The Endless Doom of the Selfie

When I started this blog my hope was to do one blogpost a week reflecting on some new level of understanding so what have I discovered since my last blog? That December is an awful time to start a project. There are a million parties, tasks to do, things to organise and slowly but surely blogging has gone to the back of the list. Now normally I would berate myself about his but I'm trying not to do that anymore so fuck it. All I'll say is sorry for the delay (not that you've noticed!) and here is this weeks offering:

Selfies.

As long as I can remember I've hated getting my photograph taken which is quite difficult when your mothers camera documents every waking moment. Nowadays, half of my life is lived on social media mainly because, being a dirty immigrant, this means family at home can see what's going on in my life en masse without making a million phone calls. However, a big part of living this way are photographs and being the hip hop happening person I am that includes selfies.

Selfies are awful. For starters, it takes about twenty goes before you get everything looking right. Your face. The background. Your face in the background. The lighting. Waiting on the people in the background to feck off. And after all that and you're finally happy, you push the button which is impossible with one hand but you've done it. Taken the perfect selfie that you're happy with. Then your camera goes and flips everything you've just taken. WHAT IS THAT?? WHY DOES IT DO THAT? So then you try again. And again. And after about 7 photos you just go with the first one you took.

Then, there are the selfies your friends take on a night out meaning you wake up to being tagged in hundreds of photographs all of which are horrendous. You click through one by one looking at your fat arm in one, your stomach looking way bigger in the dress than you thought, what was my hair doing?! Instead of admiring all your friends and laughing about what you were all doing when the photo was taken and knowing that, obviously, you shouldn't look your best because you've just downed 4 shots of tequila after many... many... many glasses of wine.

Months later, these photos pop back up on your facebook memories and you think, “Wow. I looked great back then. Look how skinny I was. Love what my hair was doing. Aw I miss those guys! We should meet up soon.”

My vow moving forward is to try and reflect on selfies in the present how I normally do months later. To talk about the positive straight away instead of looking at the fat arm. December has been an awful time to start doing this as there are lots of photos popping up in all of which I have drank and ate copious amounts before they've been taken. But if I can't do it now, then when will I?

So this is me as I am now writing this blog post. The first one I took. Aren't my glasses great?