Hate selfie sticks, or just young women having fun?
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Version 0 of 1. Another day, another pretentious proclamation that the selfie stick is the last frontier of narcissism. Or some lazy characterisation like that. Following hot on the tail of Coachella, Lollapalooza and Soundwave, music festival Splendour in the Grass has announced a ban on the selfie stick. Like other music festivals, Splendour cites safety concerns but the first line of its statement to Triple J says “Splendour says no to narcissism”, (Soundwave referred to them as “wands of narcissism”) joining the very long line of people and events which have chosen to lazily dismiss anyone who takes a photo of themselves as self-obsessed. What exactly is it about selfies that raises the ire of people who have built themselves lofty pedestals from which to dictate to people what is correct and acceptable behaviour? I don’t understand what is so inherently wrong with the selfie. Yet another photo of a beach or a sunset is much more boring than a selfie. I like seeing what my friends in different corners of the country, on the other side of the globe, and even a couple of suburbs away from me look like that day. I would much rather see a photo of my sister in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge than just another photo of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Years down the track a photo of you wearing [insert some cliched festival fashion here but definitely NOT an Indian headdress] in the muddy fields of Byron Bay is going to elicit more memories than a blurry photo of Damon Albarn on stage, or a photo of a painted trash can taken at an ironic angle. There’s no scowling when people ask someone else to take their photo, so why the scorn when people take the photo themselves? Is it the confidence of people who take selfies that irks others so much? Not only do I enjoy looking at selfies of my friends and family, I enjoy that they like what they look like. Yes the chin may be tilted just so, and the lighting divine, but most people who post a selfie like what they look like in that photo. In an age of faux empowerment, I think it’s worth celebrating people who, even if it just for a couple of minutes, don’t hate their face. Even better if they’re having a good time while not hating their face. The glory of not hating your face brings me to women, specifically young women, who are the unspoken target of all this selfie stick scorn. Young women are by no means the only people to take selfies, or use selfie sticks, but they are among the most prolific on social media. When people are criticising selfie sticks as ridiculous, I cannot help but feel the current of dismissiveness is flowing towards young women for being silly and vain by daring to take photos of themselves. Young women taking control of their image and not being ashamed of how they look is after all a thing to be feared, and deriding the selfie stick is just another way of shutting them down. Ban selfies sticks for being safety hazards, ban selfie sticks for obstructing views of the stage but don’t pretend you are somehow superior to people who want photos of themselves and their friends at music festivals by labelling them narcissistic. |