Ah, the controversial selfie. Some hate these duck-faced attention-grabs with the fire of a thousand suns. Others find them empowering. Both have logical arguments—can't we all just get along?
Count Gemini Garcia in the former camp of selfie haters. The Napa photographer has made a grand gesture to banish selfies from her personal newsfeed: people with more than 10 selfies on Facebook are eligible for a free photo shoot with her business, Third Iris Photography. The motive? Get people to embrace the beauty of actual photography.
The idea seems to have struck a nerve: though she made her offer less than 24 hours ago, Garcia already has two selfie-obsessed folks lined up to participate.
The offer is pretty damn generous (and interesting), so we naturally had to ask Garcia about her proposition. Unlike, apparently, everyone else, Garcia doesn't actually hate selfies. Instead, she's "disappointed" with them, pegging them to a societal obsession with appearances.
Selfies, especially when posted frequently in the same poses, make me think the person posting is measuring their worth or just feeling insecure and why wouldn’t they? It seems society places beauty as a superficial thing.
Burn!
Then again, she is quick to note that the selfie isn't just the vice of us vile, narcissistic Millennials: insecurity happens in every generation, she claims, and this is simply how we're coping. Lucky folks of the past dealt with similar self-esteem issues by embracing "leg warmers and dropping acid to attain a sweet kind of apathy," says Garcia. Which totally sounds more fun warm than our stupid selfie fixation.
Professional photography, on the flipside, employs a degree of trust: you are vulnerable to your features being analyzed by another, which some people simply aren't comfortable doing. And, well, that's sad.
That said, I posted a selfie on Instagram this morning and checked the number of likes several times while writing this. Yikes. Pretty sure Garcia proved her point.
Image: Inner beauty? Courtesy of, ThinkStock
