First of all, as The New Yorker pointed out, the Oxford Dictionary Online is not the same as the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary Online is a frequently updated “liberal and inclusive descriptivist dictionary,” and its purpose is to document language as it’s being used today, in the way “groovy” and “far out” were used in the 1970s and “as if” and “hella dope” were popular 1990s slang terms.
Its entry in the Oxford Dictionary Online as an informal noun is “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”
Unfortunately, selfies have a frivolous implication. Obviously the concept of a self-portrait has been around for decades. A very famous Norman Rockwell painting depicts the artist painting his own self-portrait — a meta-selfie. Selfies have arguably been around for decades, from painted self-portraits to smartphones. The concept of a selfie isn’t new at all: It has simply been adapted to describe self-portraits in relation to modern technology and the proliferation of social media.
Selfies, according to Noah Berlatsky at The Atlantic, are a modern art form and should be treated as such.
“Is there really an essential selfie-ness?” Berlatsky wrote. “You can make a selfie celebrating your achievements as a Marine, or you can make a selfie attempting to turn yourself into the airbrushed models on glossy magazines. They’re both selfies, just as ‘50 Shades of Grey’ and ‘To The Lighthouse’ are both books. The selfie is a deliberate, aesthetic expression — it’s a self-portrait, which is an artistic genre with an extremely long pedigree. There can be bad self-portraits and good self-portraits, but the self-portrait isn’t bad or good in itself. Like any art, it depends on what you do with it.”
Selfies have an intimate quality that posed photos simply can’t capture. Selfies are for snapping on the fly at concerts, parties, lunch dates and family get-togethers, cheek-to-cheek with a blurry arm extending from one corner. Selfies are for meticulously editing on Afterlight and Aviary with splashes of light and colorful filters. Whether you’re taking a solo photo to document your progress at the gym or your on-point winged eyeliner, a selfie here and there never hurt anyone.
Of course, we don’t recommend you measure your self-worth from the sum and quality of your Instagram photos. It’s a simple, succinct form of expression, a literal snapshot into the lives of others and ourselves. So you might as well have fun with it — take one over the break with your mom, download the Catwings app and splash a few kitties across it. Upload it, and harvest the likes. It’s all in the name of good, clean fun.
Unless, that is, you’re Anthony Weiner.
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 11/25/2013 under the headline "Face value: In defense of selfies"
