“Do I really look like that?”: unpacking discourses of control and discursive and visual dissonances in young women’s selfie-practices

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore how discourses of control, imbued with the logic of postfeminist and neoliberal empowerment rhetoric, are used by young women to recount their experiences of selfie-practices. In doing so, I examine how these accounts complicate popular analyses of the phenomenon as either “empowering” or “disempowering,” arguing instead that control discourse reveals a complex entanglement of agency and vulnerability that centres on participants’ ability, or lack thereof, to control their image in online environments. This desire for control versus the moments when such control is undermined or compromised produce discursive and visual dissonances which shift formerly positive assessments of one’s selfie towards the ambivalent and the self-critical. Thus, I propose that control discourse and its dissonant effects mark a site of return, offering temporary relief from the demands of specular femininity by providing the means to achieve its standards via the selfie, only to return young women to a state of disempowerment when their assessment of their image (and by extension, their embodied selves) sours in response to factors they cannot control.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• selfie
• postfeminism
• neoliberalism
• Instagram

Introduction

Since its rise to cultural prominence in the early 2010s, the selfie is often discussed in popular culture through the prism of female empowerment. These discussions tend to follow a markedly binarized trajectory where selfie-taking is characterized either as a pathology based on assumptions of narcissism or vulnerability (Gloria Ryan Erin 2013; Hinsliff Gaby 2018) or as a mode of postfeminist, neoliberal inflected empowerment that enables the individual to, as Cosmopolitan (2018) magazine puts it, “take control of your image on social media and express yourself however you want.” What is usually absent from this popular discourse of harm—versus–empowerment is an understanding of the selfie as a practice riven with contractions that defy neat categorisation as either “good” or “bad.” Academic research on the phenomenon has been essential in this regard, illuminating the many and varied ways selfies are understood and “put to use” across a wide array of contexts (see for example Anne Burns 2015; Stefanie Duguay 2016; Derek Conrad Murray 2015; Therese M. Senft and Nancy K. Baym 2015; Katrin Tiidenberg 2015). These studies underscore David Nemer and Guo Freeman’s (2015, 1832) important observation that, “selfies are produced and experienced by people in sociocultural terms. It is difficult to understand selfies without taking into account the deeper sociocultural context in which they were created, used, and interpreted [emphasis Nemer & Freeman’s].”

Building on such scholarship from a feminist perspective, this study explores how young women use discourses of control (like the one articulated in Cosmopolitan magazine above) to characterise their experience of selfie-taking. These discourses are developed from interviews with twenty women aged 18–30 about their experiences of the selfie phenomenon. Given the size of the sample, the findings provide a partial but compelling account of how the phenomenon is experienced at a subjective level. The discourses participants use depict a conceptualisation of control heavily shaped by the logics of postfeminist and neoliberal empowerment whereby the selfie enables young women to take control of their image. This control, however, is not assured or secure. It can be easily compromised, resulting in a loss of control over one’s image that is deeply felt. This produces a dissonance that is twofold, operating on a visual and discursive level. Central to these tensions is how images of participants taken by others and posted online—a process they have little control over—undermines the sense of satisfaction participants feel about their selfies, producing a negative sense of self. This article explores how this lack of control produces a dissonant effect when promises of empowerment-through-control of one’s image does not correspond with lived experiences. These discourses of control capture a complex, shifting entanglement of empowerment and disempowerment, pleasure and vulnerability, in socio-technological contexts where the scrutiny of women, including by themselves, is growing evermore dissective and intensive (Christine Lavrence and Carolina Cambre 2020; Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Shoshana A. Magnet 2015).

The presence and function of dissonance in the contexts this study explores chimes with the increased attention dissonance, as an emotional effect of postfeminist and neoliberal femininities, is gaining in the field of feminist media studies (Amy Dobson and Akane Kanai 2019; Catherine McDermott 2017; Marie-Alix Thouaille 2019). Here, I also want to consider dissonance as a disciplinary effect of postfeminist, neoliberal visibility that places a heavy emphasis on the cultivation of normative forms of specular femininity. Highly visible across contemporary media cultures including online, specular femininity is typically represented by images and narratives that centre girls and young women deemed traditionally attractive, who espouse the “right kinds” of attributes such as ambition, confidence, academic and social success, “the impossibly high-achieving heterosexual white girl” as the originator of the concept Sarah Projansky (2014, 1) puts it.

To begin, I briefly discuss the relationship between selfie-practices and femininity, before turning to the study’s analytical framework. The framework is developed from key scholarship on postfeminist and neoliberal subjectivities and feminist cultural studies that explore how dissonance manifests discursively and visually through women’s engagement with popular culture. Next, I outline the methodological approach used before turning to the analysis and discussion.

Selfies & femininity

While critical engagement with any new phenomenon is essential, solely situating the selfie within “discourses of pathology” (Senft and Baym 2015, 1589) as much popular discourse on the selfie phenomenon does, is not productive to unpacking its appeal. These discourses are often highly gendered, casting selfie-taking and selfie-takers, the majority of whom are women, as targets for public shaming (Amandeep Dhir et al. 2016; Burns 2015; Elizabeth Losh 2015; Jane Bailey et al. 2013). Such discourses also ignore the diverse ways selfies have been used politically by women to critique social media censorship of the body (Magdalena Olszanowski 2014), to return the gazes they are subject to in terms of gender, race and sexuality and to represent important aspects of their identities (Murray 2015; Minh-Ha T. Pham 2015; Agnes Rocamora 2011; Son Vivenne 2017; Jon M. Wargo 2017; Michele Zappavigna and Sumin Zhoa 2017), including mounting challenges to Eurocentric beauty norms (Mehita Iqani 2016).

However, undercooked celebratory analyses that regard the selfie as straightforwardly “liberating” for women or inherently feminist also obscure the complexities at play. The social media platforms where selfies are created and circulate are filled with enticements to judge (Camille Nurka 2014). These enticements can foster forms of looking amongst women that are highly critical (Alison Winch 2013) while emboldening the male gaze (Kelly Oliver 2017). Such environments are also notable for their unpredictability, where content can be interpreted and repurposed in ways users cannot anticipate or intervene in, a reality that calls into question the degree of control users actually have over their image (José Van Dijck 2013).

Popular discourse often positions the selfie as a site of free, unencumbered self-expression (see the earlier quote from Cosmopolitan magazine). However, this perspective overlooks how social media shape and delimit the selfie’s “conversational capacity” (Duguay 2016) in ways which typically prioritize the normative at the expense of more diverse representations (Carolina Are 2021; Duguay 2016; Nicholas Carah and Amy Dobson 2016). Instagram, for example, is notable for the high degree of visibility it gives selfies which embrace “celebrity glorification, consumerism, normative beauty” (Duguay 2016, 7). This emphasis on the normative can entice selfie-takers to engage in self-censorship and highly strategic forms of self-representation, particularly for young women who face heightened forms of public shaming (Burns 2015; Cristina Miguel 2016; Valerie Steeves 2015). In turn, this can lead to the reproduction of hegemonic gender norms rather than their transgression (Katrin Tiidenberg 2015; Ori Schwarz 2010; Rena Bivens and Oliver L. Haimson 2016).

As the experiences of the young women in this study attest, the selfie is not merely a photograph but a discursive exercise which centres the selfie-taker’s subjectivity (Paul Frosh 2015; Michele Zappavigna 2016). As Frosh (2015) argues, selfies are best understood as “gestural images” whose meaning and engagement extends beyond the photograph encompassing the emotional, the social and the technological. This discursivity is shaped and constrained by techno-cultural norms and the specific contexts in which selfies are produced, including the audiences they are created for (Edgar Goméz Cruz and Helen Thornham 2015; Nemer and Freeman 2015; Jill Walker Rettberg 2014).

For participants in this study, what they term “good” or “proper” selfies (those taken for Instagram, a platform where images are the focal point) represent what they describe as “an opportunity” or “chance,” through the use of smartphones and self-editing, to strategically create an image of themselves that they like, specifically because it meets contemporary beauty standards. On that basis, they regard the image positively and anticipate that others will too. Through their use of the selfie, participants thus position themselves addressing the viewer as they want to be seen, raising issues of agency, subjectivity, desire and control, especially when the veracity of this address is threatened.

Discursive and visual dissonances: postfeminist, neoliberal empowerment & the female gaze

When discussing their experiences of selfie-practices, participants describe the increased sense of control selfies give them over their image. They depict this development as positive and pleasurable compared to having their photograph taken in ways they cannot control. This control discourse owes much to the logics of postfeminist digital culture (Amy Shields Dobson 2015) and postfeminism’s intertwining with neoliberalism to produce “new femininities” (Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff 2011) that position young women as being in control of every aspect of their lives (Angela McRobbie 2015).

Of this development, Gill and Scharff (2011,7) propose that “the autonomous, calculating, self-regulating subject of neoliberalism bears a strong resemblance to the active, freely choosing, self-inventing subject of postfeminism.” These “new femininities” have a powerful psychological dimension that young women are encouraged to embody (Gill 2017). As feminist media scholars have repeatedly shown, while these ideologies do have immense appeal, they are also inconsistent and regressive, repositioning and prioritizing traditional but limiting expectations of femininity as highly desirable, personally liberating, and economically powerful (Gill 2007, 2008; McRobbie 2009; Tasker and Negra 2007).

These contradictions produce emotional effects which are dissonant, a feature reflected in participants’ discomfort when their striving for control over their image is compromised by factors they cannot control. There are two dimensions to these experiences; discursive and visual. In discursive terms, dissonance arises for participants when the promises of postfeminist, neoliberal “new femininities” do not cohere with their lived experiences. This failure can be traced back to the inconsistences of postfeminist and neoliberal logics which use politically defanged iterations of feminism (see Girl Power for example) to emphasize empowerment (procured via self-branding practices and the embrace of normative beauty and lifestyle choices) while ignoring the material and social factors which make empowerment elusive for many women to access and sustain (Anita Harris and Amy Shields Dobson 2015; Marnina Gonick 2006; Sarah Banet-Weiser 2012; Tram Nguyen 2013). This incoherence between the promise of “new femininities” and young women’s actual experiences produce what Emilie Zaslow (2009) terms “cultural discordance,” whereby dissonance reveals the limits of postfeminist, neoliberal rhetoric. This discordance is also inherent to the technological environments in which these young women’s images circulate. Through its affordances, social media promises users’ greater control over their image while concurrently subjecting them to intensifying forms of surveillance and judgement which they cannot control (Dubrofsky and Magnet 2015). In the contexts this study explores, in keeping with the ethos of neoliberalism, control discourse emphasizes an individualised understanding of control—a participant’s ability to take a “proper” selfie. Such discourse elides the role of social media in destabilising the control over their image that participants so desire while promoting a narrow version of visibility that is tied to exclusionary forms of specular femininity (Banet-Weiser 2018).

The visual dissonance participants experience comes to the fore when they recall encountering images online taken of them by others which they do not like and whose creation and circulation they have no control over. Being confronted with such images prompts participants to unfavourably reassess selfies they had previously been happy with, producing an effect that is destabilising and notable for the ambivalence and self-criticism it elicits. To unpack this dynamic, keeping in mind Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley’s point (2015, 32) that in contemporary contexts women “increasingly gaze at both other women and at themselves” in ways which seem to “remove altogether” the male gaze (see also Winch 2013; Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans, and Alison Mackiewicz 2016), I draw on Rosemary Betterton’s concept of the female gaze in which dissonance is a central characteristic.

Betterton (1985, 9) proposes that women’s relationship with their image and media-created images of femininity in general is “profoundly uncomfortable,” symptomatic of an androcentric culture which seeks to prescribe and inhibit the female gaze. She argues that many women perceive a “mismatch between ourselves and the images held up to us,” provoking complex responses ranging from fascination to insecurity. Participants’ accounts of selfie-taking suggest that this “mismatch” detection is not only reserved for idealised images of other women; it can also occur when looking at idealised images they have produced of themselves and when looking at images of themselves others have created.

The ambivalence Betterton captures in her account of the female gaze strikes at a critical contradiction, namely that many images which court a female gaze, particularly those that focus on pleasure and desire, may appeal to female audiences but they are also implicated in “producing and sustaining feminine positions” (Rosalind Coward 1984, 16, emphasis Coward’s) which re-inscribe inequality. For participants, the selfies they are most happy with are invariably those which conform to normative ideas of beauty. This finding chimes with other academic work on representation and social media which illustrates how transgressive forms of representation are constrained by new technologies. The potential of the recent proliferation of progressive discourses around sexuality and the body (driven by social media campaigns such as #effyourbeautystandards), for example, is restrained by media cultures which grant visibility only to those who, as Sarah Evans, Adrienne Riley, and Ari Shankar (2010, 123) write, “conform to normative ideals of beauty.” It also reflects the rise of digital landscapes where, by design, the greatest degree of visibility is still reserved for images that conform to normative expectations of femininity (Carah and Dobson 2016; Duguay 2016).

Following Coward’s (1984) work on the complex pleasures of women’s cultural practices, the selfie-activities this paper explores are representative of practices that emphasize enjoyment and empowerment while reinscribing inequality. These practices offer relief from the effects of inequality in the short term—by giving one a sense of agency or control, as participants describe—but ultimately serve to reinstate those same effects in the longer term (Celia Lury 2003; Coward 1984) by drawing participants’ attention to what they perceive as a failure to embody normative beauty. Furthermore, as Coward (1984) argues, such practices reproduce feminine perspectives that shape subjectivity along certain lines. In the case of this study, it produces shifting perspectives underpinned by feelings of doubt, vulnerability and a desire for control that shift between empowerment and disempowerment, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In keeping with neoliberal ideals of individualised responsibility or responsibilization (Wendy Brown 2019) these feelings are directed towards the self, rather than outwards at those cultural and technological factors that play a significant role in shaping participants’ experiences.

Method

As part of a study exploring young women’s subjective experiences of the selfie phenomenon, I interviewed twenty women aged 18–30 between April 2017 and January 2018. Interviewees were drawn from two third level institutions in Ireland after responding to calls for research participants who were selfie-takers and would be willing to discuss their perspectives on the phenomenon. Those who fulfilled the selection criteria in terms of age and engagement with the selfie were interviewed as part of the study, forming a corpus of twenty interviews. All participants were students, studying at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. They came from countries in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. The interviews generally lasted around one hour, took place in-person and were recorded on an audio device. They followed a semi-structured format, a method that is popular in feminist qualitative research since it enables women to express their perspectives using “their own words” (Shulamit Reinharz 1992, 19). Participants were given pseudonyms and any identifying information was removed from the transcripts.

After transcription, the interview data was subject to a detailed discourse analysis. According to Stuart Hall (1997, 6), discourses are “ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic or practice” that include “a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices” that enable the individual to talk about an issue. Following Michel Foucault (1988, 1991), Hall’s concept of discourse emphasizes its relation to power, that is, how discourse strives to “fix” certain ideas while rendering others moot. This struggle over meaning produces tensions and contradictions that are played out at the level of discourse. By identifying these tensions, scholars can interrogate and denaturalise discourses “in-action,” gaining insights on how discourses attempt to structure subjectivity and suggest certain truths about the world.

The mode of discourse analysis utilised in this study is Foucauldian, as set out by Carla Willig’s (2008) six-step framework. It originates from poststructuralist approaches in the field of psychology, exploring how language shapes subjectivity and society. In Foucauldian discourse analysis, there is a particular emphasis on how institutional practices relating to the control and organization of social and psychological life support, and are in turn supported by, discourses which legitimate and bolster their authority (Willig 2008, 113). According to Willig, Foucauldian discourse analysis explores “the relationship between discourse and how people think or feel (subjectivity), what they may do (practices) and the material conditions within which such experiences may take place.” (Ibid) This approach was critical to identifying and unpacking the nuanced ways postfeminist and neoliberal inflected discourses shaped participants’ accounts of selfie-practices including the presence of dissonance at a discursive and visual level, particularly when it came to identifying how discourses of control where constructed, utilised and “felt” in the transcripts.

Willig’s six-step framework was applied to the interview data as follows. Firstly, the corpus was examined for discursive constructions, which meant analysing how selfie-practices, as this study’s discursive object, were constructed by participants. Next, in a stage known as discourses, the construction of the discursive object was explored in relation to broader discourses. In this study, this meant exploring how discourses used by participants to construct selfie-practices connected with or diverged from wider discourses on the phenomenon, for example, popular discourse on the selfie as empowering or disempowering. The next stage, action-orientation, explored contrasts in how participants construct selfie-practices to identify tensions and contradictions therein. It was at this stage that the presence of control discourse in participants’ accounts and its complex function began to fully emerge. The contrasts from the action-orientation stage then informed the next step of the framework, positioning, where the subject positions on offer were distilled from the close analysis of the discourses used by participants. For example, in terms of the control discourse used by participants, they use it to position themselves as in control of their image. The final two stages, practice and subjectivity, explore the actions that discourses and their particular subject positions open up and shut down, and “the consequences” (Willig 2008, 117) or types of subjectivity that manifest when participants take up a particular subject position, producing tensions that are explored in detail in the next section.

Findings & analysis

Asked what they enjoy about selfie-practices, participants described the increased control it offers them over their image, enabling them to shoot, edit and share photographs of themselves they are happy with. They often contrast this ability with the difficulty of taking selfies using older forms of technology, before the front-facing camera and self-editing software like beauty apps. This evolution from digital camera to smartphone is portrayed by participants as giving them more control over their image, something they welcome. They use this control to produce what they term “nice” or “proper” selfies, images they describe consciously crafting with the aesthetics of Instagram in mind. As Instagram grants the greatest visibility to those who are conventionally attractive, it is not surprising that participants describe creating selfies that meet these standards. Indeed, as mentioned, this is one of the major appeals of the practice for participants: selfies allow them to create images they are pleased with because their affordances, such as filters, enable them to meet normative beauty standards.

However, depending on the platform, meeting these standards can be time-consuming. For participants the types of visibility associated with Instagram are particularly demanding compared to Facebook or Snapchat. Contrasting Snapchat selfies with Instagram selfies, Aine says that the short lifespan of Snapchat images means “it doesn’t really matter what you look like” whereas with Instagram selfies “you have to touch them up.” Speaking about her peer group, referring to the high standards they apply to their images, she says “everyone’s got a professional Instagram nowadays.” Regarding Snapchat, she adds, “I don’t mind using filters and stuff” but when it comes to Instagram, “I would mind having to edit every photo to get it perfect. It’s just way too much effort.”

While Aine largely eschews Instagram selfies given the labour required, she also notes that Snapchat’s filters allow her to easily create “cute” selfies without having to bother with “actual makeup.” Thus, Snapchat’s filters enable her to meet the demands of specular femininity while reducing the effort required to do so. Aine also credits her selfie-use with enabling her to “find out what looks good” when it comes to having her picture taken, by herself and by others. Nevertheless, when it comes to being photographed, her preference is for the selfie: “I can be in selfies but I can’t be in like a proper photo, I can’t, I feel too self-conscious.”

Aine is enthusiastic about the way selfie-practices enable her to create images of herself she finds pleasing. When asked if this control over her image is important to her, she responds:

[It’s] one of the best things about taking a selfie cos you control how you look and it can make you feel so good when you get this nice photo and you took it and it was you and it’s just, it’s a nice feeling. Whereas, if somebody is taking a photo of you and you didn’t know it and you looked a state, you would go around for days thinking, “is that what I look like all the time? Is that the real me, where I look like a big slob or just” (pause) it does, it does make a difference.

The ability to take an image she is pleased with gives Aine a sense of self-mastery, pleasure and self-reliance. She contrasts this with losing control over her image when being photographed by someone other than herself, leading to the production of a picture she is unhappy with—in which Aine thinks she looks “a state” – because it does not conform to normative standards of beauty. This picture causes her to question if this image, as opposed to her selfie, is “the real me,” prompting a negative emotional response.

Asked what it is about selfie-taking that she enjoys, Helen, a regular selfie-taker, says, “I think a large part of it is being able to control and define what your selfie can be.” She enjoys “making changes” to her selfie using filters and apps, and credits digital technology with giving her “more control” over her image. Like Aine, Helen underscores the importance of this control by contrasting it with an example of her not being able to control her image, recounting her discomfort at having her picture taken at a family event and being unhappy to see it online:

I was never going to go into modelling but, I was just like, “where am I supposed to go?” like, “where’s my face supposed to go?” like, “is this okay?” like “how do I look?” like, I’ve no sense of that whatsoever …

[W]hen I see one of those pictures of myself that’s been taken by somebody else and I don’t like it, obviously I wouldn’t say that to, well, I might just make a joke like, kind of like, “what is going on with my face?”

Seeing herself in the photograph “taken by somebody else” ultimately prompts Helen to reassess the accuracy of her selfie, an image she formerly took much pleasure in:

People were like “you know it’s a great photo” and I’m like, in my head I’m like, “no, I look ugly” … I’ll go back to my selfie and be like, “I’m actually just not, I’m really actually just lying to myself, do I actually look like that? And then when people meet me in person does that line-up or is that just a fiction?”

Asked what she enjoys about selfie-taking, Jane, echoing Aine and Helen, cites the sense of control it gives her over her image in an environment where she is very conscious of how she is viewed by her followers:

They like to keep tabs on what you’re doing so with selfies and social media you’re always kinda putting your best foot forward, you can control what people are seeing and how great you’re doing, even if you are not doing so great at all … like I’d never post a selfie I’m not happy with. So, I’m letting people see what I look like if I’m happy with how I look. It’s not like now. I can’t control how I look now. I can try my best by putting make-up on but if I take a selfie, it’s about the angle, it’s the light, it’s fake. Yeah. It’s all fake.

Jane’s sense of control shifts between the control she feels she can exert through her selfie online versus her inability to control her image in an offline context. In contrasting the two, she refers to her selfie as “fake,” chiming with Helen who wondered if her selfie was a “fiction” and Aine who questioned if the image she disliked, rather than her selfie, represented the “real” her. Describing further what she enjoys about the selfie, like Aine Jane states that it is her preference to, “take a selfie than get my picture taken because I can control the way I look and I know it’s going to be a nice photograph.” She contrasts this with images taken of her by others that she is unhappy with which prompt her to wonder, “Do I really look like that?.” Asked why this sense of control is important to her, Jane says:

It makes me feel good then as well because it’s hard to see a bad picture of yourself. Whereas if you take a selfie, you’re in complete control and you have that memory but it’s actually a nice picture of you, you actually look nice in it, it’s gonna, it makes me feel better whenever I look back, “oh I looked good,” whereas I see a picture my friend took, I have like one eye closed, and an eyelash hanging off.

In each of their accounts, Aine, Helen and Jane link control over their image to positive emotions and a sense of accomplishment that enables them to “show” themselves to others as they wish to be seen. This “showing” is achieved through the creation of “nice” selfies where they feel they look attractive in normative terms. Thus, exercising control is directed at creating images that are strategic and idealised. This conceptualisation of control is one where the selfie is depicted by participants as giving them increased agency over their image, allowing them to embrace a particular type of visibility through the creation of “nice” or “proper” kinds of images. Such control discourse owes much to a contemporary empowerment discourse that emphasizes personal responsibility and the need to make good choices, while placing a high premium on embracing visibility through the cultivation of the right kinds of specular femininity (Gill and Scharff 2011; McRobbie 2015; Shelley Budgeon 2015; Shields Dobson 2015).

What these discourses of empowerment cannot account for and where they strike a discordant note in participants’ accounts is in the volatility inherent to the practices Aine, Helen and Jane describe, a point illustrated when they outline the shifting relationship they have with their selfie. As they weight up different images of themselves by assuming perspectives that are more critical, Aine, Helen and Jane move between positive feelings regarding having control over their image to ambivalence and self-critique when that sense of control is compromised. Discourses of control in these contexts cannot inoculate participants against the clash between the language of postfeminist, neoliberal empowerment – taking control of one’s image – and lived experiences where such control is far from assured. This dissonance induces participants to question the validity of images they had previously derived pleasure and a sense of mastery from, undermining their initially positive associations with their selfies, producing states notable for their uncertainty rather than control.

In participants’ accounts, dissonance is also a feature of how they look at and critique images of themselves. Central to these shifting perspectives is the dissonant “mismatch” dynamic Rosemary Betterton (1985, 1987) identifies as a core element of a female way of seeing. In participants’ accounts, this “mismatch” manifests in two stages, firstly in comparisons they make between the image taken of them by someone else (which they cannot control or edit to their liking) and their selfie, triggering a comparison between their embodied self and their selfie. The differences they perceive between the images produces a lack of coherence that prompts participants to question the validity of their selfie and to wonder if the image they cannot control and do not like is in fact a more accurate representation of them (one that is unedited). It also makes them question their appearance; Helen worries she is “ugly,” Aine does not want to be seen as “a big slob” while Jane says she finds it “hard to see a bad picture” of herself. They also wonder how others see them, fearing these perspectives will be critical. It is this perspective that they adopt when reassessing selfies they were formerly happy with. Cumulatively, this entanglement of control and loss of control produces modes of looking and feeling notable for their instability. This instability is rooted in participants’ longing for control over their image, their desire to have their idealised image cohere with their embodied selves and their shame when they suspect this coherence is, as Helen puts it, “a fiction.”

In his insights on the selfie as “gestural image,” Frosh (2015) proposes that selfie-practices are communicative performances that orientate around an address to the viewer that says see me showing you. Participants’ accounts of selfie-taking reflect this observation. For these young women, selfies act not simply as photographs but as important points of visual and emotional connection and expression between the individual and wider audiences, particularly their peers. Participants discussed using selfies as a source of humour and fun, or as a way to start a conversation or record memories. Others emphasized the format’s creative and political potential while others described keeping selfies they liked, to look at on days when they felt down or insecure and needed a “boost” as one participant described it. Another recounted the fun she and her friends have with Ugly Selfie Competitions, devised in response to their frustration at not being able to take “Insta-perfect” selfies. However, in the contexts this paper explores where participants discuss self-representations heavily shaped by normative beauty standards and discursive logics of control see me showing you can be extended to include an important addendum mentioned earlier— as I want to be seen.

Throughout their accounts, participants link the sentiment see me showing you as I want to be seen to their embodiment of normative beauty achieved via controlling their image through self-editing, filters and other techniques. This alignment is most observable in participants’ responses to questions regarding how others perceive their selfie. For example, Jane says, “I’d never post a selfie I’m not happy with. So, I’m letting people see what I look like if I’m happy with how I look.” Regarding those viewing her selfie, Aine says, “I hope that they think I look nice, I hope they think that.” When asked about what she wishes people will see when she posts a selfie, Helen says, “This is going to sound really pathetic but that I’m pretty.”

This desire is derailed when participants encounter photographs they feel do not tally with the images they have created themselves. This threatens participants’ desire to be seen as they want to be seen producing an uncomfortable dissonance between images in which they see themselves embodying normative beauty (their selfie) and those in which they do not (images of them taken by others). This discomfort also reflects the intensely personal nature of selfie photography in which, via processes of subjectivation, the photographer’s perspective is foregrounded (Sumin Zhao and Michele Zappavigna 2018) and they imagine themselves to be “‘in fusion’” (Zappavigna 2016, 7) with their image. The challenge presented by images that threaten the veracity of controlled, idealised representations of the self are therefore perceived by participants as particularly discomforting.

While these dynamics are experienced negatively, they are also suggestive of participants’ growing self-awareness regarding the selfie-practices they engage in. This shift evokes Katrin Tiidenberg’s (2017) point that selfie-practices can evolve into sites of “reflexive choice” whereby takers, through a growing critical awareness, move from impulsive forms of selfie-taking to those which are more reflective. Tiidenberg (2018) also notes that selfies represent complex visual discourses that can be both empowering and disempowering, subject positions participants shift between throughout their accounts. Participants take pleasure in the sense of agency the selfie gives them over their image. As discussed, they contrast this sense of agency with moments when such agency is denied. This lack of agency is further compounded by participants’ fear that they will be judged as narcissistic or demanding if they ask for the images to be taken down or retaken. As Jane put it, “I don’t want to be one of those girls — “Take it again!” Take it again!’ Take it again!.’” From participants’ perspective, exercising control over their image via the selfie enables them to avoid these kinds of awkward social exchanges for which they fear they will be negatively judged.

Participants do take pleasure in cultivating and “taking control” of their self-image. However, while deeply felt, this pleasure through control is not secured. Rather, it functions as a point of return (Coward 1984), where pleasure, agency and the technological affordances of the selfie offer a temporary means to meet the demands of specular femininity while keeping women firmly enmeshed within structures emphasizing normative beauty as the route to visibility. Selfies enable participants to create their own image but the standards of “proper” selfies are not theirs to define; they are culturally and technologically determined. In mimicking the norms associated with “proper” selfies through self-editing, participants create images they are initially happy with but this satisfaction is threatened when they begin to suspect they cannot not live up to their own idealised image. This dissonance between participants’ embodied selves, their desired selves and images others have taken of them on a visual level, and the promise of control on a discursive level versus the limits of control in their lived experiences, produces shifting emotional states notable for their ambivalence rather than empowerment or coherence.

Conclusion

In this article, I have discussed the dissonant effects of discourses of control deployed by young women when discussing their use of the selfie. These discourses draw on the logics of postfeminist, neoliberal empowerment that cast young women as “in control” of their choices and image, a perspective which ignores contexts such as those explored in this paper where such control is compromised or cannot be secured. Discussing selfie-practices, participants describe an environment that is intensely watchful, where images are created, circulated and viewed in ways they can and cannot control. This produces a shifting, discordant terrain of positive and negative associations where the pleasure of creating a “nice” selfie is undermined by images over which participants cannot exercise the same degree of control.

A critical part of this process is the dissonance it produces at the level of the discursive but also the visual, as participants’ self-gazing shifts from positive to ambivalent. I argue that this visual dissonance, combined with its discursive aspect, mark a moment of return (Coward 1984), the point at which participants sense of agency and pleasure cannot be sustained and they revert to a more disempowered state. At this juncture, the “mismatch” (Betterton 1985, 1987) participants perceive between images taken of them by others and their selfie, and their embodied self and their selfie, becomes a source of acute discomfort. This discomfort prompts a critical re-evaluation of their image and a negative line of reasoning which is directed at the self and their appearance, where participants question how they are really seen by others – “Do I really look like that?.”

As with the discursive dissonance that arises when control rhetoric does not “match” their experiences of having their image circulate in ways they cannot control, participants’ accounts of visual dissonance reveal how the desire for coherence between self and one’s idealised image produces discomfort when such coherence cannot be secured. Together, these dissonant effects produce shifting subjectivities where a desire for control can be realised only to be undone. These individualised accounts of control cannot withstand the critical watchfulness participants anticipate their images will be subject to, a mode of watchfulness they themselves adopt when evaluating both their selfies and their embodied selves.

Control of one’s image is deeply desired by participants; the creation of images they are happy with in turn creates a positive sense of self. But the terms of this control are set by factors participants have little say in, such as which types of selfies are given greatest prominence, or another’s ability to photograph them on their terms, something digital technologies have greatly increased the likelihood of just as they have enabled practices like the selfie. Thus, when analysed in the contexts this study explores, the dissonance triggered by discursive and visual inconsistencies reveals an interdependent process where the desire for control arises from and relies on a simultaneous loss of control. Given the nature of digital technology and how easily it enables images to be taken and circulated, this loss of control is an inevitable prospect, producing a looping entanglement of empowerment/disempowerment. This “loop” remains firmly entrenched within the terrain of normative specular femininity—the “nice” or “proper” selfie alongside the anticipation of judgemental gazes—where the control selfies grant over one’s image is appealing in large part because the threat of loss of control is so ever-present.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my reviewers for their guidance, to my doctoral supervisor Dr Tina-Karen Pusse at the University of Galway for her support and insight, and to my participants for sharing their experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the University of Galway’s Hardiman Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Mary McGill

Mary McGill is a researcher at the University of Galway, Ireland and a Media Studies lecturer. Her first book, The Visibility Trap: Sexism, Surveillance & Social Media, was published in 2021. Her research interests include digital visual culture, self-image and subjectivity, and platformed cultural production. E-mail: [email protected]