Selfies Shape the World. Selfies, Healthies, Usies, Felfies…

Selfies Shape the World. Selfies, Healthies, Usies, Felfies…





Bent Fausing

A^{ssociate Professor, WSQ, PhD} The mirror is one of the pivotal

innovations that became widespread during the Renaissance and puts the self and the subject at the centre. The same is true of the so-called selfie – which, since it became popular in the second half of 2013, has become divided into various subcategories.

The first hashtag of a selfie on Instagram originated from January 2011. Since then, selfies have been hashtagged 57 million times on Instagram. In 2012, the word was named by Time Magazine as one of twelve new, breakthrough words, and it was voted word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary in 2013. The use of the word rose 17,000 percent in 2013, according to the dictionary.

Like the mirror, the selfie puts the subject and the self at the centre. Our need to see ourselves may be seen in the light of the development of self-media, which have also created new forms of selfies. The use of the word ' selfie ' rose by 17,000 percent in 2013

New categories of the selfie include the healthy selfie, the healthie, the couple's selfie, the usie, and the farmer-selfie, the felfie. Basically, it is still about mirroring oneself and seeing oneself but also being seen by others. Communication is only achieved if others see the image, particularly via social media.

Selfies are now no longer just something young people do. Even the Danish Prime Minister is in on it, and selfies were featured in such broad-appeal television programmes as Aftenshowet [The Evening Show] and TV2 's review of events in 2013. In the first programme, people were supposed to send in selfies; in the other programme, they were supposed to take a selfie with the person who sat next to them on the show. The selfie is becoming a fixed ingredient at christenings, confirmations, weddings, anniversaries, illness, death, funerals, and so on. This says something about our relationship to the self, our image of the self and our aspirations to see ourselves – and each of the various subtypes adds its own nuance.

I shall examine the need to see oneself through what I call the development of self-media in order to deal with the new forms that have emanated from the selfie. I shall also examine the selfie and its mutations in the light of a well-known selfie and the complex feelings that selfie genres may generate.

Selfies – a threat to society




According to this article from the newspaper BT, the Thai psychiatrist Panpimol Wipulakorn believes that selfies produce emotional problems that lead to societal problems. Therefore, he calls upon young Thais to avoid becoming overly dependent on selfies. Whether they are listening is another matter.

ThThe development of self-media. The function of mirroring

Wherever they may be, people look at mirror images of themselves every day. In front of the mirror in the morning, during the course of the day in the bathroom, and in images mirrored in window panes and shiny surfaces around town. Mirror images permeate our private and public spaces. Every human being is familiar with his or her entire bodily appearance including facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Our creation of and experience with this appearance is embedded as an essential component of our conscious and unconscious knowledge.

It is hardly possible to imagine a world without mirrors and the loss of familiarity with the self that such a world would mean. We know that vagrants and homeless people can lose the internal image of their own appearance, so they can no longer immediately recognise themselves in a mirror.

I am mirrored, therefore I am

The chemist and writer Primo Levi recounts the human features of the mirror in more than one sense in surroundings in which humanity itself has disappeared: "A young prisoner at Auschwitz sees two women looking at themselves in a mud puddle. There are no mirrors in the camp – in order to prevent suicide attempts [!]. They turn their backs to him, they have a scarf around their heads, and their clothes are hanging in tatters. He looks carefully at the muddy water and recognizes some features. They are his cousins, bringing him news from the family." (If This Is a Man 1987: 10). Can there be any hope in seeing a mirror image of yourself when you have ended up in an inferno like a Nazi concentration camp? Through the mirror and the mirror image, you can see in your face the humanity so lacking elsewhere in the camp. Even the elemental conditions for consciousness that are in seeing and, observing oneself and then, perhaps, achieving clarity are essential to stress in conjunction with the sense of vision, mirrors and visual media.

In another concentration camp, prisoners managed to hide a small, old mirror with bad silvering. In the evening, the mirror was secretly passed from prisoner to prisoner like a sacred relic in which everyone could identify their faces and thereby once again try to get one of the most important landmarks for the human being into their consciousness through the mirror. In places where all humanity seems to have disappeared, the mirror returns to prisoners the essential image of humanity, the face.

The Renaissance. Self-consciousness emerges

We have this knowledge of the body and the face not only as constructed from early childhood through the active exploration of the world and through our use of the body and the senses. We also have a mirror consciousness, understood as a concept of our external self via reflection in mirrors, which is linked to the possibility of self-reflection. We have, so to speak, a view of ourselves from the outside, and yet it is from the inside, because it is ourselves – from the perspective of ourselves. A self-duplication: We look at ourselves with our own eyes and not those of others. We are both subject and object in the mirror.

Our self and self-consciousness has become more and more prominent since the Renaissance. It is also during the Renaissance that individuality starts to appear in small portraits, through individual tales and readings of books, and through the invention of the mirror. In all these new media characterised by the formation of a discrete screen around the individual's perception, it is the individual, the self, which creates and is created in the encounter with the media. A single human being in Western culture is not, first and foremost, part of a tribe or a family as is the case, for example, in the Arab world. We are, first and foremost, ourselves, and the pronoun branding of our time expresses this: MySpace, YouTube, IPhone, IPad…
Self Portrait: I see myself

Of course, this is due to the interaction of many things: work, religion, upbringing, schooling, and much else. It is also supported by our image culture in contrast to the Arab world's ornamental visualisations. The images around us also mirror human beings in their way and help them to a consciousness of themselves. Self-consciousness. The democratization of the mirror is, presumably, the factor that has most extended and confirmed our self and individuality.

At the same time, with the invention of the mirror, small easel paintings began to take over from large murals. The reduced format and increased liberation and secularisation of motifs in relation to earlier divine laws encouraged a different technique in the artist and a different gaze from the observer. Both the technique and the observation became much more intimate and individual. The same thing applies to the self-portrait, which arises at the same time as the mirror. The mirror and the self-portrait accentuate the same new meanings in Western society: to view oneself, to create a reflection of oneself and thereby think about oneself and one’s situation.

Optical media and the mass experience

With the mirror follows yet another medium that is directly linked to the invention and dissemination of the glass and the mirror, i.e. the camera, which is made possible by optical lenses produced from glass. The camera could create mirror images, portraits, and self-portraits. Masses of them.

In the wake of the emergence of the camera and its optics came other optical media – film, TV, video, web-cam and smartphones – which were particularly well-suited to reproduce the face: the close-up. The photograph and related visual and audio-visual media were part of a society that turned toward mass production and reproduction as well as mass communication. This new production and communication provided mass experiences and, through this, provided for many people easy and inexpensive access to see themselves and, therefore, attain self-identity, as opposed to exclusive portrait paintings. As in a mirror.

The democratisation of the mirror is also the democratisation of the self. To see one’s self, one’s own I, frequently as part of a daily routine contributes greatly to the elaboration and nuance of human self-consciousness. The dissemination of the mirror to everyday life has helped the formation of the peculiar subjectivity that constitutes an essential feature of our culture. - But, of course, in this individuality also lurk self-sufficiency, narcissism and its dialectical reflection, exhibitionism.

Healthy selfies: the healthie

The aforementioned mirror media also include selfies and their mutations of which one of the most widespread is the healthie. Within selfies, the so-called fitness-selfie dominates Facebook and Instagram. It is, therefore, no wonder that they have their own subgroup with its own name, the healthie. Healthy selfies, if you will. Healthies have quickly become a huge trend in social media – especially on Instagram, where a large number of more or

Healthies are about the pursuit of the perfect body. Therefore, they do not have the spontaneity and irony of selfies. Healthies are images of a fixed identity and do not embrace the playfulness with identity that is found in many selfies
less creative fitness hashtags open up a world of sweat, flat stomachs, and bulging muscles. At Statigram.dk, a page containing statistics on Instagram, #fit has at the time of this writing 13,930,510 posts, #fitness 27,330,139, #fitfam 5,118,084, #fitfamiliy 110,381, #myfitlifestyle 13,943, and #healthie, as the still new concept it is, 1752 posts. The most commonly used hashtag in 2013 was #love, which has 403,918,620 posts, by way of comparison.

Social media have taken a very clear visual turn in the last four years. Instagram and Pinterest are the biggest social media successes in this period, and Facebook is a major player with Timeline and by acquiring Instagram.

There are three forms of expression particularly suited to being made visible: sexuality, body and sociality. All three are gathered in the healthie. It is the pursuit of the perfect body that is also sexually attractive and which, at the same time precisely because it is perfect, is also a sign of social success.

The successful body

The body is a hard face to the outside world but also an expression of dreams and visions. With its impermanence, however, the body is also vulnerable

That, among other things, separates healthies from selfies. Healthies lack the spontaneity, irony, self-irony, and humour that often characterise the selfie. Selfies are also more playful in and with the fact that they play with their identity, trying to find it or to expand it. If you take healthies, you have already fixed your identity. The body is a success, and you have success. The body is the visible proof that things are going really well. It is often celebrities who initially take healthies and put them up on Instagram and, later, others follow: Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Gisele Bündchen, David Craig ... They all have a perfect and perfectible body. And they know it, and they are not afraid to show it. But are probably afraid of losing it.

The healthie is serious and determined. Sometimes, even pompous. The body is a hard face to the outside world. It becomes a mask that shows: this is how I want to look. But it also shows dreams and visions. In this way, they are vulnerable. It is their dream to achieve and retain the perfect body, but the body is perishable. There is both protection and exposure in the healthie.
The body becomes an expression of the self, the body that becomes the self’s identity, but the soul is missing. On one hand, healthies say a lot about the perfection of the body, but they also say a lot about the lack of a soul. In this way, they carry on the separation of soul and body that has characterised Western culture for many years.

The couple's selfie: the usie

'Two are better than one' might be the brief characterization of a usie. A usie is really just a selfie, but there must be at least two people, preferably in love, in the image. 'Usie' comes from 'usually' and 'usual', and the word is pronounced ' U-she '. It is especially utilised when you care about someone or care very much about doing something.

A usie is a selfie with more than one person. In particular, it is a couple-selfie in which shiny, happy love can be displayed

Originally, a usie referred to people who liked to take selfies not of themselves alone but, rather, of themselves and someone else or many others. "One takes a usie to be silly with friends and have fun taking random pictures of themselves", states the Urban Dictionary (2014). The usie, however, is used more and more as the couple's selfie; it is the loving couple’s version of the selfie. Thus, the two meanings go together; people absolutely love to take selfies, and people absolutely love to take selfies of themselves and their significant others - they take a usie. Usually, in these usies, the couples are completely immersed in their love, they radiate their happiness. It is taken by one of the partners and then loaded onto one of the social media in order to show others how happy they are. .. together. This lovey-dovey version of the usie is also called a smugie.

That’s how you can give selfies a boost

Where it can be said that the selfie, by being posted on a social medium, can create relationships and, through mirroring, becomes ' two ', then the usie shows the ideal state. You are already two. But the usie, like the selfie, is only complete if others see it and thereby confirm one’s identity, relationship, and ‘being in love’.

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez Take a Usie

Famous people also manifest their love with usies

Both the selfie and the usie require communication and reflection. Both take shape in accordance with the mirror matrix that has been laid out in our primary relationships, namely, between mother and child, baby and parents. It is the matrix that all later interaction takes advantage of. Paediatrician and psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott utilises the concepts of 'connection' and 'disconnection' with respect to implementing relationships in accordance with the first basic interaction between mother and child, baby and parents. It may be said that the selfie is an attempt to connect with others; the usie is proof to others that you have connected and are not disconnected.

The farmer's selfie: felfie

Just as farmers have their own dating site, Farmerdating.dk, they also have their own form of selfies through which they can relate, felfies.

It is a farmer-selfie, and it is both a modern tribute to one of our oldest professions and a way to get attention and recognition. Farmers search social media and take selfies with funny faces together with their livestock, a felfie. It was started by the Irish Farmers Journal, which held the first felfie contest last year. It has since become a popular hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram even though the practice of taking felfies – like taking selfies – goes farther back than the hashtag registration.



A 'felfie' is a farmer-selfie. Perhaps, the use of the word will not rise as prodigiously as it did for the 'selfie', but it is definitely on its way up. The Irish Farmers Journal has, among other things, held a felfie competition

Will felfies become in 2014 what selfies were last year? Hardly, although farmers have already attracted a fair share of attention through their poses. Sites such as farmingselfie.com and, here in Denmark, landbrugsavisen.dk are working to legitimise agriculture and the self-portraits by displaying them and telling the stories behind them. The goal, according to the website farmingselfie.com, is to "put a face on the farmers who work to put food on the table."

The Guardian praises felfies for providing a new focus on agricultural life and social

media in general as a way for the modern farmer to fight isolation in the fields. The felfie is proof that farmers are like everyone else and deserve recognition for putting basic foodstuffs on our table.

With felfies, modern farmers can fight isolation and garner recognition for their work

Social media is used for branding farming and farmers by trying to change perceptions about attitudes towards the profession and those who work in it. Although felfies, like selfies, strike ironic, spontaneous, and unpretentious tones, you can sense the seriousness behind the fun: people want to be recognised. As in the case of Danish labour disputes in recent years – for example, the nurses' strike in 2008 and the teachers’ lockout in 2013, it is not about wages but about recognition for your work. It is a universal and anthropological need: "If the 'struggle for recognition' can be said to have an anthropological character, it is because the individual is unable to develop a personal identity without recognition." (Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition 2006: 8). Farmers would like to be seen, to be mirrored, to develop a contemporary identity and attain contemporary recognition for their ancient profession.

The time of the selfie. The image of a selfie being taken but never seen
We live in the time of the selfie. A quick self-portrait made by turning the camera on a smartphone around like a mirror and with the possibility of immediately being shared on social networks, which provides a new opportunity for immediate visual communication of who we are, what we are doing, who we think we are, and who we feel we are. Selfies have changed aspects of social interaction, body language, self-consciousness, privacy, humour, irony, sense of time, and public behaviour.

The selfie and its offshoots are quick, unpretentious, and forthright. Unlike traditional portraits, selfies do not need special or showy occasions. They go in a different, informal direction. There is a tradition in theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Susan Sonntag, and Roland Barthes to see melancholy and a memento mori in any photograph. Selfies are not for this mood or death; they are, rather, for vitality and the moment, a priority that, at times, may seem like a repression of melancholy and the memento. At any rate, however, the photograph (via selfies) is changing from being linked to memory to becoming linked to communication.

Cameron’s, Thorning’s and Obama’s selfie: the incarnation of Mandela's dream

The selfie is a new visual genre that is distinguishable from all other portraits in history because they can be made in the twinkling of an eye. But the selfie has the same goal as all other self-portraits: We want to put up a sign in the outside world for others to see, and we hope that this expression will be accepted and welcomed. We want to feel recognised. This we cannot say happened for one extremely famous selfie, which was taken – but never seen. Selfies truly arrived, when David Cameron, Barack Obama, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt joined together in front of the latter's smartphone to take a selfie at the Mandela Memorial in December last year. Thorning-Schmidt later related that she had seen her daughters take selfies, and she wanted to try as well.

An image that has been interpreted and misinterpreted in many ways. With the cropping, the photographer tried to create a stage for melodrama

But the image was seen as anything but an innocent, girlish game at a cheerful and colourful Mandela Memorial.

The now world-famous image of Cameron, Thorning-Schmidt, and Obama taking a selfie has been interpreted and misinterpreted in many ways, resulting in misogyny and racism, among other things. Thorning-Schmidt was a 'slut ' and a 'bitch' flirting with these powerful men, shunting the first lady of the United States aside. For Barack Obama, they talked about a 'Selfiegate' like 'Watergate', which led to the downfall of Nixon in his time. All the interpretations and reactions miss an underlying dream and vision that this picture bears.

Misogyny and racism characterised many of the responses to Helle Thorning-Schmidt's selfie

For the picture of the selfie being taken embodies Mandela's dream in a condensed form: We have a female prime minister (Helle Thorning-Schmidt), a white prime minister (David Cameron), and a black or African-American president (Barack Obama) together – and having fun! The cross-cultural and ethnic opportunities for which Mandala worked are here possible! Joy radiates from the picture, Obama’s smile is genuine and charming, as only he can do it; Helle is attractive with her hair down, and Cameron, who willingly cuddles up to Thorning-Schmidt to get into the picture, is quite prepared to play the happy teenager. What about Michelle Obama? The photographer claims that she was just there "by accident", but that doesn’t hold water. The photographer could easily have cropped the image, so she was not in it; but, apparently, there had to be a touch of melodrama. Newspapers have to be sold.

This image of a selfie about to be taken has become iconic and well known everywhere. The photographer did nothing to prevent misunderstandings; to the contrary, he helped them along, and all the media highlighted the melodramatic atmosphere in the image. Therefore, they and many observers missed the beautiful tribute to Mandela and the dream and the vision he worked for that the image contains.

The ambivalence that dazzled the selfie-dream

The image shows something crucial about selfies. You must conform your body to the selfie, nestle yourself into the framework of the picture, for example. But, at the same time, the shot demonstrates that there is always somebody

outside that did not get into the group. This creates an ambivalence about the image, the observer is outside, disconnected, and will never be able to be a part of it. Some researchers, including sociologist and psychoanalyst Sherry Turkle, who works on social media, talk about FOMO, that is, 'fear of missing out ', as something essential about these media. One, Michelle, is by the very physics of the image outside the selfie shot and the physicality and mood it demands, and other observers had only their condemnation to be a part of the image.

These very complex feelings of body, face, ambivalence, and exclusion have totally blinded the eyes of observers to the dream and vision the image contains. A dream and a vision that otherwise fit beautifully into the dream of development of the self in which all forms of selfies are rooted.

Relevant links:
Bent Fausing: "See for your Selfie. Selfies and the Search for Recognition " https://www.academia.edu/4418191/Selfies_and_the_Search_for_Recognition._See_for_your_Selfie
Bent Fausing, interview article about healthies: "Selfies are out – now we take Healthies" https://www.academia.edu/6079718/Healthies._Selfies_are_out_-_now_we_take_Healthies._Interview_article_with_Bent_Fausing
General references: “Making selfies/Making self” http://www.makingselfiesmakingself.com/selfies-in-media.html
Jerry Saltz: "Art at Arm's Length" http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html

Uty Syaiwang: "Autoportrait, Selfie, Datasexuel: Retour sur l'image de soi par soi " i: http://www.ecribouille.net/photo-du-jour/autoportrait-selfie-datasexuel-retour-sur-limage-de-soi-par-soi/

Lenna Wortham: "My Selfie, Myself" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sunday-review/my-selfie-myself.html?_r=0

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