Selfie: A Portrait of a Word

As Word of the Year decisions approach, the lexicography team at Dictionary.com has been reflecting on words that have risen in popularity this year. One such word is selfie.

In case you’re unfamiliar with this term, selfie means “a photo that one takes of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam, especially for posting on a social-networking website.” Though self-portraits are far from a novel concept, the term selfie is relatively new, only surfacing about ten years ago in Australia. It’s a great example of classic Australian hypocoristics (for example, using “Aussie” in place of “Australian,” as discussed in this Language Log post). The precursor of the selfie is the “MySpace pic,” or a poorly lit self-portrait, often taken with the aid of a bathroom mirror and used as a profile photo on a site like MySpace (remember, this was before phones had self-facing cameras). As the ease of access to camera phones and webcams has increased, and the technology has improved, the selfie has become a mainstay on the many screens we interact with on a daily basis.

In an October 2013 New York Times piece titled “My Selfie, Myself,” Jenna Wortham reflects on the selfie trend, positing that these photos give a “human element” to primarily text-based interactions. She continues, saying that at first she was selfie-shy, but after seeing all her friends turn the camera on themselves, she followed suit. And she was rewarded: “…the occasional selfie appears to nudge some friends who I haven’t seen in a while to get in touch via e-mail or text to suggest that we meet for a drink to catch up.” By the simple act of sharing a photo of her face on a social-networking site, Wortham has noticed increased social interaction in real life.

“If you’re not in the photo, it didn’t happen.” That’s what John Shahidi, CEO of the company that released the selfie-only photo-sharing app Shots of Me (backed by pop-star Justin Bieber), told TechCrunch this week. This is not the only app on the market in which selfies play a large role. There’s also Frontback, which allows you to take simultaneous photos with both your front-facing and self-facing cameras to capture your expression as you look at something. Even Vine, which originally didn’t support shooting with the self-facing camera, found its users gravitated to this option as soon as the company added it as an update. As Kate Losse notes in the New Yorker, for social-networking sites like Instagram and SnapChat “the self is the message and the selfie is the medium.”

Since gracing the Internet, the word selfie has even had its own spinoffs. There’s the legsie, which is a selfie of legs. There are alsobookshelfies, which are selfies taken in front of one’s bookshelf. Perhaps the most perverse type of selfie are funeral selfies, which are selfies taken on the way to, during or after a funeral, naturally. The fact that the word selfie has, in its short existence, already developed its own subcategories gives it the potential staying power that lexicographers look for when choosing whether or not to add a new word to the dictionary.

What do you think of this selfie phenomenon?

Do You Know Who Was in the First Selfie?

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Whether you consider yourself a digital pro or a caveman, you’ve likely heard of the word,selfie.

The Oxford Dictionary (yes, the word is in the dictionary) defines a selfie (or selfy) as: “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.

It’s one of the most popular trends of this digital revolution and doesn’t seem to be dying down any time soon. Whether you want to show off all the hard work you’ve been doing in the gym or you just spotted a celebrity on the street (who wants an autograph anymore?), a selfie will do just the trick.

First, let’s take a look at some of the more popular types of selfies…

The regular selfie

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The bathroom selfie

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The gym selfie

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The celebrity selfie

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The drunk selfie

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The duck face selfie

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The butt selfie

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The abs selfie

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The festival selfie

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The shadow selfie

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And a million others!

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And with all these types of selfies, it’s only natural that selfie trends have followed, like:

Selfies with homeless people

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Selfies at funerals

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Selfies after sex

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Selfies in front of disasters

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Selfies with strangers

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Selfies with cops

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Selfies in Jail

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Selfies with animals

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Selfies at serious places

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And selfies wherever and whenever you feel is most (in)appropriate!

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NOW WHERE THE HELL DID ALL THESE SELFIES COME FROM?!

In 2014 the word selfie was one of 150 words added to the Merriam Webster dictionary.

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In 2013 the Oxford Dictionary named selfie the Word of the Year! 

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In 2012 Time Magazine named selfie as one of its top 10 buzzwords of the year.

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On January 16, 2011 Instagram user @jennlee uploaded this image to Instagram. As soon as Instagram implemented the use of hashtags (#), she included #selfie with her pic. It was the first time a selfie hashtag appeared on Instagram.

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In 2007 The Telegraph did an expose on Flickr noting: “There are the narcissistic teenage girls (‘selfies’ as they are termed in Flickr-speak) who post endless self-portraits and whose pictures sometimes end up on the cover of pornographic DVDs.”

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Around 2005, when Myspace was still more popular than Facebook, the “Myspace Pic” was a popular photograph uploaded to the site. This was essentially a selfie, usually in front of a mirror, and usually viewed as classless.

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In 2004 the use of #selfie first appeared on Flickr, the same year the photo-sharing network was created. 

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In September of 2001 an Australian website emerged that displayed self-taken photographs with disposable cameras. This is considered the first time the word selfie was coined and is the reason why the Oxford Dictionary gives the word an Australian origin.

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In 1992 Courtney Love snapped this bathroom mirror selfie of herself and Kurt Cobain while Nirvana was on tour in Japan. Kurt may have been the first annoyed boyfriend in a selfie.

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No actually, he definitely was.

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In 1991 actors Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis introduced Hollywood audiences to the selfie by snapping this pic in the movie Thelma and Louise.

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In 1966 astronaut Buzz Aldrin took a space selfie during a space walk. This was three years before he became the second person to walk on the moon. Let’s just say Buzz Aldrin was taking selfies way before they were cool.

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In 1914 Russian Grand Duchess, Anastasia Nikolaevna, took a mirror selfie to send to a friend. She was just 13 years old at the time and took the photo with a Kodak Brownie camera.

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This picture of an unknown woman in 1900 could very well be the first mirror selfie ever taken.

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In 1865 French photographer Felix Nadar did the un-freaking-thinkable! He created a revolving selfie! This is essentially a selfie GIF, and the selfie GIF hasn’t even made a comeback yet. Let’s see if history will repeat itself with this one.

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In 1839 photography pioneer Robert Cornelius took the first ever light photograph and (surprise, surprise) it was of himself. He actually had to uncover the lens, run into place, pose for the pic, and then run back and cover the lens to develop the photo. Let’s just say selfies required a lot more effort back then.

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And there you have it – this was the first selfie ever taken! It makes sense the first photograph ever created was a selfie, BUT we do know that people knew how to draw and paint before cameras existed. The self-painted/drawn/etched portrait was a popular form of self expression in the earlier centuries, and artists usually stood in front of a mirror so they could capture their likeness on the canvas. Basically all the first selfies were mirror selfies, so let’s keep going…

In 1630 the artist Rembrandt van Rijn drew this image of himself. It could be considered the first duck-face selfie.

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In 1618 Italian painter Cristofano Allori created this graphic self-portrait depicting his mistress carrying his head as her mother looks on. This is probably the first (and last) I-got-my-head-chopped-off selfie ever created. These selfies are going to have a tough time making a comeback.

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In 1528 Flemish Renaissance painter Caterina van Hemessen created what is widely known as the first self-portrait of a woman. It was extremely difficult for women to become painters during this time period and their training consisted of things like dissecting corpses and studying naked men. Being one of the first women to create a self-portrait is kind of a big deal.

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In 1524 Italian painter and print-maker Parmigianino painted this self portrait on a convex surface to portray a mirror. It is essentially the first mirror selfie! Mirror selfies may have made the biggest comeback in the selfie game today.

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Around 1512 Leonardo da Vinci created this painting entitled, Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk. It’s still up to debate who exactly is in this portrait, but many people believe it is da Vinci himself.

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One of most famous selfie artists of the late 15th century was German Renaissance artistAlbrecht Dürer. He was extremely conscious of his public image, which is why he created so many selfies (and why he made himself look like Jesus Christ). He was kind of like the Kim Kardashian of self-portraits back in the day. Here he is at age 28 in the last self-portrait he created, which was completed in 1500.

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In 1433 Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck created what is still debated to be the first self-portrait. It is titled Portrait of a Man in a Turban, but he is actually wearing a chaperon. The chaperon resembles a turban because the ends, which normally hang down, are tied up. It is argued the chaperon ends are tied up to keep it from getting dirty while Eyck painted himself.

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So whether it’s photographed, painted, drawn, etched, taken with a disposable camera, snapped on a cell phone or shot with a high-tech space camera, we can agree on one thing: A selfie is a form of sharing your likeness with others. …

… With that being said, in the year 57 BC the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, wrapped herself in a carpet to sneak past guards and present herself to Julius Caesar. Legend has it that Caesar fell in love with her on the spot. 

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And the selfie was born.