You are beautiful, aren’t you?
Of course you are, because why else would you take pictures of yourself and share them with, well, as many people as you can, making yourself an internet pinup boy/girl forever?
The answer to why you might do this, why you have chosen to become part of the selfie phenomenon, is complicated. But here is part of that answer: “People take selfies for many reasons: to see how they look (to themselves if kept private, or to others if shared), to receive validation from others, and to be seen in a superficial sense.”
That comes from the recently published “The Selfie Generation: How Our Self Images are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture” (Skyhorse Publishing) by Alicia Eler. This is one of the first major works devoted to the subject of selfies, and it is not only charmingly personal (“My mom likes to tell me about what a private person I was in high school”) but also deeply researched and reported (it includes 23 pages of endnotes). It is fascinating, provocative, entertaining and enlightening, and likely to be the foundation of all future books on this subject.
Again from the book: “The selfie is the most easily accessible and powerful image for asserting a sense of personhood and connecting with others in a fragmented, networked, and hyperconnected world. It is done without any cost other than the agreement that your image become quantifiable data, demonstrative of complacency within techno-capitalism.”
Eler is a smart young woman, currently an art critic and reporter for the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis. She was born and raised in Skokie and has written for a vast numbers of publications. For a time, she worked at the Tribune, doing something or other for our Chicagonow.com blog of many voices. I never met her then and discovered her book a few months ago when researching a story about a monkey who took a selfie and wound up at the center of a legal tussle.
After getting what I needed about the monkey (named Naruto) on page 79, I started skipping through the book’s 290-some pages, eventually and quickly reading them all.
I was not looking for personal enlightenment. Like many people, I do not take selfies, never have. That has less to do with ego — I have one — than with my lifelong ineptitude with any sort of photographic instruments, cameras or phones.
The book is peppered with interviews with smart academics and scientists, tech and social media experts. It poses many intriguing questions and makes some astute observations, especially about the inherent misogyny in this realm. She devotes a great deal of space to exploring how girls (herself included when, she writes, frankly, “one time when I was deep into some heavy texting and it quickly turned sexting” ) participate in the selfie world and what consequences may arise, including that nasty form of betrayal known as “revenge porn.”
Women have always been viewed by men as sex objects and technology has not changed this. As Eler writes, “While the image is of her and for her, it becomes something that is also consumed by others who see her as a sexualized object. It’s impossible to escape the gaze or the commodification of bodies under patriarchy.”
Still, Eler, who began taking photos of herself as a teen and has energetically been at it ever since, is an optimistic advocate of the selfie, writing, “It can feel empowering to take selfies, however, because it is a photo that offers an element of self-control.”
Of course, there are others who would beg to disagree. Eler’s book was published before the recent Cannes Film Festival. A few weeks ago, a festival official named Thierry Fremaux announced that the taking of selfies would be banned on this year’s red carpet parade. He said, “It’s not beautiful. It’s grotesque. It’s ridiculous.” He also railed in the magazine Le Film Français, saying, “On the red carpet, the trivial aspect and the slowing down provoked by the disorder which these selfies create tarnishes the quality of [the red carpet experience] and of the festival as a whole.”
Mon dieu! Doesn’t this crowd have bigger things to worry about?
Nevertheless, the selfie is here to stay, alive on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and some other places that I have yet to explore. If you don’t create selfies, rest assured that your kids or grandkids do, and listen to Eler when she says, “This is not a generation made up solely of millennials. Kim Kardashian, the queen of selfies, is 37 years old. And most people don’t look beyond the superficial assumptions being made.
“For many — think Anthony Weiner (the disgraced former New York congressman who resigned his office in 2011 after lewd photos he had sent women on Facebook and Twitter became public) — the selfie represents just a form of personal narcissism and always will. Yes, there is that aspect but it so much more. It is a form of self-expression, a means of visual storytelling and a way to connect with others and create communities.”
Among the book’s most compelling sections has Eler exploring how people with illnesses, often isolated and frightened, can share information about their troubles and connect with others in similarly bad shape. This goes far beyond vanity or ego.
One of the subtitles in “Selfie Generation” is this: “Take a break from selfie-ing and read this book about selfies.”
That is good advice. It’s a selfie world, welcome to it. And this is the perfect guidebook.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
@rickkogan
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