Selfie And Narcissism

Oxford English Dictionaries’ definition of selfie defines it as a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website. Selfies are often discussed as the negative consequence of capitalist consumer-based consumption, and appears to represent to many people a critique of youth who have become a part of the troubling consumerist fixation and the superficiality of self-imaging. There are many gendered implications that reproduce dominant ideologies, that link young women, self-obsession, narcissism and what could be described as an insatiable consumerism, that “according to Acocella (2014), has “made Americans, especially women, dependant on commercial products,” (Murray …show more content…
In its most pessimistic description, to take selfies is to exploit yourself in a display of self-promotion. Freud’s ideas of narcissism was concerned with the relation between the ego and external objects and from this we might infer that a popular opinion among philosophers and culture critics is that selfie taking is a means of achieving validation and …show more content…
Cameras range from iPhones to digital cameras just as the qualities range from pixilated to great clarity. What unifies these varities of images is the shared fascination with fashion; an embraced narcissism that turns into high culture, and leisure-based consumption into a virtue (Murray 2015). Fashion plays a huge role in the culture of selfie taking. Many images circulating on social media feature young women dressing up and altering their hair and makeup. The intentions, if any, for these images vary greatly, but as with many Tumblr bloggers that will be discussed, the aim of these social agents are to achieve some sort of recognition, to make themselves present, and to create unique styles and identities that wouldn’t be represented or acknowledged