Girls and Selfie Culture: Empowering or Narcissistic?

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Art, specifically the self-portrait, has evolved along with technology and social media. With the technological generation, the self portrait has become a selfie. But what sort of social implications come along with this new trend?
Thesis Statement: Selfies give women and girls the power to represent themselves the way they wish to be seen, boost self-esteem, and could even shift the standard of beauty to something more realistic.
How Selfies got Started
In any art history class, there is one topic that is always covered: the self-portrait. All great artists from Leonardo Da Vinci to Jackson Pollock have immortalized themselves in the form of autobiographical portraiture. Female self portraits are specifically significant. Until the 20th century, women were rarely trained in the art of painting. Usually, the only female artists were the daughters of male artists. This was because it was necessary for apprentices of artists to live and work with the senior artist. Of course, it was socially unacceptable for a woman to live with a man to whom she was not married. Therefore, most portraits of women pre-20th century are not self portraits, but instead portraits painted by male painters. We can recognize these portraits by the fact that the subject’s gaze is never at the viewer, but rather to the side or downwards, due to the fact that women were not meant to look men in the eye.
One female artist pre-20th century who created a famous self-portrait is Marie-Denise Villers. Her most famous painting, Young Woman Drawing, was once thought to be the work of Jacques-Louis David. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “many paintings, especially portraits of young women, which were formerly attributed to Jacques Louis David or...

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...pinto, Lauren. "Artist Selfies: Everybod'ys Doing It." Muddy Colors (blog), January 23, 2014. http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2014/01/artist-selfies-everybodys-doing-it.html (accessed March 3, 2014).

Ryan, Erin Gloria. "Selfies Aren't Empowering. The'yre a Cry for Help.." Jezebel (blog), November 21, 2013. http://jezebel.com/selfies-arent-empowering-theyre-a-cry-for-help-1468965365 (accessed March 1, 2014).

Simmons, Rachel. "Selfies Are Good for Girls." Slate (blog), November 20, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/11/selfies_on_instagram_and_facebook_are_tiny_bursts_of_girl_pride.html (accessed March 1, 2014).

Winter, Jessica. "Selfie-loathing." Slate (blog), July 23, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html (accessed March 1, 2014).

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