In Defense of the Selfie

I posted this "selfie" on Thursday night as I was about to head out the door to Open Stage. Why? Well, I was feeling pretty happy about my freshly-hennaed hair and how I was wearing it down, and how cute my magenta glitter lipstick looked, and I wanted to share it with the world. I think it's fun when dancers post a little "On my way to the show" picture too, as it builds the excitement.

Then today, I read this article titled "The Age of the Selfie" which suggested that I should not, in fact, be inflicting pictures of my face upon my friends. How dare I be so vain as to suggest that I might be a little pretty and that maybe people would like to see me? Well obviously I have a couple of problems with the anti-selfie sentiments that float around on the internet!

My first problem is the suggestion that there's something wrong with feeling that you are pretty or cute or that your new haircut is awesome. I don't have the best self-esteem but there are still days when I look in the mirror and think to myself "Self, you're so darned cute today, look at that outfit and that makeup, you're rockin' it!" And while I don't share all of those moments with the internet, sometimes I feel so good about myself that I do want to share, and then yes, I definitely enjoy the validating comments that I get from my friends.

It's no secret that girls and women suffer from a lot of image-based insecurity. Whether it comes from what we see in the media, or how we were treated when we were kids, or rude comments in the street, or a complicated combination of all that and more, it's a hard problem to combat. But it seems like there are segments of the population who feel like we're supposed to feel bad about ourselves, and that feeling good about how we look is horrible vanity. Oh, we should care about how we look, we should primp and preen and dress to impress, but as soon as we acknowledge that we did a good job making ourselves presentable, we're being narcissistic.

My second problem is that I think a lot of people who are against selfies have a deep misunderstanding of the nature of internet friendships. Sure, I have friends on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that I see in person regularly, but I also have friends who I rarely if ever see face-to-face. Some of them are friends who I've only known on-line, others are people who I met in person but they've since moved away. I LIKE seeing selfies of my long-distance friends. I like knowing what they've done with their hair, what kind of clothes they're wearing these days, what they're out doing in the city they live in now. And a lot of my friends LIKE seeing selfies of me. Especially now that I bellydance, they always want to see pictures of my new costumes, what sort of makeup looks I'm experimenting with, and of course, videos of me dancing.

My third and final problem with all this anti-selfie raging is that it is the smallest, stupidest of problems to worry about. Sick of seeing a friend's selfies? Just scroll past them. No big deal. If they post them constantly, you can even adjust your newsfeed on Facebook to not show their pictures. Honestly, what is it harming anybody if people like to post lots of pictures of themselves having fun, looking pretty, being bored, soliciting opinions on their new hair color, or anything like that? They're not spreading hateful opinions or damaging misinformation or overplayed memes. They're saying "Here's what I'd look like if you were here with me right now" and there's nothing wrong with that.

The Meat on our Bones

Jes The Militant Baker is on a crusade against nasty autocomplete messages in Google. Read her original post here. Although she started out with fat shaming, she branched out into skinny shaming too, because all shaming is bad. She opened up submissions to her readers and FB fans, and I decided to do the above image.

I'm not very good at graphic design and image stuff (as you all know from my beautiful "gettin' opinionated" image that I make constant use of), so I didn't put an autocomplete drop-down in mine. Instead I took my inspiration from the yucky quote "Bones are for dogs, real men want meat." How disgusting. Not only is it skinny-shaming, but it reduces curvy women to a commodity, comparing them to a big, meaty steak. Don't get me wrong, I love steak, but I don't love it in the same way that a living, breathing, thinking human being deserves to be loved. And I also love bones, because without them, I'd be a floppy pile of skin and muscles and organs, and wouldn't that be gross?

I chose the image I did because, well, I still really like how my shoulders look, but also the composition was perfect, there was enough open space over the fan veil to put my text and make it legible. Plus I knew Liora would be into the idea of her photo being used for a body-positive message!

Speaking of body positivity, if you're into it and you're in or will be in Tucson in April, you should totally come to the Body Love Conference (also organized by Jes). I already have my ticket and I am really excited to be part of the current movement away from shaming and towards healthier attitudes.

You should also check out the ever-growing album of posters made for this autocomplete campaign, because there's some really good ones!

Dance and Body Image

You never realize how white you are until you accidentally stand under a brighter light than the rest of the troupe. Fire & Gold Bellydance, photo by Pedro Romano (I think).

From time to time I see surveys about how belly dance has affected a woman's self esteem or body image. For me, the answers vary from day to day. Sometimes dance builds me up and I feel like the most beautiful, wonderful person in the world. Other times it tears me down and I feel like a failure who should definitely wear a bag over her head.

Dance also changes what I love and hate about myself. On a normal day, I'm not too fond of my belly fat, and often I hate how it looks in photographs of me dancing. But when I do a big Egyptian shimmy and it jiggles all over and makes the movement look like an earthquake? Then I kind of love it. On a normal day, I am happy being fair-skinned, but on a day when everyone else I'm dancing with has a tan, I feel really out of place and awkward... especially when my spot in the formation puts me under a light that shouts "HEY LOOK HER BELLY IS SO WHITE!"

Some things never change, of course. I always love my hair (long! red! just thick enough!), and I always hate my teeth (overbite! yellowness! ugh!). And I always feel just a little too tall even if most of the troupe is the same height as me (I'm not tall, just limb-y), and like I am going to take someone out with my fingernails during a spin.

Body image was much on my mind yesterday as I looked at proofs from out photo shoot and mused about what I loved and hated about my body, and how I looked compared to other members of my troupe (ladies, I think you're all more gorgeous than me, so no worrying that I told myself "Well at least I look better than XXX." I would never think that about you). Then my family came over and our conversation took an interesting turn.

True fact: As a young man entering the Air Force, my dad was 6'2 and 107 pounds. That is not a typo. One hundred and seven. At six foot two. As a full grown adult. I expressed amazement. I knew my Dad had been skinny, but I didn't know how little he had weighed back then. And let's be honest with ourselves here: I'm 5'6"ish and I don't think I've weighed 107 or less as an adult.

So my Dad started telling a string of one-liners about how skinny he was, finishing with "I've heard them all, and told most of them about myself." And it made me think about being a skinny teenager (back before I developed the curves that ensure I will never be 107), and how no one ever said any of those jokes about me. No, all skinny teenage girls get is well-meaning adults (usually older women) telling you to eat more. I got told I didn't eat enough to sustain a bird, which was pretty ridiculous because I ate until I didn't feel hungry any more, and then I ran around and biked and was a generally active girl, so obviously I was fueling myself well.

For teenage girls and adult women, the general expectation or goal is skinniness. Especially for teens, when we haven't finished developing. Our peers find other things to tease us about (for me, it was my teeth, no wonder I hate them). It's not until we become adults that skinny suddenly becomes a sin. The media holds up airbrushed images and stick-thin models, sure, but your Facebook friends constantly post memes declaring that "real women have curves" and "it wouldn't be fair to the other women if I was this awesome and skinny." They build themselves up while tearing others down. I feel like I've talked about this before, though.

I have never been more aware of my body than I have been since I became a dancer. Sometimes it's a wonderful awareness, the soreness of abs well-worked in class, the admiration of arms that creative beautiful lines. And other times it's looking at a picture of myself at the bottom of an undulation and going "great. I look pregnant. I hope no one in my family gets the wrong idea." And it's painful sometimes, that constant worry of whether I'll be able to make progress as a pro while I have braces, the question of whether I need to make serious diet changes or just run more, the possibility that weight loss will mean smaller breasts and suddenly I need to remake all my tribal bras.

I feel like this will always be a complicated relationship, this threesome between my body, dance and I. It will only get worse as I age, and my knees get creakier and my face gets lined. It's something I just have to accept, and just remember not to let the struggle ruin the things that I love about dance.