting selfies. It shows a yellow rose above a big red heart emblazoned with a single word: MYSELF. It's inky testimony to the millennial conviction that loving yourself, and being public about it, is nothing to be embarrassed about. It would have horrified my grandmother, fond of frosty Calvinist maxims along the lines of "Self-praise is no recommendation".

Garrett, whose right thigh shows Kim Kardashian as a madonna, meets me on a clear day in Sydney to talk about the world's continuing preoccupation with selfies, a passing fad that refuses, doggedly, to pass. It's how we get on to the separate, but not unrelated, subject of the self-love movement and radical self-love gurus like Gala Darling. Darling, once a depressed New Zealander with an eating disorder and now happy head of a mini self-love empire, is the author of a seminal text on the subject. Her message takes up where the '80s and '90s self-esteem movements left off, and declares that you are not merely adequate; you are "magnificent", "a shimmering, exploding supernova" who can have a life "bursting with magic, miracles, bliss and adventure", once you learn how to "fall madly in love with yourself". You can see how posting selfies could be a natural step in that empowering romance.

But they can also be an act of defiance. For a fat girl teased at school, for a fat woman living in a thinworshipping world, it took courage for Ally Garrett to post her first bikini selfies on social media some years back. Now there's no stopping her. A stream of selfies shows her in bikinis, sheer black lingerie, with friends, with cats, on rocks, on planes, looking powerful or pimpled, saucy in eyeliner. Even her phone conspires.

"I have a photo editing app and if you haven't taken a selfie that day, it sends you a notification," she says, laughing. "It's like, 'You look gorgeous today. Take a selfie.' " So how many does she take? "In a selfie session, if I'm feeling good or feeling a way that I want to share or document, then I could take 50. Then I'd narrow them down to four or five favourites and ask my housemate or my sister which one I should put up. They're always like, 'They all look exactly the same', and I'm like, 'No! They're so different.' "

After talking to Garrett, I try taking 50 selfies in a sitting. I only get to 11 before I'm pooped. The results can best be described as disappointing, despite taking pointers from sources like Kylie Jenner's Five Tips for Scoring the Perfect Selfie. I suspect the problem is that I'm not a luminous young woman. And I'm an amateur, unlike Garrett, who strikes a gleaming, professional pose the moment the phone is lifted. She is also pretty gorgeous and confident, even if she does worry excessively about her fringe. Of course, there are conventionally plain women, plain fat women and older women who post selfies but news flash they are wildly outnumbered and out-"liked" by the pretty, slim ones.

Selfie trends have come and gone since the arrival of the front-facing camera (introduced into mobile phones in 2003, although selfies didn't really become a cultural phenomenon until the iPhone4 included one in 2010). A walk down memory lane: #babybjorn, #duckface, #iwokeuplikethis, #bathroom, #elevator, #after-sex, #sexyselfie, #grandmaselfies, #dangerousanimal. Even the sex-toy industry got in on the act, with a selfie stick for orgasm selfies: "a powerful insertable vibrator featuring a built-in illuminated video camera". (Some buyers found it disappointingly medical.)

The selfie trend itself, however, shows no signs of slowing. We just can't get enough of ourselves. It's hard to come by accurate figures but in 2016, Google calculated that more than 24 billion selfies were posted in 2015 on its Google Photos app alone. In 2014, the company claimed that Android devices were capturing 93 million selfies every day. One estimate claims that 74 per cent of all images on Snapchat are selfies and that 1000 selfies are uploaded to Instagram every 10 seconds.

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Scores of scholars have picked over the phenomenon, analysing everything from selfie-taking at funerals or Auschwitz, to visual cues like head position, emotional expression, gender and age. On average, women post far more selfies than men until they hit about 40, at which point the trend reverses. (No surprise to me.) They also tilt their heads more.

Apart from just being fun, selfies can be a powerful political statement, says Garrett, who positions herself as a "fat femme" (for feminine) on the queer spectrum. Every minutely calibrated shade of identity politics, body politics, feminism, etc, can now be found chatting online, and selfies are part of the dialogue. Take #VBO, for example, meaning visible belly outline.

"The fat activism movement started," Garrett explains, "but then there was criticism within the movement, along the lines of, 'Yeah, this is great but often the really popular plus-size bloggers are still hourglass figures.' So then this movement started for #VBO primarily fat women, or fat femmes, some non-binary fatties taking pictures where you can see the belly more predominantly."

Who knew? Selfies, then, are a means to many ends, although even Garrett admits people tend to post ones that show them, or their magical lives, to advantage. "That sits alongside the expectation that social media is your highlight reel, not your real life."

Rebecca Carnegie*, 26, works in fashion media, where it's expected people will use selfies to build a "personal brand". She agrees that they have become an essential tool in art-directing an online fantasy life. Left to her own devices, Carnegie would never take a selfie. Her friends, on the other hand, are hooked on them, sometimes posting between 15 and 20 a day. "Whenever we go out, they insist on taking them before we leave, while we're in the Uber, at the venue, in the bathroom if it's nice, on the streets, with our cocktails, with our dessert, on the way to wherever else we're going. Sometimes it's of us as a group, sometimes it's of themselves. I think they like to have a mix so it looks like they're not just obsessed with their own image."

WE RE NOT NECESSARILY MORE SELF-ABSORBED THAN PREVIOUS GENERATIONS. WE JUST HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO BROADCAST THAT SELF-ABSORPTION.

Youth, of course, has always been in love with its gilded self. As one 28-year-old tells me, "We're not necessarily more self-absorbed than previous generations. We just have the technology to broadcast that selfabsorption." But it's also true that the pressure to project an enviable, successful life has become relentless. "Social media has made it really important to live out your life online," says Carnegie. "It's not enough to just be there, in the moment. People like everyone to know they have a great life and great friends and are always having a great time." It's the downside of being told you're really a shimmering supernova: you can feel obliged to look like one 24/7.

Carnegie says many of her friends are convinced a selfie is a powerful act "not just taking it but sharing it, having it out there in the world"

"And there are a lot of reasons to do it. One friend broke up with her boyfriend recently and she's posting a lot. She wants to keep up that appearance of not being brokenhearted, in case the ex-boyfriend is looking at her social media. And you do get a lot of data about who's looking at your pictures, so you can tell."

The "likes" are reinforcing, but they're also pretty meaningless, Carnegie says. That hasn't stopped people from wanting them or taking it personally if they don't get many.

"Numbers are so powerful and selfies do tend to get more likes. With my friends, I make sure I like every selfie they post because I don't want them to ask me why I didn't."

"I DON'T see taking selfies as being vain. For years I hated my reflection and now I love it! The curves of my cheeks, my tiny little nose, my lips that form my unique smile it's all me and I love it! So I will take as many selfies as I damn well please. I encourage you to do the same!" @curvykatpsm

"To an outsider this must seem like such a boring and selfindulgent IG account because it's just pic after pic of me. But to me it is a place that gives me a sense of pride and achievement Through these selfies and snaps I am garnering a true love and appreciation for my body. For someone who has spent their life feeling nothing but shame and disgust about their body, that's monumental." @chocolatecurvesmodel

(Posts published on a "body positive" site.)

When the Oxford Dictionary made "selfie" word of the year in 2013, ahead of "twerk", columnists, academics, misogynists, feminists and bloggers of all stripes had something to say about the apparently innocuous act of taking a photo of yourself. Did selfies indicate clinical narcissism? Just another Me Decade with added me-ness or a cry for help from a generation lost in a celebrity swamp? How could selfies be said to "empower" or build communities when they thrive on consumer capitalism's great drivers: comparison, envy and fear?

The debate goes on. Selfies as a worrying sign of the times are touched on in a recent book by journalist Will Storr, called Selfie: How We Became so Self-obsessed and What It's Doing to Us. Among other things, Storr takes a searching look at the role of hyper-individualists like Ayn Rand, of neoliberalism and the evangelistic selfesteem programs that built up a head of steam last century, some cultish, some even state-sanctioned. What are the consequences of taking such a confected pride in ourselves, but also living in an age of judgemental perfectionism? If all this, playing out in selfies and social media, is supposed to build people up all those likes, comments, all that hyperbolic feedback then why are eating disorders, depression, suicide and self-harming on the rise? Why do many studies show people feel worse about themselves after they've been on social media sites?

And what message do selfies send to women in particular? Yes, there are all those body-positive hashtags, but even there the focus is still on women's appearance. It's hard to ignore the mountain of selfie sites where "hotness" remains the revered female commodity. All those teenage girls needing to hear, over and over, "OMG, you're so pretty/hot/gorgeous!!!!"

Cause for concern? Not according to writers like New Yorker Rachel Syme, herself a devoted selfie taker, and also young and attractive, it's perhaps relevant, although risky, to note. In 2015, Syme wrote an impassioned online ode to selfies, witheringly disposing of selfie haters along the way, her sights often trained on middle-aged men, misogynists and old-school feminists.

Syme's eloquent panegyric, Selfie, claims that dismissing them as narcissism, or just silly, misses the point. Selfies, she says, are empowering, creative, diverse and an important plank in the revolutionary selflove movement ("revolutionary" because it makes a change from women hating themselves). In selfie-land, women finally have control over the how, when and where of their own image. Selfies hand power to the invisible, the marginalised, the doubting.

"Those who see selfies as signs of the end times," she writes, "are focusing on the outliers; the bad actors. The people who accidentally fall into a waterfall and die in the pursuit of the perfect shot. The kids who get addicted to the digital feedback loop and start relying on hearts to get up in the morning. The moms and dads who take selfies when they should be watching their babies; the seething loners who use their selfies as a way to spread hate (if this hate spills over into violence, then selfies will surely get the blame)... What the critics don't focus on is how to decode the language of selfies when they are being used correctly: what the people in them are trying to do with their portraiture."

To New Yorker Rachel Syme, selfies are both empowering and creative. Photo: Instagram/Rachsyme

As part of her essay, Syme sought and received brave, often potent, selfies from people undergoing chemo, say, or heartbreak; evidence of a selfie world beyond #Ihot. Indeed, Syme makes selfie-posting sound like a noble act, horribly misunderstood by those who think it's vanity or a kind of Zelig-like me-ism.

"When a young woman takes a picture alone, in a museum," she admonishes, "those who don't take selfies will scowl, thinking that she is ignoring the art that surrounds her. They will wonder why she cannot stop and breathe in the high culture without the safety blanket of her phone. But maybe, just maybe, this youth is someone who feels less than welcome in this museum, finding it an institution that is cold and sterile and enforcing of a visual language that doesn't always include faces that look like hers. Maybe it is a big deal to finally see herself there, standing in the same frame as the grand artistic canon."

Of course, it isn't so very different from having your picture taken standing next to the Three Sisters or Niagara Falls. It's just that you're the one doing the taking. And the posting, sometimes many times a day. And wanting those likes. Isn't that just another way of encouraging approval-seeking?

"If you put a selfie online," Ally Garrett acknowledges, "and there's an element of 'click like', you are seeking validation in some form. Helen Razer wrote a piece on that, saying, no, selfies aren't actually empowering because you're still saying please like me. But then, do we expect women to grow up in a culture that says those things but to be resilient enough to not want validation or not want to feel beautiful? So it brings up this odd predicament of, 'Be beautiful, but don't enjoy it. Do things to your appearance, but make it look effortless.' "

SHE'S RIGHT, of course, in that selfies and social media are rife with contradictions and mixed messages. A way to take control. A way to be enslaved by old paradigms, and now by your own hand. A way to be "authentic". A way to fake it. Selfies have become increasingly un-self-like, thanks to filters, photo-altering apps like Facetune and aids like built-in light-up phone cases, as recommended by selfie queens like Kim Kardashian.

Emma Dockery, 34, is a Melbourne casting agent. She looks at pictures of people all day long, but technology, and the obsession with celebrity posing, are making her job that much harder. Early on, she had to deal with the rash of photoshopped studio portraits. Now it's crazy selfies.

"Quite often you'll ask for a selfie and you'll get a photo taken at some absolutely extreme angle, you know, extreme Princess Di eyes up into the camera, with only the smallest part of their forehead showing," she says. "For a while, I was constantly getting these Snapchat selfies, where they'd have this ethereal glow or their faces would be totally obscured by a cloud of golden butterflies, or they'd send one with the dog filter on. So it was like, 'Okay, I have absolutely no idea what you look like, but if we're casting for a cartoon dog, well, you're it!'" She's saddened that young girls don't feel they can be themselves. "You're looking for a real, warts-and-all teenager and when you get an extreme, pout-lipped selfie back, you do wonder, 'Oh heck, is this how you feel you have to look for us?' "

A lot of Dockery's friends are mad selfie-posters but she's the opposite. We talk about what happens to the plain-looking girls. "Well, that's me," she says, laughing. "I won't post. My face is nowhere on social media because how could I compete with the babes out there with 2000 hits and 'Omigod, you're so beautiful!!'? Some of us aren't, so we're just going to stick with posting photos of what we're eating, and dogs. And captions that show how funny you can be about a chocolate."

I ask if she thinks selfies are narcissistic or useful. "If you want to present yourself to the world through photographs you take, then go for gold," she says. "But in a world dominated by a lot of male gaze, I do wonder whether taking selfies of yourself is the way to combat that. It's one of those areas where it has grown so quickly, everyone is struggling to figure out what it all means. It's like early feminist debate about pornography is it good, is it bad, are we for it or against it? If you're creating yourself, if you consent to it, does that make it fine?"

Dockery offers all this warily, worried she's going to step on one of the landmines that litter the landscape of contemporary feminism. She can see that posting selfies might be a powerful act, a brave act, but she also has reservations. "Part of me thinks a lot of it is just people putting photos of themselves out there, hoping someone will write a nice comment about them," she says. "That makes me feel diabolically sad for where we are, especially as women."

There is something poignant, at least, about some selfie-posting. "Selfies are all about presenting a face to the world," agrees 32-year-old Mimi Johnson*, as she recalls a work trip to Bali. "There I was, staying in the most beautiful villa, with my own pool and an amazing tropical garden. All I was doing was spending hours on these lilos in the pool, taking selfies and trying not to fall in with my phone. I took hundreds, wanting to get the perfect one.

"Finally I thought, this is stupid, I'm in this incredible place and I'm not actually enjoying it. All I'm doing is worrying about presenting this image to other people. 'Hey, look at me having the perfect holiday.' "

She thinks part of her motivation was simply wanting to connect. "I don't think it was narcissism, really. I think I was a little lonely and a little bored. When people post back, it's like an endorphin hit that instant moment of validation. And now there's this hard-wired need, compulsion, to share. It's like you haven't enjoyed an experience unless you've put it on social media."

THERE IS nothing as simultaneously familiar and strange as one's own reflection. You have only to stare at yourself, or even a picture of yourself, for more than a minute to have that weird "Who the hell are you?" feeling.

In 1970, an American psychologist called Gordon Gallup devised a test, called the mirror self-recognition test, to assess self-awareness in other species. As part of the study, chimps were anaesthetised, marked with an odourless dye and, once awake, put in front of a mirror. If they touched the dyed spot on their body, it suggested they realised that the reflection was of themselves.

A lot of species have since failed the test. Many animals seem to think the reflection is another of their kind, but that has its own effect. It helps with loneliness. Mirrors can have a calming effect on different animals, particularly isolated ones. Here is a creature like them, mimicking their behaviour. Echoes of Narcissus, who didn't realise it was his own beautiful and responsive image that he had fallen in love with in the pool.

As Gallup and his colleague wrote in 1970: "The animal confronting its own reflection has complete control over the behaviour of the image, and therefore the image is always attentive and ready to reciprocate when the animal is."

I can't help thinking that is part of the appeal of selfies. Here's someone just like you, smiling at you in a loving, happy way, full of the milk of human you-ness, and ready to pose and click a hundred times for that perfect shot of you. A constant, forgiving companion. Then you send the image out there, into the vast, jostling, lonely universe of cyberspace. You hear your own echo, see your own shadow, confirm you exist.

*Some names have been changed.

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Selfies: Rampant narcissism or healthy empowerment? - The Sydney Morning Herald