The year of the #selfie

By Laila Muhammad | Last updated: Nov 25, 2014 - 12:04:43 PM

“Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.” ~Lady Gaga

Okay, I get it; you want to showcase your accomplishments to your friends, family, and the world—nothing wrong with that, social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat were designed for this very idea of sharing information, mainly pictures.

Just had a new baby, what better way to let friends and family see your bundle of joy simultaneously by instantly uploading it or tweeting a picture of him? Graduated from school, congrats, shout it from the world, or simply change your profile pic. Jumped the broom, went on vacation, or ran a marathon, by all means put yourself on blast. I love to see people sharing their lives and accomplishments, I love seeing people happy in love, and those adorable cat pics are absolutely adorable.

But it seems as if we have traded our family and group photos in for selfies. Selfie is described as a self-shot photo, usually taken with a mobile phone and posted online to social media sites. It was officially added to the Oxford dictionary in 2013. I consider myself in the photography field, so I know a thing or two about pictures. My only gripe with #selfies is that we aren’t sharing noteworthy things. Sure your hair is pretty, that tattoo sleeve is interesting, and your lips are full, but what message and image are you trying to present? If we really saw you in public, would we recognize you? I mean for real, Photoshop does wonders. How many of us are actually sharing photos of friends and family in our newsfeed? No. We are sharing photos of the most important person—ourselves.

And what exactly does it take to get that perfect #selfie? How many times do you take a photo at different angles, adjust the lighting, pursing your lips in the right way, and meddling with your hair to get the perfect shot? How many takes did it actually take for you to get the perfect picture? How much time did it take? And better yet; was it worth it?

But do not fret you are not alone in your self-absorbed reality of the beauty and importance of yourself. I was in the same boat, taking eight pics of myself to get the right shot to post on social media, to see how many likes I would get, and read the comments of folks telling me how beautiful I was. Yes, I loved the attention, and compliments, who doesn’t? But when my #selfies became more frequent, at least two per day, I realized I was craving attention. I thought I was secure with my image, yet I devoted so much extra time per day fixing my hair and makeup to look good, to put out a certain image, but for whom? Who was I trying to impress? Clearly thinking about the 5,000 friends who I’ve never met in real life put everything in perspective when I look back.

But this is more than just my observation, data from Samsung proves that millions of selfies are shared every day on various media platforms. They make up one-third of all photos taken by people between 18-24 years of age. According to www.digitalinformationworld.com, which posts stats on various social media. One report says celebrities love selfies, too. Out of all Twitter celebrities, Miley Ray Cyrus posted the most with 121 selfies. Tyra Banks posted 62 selfies, Kendall Jenner 35 selfies and a slew of others. But ironically, President Obama, Oprah, and rapper 50 Cent didn’t post any #selfies. So what does that tell you? So as 2014 is coming to a close and we are preparing to gather with family and friends over the holiday season, I pray that we will take pictures with our friends and family, great meals we prepared, and forego a #selfie for one day; it’s simply vanity when you think about it.

So let’s decide to not post any selfies but instead post photos of the work that we do, the homeless we help to feed, the causes that we support, and the marches for cures that affect us all. And let 2015 be the year of the #unselfish.

May Allah God bless us all with the courage to accept our own and be ourselves.

(Laila Muhammad is a Final Call production assistant, writer, and videographer based in Chicago. Follow her @liberatedvoices.blogspot.com, to purchase her eBook “Coffee makes you Black … so pour me some more,” go to http://www.lailamuhammad1.wordpress.com.)

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