feature image via Shutterstock
Welcome, queermos, to the Friday Open Thread, a post where we all talk about your life, your week and sometimes other things in the comments section. You talk to me, I talk to you, y’all talk to each other — it’s like a giant potluck except on the internet and we’re all eating food in our own houses on our own computers. This week, in addition to literally anything else y’all want to talk about (as per ushe), I wanna talk about selfies.
I’ve been trying to embrace the selfie more. I used to think no one would want to see a photo of my dum dum face. But remember that Best of 2015 Instagram photo thing that went around at the end of last year? Where it showed you what the most-liked posts on your account were and made a lil collage of them? Well I learned something: our faces and our cats. That what both my and my fiancée’s friends like to see on our social media. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense: those are the two things they like to see in real life, too, right? Our faces and our cats? It’s not like we all get together just to look at each other’s food (and I am TOTALLY GUILTY of foodstagramming).
https://www.instagram.com/p/_9dsVXCsX0/?taken-by=aeosworth
So then I thought, well how do I feel about other people’s selfies? And I was like, duh, I love them. I think I may have liked every single selfie posted by resident selfie queen, Mey. And if I haven’t, I certainly want to.
https://www.instagram.com/p/-PYtdzDHcy/?taken-by=meyrude
And Lizz’s perfect girlfriend Chrissie posted a selfie with a camel not two hours ago and I think that says more about how her week is going than literally anything else she could’ve posted, so.
I think my fear of the selfie stems from two places: that my own personal person is unimportant in the eyes of my community, and that people will negatively comment on my appearance. Probably most, if not all, women think about this sometimes, on account of the patriarchy. On account of a lot of things. I think about it specifically in terms of me being a masculine woman — masculinity isn’t exactly the most valued trait when you’re a woman putting your face on the internet-at-large.
This is my plea to you this week — help me embrace my limited selfie game by showing me your beautiful faces via the comment section. Post that selfie that says something about how your week went, or says something about your very favoritest outfit of the week, or that day your makeup was just rad and there was no way around it. If you’re feeling unsure about how to selfie your best selfie, why not check out this post and pick up some tips? Only positive comments in response, period. Let’s pump each other up for existing in this weird, cruel, beautiful world. Put yo’ face here by either linking to your (public) Instagram or Twitter, or by embedding the photo using another image service like Imgur. I’ll go first.
AHHHHHHHHH I DID IT.
How To Post A Photo In The Comments:
Find a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then…
code it in to your comment like so:
If you need to upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out Ali’s step-by-step guide.
How To Post A Video In The Comments, Too:
Find a video on YouTube or Vimeo or WHATEVER and click “embed.” Copy that code, paste it, go forth and jam!
