The Infamous Selfie

Have you ever taken a "selfie"? Do you know what a selfie is?
Have you ever been teased like me for taking selfies? 

Apparently there is a definition for selfies now:
A selfie is a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Selfies are often associated with social networking.

Here are a few examples:

One of my first Selfies ever! Someone please tell me what I was thinking with that hair!?

There are selfies in the BEAN in Chicago!

There are cartoon selfies.

There are selfies with doggies with writing on them!

And cold weather selfies.

And the most up to date selfie-taken 2 days ago. The most popular of selfies: THE MIRROR SELFIE

I guess as an avid Instagrammer, It cracks me up that I have been taking selfies for a long time but didn't know their proper term. What else is funny is that selfie on autocorrect is SELFISH. So that's why I am really writing this post, to try to pound out some reasoning behind the selfie. Is it all vanity? I don't think so.

One thing that can be tricky first off is comments. I know a lot of people don't put themselves out there because they feel inferior to others. Positive comments can tend to "puff" us up, and negative or no comments at all can tend to bring us down down down. But I still encourage you to try a selfie if you are wanting to. The only way I embrace my uniqueness is by seeing myself through God's eyes--if I didn't do that, I would never post selfies! It's important to be comfortable in our own skin, and that takes time. The media hasn't given us a comfortable place to do so. There are too many unrealistic standards that we measure ourselves up against. I beg of you to not play that game. You are beautifully and uniquely made. We are not beautiful or attractive based on what the world says is. It's that simple.

My second thoughts on the selfie when I first started blogging and Instagramming were just that--vanity.

I felt awkward and selfish posting pics of myself, so I didn't do it very often. I wasn't even confident enough to do so. Low self-esteem anyone!? It wasn't until one comment from one of my followers on Instagram. I posted a selfie after not doing one for a while and she was like, "I'm so happy to see your face again!" And then I noticed comments like, "There you are, I love seeing your face!" And after a while I'd notice that there were people I was following on Facebook or Instagram that would hardly ever post selfies, but when they did, I loved it!

I simply adored seeing the faces of people I followed! And people didn't mind seeing me! I think to myself, "That's what she looks like, cool!" It's sort of comforting.
 Don't get me wrong, I think it can be overkill. More on that later. 
When I would see selfies of people that I didn't even know what they looked like, it was like seeing the whole picture so to speak. It was like a comfort. I want to see my friends and people that I follow. I realized that with the combination of others appreciating seeing me and me feeling the same way about seeing them, that we all just want to connect. We take selfies for the most part because it's a relational thing to do. People want to share their lives! With social media, most of us don't know or haven't met in person, or if we have, it was back in HS or something.

One way or another I think people are just trying to connect and share their life. Can we go overboard sometimes? Yes. Can some of it be vanity? Yes. Do people post selfies because they want to show off their cute outfits? Yes. Have I posted a selfie because I think I look decent that day and want to show the world? Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe......................

I believe we are all hungry for community, relationship and connections and the selfie is just one other way to build that bridge. So next time you see a selfie, give someone the benefit of the doubt, we all have a level of vanity, but for the most part, I think it's innocent and a way to get to know one another better, and that should be our goal. We all share our lives on some level, and the selfie is an excellent tool to do so.