I’m trying to finish up something else for this exhausting blog (honestly, sometimes I wish I were a draw-er and not a writer) but in the meantime, I recalled how someone I know told me to take and post more selfies on social media.

“I don’t do that,” I replied. “I’d feel ridiculous.”

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “Before age comes to really claim us, and while we still look good, I don’t see a problem with this.” She is in her mid-forties and thinks posting Instagram selfies is a perfectly normal activity for people in our creaky demographic. The mere idea of doing this–and I have done it, I think, maybe six or seven times on my barely-used old IG account, and I shiver with nerves and embarrassment every time I do–seems totally absurd. It seems contrary to everything I believe in and stand for and value, and I certainly don’t feel like listing all of those items right here. If you know me and / or read this blog, you have a pretty solid idea of who I am.

But was she right?

I am no expert in doing any of that. I certainly have friends and relatives who are in my age bracket (and older) who think nothing of posting endless selfies while I find the whole thing distasteful, but is this actually normal now? Normal for people who aren’t teenagers and useless Gen Zedders? And does the entire process really involve an hours-long photo session with only one’s extended arm, phone, and chosen background as essential tools in order to find the solitary photo that somehow hits personal paydirt? Or is it entirely possible to take the perfect self-portrait, ready for widespread internet consumption, on the first click?

What a waste of fucking time. Unless it’s specific visual subjects that I want to capture for a story (or just share), and which I find important to treat with a bit of time and respect, it’s snap-and-go for me at most. But two days ago, after finally finding the wherewithal to wash my hair (I bathe, at minimum, at least once daily–so fear not about my impeccable hygiene–but washing and drying my mop is a gargantuan and tiring task that I put off whenever I can), I took a crack at it. I’m comfortable with how I look, I think I’m rather fine for a chick hitting 50 in exactly one-third of a year, I am actually embracing my aging visage, I don’t need makeup, I don’t yet have wrinkles, my hair was clean and wasn’t actually pulled up in an annoyed topknot as always, so let’s do this, Nad!! Let’s take a real, honest-injun selfie! It’s what everyone’s hip to!

…and I look cockeyed. I look COCKEYED. Just you look closely at that header pic. I tried snapping my awkwardly-set face three more times, and each one was worse than the last. One eye looks like it’s looking at the screen, the other eye looks like it’s staring into the tiny lens; I have no idea where to look, and never have been able to work that one out. The last couple of selfies I have taken, I made sure to purposely wear sunglasses because I have come up against this problem quite a few times over the years. I have absolutely no knack or skill for the selfie.

I am not sharing the above photo on Instagram [edited to add: I had to in order to share this blog post]; I’m only posting it here, my sort-of safe space. Why would I share an uneasy picture of myself on a Zuckerberg-helmed, sanity-compromising data mine? I still can’t understand publishing selfie after selfie of yourself on social media unless you need to share an exquisite aesthetic that you laboured over; immortalize a significant, unforgettable moment in time; or you’re hovering on the precipice of extreme mental illness. It isn’t narcissism–a terribly overused term that people believe is synonymous with “conceited”–so much as it is some desperate clawing at digital validation, using one’s own very vulnerable likeness as some kind of currency in exchange for internet stickers.

What’s the lesson in all of this? The lesson is: Selfies are a massive contributing factor to the steady, unstoppable collapse of civilization and sanity as we are currently experiencing, adding to people’s increasingly-neurotic and reality-impaired ideas of what constitutes an acceptable appearance, resulting in self-loathing, delusional self-imposed personal expectations, and more body- and facial-dysmorphic disorder than ever experienced before in the history of humankind.

Oh, and I just look better in person; that, too, was a reinforced lesson. I am not photo- or videogenic, as was shockingly confirmed to me a couple of months ago (I wrote about it, and I’ll link it when I’m in front of my laptop tomorrow, as I’m hastily posting this from my phone…terrible typos and grammar and all). And nothing–I assure you, nothing–feels more humiliating and wretched than taking pictures of yourself alone in your place, adopting various “Who, li’l ole me?” poses and facial expressions, determined to find at least one or two snapshots you feel are the most flattering. I see people do this out in public, standing in front of lampposts with a coy finger in their mouth and snapping away at themselves, or simply pausing with their cameras in the middle of a busy sidewalk, pooching their mouths out to make the unacceptable 2000’s-era ducklips (men are just as guilty of this one as women), and I legitimately have no idea how they aren’t dying of absolute embarrassment, doing this in front of hundreds of strangers and witnesses.

…but the culture is shameless now. So I say, bring back shame. Shame prevented us from celebrating morbid obesity as healthy and beautiful, and from getting tattoos all over our faces and knees. I’m telling you, the only people I will cross the street to avoid are those solicitors standing on Vancouver street corner in vests who clutch clipboards and belong to scammy charities…and people with facial tattoos. Shame on everyone.

Soon,

Nadya.