Carlyn Hill | Dyslexic writer, artist with astigmatism, extroverted introvert. Life is funny | Writer @threadless, @hellogiggles @themarysue

Dec 26, 2015

An Ode to the Selfie

A.k.a Dispelling the “Selfie Stigma”

Written while listening to: my family watching football in the background. Sports go the sports.

Now published on HelloGiggles!

Not gonna lie, when I first started working at Threadless? I wanted to take selfies with everything at the office.

Selfies with all of our murals (PSA: we have a lot of murals).

Selfies wearing my first tee as an employee.

A selfie of me taking a selfie (I know…)

What started as new-job excitement quickly became my “thing.” Soon, my coworker Crystal and I developed a reputation as having a friendly “who is the ‘selfie queen’” competition.

One day at a work party, Crystal and I started talking about our respective selfie crowns. And we both came to the same conclusion: Our selfies weren’t about being self-obsessed, or narcissistic. On the contrary: they were about us feeling damn good enough about ourselves to actually share a picture of our face. Which…is a pretty positive thing.

So color me biased, but what’s with the selfie stigma?

Selfies have become a lot like getting caught with your hand down your pants: you don’t want anyone to see you, you do it on the DL, and when you’re caught, you sputter out every excuse you can think of. “N-no! I wasn’t doing what you think I was doing, I was, uh…checking my hair…heh…”

One of the aforementioned first-day-of-work mural selfies

“Selfie” was even Oxford’s 2013 word of the year. But hell, its definition might as well look like this:

Sel•fie | noun |
1. A frowned upon social behavior synonymous with selfishness and general self-obsessiveness.
2. Shame all who partake and beat them with their selfie sticks.

But in reality? I don’t take selfies because I’m obsessed with my looks or my face or myself. I take selfies because I’m the opposite of that.

I’ve struggled with my appearance — and myself as an existing human person in general — my whole life. Not because there’s anything wrong-looking about me, but because my brain’s always believed there was. There’s a constant dialogue going through my mind, a cocktail of anxiety and self-negativity deep-set in my past as a socially awkward child.

Selfies offer a way to make sure you get a picture that eases your self-conscious mind, the one that makes you want to take 12-dozen photos with friends just to find one that you’re happy with.

Working at Threadless was a confidence-building exercise in itself, because we all double as tee models too.

Now, on the one hand, if I could tell my 6th grade self, “psst hey, you become a freakin’ model, dude,” her head would explode. On the other, it took some getting used to. Because with selfies, you can control how you look. But when you’re modeling, doesn’t matter if you like your face in the pic or not — the big bad world’s gonna see ya, baby.

Me on the right and the Selfie Queen herself, Crystal, on the left

And I get it. It is easy to look at excessive selfies as something that can look an awful lot like someone loving their face a little too much. Hell, Kim Kardashian wrote a book called “Selfie.” Which is undeniably Trump/president levels of terrible combos.

But I like to think that selfies embody this philosophy by the king of the selfie movement, “mrpimpgoodgame.” He started an account of all selfies just to be funny at first. But he told Vice:

“The selfie movement is about loving the way you look, even if you’re having a bad hair day. No matter what. It’s always appropriate to take a selfie.”

Does that mean there aren’t self-obsessed people who just like looking at themselves? Of course not. I saw a girl at a public gym pool who made her friends take pictures of her posing for 15 minutes. Like ok sure, I mean you got kids splashing around in the background but sure, pop that hip out in front of the tube slide, girl. Sexy.

And yet at the same time, hey: she was feelin’ it. And that’s really what it’s about — feelin’ good enough about yourself to take a picture of your face and feelin’ brave enough to post your face on the unforgiving troll forest of the internet.

When I take selfies — and, more importantly, when I post selfies — it has nothing to do with me saying “I love myself sooo much.” But rather it’s a moment of confidence as rare as a freakin’ as a good episode of SNL nowadays where I can say “I actually like this enough today to post it on the internet because I MUST CAPTURE THIS EVER-FLEETING MOMENT.”

So go ahead. Ditch the selfie stigma. Flip that camera to facing-you mode. And love thy selfie.