A column recently published by the Harvard Crimson purports that women taking selfies is a “deeply unsettling, even subversive” feminist act.
In the column titled, “Let Me Take a Selfie,” Nian Hu writes about the “deep-rooted discomfort that many people experience when women raise a camera to their face, take a photo of themselves, and appreciate how good they look.”
Hu also writes:
“Society condemns women for taking selfies because the act of taking a selfie is deeply unsettling, even subversive. What’s frightening about selfie culture is that it shows that women do not need men to validate their beauty. It reinforces the radical concept that women’s beauty does not, in fact, belong to men; that women do not, in fact, dress themselves or wear makeup solely for men; and that women are actually autonomous individuals who exist outside of the male gaze.”
The male gaze Hu refers to here is the feminist idea that many experience the world primarily from a “male” point of view in which women are objects of sexual pleasure. In Hu’s view, women taking seflies and complimenting each other on them gets rid of the male gaze, allowing women to give each other endless validation and attention.
Hu closes the column by writing, “When women take selfies, they are subverting the male gaze. When women enjoy their own beauty, they are no longer the objects of consumption but rather the subjects.”
“And when women take selfies, they make it abundantly clear that they do not need men, nor the male gaze, in order to feel beautiful.”