The Controversy of Selfies between Genders
By Ameena Ali, Dima Dib and Ghaidaa Hreiby
This paper tackles the selfie issue. Research including a survey and poll has been conducted to understand what LAU students think about gender differences when taking selfies. The findings affirmed the commonly held assumptions, which were made a priority. It also offered a challenge for the male population in the sense that some of the feedback received was against selfies as it is.
From a negative side, selfie can be the result of privacy invasion, addiction, harming relationships (Locke n.d). A lot of criticism have been made towards the phenomena of selfies including how it has made people more narcissistic. It has become a tool people use to seek validation towards their physical appearance. This also leads to another claim in which selfies have glorified the importance of physical appearance and increased the intensity of people’s confidence issues such as depression, social pressure, or obsession over the idea of having the perfect selfie. Moreover, it seems that selfies are more considered as feminine rather than being for both genders (Britton, 2017).
The phenomena of selfie has shifted to become the base of communication between people on social media. According to social affordance theory, selfies are now a way for people to feel connected. A simple picture of one’s self is enough for people to feel as if they’re communicating with each other. This sort of interaction portrays the change the way people use social constructivism in their behavior.
Communicating through social media, there seems to be this unspoken rules and norms people abide by based on social constructs. People act similarly in the way they pose, the angles they choose for reasons that might seem hidden but actually come from the way they unconsciously follow social norms. Moreover, selfies have influenced the perception of the terms “social constructivism” and social affordance due to the new concepts, rules, and norms it has introduced to the society. They have enhanced the way people present themselves; they now get to control the way they want to look and experiment with their appearances, and that has challenged social norms. In addition to that, selfies have brought the sense of personal branding; by presenting themselves based on how they perceive their personalities, people are branding who they are for the public, allowing people to judge others based on the concept of a selfie.
However, a selfie can have some benefits. It can enhance our self confidence, show the artistic side of us, let us capture a moment, memore or an emotion and finally can help us learn to love our selves to a certain extent (Ita-as, 2015).
Based on the survey and poll and the results shown by the university students, one could see the relation between all the concepts said previously with the gender differences in taking selfies. Through the poll and survey that had 130 students participating in choosing either answers, 95% of the students agreed that women and men take selfies differently, 70% answered that women are more comfortable in the idea of a selfie, and 85% chose that women take more time to agree on posting a selfie than men. We wanted to try to find out how people think of different sexes taking selfies. The findings allowed us to compare them to the common critiques on selfies such as selfies being feminine obsessed and the cause of low self esteem, and based on further research, the idea of narcissism in taking selfies was introduced in a more gendered perspective that challenged what we though of the critique itself. Based on an article found on CNN, men are more likely to take more selfies at the age of 40 than women and vise versa for younger ages. According to Jenny Dean Schmidt who hosts the Channelmom Show, women become more insecure at the age of 40, while men become more self confident and want to reassure they are still young (Wallace, 2014). This assures how people suppose women are more self conscious of the selfies they take because they want to reach a certain beauty standard. Moreover, women at younger ages get to take selfies far more than men. Based on studies mentioned in the New York Post (Wright, 2017), women at the age of 23 and 62% of women as a whole took more selfies than men in New York. This is in part due to the fact they are used to presenting themselves and the way they look because of all the advertising and media’s focus on women and their appearances. Based on that note, in the New York Post article, it is explained how the excessiveness in women taking selfies is actually hated by men and considered as narcissistic. One of the facts that they used to explain this reaction toward feminine selfies is that women are now in control of their pictures and how they present themselves rathe than having men taking the photographs and choosing what to display. This all reflects the idea of patriarchy that always seems to be the case when it comes to women acting independently. The narcissism that men see is really a matter of describing something that they thing doesn’t fit in the social norms. Moreover, when it comes to the audience, both men and women take selfies within different angles. Women tend to take selfies from above to be able to focus on their face features and control the exposure of their body figure, while men take from downward angles to show dominance and power.
They both do that to attract the opposite sex; men want to show they are capable of protecting their loved ones, and women want to show they are confident enough in what they’re presenting (Lazzaro, 2017). This again insures the fact that gender roles and embedded in our behavior even in a simple task such as taking a picture of oneself. It makes one wonder if selfies are spontaneous after all or if it is just a way to mirror oneself and control what they want the audience to see.
In conclusion, the observations we have performed confirmed the common critiques mentioned earlier of the selfie and more. In fact it has offered further proof that selfies have shifted a few cultural concepts of communication in our society due to it having immense power over the users of social media. Moreover, it has shed the light on the stereotypes imbedded behind the concept of taking selfies, for it was more accepted when considered for females and not males. What was unique about this observation was that it has revealed that selfies are a sensitive issue between people, and even though it is nothing but a simple act, its consequences are far more complex and serious and requires more awareness.
References:
A.Britton. Selfitis. Independent. Retrieved from :http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/selfitis-selfies-obsession-real-condition-social-media-narcissism-research-notthingham-trent-a8112066.html
J.Ita-as, 2015. 5 reasons why selfies can be good for you. Asian Journal. Retrieved from : http://asianjournal.com/lifestyle/5-reasons-why-selfies-can-be-good-for-you/
J.Wright,2017. The real reason men hate women taking selfies. New York Times. Retrieved from : https://nypost.com/2017/11/11/the-real-reason-men-hate-women-taking-selfies/
K.Wellace, 2014. Who takes more selfies: Women or men? CNN. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/living/parents-selfies-women-over-40-study/index.html
R.Locke, n.d. Why Selfies Do More Harm Than Good. LifeHack. Retrieved from: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/why-selfies-more-harm-than-good.html
