It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the swimming pool. I was happily ensconced in a good book on a chaise. Just in front of me, waist deep in water, stood four young teenage girls, 14 or 15 years-old. When I first noticed them it was noon and they were busily taking photos of each other, feverishly trading smartphones back and forth, posing in very obviously sexy positions. They flipped their hair from side to side, scrunched their shoulders to create cleavage, pouted their lips, assumed contemplative expressions with their eyes drifting off to nowhere, constricted their upper bodies to accentuate clavicles, splashed water onto their bodies, and positioned their legs into various seductive shapes. Each time a photograph was taken, the subject would anxiously reach for her smartphone, stealing it from her friend’s hands to determine what she looked like in the most recent rendering. The girls would giggle or ooh and ah or consult on a possibly improved image.
I watched them for a while, marveling at their ability to sustain interest and focus in the activity of photographing themselves. Eventually I went back to my book, but every now and again I would look up to see what they were up to. For two solid hours, until I left for lunch, the self-capturing went on, uninterrupted. It was interesting to notice as well that during those two hours, not one of the girls did any swimming or anything else other than posing, photographing, and evaluating. When I returned to the pool after 4, the same girls were still taking photos of themselves, but now out of the water and in new alluring poses as they reclined on their chaise lounges.
The scene that I witnessed at the pool is nothing out of the ordinary and my observations are in no way criticisms. I see the constant self-recording everywhere I look including my own home with my daughters and their friends. It seems that photographing oneself has become the primary leisure activity for girls these days. Recording and examining one’s own image serving as the most engaging, exciting and rewarding way to spend time.
While teenagers have always been concerned about their appearance, there’s never been a time when so much attention and energy has been spent on the creation and dissemination of a “hot” image or that a sexy identity was deemed so drastically necessary. (I say “hot” because it’s the word the girls most frequently use to describe the look they’re going for.) Now more than ever, with the explosion of technology that’s never turned off, young girls are saturated with media (including social media), literally living from inside it and becoming part of it. This media then shows them how they’re supposed to look, talk, think… be, and usually the message is "hot." The devices are being used, through the unceasing self-documentation, to show the world that they have successfully achieved the media-designed version of who they’re supposed to be. Know thyself has become show thyself.
While my memories of 15 are definitely faded, I am not so far from that time of life that I can’t remember what it was like to be a teenage girl. What I know for sure is that when I was young and holding a camera, it made sense to turn the lens away from me, outward, and take pictures of the world. It would not have occurred to me nor would I have been particularly interested in taking photographs of myself. What I also know is that I didn’t spend one thousandth the amount of time that young women do now focused on my image as it appeared on camera. When I was a young girl, being perceived as “hot” was not a goal that we aspired to, and not a primary characteristic upon which we built our self-worth.
When I ask girls and young women today (which I often do) why they spend so much time taking pictures of themselves and posting or sharing them, they usually tell me some version of this: They want other people to think they’re “hot” (both boys and girls) because if other people think they’re “hot” then they will be important and the world will like them, which will then make them like themselves.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the experiences our girls are missing out on as a result of spending so much time posing for their smartphones—what else they might be doing that could build their self-esteem in more meaningful ways. What will be the consequences in terms of who these young women become if their experiences are more and more limited to selfie-taking? What skills and strengths are they not going to develop, what self-awareness are they going to be deprived of, as a result of all these hours devoted to creating the perfect image?
As a mother of two daughters I am deeply troubled by this selfie phenomenon. We are allowing technology to be used in a way that disempowers young women, keeps them busy staring at themselves, pursuing “hotness” as designed by the modern media, at the expense of living their lives fully, being curious about the world on the other side of the camera, engaging in life beyond their image.
Not surprisingly, we are seeing an epidemic in low self-esteem in young women as they devote less of their time and energy to activities that could build a true sense of reliable self-worth and instead, attempt to build a self out of “hot” selfies. Unfortunately, however, the selfie-created self is wobbly and ephemeral, and can be obliterated by not enough “likes” on a single post.
As the mother of two daughters, I am concerned, and not just for my own, but for all the young women who are coming up in the age of selfie consciousness. Staring into their smartphones at themselves, being driven by the desire to create a “hot” pose—none of this is a wise use of young female energy and intelligence, nor does it create a garden in which to grow empowered and confident women.
I write this today with many questions and few answers. But the questions are important and we need to start raising them more often, more vigorously, and on a societal level. What kind of women are we growing in this digital age, in this "Am I hot?" world? And, what can we do as the grown-ups, both men and women, to redirect our girls towards a life that will provide them with what they need to feel empowered, capable, confident and ultimately, happy?
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