Exploring our selfies, exploring ourselves

Today I will be exploring Instagram as a photographic platform and the special feminist potential it has for young women attempting to formulate a self-hood.

Young people - especially young women - have been tirelessly condemned as self-centered, vain, superficial and over-involved with their technologies. I believe that these arguments leveled against us fail to recognize the ways in which technology has become integrated with daily life and communication, with how you know and mediate yourself.

The Selfie is the epitome of self-involvement; it is the distilled photographic interaction between the camera and the self. Model and photographer become one, flowing through the photographic apparatus. I argue, though, that self-involvement can be a good thing. Obviously, taken too far it becomes ignorance, apathy and true self-centeredness. But a healthy involvement with your own being, your psyche, your ontological presence in the world can lead to examinations of your prejudices, beliefs and feelings. I have looked at a selfie, thinking how bad I look, only to realize that I am engaging in something much broader, a political discourse about beauty, the value of myself as an object to be looked at, and where I should find my true self-worth. Self-involvement means understanding who we are in the world around us.

Instagram, as an almost purely photographic realm (though captions are a fine art in themselves), provides a new, unique way of probing this epistemological journey. A selfie turns into something much more powerful when posted.

Photographs, since their invention, have been used to attempt to access the truth, especially of the Other. Photography, as theorist Roland Barthes claims, has "referential contingency," meaning the person in the photo must have been there, and we look for some essence of them, some trace of their living being in their photos. He even touches on, in his book, Camera Lucida, an experience we are all familiar with: finding a picture that you feel perfectly encapsulates your friend's personality. Sometimes, though, it's your own being you see on the screen - you encounter yourself in a photo and, for once, feel like it says something about you beyond that you existed in that space at that time. That feeling is an extremely powerful one that we, and the bashers of the selfie, take for granted.

The world is unfriendly for the young female psyche. Online hate messages, inappropriate pictures sent unsolicited, sexual assault threats abounding, and the ever-present media telling us we should be skinnier, prettier, taller, girlier, more self-disciplined, better dressed, more sexually active, less sexually active. Girls know, from a young age, that the digital space around them , may be about them, but it is certainly not for them.

The hatred of the selfie must be based on the presupposition that the masculine look has more truth in it than the feminine look, that men can mediate images of women and create truth. A male image of a woman (see: every art museum ever) is called a masterpiece, a true, beautiful vision of femininity as it is. This means that belief is founded on the assertion that women have no right to know themselves or mediate images of their own femininity - and certainly not without being called silly, dumb, or vain.

On Instagram, though, a young woman can easily flip this process on its head. Most phones have a camera and Insta is totally free, making it an unbelievably democratic platform. You can take pictures however you want, wherever you want, with or without makeup; you can express your gender and sexuality however you want (barring explicit photos). You can create an archive that shows the multiplicities of the female self, how it is performed differently day-to-day, moment-to-moment, breaking free of the perfect, still, silent image of a woman touted by museums and advertisements alike. The power of curatorship also comes along with an account - deciding who can see pictures, whose pictures you want to see, when your photos go up and in what order.

Young women can finally take back their images and the fundamental representational power of taking, mediating, and circulating them. Of course, no platform is ever safe from being unnecessarily flagged or hacked, but, more so than the rest of the internet, Instagram creates a safer space in which women can express themselves, see themselves differently, and connect with other like-minded young women. I have Instagram role models who keep me strong in the face of intolerance and hateful messages, who remind me to be supportive of other women but also of myself.

One selfie may not start a revolution, but a generation of women who love themselves unabashedly and represent themselves how they see fit certainly could.

~UCG~

Real-Talk Recommendations

Who is this girl? Why should I believe her recommendations besides the fact that I intuitively feel she has excellent taste?

YOU SHOULDN'T!

Go listen to, read, and examine these things yourself. I give you my lady-word that they will rock your socks.

Podcasts

Call Your Girlfriend - This is my number one podcast and it's only fault is that it comes out every two weeks and not every hour! Two hilarious long-distance best friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman,  cover everything from breaking news in Period Science to Pop Culture happenings with lots of knowledge, sharp humor and the kind of priceless riffing only two besties can produce. 

Throwing Shade - Self-claimed "Feminasty" Erin Gibson and "Homosensual" Bryan Safi explore Feminist and LGBTQI issues "with much less respect than they deserve" (according to their intro) - meaning the irreverent humor you would expect from two professional comedians exploring the completely absurd world we live in. 

Songs

"Reflections" - MisterWives 

Starts off a little slow, but soon you will be scaring everyone on the street with your self-assured strut!

"My Garden" - Kat Dahlia

A dark, lush sound for a thinly veiled sexual allegory. She does use the word, bitch, but I can't throw rocks at someone's reclamation of that word. On the other hand, I have to admire the lyrical way she explores her desire and challenges ideas of (ugh) "purity"

Reading Materials

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 

This Marvel comic, as I explained in my welcome post, is one of my new favorites! She is funny, eccentric, and admires her sizable booty/secret squirrel tail in the mirror with body-love and sass. Not to mention she literally saves the world....

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

This small book from 1973 explores how seeing is not as innocent a process as it seems. Berger makes brilliant insights about how women are transformed into images and alienated from themselves by the way they are forced to observe themselves and make themselves picturesque. His writing style is easy to read and every sentence will change the way you see seeing, vision and how women are imaged in art and advertising.

I hope you enjoy the recommendations - have a safe, fun, feminist week y'all!

~UCG~

Welcome Everyone

Hey y'all!

I want to welcome you to my blog, Unbeatable Curl Girl!

My title is based off the Marvel comic series Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, about an unlikely superhero who uses her wits and furry friends to pull off unthinkable victories in the name of Justice. She is kind of the unofficial mascot for this blog as she stands for what I will deal with in these posts. She is a young woman who refuses to be put down by society or told she is ridiculous or trivial. She lives her life according to her own rules and is proud of it - from her unconventional friends, to her bodacious non-conforming bod, to her social awkwardness. She's not perfect, but she is strong, brave and kind - a real hero.

This blog will be mostly about feminism and its intersection with art, literature, comics and pop culture. I will recommend things that I find to Feminist-Friendly and constructively critique the things I find not so Feminist Friendly from podcasts to art exhibitions to comic books. I will also be using this blog as a way to explore some of the issues young women face in today's world like, body image, the professional world, tense social interactions and more!

I don't claim expert status - I have been a Feminist since I can remember (thanks, sis!) and have used my education as a way to delve into these issues, learn as much as possible and form my critical approach to the world and all its complexities. I am always learning more and I believe that any good feminist or any thinker, really, always should be.  I write from my theoretical knowledge, experience as a woman and what I learn from my peers, friends and family. Objective Truth Claims NOT welcome! Let's be real - everything is a social construct, including this blog - so let's have fun!

Always in the name of laughing and learning,
Unbeatable Curl Girl