As A Man, Why Are You Taking Selfies?
A hot photo of yourself is currency. We enter it into the world in exchange for validation, attention, sexy DMs. Sometimes, it’s proof of life, documentation of me now, for me later. Taking one is part of a human impulse to know yourself. So why is it unsettling when a guy I like does it?
Men, too, want to be validated and witnessed. But they don’t project beauty in the familiar, feminine way. No doe eyes looking up at the camera. No tasteful cleavage or excessive use of blush. Their desire to be seen as hot is obscured. The framing is off, the light is often bad, and they look past the lens; nonchalant, better things to do. Bad Bunny is a favorite exception to all this. But you’ve seen the rest–a toothbrush-in-mouth selfie, a head floating in a blue sky. This camera just happened to be there; my finger just happened to hit the shutter. They don’t own their narcissism, and honestly, thank God.
Imagine you meet someone and they’re great, then you follow them and find rows of earnest photos of themselves taken by themselves. They know their angles. They are horny for the camera, not you. They are hot, yes, but also in need of having their hotness acknowledged over and over again. We need the camouflage and the bad selfies since the alternative is almost antisocial. If he’s so taken with his own image, is there any room left for him to be taken with yours? Will you be taken together?
A masculine selfie is off-putting because it rivals the feminine and lays our vanity bare. In engaging in the very behaviors women do (I recently went on a trip where my friends took no less than one hundred photos of me), men posting thirst traps remind us why masculine beauty ideals are ideal. Feminine standards of being delicate and soft align with the undemanding action of taking a selfie, arm leisurely outstretched. Versus male beauty standards–looking strong and brave, calloused hands holding something more important than an iPhone–which signal that he can and would protect you against a bear or an enemy or a hater, not just feebly take a photo of it for his Instagram story.
Instead, these guys are busy standing contrapposto in front of a full-length mirror, a modern-day David, only there’s nothing prophetic here. I’ve never felt saved by a male nude. In preening, posturing, and admiring themselves, they subvert gendered expectations while documenting a prescribed masculine aesthetic. Men used to go to war for their ego, now, all a lot of them can do is look pretty. Their big arms are for posting, not chopping down a tree. And, as opposed to a Renaissance subject being sculpted, it’s self-directed. They’re sexy, and they know it. A man can be so hot that he’s not at all.
Enter medium-ugly men: who aren’t obviously hot on paper, or a front-facing camera, but whose appeal is found somewhere within that. A medium-ugly man isn’t staring at his own reflection. Or, he probably is, but he isn’t posting about it so often. It allows you to imagine that he reads books or volunteers with old people. If he does post a photo of himself, it’s something his friend took on film or a nonchalant selfie. He looks unassumingly into the camera without the recognition of our Heroic males. It’s the guy you show your friends with a caveat–he’s a lot hotter in person.
The latter is always more attractive. A guy who doesn’t know he’s beautiful, who is waiting to be told so by you. Or maybe it’s just refreshing in light of my own vanity. I’m not indifferent, so I think men should take photos of themselves and have documents of their selfhood and life. Hot ones, even. When I like a guy, I seek out every photo that exists, consuming them greedily in an attempt to know him more deeply. But there’s allure in the rarity, the search that leads back to his mom’s Instagram account. If hot selfies are our currency, then they should be doled out in a measured way, accidental and lucky. If he’s showing the world how hot he is every day, what’s left for me? If his hotness is a currency accepted everywhere, he becomes less and less sexy the more he shows it. I think that’s how inflation works.
For research, I looked at a few selfies of a guy I like. There are less than ten, and in each, he’s looking down at the camera or straight-on, as unceremonious as any text he’d send. A lot of them look like they were taken on whatever came before an iPhone X. He could be attractive or not. It’s mysterious, there’s more to find out, and that’s what makes it so hot.