on the mediated self[ie]: this is who me is.

usually, this is me, first thing in the morning. if you're going to wake me this early, you'd better have a 10 gallon mug of coffee ready for me to chug. if you don't, may God have mercy on your soul.

i know. even after i've superimposed the retro mood lighting over the original black & white image, i still look like a heartless troll. that's what happens when i'm roused too early. but what about when i do... this?

or this?

or even... this?

?

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i used to hate selfies with a serious passion. serious. hate. passion. & stuff. at best, they seemed to be the embodiment of casual self-involvement &, even worse, pedestrian immaturity: artless, style-less expressions of self that could only be executed with a smartphone, a bathroom mirror, & god-awful lighting. at worst, they were vile narcissism at its most demanding &, therefore, its most pathetic. likely unaware of the hilarious & sad irony, the photographer-cum-subject had revealed his/her desperation for others to see him/her as a strong/sexy/idealized body, without any context that might point to his/her personality & inner worth. perhaps he/she even wanted to deflect the viewers' attempts to cut to his/her true identity; i was convinced that the selfie, by definition, was a perverse marriage of vanity & self-loathing.

i was dismissive. i was disdainful. i thought, "i am above the duckface."

my perspective shifted a few months ago, when, while stomaching a less-than-desired change in plans, i found myself without a path. everything i'd imagined was now out of the realm of [then-current] possibility, & i had no concept of how to get myself back together. it was then that i subconsciously reached for long-dormant loves: running & photography. every day, i had more time than i wanted, so i allowed myself to look. there was the sky, there was a nearly dead bird, there was my dog.

there was me. the i. the self.

forgive me for a laywoman's haphazard, momentary leap into philosophy here, but--if you've studied george herbert mead, you'll know that the me & the i are two concepts that comprise the larger self. if i'm speaking of myself as me, then i'm looking back on my own actions, checking in from the perspective of the outside other, ostensibly seeing myself as they do (or, at least, how i think they do). this me is fitting into some social construct somehow, & according to the needs of said placement, i am to understand my own behavior & identity. if you'll grant the grammatical butchery, this is who me is. by contrast, if i'm speaking of myself as i, it's a completely different story. the i is immediate, the novel, the instinctive response to stimuli. those responses to the same stimuli may be similar, but in an ever changing world, they will never be exactly the same. thus, my i isn't historical but is ephemeral, as it can only be defined after the fact, when it has become my me.

make sense yet? shall i get the smelling salts for you?

anyway. if we're to use mead-speak, my i was falling apart, & that was frightening because, frankly, i didn't have the slightest clue as to what my i was any longer. in many ways, i had to make a new path &, in so doing, redefine my i. how was i do to that? how in the hell was i going to show everybody... well... something, when i felt that i had nothing? the present i? fuck that noise; better to manipulate that which is superficially mutable. i admit it; i decided to be my own winston smith, &, philosophically speaking, i turned to the reconstruction of my me. i glommed onto the selfie.

really, it's absurdity at its finest. give an artist tools to reveal herself, & she has the potential to obscure anything she wants, all to present a false truth. or, at least, she can give you only the truth she wants you to see. we know that. the only transparency & guaranteed-correct interpretation of the self-portrait is that i'm feeding you an image of my own design. in a sense, i'm obstructing you from the candid i because, frankly, i can't promise myself that my i is all that appealing. it's not the me i want recorded for all posterity, so i'm making one for you [you're welcome]. it's staged. it's a façade.

to make it even more complicated, here's the massive disconnect--i'm now consciously tipping my hand & showing myself to be a self-constructing fraud. & yet, there are still deeper, undeniable truths to be revealed by the surface, if one looks hard enough. to borrow a phrase from Fullmetal Alchemist, there are 'truths within the truth.'

1. i'm not the only one who attempts to present a persona. true, the "everybody else is doing it, so why can't i" argument is nothing but bull when it comes to decision-making, as it reduces us to mindless little shits who can't function independently or against the tide of society. however, it does mark a widespread behavior, one that is relatable. nobody wants to air their undesirables, so everybody puts on their best faces, or at least the ones they don't mind showing.
2. even in sharing, we still hide. if i really wanted to display myself as a bathing beauty or a casually prone hot bod, i'd have made my face as obvious as my cleavage. at the very least, i wouldn't have cropped my head out. so, do i want attention, or don't i? in reality, every time i omit something, i reveal something else, which then leads to the fact that...
3. no matter how meticulously crafted the mask, there are always cracks that can be exploited & easily made larger, if only the viewer knows how. if you can read a particular visual language, you'll see that this isn't just an image of my eye. the intensity of color, the lack of sharp definition, the gaze that refuses to connect all belie much more. to be blunt, you'd see that i wasn't artsy-fartsy at the time of the photo; i was in pain, lost.

so is your head spinning yet? for certain, i haven't written anything terribly cogent. in fact, it's likely that i've only released a philosophical miasma, re: the truth, fallacy, & efficacy of visual self-representation. i suppose that i must concede then that the selfie, as a tool, can only go so far in any purpose the photographer can assign it, & its strength as self-propaganda walks stride-for-stride with its vulnerability to accurate interpretation. have i finally made & shared the me that i find personally palatable, or have i tanked my own efforts by yapping on & on about it? who knows...

without any concrete axiom proven then, the only parting gift i have for you, dear reader, is a 100% dead-on selfie of what i look like without my AM coffee. it's the truth. i swear.