A Selfie, a Selfie! My Kingdom for a Selfie!

When is the last time that you had the opportunity to display in person yourself or your
abilities and ideas to a large group of people, in hopes that you might impress that group of
people? We humans live in a crowded world that reserves those rewarding moments of fame for
the few; multitudes go through life without having any celebrity or fuel for their self-conscious
and insecure sides. However, the creation of the front-facing camera allowed its users to score
the selfie that would earn a plethora of likes and thus assuage these feelings of insecurity and
self-consciousness. As these following pictures show, the selfie for many is a tool for satisfying
social insecurities and for achieving that feeling of worth and social acceptance.

The selfie on the left shows a young woman pointing to herself with her thumb while
looking at her camera with a somewhat conceited expression on her face. This combination of
the thumb point and the better-than-thou facial expression communicates to her viewers that she
is powerful, that she is cool, and that all of those who set eyes on her should adore her and want
what she has. All of this being said, the viewer can recognize that she is most likely in her room,
that this room is messy, and that she is probably lonely during this occasion (it seems strange for

someone to take a selfie in her room while she has friends around), all reasons for why someone
is not cool, not powerful, and not adorable.
Justin Biebers selfie shows Bieber flaunting his youthful and almost-naked body. Bieber
wants his viewers to stare in awe at his sexy torso while they admire his cool ink and accept his
choice of jewelry. He stares down the camera with his cap turned back and with a look of
nonchalance that must make the typical stressed-and-overwhelmed viewer respect and envy him
at the same time. These features probably scream to most viewers that Bieber is unique, that he is
manly if not Zeus-like, and that he is cool. Viewers with these thoughts in mind will most likely
respect Bieber and give him plenty of attention.
There are however deeper reasons for why the two individuals have these unique features
in their selfies. A study regarding selfies and conducted by coupon-app VoucherCloud surveyed
2,071 UK males and females between ages eighteen and thirty and found that most of the
subjects posted selfies to get attention from likes and comments (Blades). Both the young
woman and Justin Bieber want viewers to have a constant image of them as confident and hip
individuals and want their viewers to give them attention, in the form of likes and comments, for
such qualities. If people just wanted to reach out to others on social media via pictures, surely
they would send pictures that resembled how they look on a typical day, not how they look with
unusual facial expressions, adjusted lighting, uncomfortable body twists and bends, and so on.
Sometimes insecurity and self-consciousness are not remedied by just a modified selfie
posted online. On February 7, Twitter account BeautyintheBag tweeted, Are #Selfies Driving
People to Get #PlasticSurgery? (Beauty in the Bag), referring to the surge in cosmetic surgery
during the era of the selfie. Insecure social media users in their minds have to appear more
beautiful and more perfect every time they take pictures of themselves, resulting in the use of

blemish-hiding filters, powerful editing software, and even permanent physical reconstructions.
Justin Bieber may think that his ears are too pointy. For this reason he might purchase ear
surgery to change his ears. The young woman on the left might think that her hair is unattractive
to many, thus she may change her hairstyle drastically. These reconstructions would probably
increase the attractiveness of each selfie, resulting in more likes and more views. If this increase
in cosmetic surgery is truly caused by (or heavily correlated with) the outbreak of selfies, it
seems impossible for anyone to truly believe that insecurity is not a major reason for the surgery
and more importantly for the selfies.
Pictures say one-thousand words each and can be very refreshing and stimulating to the
eye and the mind. However, when a person traps himself or herself behind a camera for hours at
a time, taking hundreds if not thousands of selfies (of which only a few will be posted online),
there is a grave problem at hand for that person and for humanity. Those who are self-conscious
about their physical appearances and who crave attention from others have taken over the selfie
and use it every day in hopes of assuaging their growing insecurities, even while their lives are
being wasted before their eyes.

Works Cited

Beauty In The Bag (BeautyintheBag). "Are #Selfies Driving People to Get #PlasticSurgery? >
http://t.co/OAG7KAzcrS via @PEOPLEMag. 07 Feb 2015, 23:15 UTC. Tweet.
Blades, Nathan. "Selfie Addiction Is Surely a Sign of Low-self Esteem, Study Reveals." Daily
Star. N.p., 18 Sept. 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.