Stop Telling Us How to Take Our Selfies

I mean it.  Stop it.

I bet you think you’re helping us, right?

Because selfies are going wild these days and everyone seems to be taking them. Tons of them.

You’ve gotta reign us in and let us know the do’s and don’ts of taking selfies.

But you aren’t helping us.

You are shaming us.

Everywhere I look online there are articles informing us of how it is acceptable to take a selfie.  Some are even on websites that share great articles otherwise but not about this!  Telling us how to pose, how and when to take selfies, what is too much or too little. Things like:

• Don’t get cocky, don’t use them for attention.
• Know which poses are considered passé!
• Don’t be so serious, don’t overdo it!
• No double chins! No one wants to see that!
• Fix Your Face

Reading them, all I hear is this:

You are not enough. Make yourself look like enough.  Don’t show your bad side.  Be ashamed of your bad side. You are not enough but don’t be too much okay? Don’t be uncool. Don’t try to get too much attention. Hide yourself. Tell the story you think other people want to see.

It’s enough to make you put down your camera and never try to take a selfie isn’t it. 

Sure there are a few great tips in there, but every time I read these articles I’m just floored by the way they are written.  We are being told at every turn that selfies are only okay if you _____________ (don’t share too many, don’t share bad ones, don’t try too hard, etc).

They are also instructions, rooted in diet-culture with the singular goal of getting our bodies to look smaller and as much as possible, fit into normative body standards.

I mean, I could teach you all these tips but I don’t want to and I won’t. Becasue I want more than that for you.

Now, how-to posts are generally great and yes indeed I write tip posts here on the blog too but they aren’t about taking flattering photos or ‘doing something right’ but are about welcoming in more love through the camera. These above make me mad because they aren’t trying to share technical information or help us learn about ourselves.  They are straight up telling us what to do, what is acceptable.  They are telling us to go outside of ourselves in order to ‘do it right’.

That is one of my biggest problems with the critique of selfies, the assumption that we are doing it for others not for ourselves. Because doing it for ourselves would be self-centred or narcissistic right (another MAJOR critique of selfies, right)! It’s like we can’t win.

While I think some of the culture of selfies these days is outside of my comfort zone, I’m floored by how we are so blatantly being controlled around how we should or shouldn’t take a selfie.

It makes me want to scream and this is why.  These articles are full of shaming.

Shaming our selfie taking.

Shaming our bodies or assuming we should hate our bodies.

Shaming our photos or our reasoning behind taking selfies.

Because here is the thing that I think many people don’t realize, especially those people writing the articles: Selfies are a way for us to decide how we want to see ourselves, not the way you think we should. 

By telling us these things you are taking away our voice, our expression.  You are writing our narrative for how to take a selfie and disempowering us from telling our stories, our way.

When I started taking self-portraits, I found that for the first time in my life I could create a space where outside voices weren’t in charge of how I saw myself.  It allowed me to quiet down all of the external voices so I could finally hear my own and was deeply healing.  Which is why I want other people to have the right to create that space for themselves too.  Because you are worthy of having that space in your life, where you get to hear your own voice and value it. 

If you haven’t taken one of my classes and just arrived at this site you might be thinking “Hey wait…don’t you teach people how to take selfies though?” and indeed my classes are about taking selfies, but that’s why this is so important to me.  In the classes I don’t teach you how to take selfies like me, or how to take selfies like anyone else for that matter…you are invited to discover your story, your voice and what lights you up when you pick up the camera.  We all have our own unique voice that deserves to be heard.

Part of the process of taking selfies is learning how to do just that, to tell our story. To figure out why we want to take selfies and what we want to share with the world. Even if that involves taking a LOT of selfies, ones that fit both inside and outside of the box of what you think we should be doing.

That’s why I think you need to stop telling me, and all of us, how to take our selfies.

Stop telling us how to tell our own story.

Stop telling us how to pose for the most ‘flattering’ selfie.

Stop telling us how to let ourselves shine the best, how to fit into a certain type of beauty.

Stop assuming that you know why we are taking selfies.

Because we are not doing this for you.  We are doing this for ourselves.

Instead, why don’t we:

Love ourselves as we are right now rather than hiding our perceived flaws.

Explore different angles and see what we like, not just the angle we are told to.

Trust (yes, even trusting teens who take selfies) that we are using it as a tool for self-discovery.

Use it as a tool to see ourselves with kindness, not critique….from others or ourselves.

Now if you don’t mind…I’m going to tune out those kind of articles until they improve (and invite you too as well) and get back to the business of telling my story, my way!