Kassidy Powell Selfie Response

            While reading the paper on, “Rethinking the Selfie” all I could think about was, “wow Americans just kind of suck.” The beginning of the article was explaining about how all of these different groups of people use selfies to find a different way to express themselves and stay away from the American status quo of how pop culture shows the modern-day individual. But then, in the classic way that Americans want to label everything, the taking of selfies automatically becomes “narcissistic” and there is none of that deeper thought- even from me- when I see a selfie on Instagram or some other social media platform. Instead, all I think is, “oh great this is a good way of describing your day.” Or I look at the grammar of the post and choose if I’m going to “like” it. Sometimes even I look at the song lyrics (because there are typically song lyrics used as some type of caption) and just think, “wow, that’s a good song.” But I don’t look at the selfie itself and think, “huh, they’re expressing themselves because they chose how to pose, they chose what to wear, they chose…” In that sense, I think I become some overly judgmental American which is never something that I’ve ever wanted to be. I like being American, but some of the things that Americans are, I don’t want to be that. I really enjoyed throughout the article how the author kept hitting home on how the selfie was begun by Others and has since been recognized as something only classic white girls really use. Again, that kind of reiterates my point on how the American society is so judgmental because there is no looking at the selfie and seeing a way of self expression, it is seen solely as a form of narcissism. Personally, I’m not the type to take a lot of selfies because I would rather take pictures of the people I love doing things or cool pictures of the outdoors rather than a picture of myself. It isn’t that I think I’m above taking selfies, I just would rather express myself through what I like to do rather than by what I look like. Selfie taking is part of modern day America from which I’d rather stay away, solely because I don’t ever want to feel as though I’m lumped in with everyone else. I see how selfie taking used to be a much bigger and better form of expression for Others, but currently I don’t think that that’s how it’s used anymore and I want to stand out- even if that means I post a picture of a rock rather than one of my face.