My daughter was just over a year when she took her first selfie. It was an accident. She was playing with the camera when it ‘clicked’ and out came a photo. When she saw the image, she was thrilled! It was as if she was looking at herself for the first time. She stared at it for the longest time, and whenever she asked for the phone after that, it was to see herself. It wasn’t vanity, just pure curiosity. She saw and recognized herself in the image. Now, when I see the endless selfies on social media, I genuinely wonder what they are for, is it a social commentary on our lives, a way of recording our existence, we see therefore we are? Or is it just vanity, we like to see ourselves. I take selfies, my Instagram has many, but I still don’t understand why I take them.
We barely ever see ourselves, and we’ll never see ourselves the way others do. We may check a mirror or take a selfie or apply makeup but we rarely spend time really looking at ourselves. The first time I remember doing it was when I started Bikram Yoga, and for 90 minutes, I had to watch myself. I saw what I looked like when I was frustrated, annoyed, excited and sweaty. It made me really think if I like who I am, if I love my body as it is, how to be comfortable with who I was in that moment and not be anxious to be more. Looking in the mirror was a study of self rather a primping and prodding to make me look better. Watching myself then seemed the most authentic view of self. There was no pretense, no smizing (as defined by America’s Top Model), no fish face, just me. As fleeting as the memory was, it seemed to be a more lasting impression of who I am than any selfie.
When I think back on my own memories, the ones I have been most fascinated me are not on instagram or any other social media sites, and I’m glad they are not. My memory has preserved them in a way that is imbued with the emotional fact of the moment rather than the actual truth. I imagine if I saw pictures of my children’s birthdays, I would concentrate on the non-essentials like how I looked, which people were present and how alien the babies looked. Right now, the memories of the moments are full of joy, tenderness and an overwhelming amount of love and that’s how I wish for them to remain.
We have devoted our time to recording our lives rather than experiencing them. I often wonder how much we lose out on when we are plugged behind our phones taking pictures or recording videos. Are we being truly authentic when we are recording for prosperity rather than living the moment. I know the moment I pull out my camera, I become more conscious of my gut being out, looking funny, not looking at the camera and a plethora of other things, that the image becomes more significant than the experience. On my (very limited snaps) I make more of an effort to sound smart or funny or both at the same time, worried that people will not find me interesting enough to follow if I don’t pre-script every moment. I become more absorbed in Instagram layouts and Snapchat content than whatever experience in front of me. That makes the memory I am trying to capture inauthentic. It is staged and rehearsed and awkward. It is not the real me I actually want to capture, but some pretend social media personality that badly mirrors my everyday self.
I intend to continue to selfie and capture moments on frame and video and I hope the process can capture a more authentic self. I will appreciate and maybe even poke fun at the seriousness of the vanity, I want to use these memory capture devices as a tool to remember the moment but not necessarily the emotional energy, that I retain for my memory as imperfect and fleeting as it is.
