An elementary school principal I once worked with said that if you ask a group of

first grade girls who the best runner in the class is, they all point to themselves: I’m the
best runner, they’ll say. Ask a group of sixth grade girls, she went on, and they’ll point to
the best runner.
Ask a group of ninth grade girls, I thought to myself, and when they point out the
fast girl, she’ll flinch and demur, saying, “No, I’m awful!” Pride, after all, is a cardinal sin
in girls’ social culture. It’s a lesson they learn early and with ugly consequences. Act too
confident and you’ll be isolated, called “conceited,” a “bitch,” a girl who “thinks she’s all
that,” who’s “full of herself.”
Girls adapt by learning the language of the humble. They raise their hands
tentatively at the elbow, beginning classroom comments with apologies (“I’m not sure if
this is right, but …”). They turn strong opinions into questions with “upspeak.” As Amy
Schumer lampooned in her viral sketch, young women deflect compliments with frenetic
intensity—or, as I’ve found in my own research, perform an inverse maneuver, earning
a compliment by putting themselves down (“I look so awful today.” “No you don’t, you
look amaze!”).
Enter the selfie, which Oxford Dictionaries just picked as its word of the year. As
the Pew Center for Internet Research reported earlier this year, 91 percent of teens
have posted one. Last week, the first selfie app went live: Shots of Me, backed by Justin
Bieber, is a camera app that opens with the lens already facing its user.
These days, the selfie and its main outlet, Instagram, generally come in for much
adult loathing. But consider this: The selfie is a tiny pulse of girl pride—a shout-out to
the self.
Earlier this week, the first three women to complete Marine infantry combat
training, along with a fourth who completed most of the hurdles but was injured before
her final physical fitness test, posted a jubilant selfie. (Nancy Pelosi tweeted it as “selfie
of the year.”) If you write off the endless stream of posts as image-conscious
narcissism, you’ll miss the chance to watch girls practice promoting themselves—a skill
that boys are otherwise given more permission to develop, and which serves them later
on when they negotiate for raises and promotions.
When I posted my first selfie a few months ago after getting a haircut I loved, my
thumb hovered, ambivalent, over the post button. I felt a wave of discomfort. How
obnoxious, I thought to (and of) myself—are people going to think that I think I look
good? And that I want others to know it? That this kind of casual self-promotion comes
so easily to girls points to a yawning—and promising—generational divide. Maybe we
adult women, of the Lean In generation, have something to learn here.
The selfie suggests something in picture form—I think I look [beautiful] [happy]
[funny] [sexy]. Do you?—that a girl could never get away with saying. It puts the gaze of
the camera squarely in a girl’s hands, and along with it, the power to influence the
photo’s interpretation.
As psychiatrist Josie Howard recently told Refinery29’s Kristin Booker, selfies
“may reset the industry standard of beauty to something more realistic.” On
#selfiesunday, an often giddy end-of-weekend selfie-fest, the middle school girls on my
feed run the gamut from serious to silly. Some girls are working it, sure, but others have
their tongues half out as if to say, I know I look stupid. But I choose to, and I’m beating
you to the judgment punch.
When I recently suggested to my Facebook community that selfies might
occasionally be a good thing for girls, I was swiftly checked by a chorus of horrified
grown-ups. Selfies are a form of “approval seeking,” said one. They feel “so desperate,”
tsked another. Many professionals echo their alarm.
But of course: Pity the teenage girl. As with sex and hooking up, we assume
there is only one motivation, and it’s a bad one. Girls are perennial victims and the
culture always perpetuates this. All girls hook up because they know they’ll have to
settle to get the intimacy they so desperately crave, even on someone else’s terms—not
because they might just be drunk and want to make out with someone. All girls sext
because they’re clueless and stupid—not because some have figured out how to
leverage the tools of social media to play at sex without having it. And all girls post
selfies because they’re desperate for others to fill the beauty-affirmation void left by a
ruthless media. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
I’ve been an educator for the last 15 years. I do worry that for every girl who
posts a selfie with pride, others use it to cobble together the validation they cannot give
themselves. I worry also about the girls who spend hours editing out their blemishes
and adding filters.
A 16-year-old from Texas told me that she longs for the days of their
grandmothers’ brave, set-in-stone Polaroids. And there is plenty that’s troubling about
girls’ tendency to use Instagram to celebrate their physical appearance over their
accomplishments. A survey by the Girl Scouts in 2010 found that girls downplayed their
intelligence, kindness, and efforts to be a positive influence online in favor of presenting
an image that is fun, funny, and social.
But I worry more about a world of parents and educators that are overly invested
in seeing all social media as problematic, and positioning girls as passive targets
instead of agents of their own lives.
Every girl is different, and context matters.
The selfie flaunts the restrictions of “good girl” culture like a badass teenager
sitting in the back of the classroom, refusing to apologize for what she says. I, for one,
want to sit next to her in detention.
 Fostering a Positive Outlook: The Correlation of Selfies, Pride, and Self-
Confidence

The article “Selfies are Good for Girls” by Rachel Simmons talks about the
correlation of digital selfies and the perception of a girl of oneself. Simmons begin
explaining how a group of young girl posses high self-esteem and build-up confidence.
But as they progress in age, the confidence started to decrease. This is mainly because
of the environment factor where girls are usually exposed to, not just only within their
immediate surrounding, but as well as to their digital surroundings. Simmons posits that
girls are being exposed to the idea that when she is confident or when she boasts
herself with pride, she might be interpreted as someone who is seeking of more
attention, and this is not good. That is why Simmons said that girls adapt by learning the
language of humble. The more you get older, the less confident you are to put yourself
out there and flaunt what you have because of the societal standards and pressure of
how a girl should be and should look like.
Despite of the strong abhorrence of perception of pride in social media, Simmons
aver that selfies help girls showcase who they are and what they can be. It is a powerful
tool with limitless possibilities in expressing oneself out to the world. But this cannot be
achieved as long as the society keep putting these standards of what girls can and
cannot do.
Simmons also said that she is worried about a world of parents and educators
that are overly invested in seeing all social media as problematic, and positioning girls
as passive targets instead of agents of their own lives. In this day and age, social media
is here to stay no matter we like it or not. It is the driving force of connection of one
another and the economy is somehow lodged with it as well. That is why it is so wrong
to view social media as something that is so problematic because of its limitless
possibilities and usage. The perception of the older generation that girls should not be
exposing much of themselves on social media should be dismantled. Girls should put
out of themselves more on social media, safely because it is an avenue of expressing
their femininity, beauty, confidence, and their sexuality. Gone are days where girls
should only be timid and must be clothed from head to toe. We are living in an age
where girls should be free to choose what they would wear without getting any bad
remarks from the society. This is one of the great disparity a girl experiences over a
boy.
Finally, selfies correlate to the perception of pride of a girl because the selfie is
the mirror which shows how powerful a girl could be. And being powerful or confident is
not bad. It’s just a matter of perception all the time.