Selfies, selfies, selfies

Model: me  Photographer: Evelyn Yang. Styling: Emma Bowman

I was on a train the other day en route to some friends living in "darkest Oxfordshire" as they refer to the lovely village  they have moved to after living in London for decades.  The journey was not very long but knowing how haphazard British trains can be time wise I thought this gave me a good excuse  to stock up on magazines to read. If we get stuck, I thought, I will have some entertainment.
I confess, I love women's magazines, they truly are my weakness. I have always read them with immense interest, from cover to cover, taking it all in. I love the glossies like Vogue and Harper's and Bazaar but also love the ones full of juicy gossip, and I adore dear, good old (and old fashioned) Cosmo, once so terribly naughty, now so terribly silly.
When I was a teenager whatever I read in the Magazines was Gospel. Once I came across a news item about Twiggy's boyfriend manager  putting her on a lettuce diet for a week so that she would lose the two or three pounds she had allowed herself to gain - shock horror, how could Twiggy gain weight? Was she human? I was fifteen or sixteen at the time.  I remember showing that to my mum and declaring  I too wanted to live off lettuce for a week to lose weight. She had other ideas and from then on monitored my food intake very regularly. Eventually she scared me off not eating by telling me that my growth would be stunted. I did not like the sound of that, so I agreed to eat. But I digress.
Now I still relish reading the magazines (note the shift from capital M to lower case).  They are my guilty pleasure - but I know better than taking it all in uncritically.

Model: me. Photographer: Evelyn Yang. Styling: Emma Bowman
And so it was that I came across an article about 'selfie esteem'. In Cosmo April 2016, 'only £1'. Basically it boils down to this: women are spending an inordinate amount of time and putting on an inordinate amount of make up to take selfies that are 'selfie worthy'  to display  on Instagram or Facebook. Is it good ? Is it bad?  REALLY?

Selfie with fellow model Nicola Griffin 
Hold on. I take selfies all the time. When I model, to have a record of the shoot behind the scenes - and am not so good at doing that, half the time I forget. When (one of) my agency asks me to send a 'polaroid' (I love that old fashioned term, who takes polaroids these days?) for a client that has requested me for a modelling job - no make up is mandatory. Sometimes I take a selfie on the spur of the moment. I never spend ANY time making myself up for it.
So honestly, I do not understand this trend for selfie make up. But apparently it is BIG.
Maybe this is why I have only a few followers on my Instagram account...


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