“Selfie: The Revolutionary Potential of Your Own Face, In Seven Chapters” (Rachel Syme, Matter)

Back to top S hot One: Open on a woman snapping a picture of herself, by herself.

返回页首 S hot One：开场是一位女士独自拍摄一张自己的照片。

Maybe she is sitting at an outdoor cafe, her phone held out in front of her like a gilded hand mirror, a looking glass linked to an Instagram account.

也许她正坐在一家露天咖啡馆里，手机举在面前，就像一面镀金的手镜，一块与 Instagram 账户相连的镜子。

Maybe she tilts her head one way and then another, smiling and smirking, pushing her hair around, defiantly staring into the lens, then coyly looking away.

也许她把头歪向一边，然后又歪着一边，微笑着，傻笑着，把头发撩到一边，挑衅地盯着镜头，然后害羞地把目光移开。

She takes one shot, then five, then 25.

她开了一枪，然后是五枪，然后是 25 枪。

She flips through these images, appraising them, an editrix putting together the September issue of her face; she weighs each against the others, plays around with filters and lighting, and makes a final choice.

她翻阅着这些照片，对它们进行了评价，就像一个编辑器将九月号的她的脸部照片拼凑在一起；她会权衡各个因素，尝试使用滤镜和灯光，然后做出最终选择。

She pushes send and it’s done.

她按下“发送”按钮，一切就完成了。

Her selfie is off to have adventures without her, to meet the gazes of strangers she will never know.

她的自拍照开始了没有她的冒险，迎接她永远不会认识的陌生人的目光。

She feels excited, maybe a little nervous.

她感到很兴奋，或许还有点紧张。

She has declared, in just a few clicks, that she deserves, in that moment, to be seen.

只需点击几下鼠标，她就宣布，在那一刻，她值得被看到。

The whole process takes less than five minutes.

整个过程不到五分钟。

Shot Two: Zoom in on a group of people watching this woman, one table over.

镜头二：放大一群人在一张桌子旁注视着这个女人。

They are snickering, rolling their eyes, whispering among themselves.

他们窃笑、翻白眼、窃窃私语。

Maybe they are older than she is, making jokes about Narcissus and the end of civilization as we know it.

也许他们比她年长，拿水仙和我们所知的文明的终结开玩笑。

Maybe they are all men, deeply affronted by a woman looking at herself with longing, a woman who is both the see-er and the seen, the courier of her own message.

也许他们都是男人，被一个充满渴望地看着自己的女人深深冒犯，这个女人既是观看者又是被观看者，是她自己信息的传递者。

Maybe they are a group of chattering women, who have internalized a societal shame about taking pleasure in one’s face in public, who have learned to be good girls, to never let their self-regard come off as a threat.

也许她们是一群喋喋不休的女性，她们已经内化了在公共场合以自己的面孔为乐的社会耻辱，她们学会了做个好女孩，永远不要让自己的自尊心成为一种威胁。

Maybe they are lonesome and hungry for connection, projecting their own lack of community onto this woman’s solo show, believing her to be isolated rather than expansive.

也许他们感到孤独，渴望联系，将自己缺乏社区的感觉投射到这个女人的个展上，相信她是孤立的而不是广阔的。

They don’t see where her image is headed, where it will take up space in the infinite.

他们看不到她的形象将走向何方，将在哪里占据无限的空间。

This is scary for them, this lack of control, this sense that her face could go anywhere, pop up anywhere.

这对他们来说很可怕，这种缺乏控制，这种感觉她的脸可以去任何地方，突然出现在任何地方。

This is why they sneer at her like she is masturbating.

这就是为什么他们嘲笑她就像她在自慰一样。

This is why they believe that no selfie could ever mean anything other than vanity.

这就是为什么他们认为自拍除了虚荣之外没有任何意义。

This is why they think selfies are a phase, something they can wish away.

这就是为什么他们认为自拍是一个阶段，是他们可以希望摆脱的东西。

Whoever they are, and for whatever reason they hate selfies, they are wrong.

无论他们是谁，无论出于何种原因讨厌自拍，他们都是错的。

Back to top W henever I think about selfies, I think about the women who came before.

返回顶部 每当我想到自拍时，我就会想到之前的女性。

I think about the ones who never got to use front-facing cameras, that technological ease and excess that we have so quickly taken for granted.

我想到那些从未使用过前置摄像头的人，我们很快就认为技术的便利和过度是理所当然的。

I think about Julia Margaret Cameron, who got her first camera as a gift, in 1863, when she was 48 years old.

我想起朱莉娅·玛格丽特·卡梅伦 (Julia Margaret Cameron)，她于 1863 年收到了她的第一台相机作为礼物，当时她 48 岁。

Her daughter gave it to her, a toy to stave off the solitude of aging.

她的女儿把它送给了她，一个用来排解衰老孤独的玩具。

The machine must have felt electric in her hands.

这台机器在她手里肯定有触电的感觉。

See, Julia wasn’t really a head-turner.

你看，朱莉娅并不是一个真正引人注目的人。

We know this from her great-niece, Virginia Woolf, who wrote that Julia was an ugly duckling in a family full of cameo complexions; her nickname was “Talent,” where her sisters got to be called “Beauty.” Cameron became instantly obsessed with photography and dove into her second act.

我们从她的侄孙女弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫那里知道了这一点，她写道，朱莉娅是一个充满浮雕肤色的家庭中的丑小鸭；她的绰号是“才子”，而她的姐妹们则被称为“美女”。卡梅伦立即对摄影着迷并投入了她的第二幕。

She made hundreds of silver albumen prints, practicing and practicing in a kind of fever dream until she had created a unique method of applying a soft, dewy focus to her portraits of British celebrities.

她制作了数百幅银色蛋白照片，在一种狂热的梦想中练习和练习，直到她创造了一种独特的方法，将柔和、水润的焦点应用于英国名人的肖像。

In front of her lens, Cameron made everyone look gauzy, beautiful, ethereal.

在她的镜头前，卡梅隆让每个人都显得轻薄、美丽、空灵。

She copyrighted her technique, sold prints to museums, and wrote myth-making prose about her process in her memoirs:

她为自己的技术申请了版权，将印刷品出售给博物馆，并在回忆录中写下了关于她的过程的神话散文：

“I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.”

“我渴望捕捉眼前的一切美丽，而这个渴望终于得到了满足。”

Julia Margaret Cameron.

朱莉娅·玛格丽特·卡梅伦。

A self-portrait of the British pioneer of photography.

英国摄影先驱的自画像。

(Getty Images) Julia took only a few pictures of herself, and in them she looks far less imposing than her subjects, who were usually stoic, grizzled male intellectuals or creamy-cheeked actresses and debutantes.

(盖蒂图片社) 朱莉娅只给自己拍了几张照片，在这些照片中，她看起来远没有她的拍摄对象那么有气势，这些拍摄对象通常是坚忍不拔、头发花白的男性知识分子，或者是脸颊奶油色的女演员和初出茅庐的新人。

In her own portraits, she looks glum, dejected, staring at the ground or into the lens with a withering squint, as if she cannot believe she is doing this.

在她自己的肖像中，她看起来闷闷不乐、沮丧，眯着眼睛盯着地面或镜头，仿佛她不敢相信自己正在这样做。

Her self-portraits contain sighs.

她的自画像中充满了叹息。

Vintage cameras had long exposure times, requiring the sitter to hold the same expression forever.

老式相机的曝光时间很长，要求拍摄者永远保持相同的表情。

I don’t know why Julia chose to glower, but if I had to guess, I would think she knew she could grimace for a full hour.

我不知道朱莉娅为什么选择怒目而视，但如果我不得不猜测，我想她知道她可以做鬼脸整整一个小时。

It was an expression she was used to.

这是她已经习惯的表情。

The type of camera Julia used wasn’t made for experiments; each snap was a big commitment.

朱莉娅使用的相机类型不是为实验而设计的；每一次快照都是一个重大的承诺。

We aren’t bound by her constraints now, with our ability flood our clouds with unlimited smirks, kissy pouts, tongue waggles, goofy winks, and come-hither stares.

我们现在不再受她的束缚，我们的能力让我们的云充满无限的傻笑、亲吻的撅嘴、摆动舌头、傻乎乎的眨眼和来来往往的凝视。

When we can take endless shots from endless angles, we start to discover dimensions of ourselves we never even knew were there.

当我们可以从无尽的角度拍摄无尽的照片时，我们开始发现自己从未意识到的维度。

That girl in the park taking selfie after selfie after selfie?

那个在公园里不断自拍的女孩？

She’s investigating her own silhouette.

她正在研究自己的轮廓。

She’s figuring out which parts of her face she loves; she’s doing confidence fact-finding.

她正在弄清楚她喜欢自己脸上的哪些部分；她正在进行信心事实调查。

Sometimes it takes a hundred selfies to capture the one that rings out with recognition: this, this is who I am.

有时需要一百张自拍照才能捕捉到一张让人认可的自拍照：这，这就是我。

Julia didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on herself until she felt like she could smile.

朱莉娅没有足够的精力专注于自己，直到她觉得自己可以微笑。

But we do.

但我们做到了。

I think about Marian Hooper Adams, who went by Clover, the society doyenne of post-Civil War D.C. Clover and her husband, writer Henry Adams, lived across from the White House in a grand, creaky manse, where she played hostess to intellectuals and diplomats as they came through town.

我想起了玛丽安·胡珀·亚当斯，她的绰号是克洛弗，是内战后华盛顿特区的社会元老。克洛弗和她的丈夫、作家亨利·亚当斯住在白宫对面一栋破破烂烂的宏伟宅邸里，当知识分子和外交官进城时，她在那里充当女主人。

In their sitting room, Henry was king, while Clover played subservient wife, as women of the time were expected to do.

在他们的客厅里，亨利是国王，而克洛弗则扮演顺从的妻子，就像当时女性应该做的那样。

No matter that she was extremely educated, the daughter of a prominent doctor and a Transcendental poetess.

尽管她受过高等教育，是一位著名医生和一位超验女诗人的女儿。

She was expected to stay quiet and erase herself, a smiling woman with a polished silver tray.

她应该保持安静，抹去自己的情绪，微笑着，端着一个擦得锃亮的银托盘。

Marian Hooper Adams, circa the 1860s.

玛丽安·胡珀·亚当斯，大约在 1860 年代。

But upstairs, in her little room, she worked with colloidal silver, and there, Clover was queen of her domain.

但在楼上她的小房间里，她用胶体银工作，在那里，克洛弗是她领域的女王。

She started taking photographs as a side hobby in 1883 (Henry would never let her go pro with it), collecting pictures of her friends and family and the politicians that flowed through her house, the ones she wasn’t really supposed to talk to all that much.

1883 年，她开始把拍照作为业余爱好（亨利永远不会让她成为专业人士），收集她的朋友、家人以及在她家中穿行的政客的照片，而她实际上不应该与这些人交谈太多。

Instead, she used her photographs to communicate, to make some sense of her surroundings, to speak about her isolation.

相反，她用照片来交流，了解周围的环境，谈论她的孤独。

She wrote extremely technical notes about her work; her avocation became her calling.

她写了关于她的工作的非常技术性的笔记；她的爱好变成了她的使命。

She took a devastating portrait of her in-laws, who barely spoke to her, their scowls barely concealing their grumpy disdain.

她给她的公婆拍了一张毁灭性的照片，他们几乎不和她说话，他们的皱眉几乎掩盖了他们脾气暴躁的蔑​​视。

Whenever she shot herself, she blocked out her face with a giant hat or some other prop; sometimes she was just a blurry smudge darting across the frame.

每当她开枪自杀时，她都会用一顶大帽子或其他道具遮住自己的脸。有时，她只是画面中的一抹模糊的污迹。

I think even in these moments of silent communion with the camera, Clover was trying to grapple with how unseen she was, how little she felt she deserved to show herself.

我想，即使在这些与镜头无声交流的时刻，克洛弗也在努力克服自己是多么不被人看见，她觉得自己不值得展示自己。

For a socialite, she didn’t have much of a social network of her own.

作为一个社交名流，她并没有太多自己的社交网络。

She had no one to share her face with, and so she kept it to herself like a secret.

她没有人可以分享她的脸，所以她把它当作一个秘密来保守自己。

One day, two years after she started taking pictures, Clover killed herself in front of her bedroom fire.

克洛弗开始拍照两年后的一天，在卧室的火炉前自杀了。

She was only 42.

她只有42岁。

She swallowed potassium cyanide, the agent she used to develop her photographs.

她吞下了氰化钾，这是她用来冲洗照片的试剂。

After her death, Henry would destroy all of Clover’s letters and write her out of his autobiography; he almost managed to make her disappear.

她死后，亨利销毁了克洛弗的所有信件，并将她从他的自传中删除。他几乎设法让她消失。

But somehow, her photographs survived.

但不知何故，她的照片幸存了下来。

If I could go back and climb upstairs to her studio, I would tell her to show her face.

如果我能回去爬上楼到她的工作室，我会让她露面。

If you ever feel scared to take your portrait and push it out to your feed, let me urge this: don’t focus on your anxiety, focus on all the Clovers, on all the women who felt the heat of a camera in their hands but were cut off from sharing with the world, who burned silently and alone for the chance to connect.

如果你曾经害怕拍下你的肖像并将其发布到你的动态中，请允许我敦促这一点：不要专注于你的焦虑，专注于所有四叶草，专注于所有感受到手中相机的热量但无法与世界分享的女性，她们默默地、孤独地燃烧着联系的机会。

I think about Francesca Woodman; the lovely, doomed Francesca, the daughter of two bohemian artists, a plaintive blonde who spent summers in Italy and learned to take photographs of herself in an old farm house.

我想起了弗朗西斯卡·伍德曼；可爱、注定失败的弗朗西斯卡是两位波西米亚艺术家的女儿，她是一位忧伤的金发女郎，在意大利度过了夏天，并学会了在一座古老的农舍里给自己拍照。

She started noodling around with a camera when she was only 14 in 1972, fully committing herself to her work when she went off to study at RISD three years later.

1972 年，年仅 14 岁的她就开始拿着相机闲逛，三年后，当她去罗德岛设计学院学习时，她全身心投入到工作中。

She sent her shots to fashion houses and magazines, but couldn’t really get much traction; she applied for grants and residencies with mixed results.

她将照片发送给时装公司和杂志，但并没有真正获得太多关注；她申请了助学金和居留权，但结果好坏参半。

She was in such a rush to become a success that any slowness in the process felt like a deep insult.

她急于取得成功，以至于过程中的任何缓慢都感觉像是一种深深的侮辱。

Her depression rolled in like an unshakable fog.

她的忧郁像一团不可撼动的迷雾一样滚滚而来。

She tried to kill herself once, then again, and in 1981, when she was only 22, she succeeded by leaping out of a window of a building on the East Side of Manhattan.

她一次又一次地试图自杀，1981 年，年仅 22 岁的她从曼哈顿东区一栋大楼的窗户跳了下去，成功了。

What made Francesca different than Clover — give or take a hundred years — was that she actively inserted her own face and nakedness into her work, she made over 10,000 negatives demanding to be seen by someone, anyone.

弗朗西斯卡与克洛弗的不同之处——或多或少一百年——是她积极地将自己的脸和裸体融入到她的作品中，她制作了超过一万张底片，要求被某人、任何人看到。

Looking at her work is like seeing someone discover and then delight in her own body, how far she could push it, how weird she could get, alone in a room with a roll of film.

观看她的作品就像看到有人发现并欣赏她自己的身体，她可以把它推到多远，她可以变得多么奇怪，独自一人在一个有胶卷的房间里。

Sometimes Francesca shot herself as drowning in a river like a wet rat, or screaming, or holding a sharp knife while she bared one breast to the camera.

有时，弗朗西斯卡把自己拍成像一只湿漉漉的老鼠一样淹死在河里的样子，或者尖叫，或者拿着一把锋利的刀，同时向镜头露出一个乳房。

Sometimes she showed herself disfigured by tight clothing, sometimes she bounced around in oversized dresses, exploring the space of a giant, empty, room.

有时，她穿着紧身衣服，显得丑陋不堪；有时，她穿着超大号的衣服，在一个巨大、空荡荡的房间里跳来跳去。

She played with exposure times — at the end of her life she was playing with such a slow shutter speed that she had to sit in front of her lens for hours — she was interested in her body as a vessel of both life and decay, of something vitally here and then suddenly gone.

她玩弄曝光时间——在她生命的最后阶段，她玩弄如此缓慢的快门速度，以至于她不得不在镜头前坐上几个小时——她对自己的身体感兴趣，因为她的身体既是生命的容器，也是腐朽的容器，是某种生机勃勃的东西，然后突然消失了。

She sometimes referred to her work as “ghost pictures.”

她有时将自己的作品称为“幽灵照片”。

Francesca Woodman, from Angel Series, 1977.

弗朗西斯卡·伍德曼，《天使系列》，1977 年。

(The Estate of Francesca Woodman, Courtesy George and Betty Woodman.) Since her work came back in vogue — a documentary, a book, an exhibition, a feminist re-appraisal — many are quick to view Francesca’s work in light of her death, to say that she was actively trying to cancel herself out by isolating parts of her body in the frames, that her self-portraits were angry momento mori.

（弗朗西斯卡·伍德曼的遗产，由乔治和贝蒂·伍德曼提供。）自从她的作品重新流行起来——一部纪录片、一本书、一个展览、一次女权主义的重新评价——许多人很快就从她的死亡角度来看待弗朗西斯卡的作品，说她正在积极地试图通过将自己的身体部分隔离在框架中来消除自己，她的自画像是愤怒的死亡时刻。

This is likely a mistake: those who knew her described Francesca as extremely ambitious; she wrote in her journals in the third person, she saw herself from the outside as someone heading for greatness.

这很可能是一个错误：认识弗朗西斯卡的人都说她野心勃勃。她以第三人称在日记中写道，她从外表上看到自己是一个走向伟大的人。

She was doing that thing that makes women fearsome: she was trying to make art that mattered.

她所做的事情让女性感到恐惧：她试图创造重要的艺术。

Consider this: maybe a woman — or really any person — who takes and publishes many pictures of herself is simply ambitious.

考虑一下：也许一个女人——或者实际上任何人——拍摄并发布许多自己的照片只是雄心勃勃。

She wants people to recognize her image-making ability, her aesthetic boldness, her bravery for stepping into the frame and clicking send.

她希望人们认识到她的图像制作能力，她的审美大胆，她勇敢地走进画面并点击发送。

When you tell someone that they have sent too many images of themselves into their feeds, when you shame them with cries of narcissism and self-indulgence, when you tell them that they are taking up too much virtual space (space that is at present, basically limitless, save for the invented boundaries of taste): you need to question your motives.

当你告诉某人他们在自己的动态中发送了太多自己的图像时，当你用自恋和自我放纵的呼喊来羞辱他们时，当你告诉他们他们占用了太多的虚拟空间（目前的空间基本上是无限的，除了发明的品味界限之外）：你需要质疑你的动机。

Are you afraid of a person’s ambition to be seen?

你害怕一个人的野心被人看见吗？

Where does that come from?

这是从哪里来的？

If you take nothing else away from this historical detour, remember this: These women didn’t have the ability to take and post their own images to thousands of people at once.

如果你不从这段历史弯路中吸取任何教训，请记住这一点：这些女性没有能力同时拍摄自己的照片并将其发布给数千人。

And they were still the lucky ones, the ones with cameras.

他们仍然是幸运的，有相机的。

So many women’s stories were erased (and will never be recovered) because they didn’t have access to private image-making.

许多女性的故事被删除（并且永远无法恢复），因为她们无法获得私人图像制作。

Virginia Woolf knew this: “[The history of most women is] hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.” The same could be said for not just women but anyone living on the margins of race, gender, or class.

弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫知道这一点：“[大多数女性的历史]要么被沉默所掩盖，要么被相当于沉默的华丽和装饰所掩盖。”同样的道理不仅适用于女性，也适用于生活在种族、性别或阶级边缘的任何人。

The human longing to be seen and appraised has existed for centuries, but only a few had the technological power (and the distribution channels) to control it.

人类对被看到和评价的渴望已经存在了几个世纪，但只有少数人拥有控制它的技术力量（和分销渠道）。

Selfies are just one way of making up lost time, all of that yearning and desire that we never got to see because the powerless didn’t have their own cameras and printing presses.

自拍只是弥补失去的时间的一种方式，所有那些我们从未见过的渴望和渴望，因为无能为力的人没有自己的相机和印刷机。

Types of people who never got to be looked at before are getting looked at, and are creating entire communities surrounding that looking, and these communities are getting stronger and stronger every day.

以前从未被关注的类型的人正在被关注，并且正在围绕这种关注创建整个社区，并且这些社区每天都变得越来越强大。

L et me back up for a moment.

让我退一步。

This should be said: We are living in times of peak-selfie, and therefore, peak selfie-hatred.

应该说的是：我们生活在自拍高峰的时代，因此，自拍仇恨也达到顶峰。

When a phenomenon leaks so completely and quickly into the cultural water supply, people are bound to get freaked out.

当一种现象如此彻底、如此迅速地渗入文化水源时，人们一定会感到害怕。

Sure, men and women have been taking pictures of themselves for years, and they were painting themselves before that, and they were carving their faces onto rocks before that.

当然，男人和女人多年来一直在给自己拍照，在那之前他们就在画自己，在那之前他们就在岩石上雕刻自己的脸。

But the selfie , a photograph of oneself with an immediate and distinct social component built into the process, that is something very new.

但自拍照，即一张自己的照片，在这个过程中融入了直接且独特的社会成分，这是一种非常新的东西。

Selfies must be shared — or at least be taken as part of a series with the intention to share at least one — to be considered selfies.

自拍照必须被分享——或者至少被视为一系列的一部分，并意图分享至少一张——才能被视为自拍照。

This is my working definition (and for purists, also the one listed in the Oxford Dictionaries) and there are no exceptions.

这是我的工作定义（对于纯粹主义者来说，也是牛津词典中列出的定义），没有例外。

If you take a picture of yourself never intending to post it or send it out, that is not a selfie.

如果你拍了一张自己的照片，但无意将其发布或发送出去，那么那不是自拍照。

If you allow someone else to take your picture, and then put it on Instagram, that’s not a selfie (it is still valuable mythmaking-via-imagery, but with the disqualifying intervention of an outsider).

如果你允许别人拍你的照片，然后把它放在 Instagram 上，那就不是自拍照（它仍然是有价值的通过图像制造神话，但有局外人的干预，不合格）。

If you take a picture with yourself and someone else and share it, that is called an “ussie,” and it technically counts, but is usually met with less disdain than a solo effort.

如果你与自己和其他人合影并分享，这被称为“ussie”，从技术上讲它很重要，但通常比单独的努力更少受到蔑视。

I am interested in the selfie that is entirely autonomous, the type where a single person is the subject, the photographer, the editor, and the publisher.

我对完全自主的自拍感兴趣，这种自拍是一个人作为拍摄对象、摄影师、编辑和出版商。

Participating in selfie dialogue is a two-part process: the private and then the public, the conception and then the release, and they work in a kind of electric tandem.

参与自拍对话是一个两部分的过程：私人的，然后是公共的，构思的，然后发布的，它们以一种电动串联的方式工作。

The hatred that goes along with selfie-taking might be traced back to the Oxford American dictionary itself, when it tried to grasp for relevance with that old reliable act of web trolling that is its “Word of the Year” selection.

与自拍相伴的仇恨可能可以追溯到《牛津美国词典》本身，当时它试图抓住与“年度词汇”选择的古老可靠的网络恶搞行为的相关性。

In 2013, Oxford picked “selfie,” a decision the organization described in a press release as unanimous, “with little if any argument,” a “runaway winner.” Whoever wrote the release exhibited elegant restraint: they tracked the origin of the word (legend dates it back to an Australian web forum in 2003), the rapid rise in usage in mainstream media (17,000 percent increase in a single year), and the potential explanation for the suffix (“It could be argued that the use of the -ie suffix helps to turn an essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing”).

2013年，牛津大学选择了“自拍”，该组织在一份新闻稿中称这一决定是一致的，“几乎没有任何争论”，是一个“巨大的胜利者”。无论谁撰写这篇新闻稿，都表现出了优雅的克制：他们追踪了这个词的起源（传说可以追溯到 2003 年的澳大利亚网络论坛）、主流媒体使用率的迅速上升（一年内增长了 17,000%），以及该后缀的潜在解释（“可以说，使用 -ie 后缀有助于将本质上自恋的企业变成更讨人喜欢的东西”）。

There are slight jabs at narcissism and herd mentality in the entry, but it is mostly concerned with etymology.

条目中对自恋和从众心理有轻微的攻击，但主要与词源有关。

Dictionaries are never pure resources: what belongs and what doesn’t is reflective of a very specific ideology.

字典从来都不是纯粹的资源：什么属于什么不属于，反映了一种非常具体的意识形态。

But in this case, Oxford tried to explain its decision as merely reflective of an undeniable cultural force.

但在这起案件中，牛津大学试图将其决定解释为仅仅反映了不可否认的文化力量。

Other outlets were not so generous in their response to Oxford’s choice.

其他媒体对牛津大学的选择的反应则没有那么慷慨。

Observe CNN:

观察CNN：

“The most esteemed guardian of the English language has bestowed a prestigious honor upon debatably the most embarrassing phenomenon of the digital age: the selfie.

“最受尊敬的英语守护者将一项享有盛誉的荣誉授予了数字时代最令人尴尬的现象：自拍。

So, grab a smartphone, put on your best duck face and celebrate.”

所以，拿起智能手机，摆出你最好的鸭子脸，庆祝吧。”

This tiny blurb set the mold for nearly all of the shame-laden language hurtled at selfie culture, for thousands of other op-eds, Facebook comments, hot takes, malicious RTs, so let’s unpack it:

这条小小的宣传语为几乎所有攻击自拍文化的羞耻语言、数以千计的其他专栏文章、Facebook 评论、热门言论、恶意转发奠定了基础，所以让我们来解开它：

@ officialmackzmusic Freaking out because I just met Kim Kardashian!!!!!!

@officialmackzmusic 吓坏了，因为我刚认识金·卡戴珊！！！！！！

LOVE YOUUUUU🎀🎀.

爱你UUUU🎀🎀。

@kimkardashian literally crying😢😍 Selfie politics are attention politics: it is all about who gets to be seen, who gets to occupy the visual field.

@kimkardashian 真的哭了😢😍 自拍政治就是注意力政治：关键在于谁能被看到，谁能占据视野。

Critics always talk about Kim and her family as taking up too much space , as clogging our DVRs, our Twitter feeds, our newsstands.

批评者总是说 Kim 和她的家人占用了太多的空间，堵塞了我们的 DVR、我们的 Twitter、我们的报摊。

At a micro-level, the ire leveled at Kim is aimed at everyone who takes selfies: who do you think you are and why should I have to keep up with you?

从微观层面来看，对金的愤怒是针对每一个自拍的人：你以为你是谁，我为什么要跟上你？

They don’t realize that in posing this question they are proving their own ignorance.

他们没有意识到，提出这个问题是在证明自己的无知。

One should never have to ask anyone else why they are worthy of being seen.

一个人永远不必问别人为什么他们值得被看到。

Every human is given a body and a face and then spends the rest of his or her life trying to feel at home there.

每个人都有一个身体和一张脸，然后在他或她的余生中试图在那里有宾至如归的感觉。

Worthiness is part of the basic package.

价值是基本包的一部分。

Back to top No one posts a picture to social media without anticipating the mockery it will receive, either in the form of direct comments or indirect hatred from the wider media.

返回顶部 没有人在社交媒体上发布照片时会预料到它会受到嘲笑，无论是来自更广泛媒体的直接评论还是间接仇恨。

And yet selfies continue to explode in number, reproducing exponentially, filling up server farms and data plans and camera rolls.

然而，自拍的数量继续呈爆炸式增长，呈指数级增长，填满了服务器群、数据计划和相机胶卷。

It’s not just that a cultural faucet, once turned on, can never be turned off.

这不仅仅是文化水龙头一旦打开就永远无法关闭。

It’s that everyone who posts a selfie must be getting something out of it, something so life-affirming that it makes the harshness endurable.

每个发布自拍照的人都必须从中得到一些东西，一些对生活如此肯定的东西，以至于让严酷变得可以忍受。

Consider a recent viral news story, a seminal cultural text of selfie shame.

考虑一下最近病毒式传播的新闻故事，这是一个关于自拍耻辱的开创性文化文本。

During a Colorado Rockies game in September, a pair of male announcers fixated on a group of twenty-something gal pals sitting in the stands, a posse of Alpha Chi Omegas from Arizona State.

九月，在科罗拉多洛矶队的一场比赛中，两名男播音员把注意力集中在看台上一群二十多岁的女孩们身上，她们是来自亚利桑那州立大学的 Alpha Chi Omegas 队。

The commentators had just asked the crowd to send in fan photos for a contest, but immediately began to dig into the women for taking part in the request.

评论员刚刚要求观众发送粉丝照片进行比赛，但立即开始挖掘女性是否参与了这一要求。

The cameras hovered on the women for at least a minute, and it felt like a long, predatory minute.

摄像机在这些女性身上停留了至少一分钟，感觉就像是漫长而掠夺性的一分钟。

The announcers mocked the women with dad jokes: “Every single woman in the picture is locked into her phone,” “These are the best 300 pictures I’ve taken of myself today!” “Welcome to parenting in 2015!” “Hold on, gotta take a selfie with a hot dog, with a churro, with a selfie of a selfie.” These jabs felt a thousand years old.

播音员用爸爸的笑话嘲笑这些女性：“照片中的每个女人都被锁在手机里”、“这是我今天给自己拍的最好的 300 张照片！” “欢迎来到2015年为人父母！” “等一下，我得和热狗、油条一起自拍，自拍自拍照。”这些刺痛感觉已有一千年的历史了。

The announcers’ rant became a lightning rod for people on either side of the selfie debate.

播音员的咆哮成为自拍争论双方的避雷针。

Haters trotted out the classic anti-selfie insults: Millennials are narcissists (no matter how old you are when you take a selfie, by the way, you are always, always a millennial), they don’t care about anything but themselves, they are ruining good old-fashioned American pastimes with their smartphones and their insatiable thirst for likes.

讨厌自拍的人抛出了经典的反自拍侮辱：千禧一代是自恋者（顺便说一句，无论你多大年纪，当你自拍时，你永远都是千禧一代），他们除了自己什么都不关心，他们用智能手机和对点赞的贪得无厌毁掉了美国传统的消遣方式。

But those on the other side of the debate saw something much more toxic buried in the selfie-loathing, something gendered and ugly and terrified.

但辩论的另一方则看到，在对自拍的厌恶中埋藏着更有毒的东西，一些性别化、丑陋和恐惧的东西。

The baseball incident proved, publicly, that selfies aren’t just irritating to people in positions of power, but downright dangerous.

棒球事件公开证明，自拍不仅会激怒掌权者，而且是彻头彻尾的危险。

Look at it this way: the men in power at the game, the ones sitting in the glass box above the stadium, they have access to a camera in the sky.

这样看：比赛中的掌权者，坐在体育场上方玻璃盒子里的人，他们可以使用天空中的摄像机。

It is able to focus on whoever it wants, to linger for as long as it wants.

它能够专注于任何它想要的人，想停留多久就停留多久。

The jumbotron rubbernecks lasciviously, a phallic all-seeing eye that ignores women entirely until it chooses to ogle them.

巨大的橡胶脖子淫荡地，阳具般的全视之眼完全无视女性，直到它选择向她们投去目光。

When these women decided to make their own fun, to bond and laugh with their friends instead of paying attention to the sports in front of them — a sport which, by the way, excludes women from the field and so will never feel all that inclusive to begin with — they were seen as committing a transgressive act.

当这些女性决定自己找乐子，与朋友们一起欢笑，而不是关注眼前的运动时——顺便说一句，这项运动将女性排除在赛场之外，因此从一开始就不会感受到包容性——她们被视为犯下了越界行为。

They are encouraged to watch men hit a ball with sticks for as many extra innings as it takes, but add a selfie stick into the mix, and minds explode.

他们被鼓励观看男子用球棒击球，并尽可能多地进行额外的比赛，但如果加上一根自拍杆，他们的思想就会爆炸。

The announcers’ disgust for that simple act, for a group of women looking at themselves instead of at the men on the field, continued the bait-and-switch that men have been pulling on women for eons: pretending they are madonnas until the moment it is convenient to call them whores.

播音员们对这种简单的行为感到厌恶，因为一群女人看着自己而不是球场上的男人，延续了男人们千百年来对女人的诱饵和转换：假装她们是麦当娜，直到可以方便地称她们为妓女的那一刻为止。

These young women were worth looking at when it suited the men in charge, but as it became clear that their love for each other trumped the love of the game, the men with microphones started to crumble.

当这些年轻女性适合负责的男性时，它们是值得关注的，但当很明显她们对彼此的爱超过了对比赛的热爱时，拿着麦克风的男性开始崩溃。

They did what any player does when their team is losing: they shook their fists and raged.

他们做了任何球员在球队输球时都会做的事情：他们挥舞着拳头，愤怒不已。

And this rage sounded a bit like a death rattle.

而这愤怒听起来有点像临死前的嘶吼。

The way these men mocked selfies settles them on the wrong side of history.

这些人嘲笑自拍的方式让他们站在了历史的错误一边。

Because they don’t recognize that an equally important game is currently being played out, this very minute, on the web.

因为他们没有意识到，此时此刻，一场同样重要的游戏正在网络上上演。

Selfies are becoming a sport.

自拍正在成为一项运动。

Instagram is a place where people can turn themselves into trading cards where they can win and become a hero.

Instagram 是一个人们可以将自己变成交易卡的地方，他们可以在其中获胜并成为英雄。

With every selfie, you can build your fan base, gain stats, pose for your own Wheaties box, and experience the thrill of a cheerleading squad.

通过每张自拍照，您都可以建立自己的粉丝群，获得统计数据，为自己的 Wheaties 盒子摆姿势，并体验啦啦队的刺激。

The reason Kim Kardashian gives for taking her butt selfies?

金·卡戴珊 (Kim Kardashian) 为何自拍屁股？

“It’s fun!” The selfie game — posing, posting, interacting — is meant to be fun.

“真有趣！”自拍游戏——摆姿势、发帖、互动——本来就是很有趣的。

But it is driving those who don’t know how to play to utter madness.

但它却让那些不会玩游戏的人变得疯狂。

Of course, the enemies of the selfie game aren’t always male; women can shame the selfies of other women with such mean-girl vitriol that they make the announcers’ jabs feel minor league.

当然，自拍游戏的敌人并不总是男性。女性可以用刻薄的尖酸刻薄的方式羞辱其他女性的自拍照，以至于让播音员的刺痛感觉像是小联盟。

I sometimes click back to article that Vogue published earlier this year about the evils of selfie-taking, and it makes me laugh.

有时我会点击返回《Vogue》今年早些时候发表的有关自拍罪恶的文章，这让我发笑。

The writer called selfie sticks “the single most embarrassing invention of our generation” and had plenty of rules to offer:

作者称自拍杆是“我们这一代最尴尬的发明”，并提出了很多规则：

A selfie is only acceptable on a few occasions: if you work in fashion and are showcasing an outfit or a specific part of an outfit for work purposes, if you are somewhere awesome and there is no one to take your picture (e.g., a chairlift on Mount Kilimanjaro or jury duty with Oprah).

自拍仅在少数情况下才可以接受：如果您从事时尚工作并出于工作目的展示一套服装或服装的特定部分，如果您在很棒的地方但没有人给您拍照（例如，乞力马扎罗山的缆车或与奥普拉一起担任陪审团）。

Any selfie that involves the “kissy” face is not acceptable.

任何涉及“亲吻”脸部的自拍照都是不可接受的。

These pictures are not sexy.

这些照片并不性感。

You look like an idiot.

你看起来像个白痴。

This passage, which reads like a fascist Emily Post, comes from Vogue , that bastion of “taste” primarily staffed by slender, wealthy women who have more than a small stake in ensuring that capitalism perpetuates itself.

这段话读起来就像法西斯主义的《艾米莉·波斯特》，来自《Vogue》，这个“品味”的堡垒主要由苗条、富有的女性组成，她们在确保资本主义永存方面有着不小的利益。

Of course.

当然。

Of course the glossy women’s media wants women to feel like nitwits, to hate their kissy faces, to feel like they cannot post an image of themselves online unless they “work in fashion” (or work at places like Vogue , where staffers Instagram themselves from their cubicles all the time).

当然，光鲜亮丽的女性媒体希望女性感觉自己像白痴，讨厌她们亲吻的脸，觉得自己不能在网上发布自己的照片，除非她们“在时尚界工作”（或者在《Vogue》这样的地方工作，那里的员工总是在自己的小隔间里发布自己的 Instagram 照片）。

These narrow standards for who can and and cannot post selfies expose the values that currently keep most magazines in business.

这些关于谁可以和不能发布自拍照的狭隘标准暴露了目前大多数杂志赖以生存的价值观。

The land of selfies, where people who fall outside the narrow aesthetic guidelines set by the fashion industry can nonetheless dominate the medium, is terrifying to those who want to set consumer agendas.

在自拍的国度里，那些不符合时尚界设定的狭隘审美准则的人仍然可以主宰这一媒体，这对于那些想要设定消费者议程的人来说是可怕的。

But that’s why you have to keep going: take your selfies, watch it all burn.

但这就是为什么你必须继续前进：自拍，看着一切燃烧。

In 1973, the British feminist scholar Sheila Rowbotham wrote a dense little tome called Female Consciousness, Man’s World , about the ways societies perpetuate oppression.

1973 年，英国女权主义学者希拉·罗博瑟姆 (Sheila Rowbotham) 写了一本厚重的小书，名为《女性意识，男人的世界》，讲述社会如何延续压迫。

She was writing about selfies and just didn’t know it yet.

她正在写关于自拍的文章，只是她还不知道而已。

One of the ways, she wrote, was by discouraging any forms of self-reproduction by individuals, and ways of seeing that were not regulated by the powers that be.

她写道，其中一种方法是阻止个人任何形式的自我复制，以及不受权力监管的观看方式。

In order to subvert this oppression, the individual needed to learn once again how to reproduce herself:

为了颠覆这种压迫，个体需要再次学习如何复制自己：

In order to create an alternative, an oppressed group must at once shatter the self-reflecting world which encircles it and, at the same time, project its own image onto history.

为了创造一种替代方案，一个被压迫群体必须立即粉碎包围它的自我反省的世界，同时将自己的形象投射到历史上。

In order to discover its own identity as distinct from that of the oppressor it has to become visible to itself.

为了发现自己的身份与压迫者的身份不同，它必须变得对自己可见。

All revolutionary movements create their own ways of seeing.

所有革命运动都创造了自己的看待方式。

Capitalism, as Rowbotham noted, loves to self-reflect.

正如罗博瑟姆指出的那样，资本主义喜欢自我反思。

It needs to perpetuate itself, and one of the ways it does so is via imagery — i.e. advertising — that keeps people desirous, that makes people feel incomplete without whatever shiny new thing has just hit the market.

它需要让自己永存，而实现这一目标的方式之一就是通过图像——即广告——来保持人们的欲望，让人们在没有任何闪亮的新事物刚刚进入市场的情况下感到不完整。

Those at the top benefit, naturally, from creating these images.

那些处于顶层的人自然会从创建这些图像中受益。

It is bad then for the lust-economy to have people reveling in pictures they take themselves; it is very difficult to control consumers who do not need to look at the media to know what to value, what to buy, who to honor and protect.

那么，让人们陶醉于自己拍摄的照片，对于情欲经济来说是一件坏事。控制消费者是非常困难的，他们不需要看媒体就知道看重什么、买什么、尊重和保护谁。

Selfies are not inherently political acts, but these resonant, addictive, unregulated images are another manifestation of this growing distrust of the mainstream and the swelling desire by many individuals to reclaim their own narratives now that they have the virtual microphone.

自拍本质上并不是政治行为，但这些引起共鸣、令人上瘾、不受监管的图像是对主流日益增长的不信任的另一种表现，以及许多人在拥有虚拟麦克风后越来越渴望收回自己的叙述。

But as selfies are so pervasive (and alluring to look at), the only solution for advertisers is to infiltrate the most popular selfie-takers and buy them off.

但由于自拍如此普遍（而且看起来很诱人），广告商唯一的解决方案就是渗透到最受欢迎的自拍者中并收买他们。

The gods of capitalism offer teenage social media stars thousands of dollars just to be walking billboards for their goods; they buy their labor and their time and call it empowerment.

资本主义之神为青少年社交媒体明星提供数千美元，只是为了让他们的商品成为行走的广告牌；他们购买自己的劳动力和时间，并称之为赋权。

And for some, it is empowering.

对于某些人来说，它是一种力量。

The checks cash, and some teenagers’ lives change forever.

支票兑现，一些青少年的生活永远改变了。

If you could get the opportunity to travel around the world, get gobs of free stuff, and become an instant idol to millions of strangers with the click of a button, could you, at only 18, possibly say no?

如果你有机会环游世界，获得大量免费物品，并且只需点击一下按钮就可以立即成为数百万陌生人的偶像，年仅 18 岁的你能拒绝吗？

28.2k likes (via Instagram.com/essenaoneill) 24.5k likes (via Instagram.com/essenaoneill) In late October of this year, a bit of this darkness came to light in public.

2.82 万个赞（来自 Instagram.com/essenaoneill） 2.45 万个赞（来自 Instagram.com/essenaoneill） 今年 10 月下旬，这种黑暗的一点点在公共场合曝光。

An 18-year-old Australian Instagram star named Essena O’Neill woke up one morning to discover both her privilege and exploitation in one heartbreaking wave (the kind of revelation that traditionally comes to most teens during their freshman philosophy seminars).

一位名叫埃塞纳·奥尼尔 (Essena O’Neill) 的 18 岁澳大利亚 Instagram 明星一天早上醒来，在令人心碎的一波浪潮中发现了自己的特权和剥削（传统上大多数青少年在新生哲学研讨会上都会发现这种启示）。

She realized that being paid to model free swag and post perfect bikini shots wasn’t worth the capital gains anymore; she was starving herself, relying on double-taps to validate her self-worth, and crying herself to sleep feeling morally and spiritually bankrupt.

她意识到，为了免费模特的赃物和完美的比基尼照片而付费已经不值得资本收益了；她自己挨饿，靠双击来验证自己的价值，哭着入睡，感觉道德和精神都破产了。

So she deleted 2,000 Instagram posts, and on the pictures that remained, added new captions exposing the discrepancies between the fantasy and the real.

于是她删除了 2000 条 Instagram 帖子，并在剩下的照片上添加了新的说明文字，揭露幻想与现实之间的差异。

She noted how much she was paid for each picture, how little she had eaten at the moment the flashbulbs illuminated her skinny abdomen.

她记下了每张照片的报酬，以及在闪光灯照亮她瘦削的腹部时她吃的东西是多么少。

She launched a new website to encourage young girls to talk about how they really feel rather than mask their emotions with Pinterest-ready photo bait, and the effort went viral.

她推出了一个新网站，鼓励年轻女孩谈论她们的真实感受，而不是用 Pinterest 上的照片诱饵来掩盖自己的情绪，这一努力得到了病毒式传播。

From her bedroom, the Noxema-fresh blonde sparked a global conversation about how every selfie can be a lie disguised as a like.

这位刚接触诺克塞玛的金发女郎在她的卧室里引发了一场全球性的讨论，讨论每张自拍照都可能是伪装成点赞的谎言。

Right away the backlash began (and continued to snowball, as all Internet ire does): Critics called her lament a hoax , argued that she was a hypocrite for using the very social media that made her unhappy to spread her message, that she was continuing to seek attention even as she talked about how the eyeballs of strangers made her so miserable.

强烈的反对声立刻开始了（并且像所有互联网上的愤怒一样，继续滚雪球）：批评者称她的哀叹是一个骗局，认为她是一个伪君子，因为她使用了社交媒体，这让她不高兴传播她的信息，即使她谈到陌生人的眼球如何让她如此痛苦，她仍在继续寻求关注。

But what this cynicism around her story lacks is any kind of empathy: Essena is only 18.

但围绕她的故事的这种愤世嫉俗缺乏的是同理心：埃塞纳只有 18 岁。

She is still figuring it all out.

她仍在弄清楚这一切。

And in 2015, teens, at least those who leap into the social media battledome, must figure it all out in public.

2015 年，青少年，至少是那些跳入社交媒体战场的青少年，必须在公共场合弄清楚这一切。

The criticism about Essena is misplaced because she isn’t the problem; she is a victim of the problem.

对埃塞纳的批评是错误的，因为她不是问题所在。她是这个问题的受害者。

It is important to recognize this aspect of selfie-taking so that it can be fought against (and I celebrate those like Essena who are taking steps to do this, no matter how stumbling and callow her protest may be), but it is also important not to let this one test case stand for the whole.

重要的是要认识到自拍的这一方面，以便能够对其进行打击（我赞扬像埃塞纳这样正在采取措施做到这一点的人，无论她的抗议有多么蹩脚和幼稚），但同样重要的是不要让这个测试案例代表整体。

Yes, there are those who would want to exploit your selfie and use it for their own gain.

是的，有些人想利用你的自拍照来谋取私利。

There are bullies and harassers who make the lives of some women (and men) who take selfies unbearable.

有些欺凌者和骚扰者让一些自拍的女性（和男性）的生活变得难以忍受。

There are those who allow themselves to get caught up in the vortex of fame and money, who sell the rights to their faces and then feel deeply alienated from their own smiles.

有些人让自己陷入名誉和金钱的漩涡，出卖自己的面容权利，然后对自己的笑容感到深深的疏远。

There are those who manipulate the selfies of innocent people for cruel media pranks — just last week, a Sikh man in Canada had to defend himself from viral hatred after someone doctored his selfie , adding a suicide vest and a Koran to suggest that he was involved in the Paris attacks.

有些人操纵无辜者的自拍照来进行残酷的媒体恶作剧——就在上周，加拿大一名锡克教徒不得不保护自己免受病毒般的仇恨，因为有人修改了他的自拍照，添加了自杀背心和古兰经，暗示他参与了巴黎袭击。

There are those who would screengrab sumptuous nudes and butt selfies and then use them to try to humiliate or shame women for celebrating the pleasures of the flesh.

有些人会截取华丽的裸体和屁股自拍照，然后用它们来羞辱或羞辱那些庆祝肉体快乐的女性。

These are all real threats, real dangers.

这些都是真正的威胁、真正的危险。

But it is overblowing these fears — the endless concern trolling, the wondering what has become of our teen girls, the fretting that we are all feeding too many nudes into a ravenous maw — that obliterates the more revolutionary conversation about selfie culture, about what it can do for us.

但正是这些恐惧被夸大了——无休止的担忧、对我们十几岁女孩的遭遇的好奇、对我们都把太多裸体喂进贪婪的胃的担忧——抹杀了关于自拍文化、关于它能为我们做什么的更具革命性的对话。

S elfie-taking is often described by its detractors in terms of vulgarity: too much, too often, too desirous, too sensual, too much lip, too much body.

自拍常常被批评者形容为粗俗：太多、太频繁、太欲望、太感性、太多嘴唇、太多身体。

Those who are deeply in touch with their body always get labeled obscene.

那些深入接触自己身体的人总是被贴上淫秽的标签。

Like most insults, these barbs rise from a place of insecurity: so many people are so afraid of themselves!

像大多数侮辱一样，这些倒刺来自不安全感：这么多人如此害怕自己！

Of their flesh, of their nooks and crannies, of how they might be found wanting.

他们的肉体，他们的角落和缝隙，他们可能会被发现的不足。

And the people who are most afraid of being scrutinized are those in control, who have held onto their positions thanks to hierarchical social structures that weren’t really questioned until recently (those that elevate white males over others, say).

最害怕受到审查的人是那些掌握权力的人，他们凭借直到最近才真正受到质疑的等级社会结构（例如那些将白人男性置于其他人之上的社会结构）而保住了自己的职位。

These powerful men and women are so scared that if anyone looked at them closely and dissected why they are in control that they might turn to dust.

这些强大的男人和女人如此害怕，如果有人仔细观察他们并剖析他们为什么能控制，他们可能会化为尘土。

So they discourage anyone from looking at anyone else — even themselves — with intensity or tenderness.

因此，他们不鼓励任何人以强烈或温柔的态度看待其他人，甚至是他们自己。

This is why the crusaders talk about selfie sticks as if they were solipsism weaponized and use the word “narcissism,” which they hope conjures up strong enough revulsion to crush the army of selfies popping up like whack-a-moles.

这就是为什么十字军们谈论自拍杆就好像它们是唯我论武器一样，并使用“自恋”这个词，他们希望这个词能唤起足够强烈的反感，以粉碎像打地鼠一样涌现的自拍大军。

Surely, no one wants to be a narcissist , they say, no one wants to fall into their own reflection and drown.

他们说，当然，没有人愿意成为一名自恋者，没有人愿意陷入自己的反思中并被淹没。

But narcissism is a flimsy charge.

但自恋是一种站不住脚的指控。

It doesn’t hold up in selfie court.

它在自拍法庭上站不住脚。

Narcissus, Ovid wrote in verse, became enchanted by his own reflection, forming a closed feedback loop with himself.

奥维德在诗中写道，纳西索斯被自己的倒影所着迷，与自己形成了一个封闭的反馈循环。

He loved only himself, desired only himself.

他只爱自己，只渴望自己。

O I wish I could leave my own body!

哦，我希望我能离开自己的身体！

Strange prayer for a lover, I desire what I love to be distant from me.

为爱人奇怪的祈祷，我渴望我所爱的远离我。

At no point did Narcissus ever try to share this love with anyone else, to chat up any nymphs about it, to see which of the muses might also delight in his cherub cheeks.

纳西索斯从来没有试图与其他人分享这种爱，与任何仙女谈论它，看看哪位缪斯也会喜欢他天使般的脸颊。

Instead, he dove deeper and deeper into his egoistic stupor, and choked to death because he couldn’t look away.

相反，他越陷越深，陷入自私的麻木之中，最后因为无法移开视线而窒息而死。

Selfies, though, are all about looking away.

然而，自拍就是把目光移开。

They are not a closed loop​.

它们不是一个闭环​。

T​hey are a new and vibrant language.

它们是一种新的、充满活力的语言。

Selfies never exist in a vacuum.

自拍从来不存在于真空中。

Once they go live, they have adventures, they go out and ​make friends.

一旦他们上线，他们就会有冒险，他们会出去交朋友。

They are born by waves, digital driftwood: millions of faces washing up on various shores, launching various ships.

它们是随着海浪、数字浮木而诞生的：数以百万计的面孔被冲上不同的海岸，发射不同的船只。

They ​voyage ahead ​and probe new communities, and sometimes they bring back stories.

他们​向前航行​并探索新的社区，有时他们会带回故事。

Our selfies are weightless versions of ourselves, with wings.

我们的自拍照是我们自己的失重版本，长着翅膀。

The men and women who are create these streams and streams of their own images do so to confirm their own bodies in space, and then to give th​ose bodies flight — journeys into the cloud, a kind of stretching back towards a oneness with everything.

创造这些自己图像的男男女女这样做是为了在太空中确认自己的身体，然后让这些身体飞翔——进入云端的旅程，一种向后延伸到与万物合一的状态。

This may be the most generous way to say that it can be a selfless — and defiantly not narcissistic — act to put your own dumb face all over the Internet.

这可能是最慷慨的说法，表明将自己的愚蠢面孔放在互联网上是一种无私且绝对不自恋的行为。

​Those who see selfies as signs of the end times are focusing on the outliers; the bad actors.

那些将自拍照视为末日迹象的人正在关注异常值；坏演员。

The people who accidentally fall into a waterfall and die in the pursuit of the perfect shot.

那些为了追求完美的镜头而不小心掉进瀑布而死的人。

The kids who get addicted to the digital feedback loop and start relying on hearts to get up in the morning.

孩子们沉迷于数字反馈循环，并开始依靠心灵在早上起床。

The moms and dads who take selfies when they should be watching their babies; the seething loners who use their selfies as a way to spread hate (if this hate spills over into violence, then selfies will surely get the blame).

那些在应该看护宝宝的时候却自拍的爸爸妈妈们；那些用自拍作为传播仇恨的方式的愤怒的孤独者（如果这种仇恨蔓延成暴力，那么自拍肯定会受到指责）。

But these types of delinquents have always existed: the teenagers who don’t pay attention in class, ​the bros ​who snooze through cultural events,​ the trolls who care about snark over compassion.

但这些类型的不良少年一直存在：上课不专心的青少年，在文化活动中打瞌睡的兄弟，关心他人的恶作剧者。

​There are always going to be tourists who shove themselves obnoxiously to the front of the line, people who put their needs over the needs of others, people who gawk at fires and funerals: these are not unique social problems created by the selfie or its accoutrement.

总会有一些游客令人讨厌地挤到队伍的前面，有人把自己的需求置于他人的需求之上，有人呆呆地看着火灾和葬礼：这些并不是自拍或其装备造成的独特社会问题。

​What the critics don’t focus on is how to decode the language of selfies when they are being used correctly: what the people in them are trying to do with their portraiture, what big message each individual’s self-representational practice all adds up to in the end.

评论家没有关注的是，当正确使用自拍照时，如何解读自拍照的语言：其中的人们试图用他们的肖像做什么，每个人的自我表现实践最终会传达什么重要信息。

When a ​young ​woman takes a picture alone, in a museum, those who don’t take selfies will scowl, thinking that she is ignoring the art that surrounds her.

当一位年轻女性在博物馆独自拍照时，那些不自拍的人会皱起眉头，认为她忽视了周围的艺术。

They will wonder why she cannot stop and breathe in the high culture without the safety blanket of her phone.

他们会想知道为什么她不能在没有手机安全毯的情况下停下来呼吸高雅文化。

​But maybe, just maybe, this ​youth is someone who feels less than welcome in this museum, finding it an institution that is cold and sterile and enforcing of a visual language that doesn’t always include faces that look like hers​.

但也许，只是也许，这个年轻人在这个博物馆里感觉不受欢迎，发现这是一个寒冷和贫瘠的机构，并强制执行一种视觉语言，其中并不总是包括与她相似的面孔。

Maybe it is a big deal to finally see​ herself there​, standing in the same frame as the grand artistic canon​.

也许最终能看到自己在那里，与伟大的艺术经典站在同一个框架中，也许是一件大事。

Maybe she is willfully ​putting herself in the context of the art, and then putting the other people who follow her feed in the context of the art​.

也许她故意​将自己置于艺术的背景中，然后将关注她的其他人置于艺术的背景中​。

Maybe she is adding layers of context to the world, not flattening her own experience.

也许她正在为世界添加层次的背景，而不是扁平化她自己的经历。

Those who cannot see this, who refuse to see this,​ are just not yet fluent in her visual ​language.

那些看不到这一点、拒绝看到这一点的人只是还没有熟练掌握她的视觉语言。

If they want to reach her, and others like her, they will have to learn.

如果他们想接触到她以及其他像她一样的人，他们就必须学习。

Here’s the secret: Nothing destabilizes power more than an individual that knows his or her own worth, and the campaign against selfies is ultimately a crusade against widespread self-esteem.

秘密是：没有什么比一个了解自己价值的个人更能破坏权力的稳定了，而反对自拍的运动最终是对普遍存在的自尊的一场讨伐。

What selfie-haters fear, deep down, is a growing army of faces they cannot monitor, an army who does not need their approval to march ahead.

讨厌自拍的人内心深处担心的是，越来越多的面孔是他们无法监控的，这支军队不需要他们的批准就能前进。

They fear the young, the technologically savvy, the connected.

他们害怕年轻人、精通技术、有联系的人。

They fear a community they feel excludes them.

他们害怕一个他们认为排斥他们的社区。

The way that Henry wanted to silence and erase Clover, so these selfie-haters want to silence and erase the faces they don’t understand.

就像亨利想让克洛弗沉默并抹去一样，这些讨厌自拍的人也想让那些他们不理解的面孔沉默并抹去。

It is that simple.

就是这么简单。

Anyone who hates selfies outright is likely in the position of privilege to never have felt invisible.

任何彻底讨厌自拍的人都可能处于一种从未感到隐形的特权地位。

They fail to perceive the value that a new way of seeing can bring to so many lives.

他们没有意识到新的观察方式可以给许多人的生活带来的价值。

Back to top It is not even necessary to decide ​whether or not selfies are ultimately good or bad for humanity​; we can’t know that for decades or centuries (or maybe never; maybe good and bad are not words that will exist in future generations to describe personal aesthetic choices).

返回顶部 甚至没有必要决定​自拍最终对人类是好是坏​；我们无法知道几十年或几个世纪（或者也许永远不会；也许好与坏不再是未来几代人用来描述个人审美选择的词）。

They are an active conversation, one that millions of people are engaging with, taking on, wrestling with, falling for, and giving everything to, every minute of every day​.

它们是一种活跃的对话，数百万人每天每一分钟都在参与、参与、角力、迷恋并付出一切​。

​Hop into the feed or fall behind.

​跳入提要或落后。

For the past six months, I have been asking people to send me their faces.

在过去的六个月里，我一直要求人们向我发送他们的面孔。

Every time I open my email, I have new selfies to look at, with new stories behind why they exist, what the impulse was when someone decided to join forces with their phone.

每次我打开电子邮件，我都会看到新的自拍照，以及它们存在背后的新故事，以及当有人决定与手机联手时的冲动是什么。

These stories have kept me going, they have been my batteries.

这些故事让我继续前进，它们是我的电池。

Here are just a few.

这里仅列出一些。

You can find more (and add your own!) here .

您可以在此处找到更多信息（并添加您自己的！）。

Tyler “This was from when I first got my braids.

泰勒：“这是我第一次扎辫子的时候的事。

I took this right after I woke up.

我醒来后立即服用了这个。

I take selfies when I don’t want to get out of bed yet.

当我还不想起床时我会自拍。

When I took this, I remember thinking, damn, I look so pretty.

当我拍下这张照片时，我记得我在想，该死，我看起来太漂亮了。

I hadn’t had long hair since I was 16, and I was super excited about it.

我从 16 岁起就没有留过长发，对此我感到非常兴奋。

I came out when I was 20 as trans, and my hair was super short; then I was living as a man for two years, and my hair was super short.

我20岁的时候就出柜了，我的头发很短；然后我就以男人的身份生活了两年，头发也超级短。

Then I went off testosterone almost two years ago and started growing my hair out.

大约两年前，我停用了睾丸激素，开始留头发。

I was super excited to get my braids.

我非常兴奋能得到我的辫子。

It was very gender-affirming for me, and I couldn’t really stop staring at myself and playing with it.

这对我来说是非常性别肯定的，我真的无法停止盯着自己并玩弄它。

I took this selfie and I was like, this is everything.

我拍了这张自拍照，我想，这就是一切。

I am killing it right now .

我现在就杀了它。

“I definitely take selfies for myself, but a big reason why I post them is that I want to be a visible agender person of color, and I want other young trans people to have someone to look at and see themselves reflected.

“我肯定会为自己自拍，但我发布这些照片的一个重要原因是我想成为一个明显的有色人种中的性别者，我希望其他年轻的跨性别者能有人看到并看到自己的反映。

I never had that growing up, and that is super important to me.

我的成长过程中从未有过这样的经历，这对我来说非常重要。

I feel like my life would be very different if I had known anyone who was non-binary, or if I had known there were other genders than male and female.

我觉得如果我认识任何非二元性别的人，或者如果我知道除了男性和女性之外还有其他性别，我的生活将会非常不同。

So my purpose with selfies is 1) I look cute as hell and 2) I want to be very out and accessible.”

所以我自拍的目的是 1) 我看起来很可爱，2) 我想要非常外向且平易近人。”

Rebecca “I took this on the day I was told that I would die if I removed the tube in my nose.

丽贝卡“我在有人告诉我如果拔掉鼻子里的管子我就会死的那天，我就服用了这个。

I couldn’t keep my eyes open and forming the smile was the hardest thing I could do…

我无法睁开眼睛，微笑是我能做的最困难的事情……

I took the picture because I was determined to have a ‘before’ shot because I was adamant that that day was the beginning of my recovery ‘after.’”

我拍这张照片是因为我决定拍一张‘之前’的照片，因为我坚信那天是我‘之后’恢复的开始。”

Stella “I took the first one in the bathroom of a fancy gala where I felt very out of place.

Stella：“我在一场盛大晚会的浴室里拍了第一张照片，感觉很不自在。

In the other, I had bought this bikini online and when I put it on at home, I remember thinking: “How could I have ever hated all this?” and almost cried.

另一次，我在网上买了这件比基尼，当我在家穿上它时，我记得我在想：“我怎么会讨厌这一切呢？”几乎哭了。

For years, I thought that the size of my body and the fact that I am queer meant that any sort of femininity wasn’t available to me.

多年来，我认为我的身材和我是酷儿的事实意味着我无法获得任何形式的女性气质。

Luckily I’ve since realized that femininity is a choose-your-own-adventure, and taking selfies like this remind me that I’m statuesque and gorgeous as hell.”

幸运的是，我后来意识到女性气质是一种选择自己的冒险，像这样的自拍照提醒我，我是雕像般的、美丽的。”

Mackenzie “Last year, a month after my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I spent all of October in Los Angeles.

麦肯齐“去年，我妈妈被诊断出患有阿尔茨海默氏症一个月后，我整个十月都在洛杉矶度过。

My mom was really nervous about me going because she rightfully thought I’d fall in love with it and not want to come back to the East Coast.

我妈妈对我去真的很紧张，因为她理所当然地认为我会爱上它并且不想回到东海岸。

To ease the fear and tension around it, I would send her selfies to help erase the miles and show that I was happy and hadn’t like, done anything to my look that she’d missed.

为了缓解周围的恐惧和紧张，我会给她发自拍照，以帮助消除里程，并表明我很高兴，并且不喜欢对我的外表做任何她错过的事情。

So I took this one in the bathroom of my office there and sent it with the text ‘getting that Cali glow but miss you lots’ then I tossed it through a filter and put it up on Instagram as my first selfie.”

所以我在我办公室的浴室里拍了这张照片，并附上文字‘让卡利焕发光彩，但很想念你’，然后我把它扔进滤镜里，把它放在 Instagram 上，作为我的第一张自拍照。”

Octavia “This selfie is one of my top 10 because I’m happy, the lighting is perfect, I’m radiant, and it’s also the first day of the pumpkin spice latte comeback this season.

Octavia “这张自拍照是我的十大自拍照之一，因为我很高兴，灯光很完美，我容光焕发，而且这也是本季南瓜香料拿铁卷土重来的第一天。

I don’t know if this sounds vain, but I love selfies.

我不知道这听起来是否虚荣，但我喜欢自拍。

I love taking them and I love being a part of others.

我喜欢接受它们，也喜欢成为他人的一部分。

In a culture so centered around the reachability of technology and specifically our phones, it’s an exhilarating feeling seeing so many beautiful people embrace this, which is why I love retweeting these beautiful people.

在一个以技术（特别是我们的手机）的可达性为中心的文化中，看到这么多美丽的人拥抱这一点是一种令人兴奋的感觉，这就是为什么我喜欢转发这些美丽的人。

I’m enamored by all the women I encounter online and I love to uplift them.

我迷恋我在网上遇到的所有女性，并且我喜欢提升她们。

I’ll never understand people who aren’t for selfies.

我永远无法理解那些不喜欢自拍的人。

Then again, it takes a lot of courage, time, good lighting, energy, and a strong arm to get the right picture and to know your angles, which could be intimidating for these same people.”

话又说回来，需要很大的勇气、时间、良好的灯光、精力和有力的手臂才能拍出正确的照片并知道你的角度，这对这些人来说可能是令人生畏的。”

Matthew “In late 2010, two years after I’d uprooted my life and moved from suburban Indianapolis to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with and then marry the girl from that long-distance thing, I experienced a severe depressive breakdown.

马修 “2010 年末，也就是我背井离乡，从印第安纳波利斯郊区搬到田纳西州孟菲斯，与异地恋中的那个女孩住在一起并结婚两年后，我经历了严重的抑郁崩溃。

I couldn’t seem to accomplish anything, no matter how I tried.

无论我如何努力，我似乎​​都无法完成任何事情。

Up to that point, I had thrived on the energy that writing and music gave me, but I just couldn’t do it any more.

在那之前，我一直依靠写作和音乐给我的能量而茁壮成长，但我再也做不到了。

“But — maybe by instinct, maybe by desperation — I kept taking selfies on my iPhone.

“但是——也许是出于本能，也许是出于绝望——我一直用 iPhone 自拍。

Depression selfies definitely weren’t a thing then, but that seems to be what I was doing — documenting myself to remind myself that I was still there.

那时，抑郁症自拍绝对不是一件事，但这似乎就是我正在做的事情——记录自己，提醒自己我还在那里。

One day, in late 2010, I stepped into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, decided I looked great, smiled as big as I could, and snapped a picture.

2010 年末的一天，我走进浴室，照了照镜子，觉得自己看起来很棒，就尽可能地笑了，然后拍了一张照片。

The above was the result.

以上就是结果。

I don’t know why I thought that was a smile, why I thought that a sweat-stained plain white tee was a great look, why I didn’t notice that my eyes were swollen from constant almost-crying, or that my eyes were almost completely vacant.

我不知道为什么我认为那是微笑，为什么我认为一件沾满汗水的纯白T恤很漂亮，为什么我没有注意到我的眼睛因为经常哭得肿了，或者我的眼睛几乎完全空洞。

Also my haircut was stupid, but my haircuts were always stupid until pretty recently.

我的发型也很愚蠢，但直到最近我的发型一直都很愚蠢。

I do know why I thought I looked great, though: I wasn’t asleep or doubled over in the shower trying to convince myself to stop wanting to die.

不过，我确实知道为什么我认为自己看起来很棒：我没有睡着，也没有在淋浴时弯腰试图说服自己不再想死。

That ugly selfie was both a declaration of victory in that day’s battle and a rallying cry for the months to come.

这张丑陋的自拍照既是当天战斗胜利的宣言，也是未来几个月的战斗口号。

I could at least stand up.

我至少可以站起来。

When my brain was screaming for me to kill myself, I could choose to do nothing.

当我的大脑尖叫着要我自杀时，我可以选择什么都不做。

“I lost a job to that depression.

“我因为抑郁症失去了工作。

My marriage spoiled into an abusive dynamic.

我的婚姻陷入了虐待之中。

(Which is a total chicken/egg discussion.

（这完全是先有鸡还是先有蛋的讨论。

I don’t remember which came first.

我不记得哪个先出现了。

I suspect depression did, largely because I was in such a vulnerable position for manipulation — I wanted to die every second I was awake; why would I not also believe that I was unloveable, unworthy of eating, deserving of being hit?)

我怀疑是抑郁症造成的，主要是因为我处于如此容易被操纵的境地——我醒着的每一秒都想死；我为什么不相信自己不可爱、不值得吃饭、值得被打呢？）

“New Year’s Eve, 2011, my wife insisted that she bring a friend over and didn’t allow me to invite anyone.

“2011年除夕夜，我妻子坚持要带一个朋友过来，不让我邀请任何人。

It was the guy whose house she had been spending several nights a week at.

她每周都会在这个人家里度过几个晚上。

By midnight, she had fallen asleep on his shoulder, after putting a pillow between us.

午夜时分，她在我们之间放了一个枕头，靠在他的肩膀上睡着了。

I don’t know how I worked up the nerve to document that with a selfie:

我不知道我是如何鼓起勇气用自拍照记录这一点的：

“On showing that picture to my therapist, he rightly insisted I move out.

“在向我的治疗师展示那张照片后，他坚持要求我搬出去，这是正确的。

Which I did, but not until she told me to.

我照做了，但直到她告诉我才这样做。

About a week later.

大约一周后。

“It was weirdly magic.

“这真是一种奇怪的魔法。

The difference happened almost immediately.

差异几乎立刻就发生了。

This is from May 2012:

这是 2012 年 5 月的情况：

“It wasn’t a sudden, complete change, but very rapidly (and really, I’ve only noticed while collecting these selfies), the light came back to my eyes, I re-learned how to smile (if only slightly).”

“这不是一个突然的、彻底的改变，而是非常迅速（实际上，我只是在收集这些自拍照时才注意到），光线又回到了我的眼睛里，我重新学会了如何微笑（即使只是轻微的微笑）。”

Jolie “ #SELFIEARMY is about radical self-love.

朱莉“#SELFIEARMY 是关于彻底的自爱。

I truly believe that for a woman, loving yourself is an act of social disobedience.

我坚信，对于一个女人来说，爱自己是一种不服从社会的行为。

We’re taught to critique ourselves constantly, ingrained to hate ourselves.

我们被教导要不断地批评自己，仇恨自己根深蒂固。

We’re taught that anything less than perfection is not good enough, and we’re reminded damn well that we will never be perfect.

我们被教导说，任何不完美的东西都是不够好的，而且我们被很好地提醒，我们永远不会完美。

We could always be thinner, prettier, have bigger boobs, a nicer ass, have clearer skin — and due to the Photoshopping epidemic we find ourselves in today, when we see women in the media, we compare ourselves to literally (literally) unattainable standards.

我们总是可以变得更瘦、更漂亮、拥有更大的胸部、更漂亮的屁股、更干净的皮肤——而且由于我们今天所处的 Photoshop 流行，当我们在媒体上看到女性时，我们会将自己与字面上（字面上的）无法达到的标准进行比较。

Above all, we aren’t taught to define ourselves, but to instead see ourselves only through the eyes of the men around us.

最重要的是，我们没有被教导要定义自己，而是只能通过周围人的眼睛来看待自己。

If we receive a compliment, we may say “thank you,” but we are never to compliment ourselves first.

如果我们受到赞美，我们可能会说“谢谢”，但我们永远不要先赞美自己。

More than a virtue, modesty was invented to silence women.

谦虚不仅仅是一种美德，它的发明也是为了让女性保持沉默。

Historically, men have been the artist and women have been the muse.

从历史上看，男性是艺术家，女性是缪斯。

Taking a selfie is about reclaiming our right to be both — Yes, I agree that I am a beautiful, magnificent, one of a kind work of art, I just don’t understand why you think you deserve any credit for that.

自拍是为了收回我们两者兼而有之的权利——是的，我同意我是一件美丽、宏伟、独一无二的艺术品，我只是不明白为什么你认为你应该因此得到任何赞扬。

The selfie: a love story: I AM ART AND I AM AN ARTIST.

自拍：一个爱情故事：我是艺术，我是艺术家。

YOU’VE held MY body for ransom for centuries and I am returning it to its rightful owner.”

几个世纪以来，你们一直扣留我的尸体以索取赎金，我要把它归还给它的合法主人。”

Meredith “I think of selfies like a timeline-diary, a way to document my adventures.

梅雷迪思“我认为自拍就像时间线日记，是记录我的冒险经历的一种方式。

I get an overwhelming desire to make an image sometimes.

有时我有一种强烈的愿望去创作一幅图像。

Like my circumstances will be really curious or beautiful and it’ll be like an itch I have to scratch.

就像我的处境真的很奇怪或很美丽，就像我必须挠痒痒一样。

I have to put the moment down.

我必须放下这一刻。

I was a very early proponent of the selfie, growing up with a camera and being on livejournal and MySpace as a teen.

我是自拍的早期支持者，我从小就带着相机长大，十几岁时就上了 livejournal 和 MySpace。

Making pictures of myself has always been a part of my regular art practice.

给自己拍照一直是我日常艺术实践的一部分。

“After the worst breakup of my life, I took a picture of myself every day for SO LONG just to remind myself I was real.

“在经历了人生中最糟糕的分手之后，我每天都给自己拍一张照片，持续很长时间，只是为了提醒自己，我是真实的。

I have an old broken laptop with probably 1,000 photos of myself at age 23–24.

我有一台破旧的笔记本电脑，里面大概有 1,000 张我 23-24 岁时的照片。

In a weird way, I cherish the selfie practice I’ve adopted because now, being in a band, I have my picture taken all the time and I know my angles.

以一种奇怪的方式，我很珍惜我所采用的自拍练习，因为现在，在乐队中，我一直在拍照，而且我知道自己的角度。

When it comes time for me to be on camera, I don’t panic.

当我出现在镜头前时，我不会惊慌。

I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last year and I’m getting older…

去年我体重增加了很多，而且我也变老了……

but this is my face, and it’s the only one I’ve got.

但这是我的脸，也是我唯一的脸。

Ergo: selfies.

因此：自拍。

This is me, regardless of how I or you feel about it.

这就是我，无论我或你的感受如何。

I exist.

我存在。

“I have had such huge life changes between November 2013, when my band first started touring, and now, and I look back at my Instagram and I’m just shocked.

“从 2013 年 11 月我的乐队第一次开始巡演到现在，我的生活发生了巨大的变化，当我回顾我的 Instagram 时，我感到震惊。

My life has done three or four 180s, and there I am, surviving all of it, still getting on stage and smiling.

我的人生经历了三四个一百八十度大转弯，而我却挺过来了，仍然站在舞台上微笑着。

Like whoa, little dude, there you are.

就像哇，小家伙，你来了。

Being as open as I have about my history with mental illness, maybe seeing a photo of my not only living but thriving might be important for someone.

尽管我对自己的精神疾病史持开放态度，也许看到一张我不仅生活而且蓬勃发展的照片对某人来说可能很重要。

“Selfies are giving me agency to show people there’s more to me than the incendiary parts focused on by the media.

“自拍让我能够向人们展示我的魅力，而不仅仅是媒体所关注的煽动性部分。

People definitely want me to be this violent angry person all the time.

人们肯定希望我一直是一个暴力愤怒的人。

All screaming pictures.

都是尖叫的画面。

So like, me feeding boys donuts or holding a bunch of flowers or working on one of my cakes is important.

所以，就像我给男孩喂甜甜圈、拿着一束花或做我的一个蛋糕一样，这些都很重要。

I’m a very nice, mild mannered person.

我是一个非常友善、温和的人。

I don’t want people to be afraid of me.

我不想让人们害怕我。

I’m a boring old lady!”

我就是一个无聊的老太婆！”

Esmé “I took this because I wanted to capture a time shortly after beginning a new treatment protocol for late-stage Lyme disease.

Esmé “我拍这张照片是因为我想捕捉晚期莱姆病新治疗方案开始后不久的一段时光。

I was feeling better than I had in years, and it seemed like being able to freeze that experience of hope could magically prolong it, or at least commemorate it.”

我的感觉比多年来好多了，似乎能够冻结这种希望的经历可以神奇地延长它，或者至少纪念它。”

Alana “I take selfies because I hated my appearance for so long that I avoided photos altogether for several years in early adulthood.

Alana “我自拍是因为我长期以来讨厌自己的外表，以至于在成年初期的几年里我完全避免拍照。

I’m sad that there is no evidence of me during that time and so maybe I’m overcompensating now by taking selfies as often as I do.

我很遗憾没有证据表明我在那段时间的存在，所以也许我现在像以前一样频繁地自拍是过度补偿了。

Most of the selfies I take include either my cat or my ass, though never at the same time.

我拍的大多数自拍照要么是我的猫，要么是我的屁股，尽管从来没有同时出现过。

In the case of this selfie, I like that my semi-nakedness seems inconsequential to me.

就这张自拍照而言，我喜欢我的半裸对我来说似乎无关紧要。

The electric blue is a nice touch but I think this would be a sexy photo even if I was clothed because my expression is so quintessentially me.”

电蓝色是一种很好的触感，但我认为即使我穿着衣服，这也会是一张性感的照片，因为我的表情就是典型的我。”

Christin “I don’t have a ton of selfies my phone because I take waaayyyyy too long setting them up, usually long enough to go “what’s the point” and not bother.

Christin “我的手机里没有太多自拍照，因为我设置它们的时间太长了，通常足够长的时间去问“有什么意义”而不用打扰。

I care just a little too much about the mise en scene, my office is kinda boring, and I’m self-conscious about taking pictures in public.

我有点太在意场景了，我的办公室有点无聊，而且我对在公共场合拍照有点不自在。

I think selfies are awesome and I always want to see my friends’ beautiful faces but I draw the line when it comes to myself.

我认为自拍很棒，我总是想看到朋友们美丽的面孔，但当涉及到我自己时，我就划清界限了。

“Like, even writing this.

“就像，甚至写这个。

Whenever people post stuff like ‘I want to hear from you, and yes I mean you’ I always think ‘Yeah but not.

每当人们发布诸如“我想听听你的消息，是的，我指的是你”之类的东西时，我总是想“是的，但不是。”

Like, ME though.’ All that empowering stuff on Twitter and Tumblr like ‘You look cute today’ or ‘Send me your address so I can send Christmas cards.’ I always think oh, that’s sweet but they don’t mean me.

Twitter 和 Tumblr 上那些充满力量的内容，比如“你今天看起来很可爱”或“把你的地址发给我，这样我就可以寄圣诞贺卡了。”我总是想，哦，这很贴心，但它们并不是指我。

So that’s something I’m working on.

这就是我正在做的事情。

“Also getting acquainted with my own face.

“同时也熟悉了我自己的脸。

Like, I honestly have no idea what I look like.

就像，老实说，我不知道自己长什么样。

The picture I took is pretty close to what I see in the mirror but there are photos of me from a party this weekend and they made me want to stay inside with a blanket over my head.

我拍的照片与我在镜子中看到的非常接近，但有我这个周末参加聚会的照片，它们让我想呆在里面，头上盖着毯子。

Have I been walking around that ugly all the time?

难道我一直都这么丑陋吗？

(Really opening up the floodgates here.) So part of why I like the few selfies I take is I get to control the narrative.”

（真的打开了闸门。）所以我喜欢我拍的几张自拍照的部分原因是我可以控制叙事。”

Nev “First of all, it’s hard to focus on crying and holding a phone at the same time, so there is a degree of skill on display here.

Nev “首先，一边哭一边拿着手机是很难集中注意力的，所以这里展示了一定程度的技巧。

“I took that picture right after a friendship-ending fight over my transition .

“我在一场关于我的过渡的友谊结束的争吵之后拍了这张照片。

Someone I really trusted turned their back on me.

我真正信任的人背弃了我。

You can see it in my face that it’s not mere sadness — there’s some real fucking indignation there.

你可以从我的脸上看出，这不仅仅是悲伤——还有​​一些真正的他妈的愤慨。

How could someone do this to me?

怎么会有人这样对我？

“There are so many pictures out there, somewhere, of me and this person as childhood friends.

“那里有很多我和这个人儿时好友的照片。

This selfie was like the end of all that, like the final frame of one of those terrible coming-of-age movies.

这张自拍照就像这一切的结束，就像那些可怕的成长电影之一的最后一帧。

Except with an even suckier ending.

除了一个更糟糕的结局。

“You need to document yourself at your most vulnerable, because just having that memory isn’t enough anymore.

“你需要记录自己最脆弱的时候，因为仅仅拥有这样的记忆已经不够了。

Without the picture, you don’t really remember how your lips stung when you made that face or the shape of the lines on your face that your tears left.

如果没有这张照片，你就不会真正记得当你做出那张脸时你的嘴唇是多么刺痛，或者你的眼泪在你脸上留下的皱纹的形状。

All you remember is that you were sad, and that’s not enough for me.”

你只记得你很伤心，但这对我来说还不够。”

Ashley “About two weeks before I took this photo, I was lying in bed naked and said to myself, “I’m tired of thinking of my body as a problem.” Every time I looked in the mirror, I had something awful to say (or think) about my body, and quite suddenly, the thought of going through that old emotional routine felt distinctly and profoundly boring.

阿什利“大约在拍这张照片前两周，我赤身裸体地躺在床上，对自己说：“我厌倦了把自己的身体视为一个问题。每次我照镜子时，我都会对自己的身体说（或想）一些可怕的事情，突然间，一想到要经历旧的情感惯例，我就感到明显而深刻的无聊。

A week later I found this crop top on sale, and wore it proudly into a conversation with a group of thin white women who worked in fashion writing.

一周后，我发现这件露脐上衣打折，并自豪地穿着它与一群从事时尚写作的瘦白人女性交谈。

On my way out of the meeting, I stopped in front of this mirror next to the elevator, and I posed like I was as fabulous and non-boring as I felt.”

在离开会议的路上，我在电梯旁边的镜子前停下来，摆出一副我觉得自己很棒、不乏味的姿势。”

Tam “Usually, people take selfies of their most attractive/confident selves, but I am oddly only ever motivated to take selfies after something particularly awkward or memorable has happened (and this doesn’t seem to overlap with my feeling cute, unfortunately).

Tam “通常情况下，人们都会给最有吸引力/最自信的自己自拍，但奇怪的是，只有在发生了特别尴尬或难忘的事情之后，我才会有动力自拍（不幸的是，这似乎与我感觉可爱的感觉并不重叠）。

“This was taken at JFK, right after TSA officers publicly patted down my hair and boobs because my ‘ethnic’ hair (a term used by the TSA officers) set off the airport body scanner for the 9th time in four weeks.

“这张照片是在肯尼迪机场拍摄的，就在 TSA 官员公开拍打我的头发和胸部之后，因为我的‘种族’头发（TSA 官员使用的术语）在四个星期内第九次触发了机场人体扫描仪。

Apparently, thick hair blocks the scanner from working and conceals any area that the hair rests on.

显然，浓密的头发会阻碍扫描仪工作并隐藏头发所在的任何区域。

If you put your hair up in a bun, they’ll pat the bun and sometimes undo it, just in case you may be concealing a knife or tiny antique pistol within your locks.”

如果你把头发盘成发髻，他们会轻拍发髻，有时还会把发髻解开，以防万一你的头发里藏着一把小刀或一把小古董手枪。”

Joe “I took 25 pictures of myself laying in different positions across my bed.

Joe “我拍了 25 张自己躺在床上不同姿势的照片。

Some funny, some blurry, and two or three I like.

有些有趣，有些模糊，有两三个我喜欢。

Taking all those pictures made me put my guard down.

拍完这些照片让我放下了警惕。

To do that I imagined my phone to be the face of a friend I admire.

为了做到这一点，我把我的手机想象成我敬佩的朋友的面孔。

“I feel strange sometimes, because selfies are about people declaring agency over how they are seen.

“有时我感觉很奇怪，因为自拍是人们在表达自己在他人眼中的表现。

Frankly, men who look like me are seen pretty positively by society.

坦率地说，社会对像我这样的男人的评价非常积极。

When women, trans, non-binary, and people of color post them it is a celebration and political statement: them taking control of their bodies and presentation is a radical move because it rewrites the narrative around their lives one snapshot at a time.

当女性、跨性别者、非二元性别者和有色人种发布这些照片时，这是一种庆祝和政治声明：她们控制自己的身体和展示是一个激进的举动，因为它一次一个快照地改写了她们生活的叙事。

I like selfies because they offer me control over my body.”

我喜欢自拍，因为它们让我能够控制自己的身体。”

Megan “Taking a selfie is the act of reflecting light I’ve already felt back to myself again and again.

梅根“自拍是一种反射光线的行为，我已经一次又一次地感受到自己的存在。

It’s an active attempt to remind myself I exist.

这是一种提醒自己我存在的积极尝试。

I guess anytime I’m looking into a camera I’m facing my own mortality, then demanding there be a chance to last forever−but, with a selfie, it’s only in the way I want to be remembered.

我想每当我看着相机时，我都会面对自己的死亡，然后要求有机会永远持续下去——但是，通过自拍，这只是我希望被记住的方式。

Like writing my name on some wall as a kid: I WAS HERE.

就像小时候在墙上写下我的名字一样：我在这里。

That’s the thing, it’s this intimate promise to myself: I don’t have to be forgotten.

就是这样，这是对自己的亲密承诺：我不必被忘记。

There will always be this.”

永远都会有这个。”

Back to top N ow let me take a selfie.

返回顶部 现在让我来一张自拍照。

Here is a short story about one of my own pictures, about what compels me to take them, about why I do this.

这是一个关于我自己的一张照片的小故事，关于是什么迫使我拍摄它们，关于我为什么这样做。

My way of taking selfies may not be yours; this is not prescriptive.

我的自拍方式可能不适合你；这不是规定性的。

It is just a snapshot, one of many.

这只是一个快照，是众多快照中的一个。

This particular selfie takes place somewhere in the hours between night and morning.

这张特别的自拍照发生在夜间和早晨之间的某个时间。

I am up too late again, reading about Frida Kahlo, reading from her diary.

我又起得太晚了，读着弗里达·卡罗的故事，读着她的日记。

There is this line in it that I keep returning to and mouthing silently as I chew off my cuticles.

当我咀嚼我的角质层时，我不断地回想起其中的这句话，并默默地用嘴默念。

It is only half a sentence, a scribble out of context:

只有半句话，断章取义：

I flip the pages and try to distract my hands, but they keep crawling over to my phone, where they always want to go.

我翻着书页，试图分散我的双手，但它们总是爬到我的手机上，它们总是想去的地方。

My hands and my phone are in love.

我的手和手机相爱了。

They finish each other’s 140-character sentences.

他们互相补完对方的140字句子。

Hello, old friend.

你好，老朋友。

Instinct kicks in: I click on the camera and stare into it.

本能发挥作用：我点击相机并凝视它。

My late night face: waxy, bloated, a bit sunken in.

我深夜的脸：蜡质、浮肿、有点凹陷。

But still, there’s something about the lamp light.

但灯光仍然有一些东西。

I look wise in it.

我看起来很聪明。

I look like someone who has stayed up late reading.

我看起来就像一个熬夜读书的人。

I feel compelled to capture this someone, for others to know her, to remember her myself in the morning.

我觉得有必要捕捉这个人，让其他人认识她，让我自己在早上记住她。

I think those words again as I try out different angles .

当我尝试不同的角度时，我又想起了这句话。

Neck up, neck down, eyes open, eyes closed.

脖子向上，脖子向下，眼睛睁开，眼睛闭上。

The one who gives birth to herself.

那个生下自己的人。

Along with Julia, Clover, and Francesca, Frida is someone I am always thinking about.

与朱莉娅、克洛弗和弗朗西斯卡一样，弗里达也是我一直惦记的人。

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940 (via Wikipedia ) Scholars like to link this journal fragment to Kahlo’s love of the great myths, to her affinity for epic stories carved into stones.

弗里达·卡罗，《带着荆棘项链和蜂鸟的自画像》，1940 年（来自维基百科）学者们喜欢将这本日记片段与卡罗对伟大神话的热爱，以及她对刻在石头上的史诗故事的喜爱联系起来。

Kahlo studied ancient Egypt inside her blue house in Coyoacan, and there she must have encountered Nu, the primordial, gender-neutral watery chasm at the beginning of all things, and Atum, the first god, who created himself by rising out of it.

卡罗在她位于科约阿坎的蓝色房子里研究了古埃及，在那里她一定遇到了努，万物之初的原始、性别中立的水深渊，以及第一个神阿图姆，他从其中升起创造了自己。

Atum was known as the start of the world and also the logical end of it; his name roughly translates to completion, a perfect cycle.

阿图姆被称为世界的开始，也是世界逻辑上的终结。他的名字大致翻译为完成，一个完美的循环。

He bore himself, and then out of lonesomeness, sneezed out two children (some versions depict this productive sneeze as ejaculate; hieroglyphic porn turns out to be pretty vague); eventually his tears created man.

他让自己感到厌烦，然后出于孤独，打出了两个孩子（有些版本将这种富有成效的喷嚏描述为射精；象形文字色情结果是相当模糊的）；最终他的眼泪创造了人类。

Atum willed himself out of the darkness and then returned to it once his work was done, in his body he contained all pre-existence and post-existence, all the energy and matter in the universe.

阿图姆用意志让自己走出黑暗，工作完成后又回到黑暗中，他的身体里包含了所有的前存和后存，宇宙中所有的能量和物质。

Kahlo was an artist with a broken body after a horrific trolley accident, a woman who was often confined to her bed and who could not bear children.

卡罗是一位艺术家，在一次可怕的电车事故后身体受伤，她是一个经常卧床不起且无法生育的女人。

I can imagine that the story of Atum’s full generative powers was both soothing and painful to her.

我可以想象，阿图姆拥有全部生育能力的故事对她来说既是安慰又是痛苦。

She could not give birth to any life, much less the world, but she could at least rise out of the mist by herself, flinging her image over and over and over out of the abyss before she returned to it.

她无法孕育出任何生命，更无法孕育出世界，但她至少可以自己从迷雾中升起，将自己的形象一遍又一遍地从深渊中抛出，然后再回到深渊。

I see her self-portraits as ecstatic nativities: fertile, bloody, dangerous.

我把她的自画像视为欣喜若狂的诞生：肥沃、血腥、危险。

I am overwhelmed by them.

我对他们不知所措。

I close the book and turn to fine-tuning my own face.

我合上书，开始微调自己的脸。

It needs more saturation and bit of blurring around my smile lines.

它需要更多的饱和度和我的微笑线周围的一些模糊。

I scroll through filter after filter until one just feels right, the closest I will get to having aesthetic instinct at 3 a.m.

我滚动浏览一个又一个的滤镜，直到感觉合适为止，这是我在凌晨 3 点最接近产生审美本能的时候。

And then, it’s gone.

然后，它就消失了。

Off to Instagram, off to earn its first gold star.

前往 Instagram，赢得第一颗金星。

I have sliced off a little piece of myself that is also a piece of not myself, and the image no longer belongs to me.

我切下了自己的一小部分，那也是不属于我的一部分，图像不再属于我。

There is loss in this moment of separation: you wish your pic well, you hope it grows up to be a winner.

在这分离的时刻有一种失落：你希望你的照片一切顺利，你希望它长大后成为赢家。

You have hopes and expectations for what it will do long after you have returned to Nu’s primordial lake, the song of you it might sing.

当你回到怒族的原始湖之后，你对它会做什么抱有希望和期待，它可能会唱你的歌。

Goodbye, little nighttime selfie.

再见，夜间小自拍。

I hope you outlive me, I hope you are a reminder that I once was a person who lived.

我希望你比我活得更久，我希望你能提醒我，我曾经是一个活着的人。

People have asked if I ever feel guilty about using tints or hazing out my imperfections, if I feel that I am somehow betraying truth by tossing an airbrushed idea of myself into the future.

人们问我是否曾因使用色彩或掩盖自己的缺陷而感到内疚，是否觉得自己将自己的想法抛向未来而在某种程度上背叛了真相。

This is one of the major critiques leveled against selfies: that they deceive.

这是针对自拍的主要批评之一：自拍具有欺骗性。

That we can never really see ourselves clearly.

我们永远无法真正清楚地看到自己。

But all self-construction is narrative, it’s all improvisation.

但所有的自我建构都是叙事，都是即兴创作。

Filters don’t always blur out the facts; they can work as storytellers, dramatic lighting for personal theater.

过滤器并不总是模糊事实；他们可以充当讲故事的人，为个人剧院提供戏剧性的灯光。

Look at me crying in hypercolor washed over with a blue glaze; forcing you to hear my #feelings soliloquy.

看看我在被蓝色釉料洗过的彩色中哭泣；强迫你听我的#feelings独白。

Look at me smiling softly alone in my room, bathed in light, pale as vapor, beatific as the pietá; bear witness to this joy, this stillness, this dreamy intermission between moments of anxiety.

看看我独自在房间里轻轻微笑，沐浴在光线中，苍白如水蒸气，幸福如圣母怜子图；见证这种喜悦、这种宁静、这种焦虑时刻之间的梦幻间歇。

I am the director of this feed; and I am going to act like I am Orson Fucking Welles.

我是这个 feed 的总监；我会表现得像我是他妈的奥森·威尔斯。

FaceTune Right now, there are over 15 apps on the market devoted primarily to the act of taking selfies.

FaceTune 目前，市场上有超过 15 个应用程序主要致力于自拍。

There’s FaceTune, Bestie, Perfect 365, CamMe, YouCam, Selfie Studio, CreamCam, Candy Camera, Cymera, Selfie Booth, Selfius, Frontback, Dayfie, Everyday.

有 FaceTune、Bestie、Perfect 365、CamMe、YouCam、Selfie Studio、CreamCam、Candy Camera、Cymera、Selfie Booth、Selfius、Frontback、Dayfie、Everyday。

In March 2014, the Apple store added a dedicated “Selfie” section (much to tech bloggers chagrin; Engadget mocked the virtual storefront as “not the app store section we needed, but the app store section we deserved.”).

2014 年 3 月，苹果商店增加了专门的“自拍”部分（这让科技博主们大为懊恼；Engadget 嘲笑虚拟店面“不是我们需要的应用商店部分，而是我们应得的应用商店部分。”）。

The apps all function in slightly different ways, but they all optimize both the process of taking a selfie and the post-production tinkering that happens before pressing send.

这些应用程序的功能都略有不同，但它们都优化了自拍的过程以及按发送之前发生的后期制作修补。

CamMe is made to enhance the initial photo-capture; it allows the person holding the smartphone to click the shutter with a hand gesture (a closing of the fist).

CamMe 旨在增强初始照片捕捉效果；它允许持有智能手机的人通过手势（握拳）点击快门。

This freedom from hardware means that a selfie-taker can stretch out, walk away, pose in full body, moon from behind.

这种不受硬件限制的自由意味着自拍者可以伸展身体、走开、摆出全身姿势、从后面看月亮。

It liberates the hands, and in doing so, lets you twist around like a figure drawing model, lets you mimic and dialogue with the iconic self portraits of art history (NB: I refuse to wade into the perennial art critic debate about whether Rembrandt would be rolling in his grave over all this).

它解放了双手，这样做，让你像人物绘画模型一样扭动，让你模仿艺术史上标志性的自画像并与之对话（注意：我拒绝介入艺术评论家关于伦勃朗是否会因为这一切而在坟墓里打滚的长期争论）。

CamMe Editing apps like FaceTune exist to streamline everything that comes after the snap; the serious work of preparing an image for gallery viewing.

像 FaceTune 这样的 CamMe 编辑应用程序的存在是为了简化快照后发生的一切；准备图像以供画廊观看的严肃工作。

FaceTune features a powerful arsenal of editing tools: you can fuzz out blemishes, whiten teeth, add a dewy soft-focus like a smear of Vaseline on the lens, brighten your eyes, hollow your jowls.

FaceTune 具有强大的编辑工具库：您可以模糊瑕疵、美白牙齿、添加水润柔焦（如在镜片上涂抹凡士林）、提亮您的眼睛、挖空您的下巴。

This is where selfies start to get more controversial: if, in 2015, we agree that it is blurry feminism (at best) to Photoshop celebrities beyond recognition on magazine covers, then why are we comfortable erasing our own perceived imperfections?

这就是自拍照开始变得更具争议性的地方：如果在 2015 年，我们都认为用 Photoshop 制作杂志封面上的名人，让其面目全非，这（充其量）是模糊的女权主义，那么为什么我们会轻松地抹去自己认为的缺陷呢？

If selfies are about warts-and-all self-acceptance, what message does it send when we don’t show the warts?

如果自拍照是关于自我接纳，那么当我们不展示缺点时，它会发出什么信息？

I understand these fears, but also would argue that using a personal Photoshop machine doesn’t necessarily present the same grand-scale self-esteem attack that glossy magazine covers do.

我理解这些担忧，但也认为使用个人 Photoshop 机器并不一定会像光鲜亮丽的杂志封面那样对自尊造成大规模的攻击。

Celebrities and models never have final approval on their covers; but selfie-takers own the entire publicity machine: you take the shot, you edit the shot, you publish the shot.

名人和模特的封面永远不会得到最终批准；但自拍者拥有整个宣传机器：你拍摄照片，你编辑照片，你发布照片。

All the artifice is in your hands, and that can feel like power.

所有的技巧都在你的手中，这感觉就像力量。

FaceTune, and other apps like it, are a way of playing, of gaming your face.

FaceTune 和其他类似的应用程序是一种玩脸游戏的方式。

They let you you tweak and shade, paint and polish.

它们可以让你调整、着色、绘画和抛光。

They let you pick out your favorite features and highlight them.

它们可以让您挑选出您最喜欢的功能并突出显示它们。

They let you art direct your own portrait, sending viewers’ eyeballs to precise locations on your face.

它们让你可以艺术指导自己的肖像，将观众的眼球引导到你脸上的精确位置。

Some people see editing apps as a way to hide behind magic wands, but I see them as very public declarations of a common human hunger: to be seen in the light you want to be seen in.

有些人将编辑应用程序视为隐藏在魔杖后面的一种方式，但我认为它们是对人类共同渴望的公开宣言：以你希望的方式被人看到。

It’s your selfie party; cry in sepia tone if you want to.

这是你的自拍派对；如果你愿意的话，可以用棕褐色的声音哭泣。

Everyday The app I use is called Bestie, and it combines the two types of apps into a one-stop experience.

我每天使用的应用程序称为 Bestie，它将两种类型的应用程序结合成一站式体验。

It opens onto a front-facing lens, and then immediately applies a smooth veneer, airbrushing in real-time.

它打开一个前置镜头，然后立即应用光滑的饰面，实时喷枪。

Under-eye circles magically disappear, the complexion goes luminous.

黑眼圈神奇地消失，肤色变得明亮。

After I downloaded Bestie, I realized there is a world in which I never again need to keep an unedited version of my own image on my camera roll; there could be no faulty negatives to protect from the cloud, nothing to leak, nothing to wince at later.

下载 Bestie 后，我意识到在这个世界里，我再也不需要在相机胶卷上保留自己图像的未经编辑的版本；不会有任何有缺陷的底片需要保护，不会受到云的影响，不会有任何泄露，也不会出现事后畏缩的情况。

And I know instinctually that I don’t want that.

我本能地知道我不想那样。

Sometimes when I feel like I look my worst, I take selfies outside of the app.

有时，当我觉得自己看起来最糟糕时，我会在应用程序之外自拍。

This act makes some strange sense to me; on certain moody days, it can also feel like high-risk behavior.

这个行为对我来说有一些奇怪的意义；在某些情绪低落的日子里，这也可能让人感觉像是高风险行为。

I put up these few raw images a year to remind myself (and my followers) that even with the wrinkles and stray eyebrow hairs and visible pores, I am a person who should be seen and appraised, and even found acceptable despite these flaws.

我每年都会发布这些几张原始图像，以提醒自己（和我的追随者），即使有皱纹、散乱的眉毛和明显的毛孔，我也是一个应该被看到和评价的人，甚至尽管有这些缺陷，也应该被认为是可以接受的。

But I still love the apps; I believe in them.

但我仍然喜欢这些应用程序；我相信他们。

It took Cindy Sherman hundreds of different costumes to interrogate all the different corners of herself; apps let us try out her lifetime of masquerade with just a few quick clicks.

辛迪·谢尔曼 (Cindy Sherman) 穿了数百种不同的服装来审视自己的各个不同角落；只需快速点击几下，我们就可以通过应用程序尝试她一生的化妆舞会。

I am not ashamed to use them, nor should anyone be.

我并不羞于使用它们，任何人也不应该感到羞耻。

Apps turn your iPhone into the Queen’s Magic Mirror.

应用程序可将您的 iPhone 变成女王的魔镜。

Stare into it.

凝视它。

Think: I am the fairest of them all, I will eat their hearts.

想想：我是他们当中最美丽的，我要吃掉他们的心。

I have a friend who controls her own image online with an iron fist; she hates encountering pictures of herself taken without consent.

我有一个朋友，她在网上用铁拳控制自己的形象；她讨厌遇到未经同意就拍摄自己的照片。

She often scrolls through Instagram and Facebook untagging every candid image, like a burglar wiping off fingerprints.

她经常浏览 Instagram 和 Facebook，取消每一张偷拍图片的标签，就像窃贼擦掉指纹一样。

I used to think this was a bizarre eccentricity, but after living in the world of selfies for a while, I understand it.

我曾经认为这是一种奇怪的怪癖，但在自拍的世界里生活了一段时间后，我明白了。

Photographs that you don’t control may have some journalistic benefit one day, but they can feel exploitative, unwieldy, and strange.

您无法控制的照片有一天可能会在新闻方面带来一些好处，但它们可能会让人感到被剥削、笨拙和奇怪。

Selfies provide a blessed course-correct to this photographic chaos, a chance to refocus the narrative that others might want to tell about you (or not tell — selfies also allow you to have pictures available online even if you are the type to rarely show up in party photographs or crowd shots).

自拍为这种摄影混乱提供了一个正确的方向，一个机会重新聚焦其他人可能想告诉你的关于你的叙述（或不告诉 - 自拍还允许你在网上提供照片，即使你是那种很少出现在聚会照片或人群照片中的类型）。

When I met my partner, he told me that he got to know me through my selfies.

当我遇到我的伴侣时，他告诉我他是通过我的自拍照认识我的。

This was for the best.

这是最好的。

Because if you Google me, you will get: an almost feral picture from an old gossip blog article in which I am wearing schlumpy buffalo plaid and look like I have a thyroid condition, a photo of myself at 24 in a backyard garden wearing a horrible pastel scarf and writing in a notebook while everyone around me seems to be talking to each other, and some photos of myself at literary events, surrounded by acquaintances with my hair in a topknot.

因为如果你在谷歌上搜索我，你会得到：一张来自旧八卦博客文章的近乎野性的照片，其中我穿着邋遢的水牛格子呢，看起来好像患有甲状腺疾病；一张我24岁在后院花园里的照片，我戴着一条可怕的彩色围巾，在笔记本上写字，而我周围的每个人似乎都在互相交谈；还有一些我在文学活动中的照片，我的头发在熟人的簇拥下。

If you make guesses about me from these photos, some of them will be right: I am a writer in Brooklyn and have worn the lumberjack flannels and scarves to prove it, I have attended parties, I have read in public, at one point I thought it would be a good idea to wear a formal bowtie with a dress.

如果你从这些照片中对我进行猜测，其中一些是对的：我是布鲁克林的一名作家，我穿着伐木工人的法兰绒和围巾来证明这一点，我参加过聚会，我在公共场合读书，有一次我认为在裙子上穿正式的领结是个好主意。

But I don’t recognize myself in any of those photos, and not just because some of them are unflattering.

但我在这些照片中都认不出自己，不仅仅是因为其中一些照片不讨人喜欢。

It is because I can only view that person as an other, as someone I might have crossed paths with a few times but who still takes me several blinks to remember.

因为我只能将那个人视为另一个人，视为一个我可能有过几次交集但仍然需要我眨眼才能记住的人。

Even as a young girl, I always felt such a discrepancy between the person I saw in the mirror and the person that showed up in photographs.

即使作为一个年轻女孩，我也总觉得镜子里的人和照片里的人有很大的差异。

But my selfies tell another story, one where the person I see and the person I feel that I am fuse in the same instant, one that feels closer to who I am, one that always ignites a flash of recognition when I revisit them (and as anyone who takes and posts a lot of selfies will tell you, going back to look at old photos can be as tender and thrilling as finding a diary).

但我的自拍照讲述了另一个故事，一个我看到的人和我感觉到的人在同一瞬间融合在一起的故事，一个让我感觉更接近自己的故事，一个当我重新审视他们时总是会燃起一抹认出的火花的故事（正如任何拍摄并发布大量自拍照的人都会告诉你的那样，回顾旧照片可以像找到一本日记一样温柔和令人兴奋）。

via @rachsyme on Instagram Scroll back through my Instagram .

来自 Instagram 上的@rachsyme 向后滚动浏览我的 Instagram。

There I am in black and white, wearing oversized sunglasses, drinking a Slurpee, looking like a still from a new wave film on a hot summer day.

我穿着黑白相间的衣服，戴着超大墨镜，喝着思乐冰，看起来就像炎热夏日新浪潮电影中的剧照。

There I am in driving a vintage car in Los Angeles, with my eyes focused on the side mirror (the closest I may ever be cosplaying as Didion with her Stingray).

我在洛杉矶驾驶一辆老爷车，眼睛盯着后视镜（这可能是我扮演迪迪安和她的黄貂鱼时最接近的一次）。

There I am, hair in a static halo around my face, no makeup on, a coffee the size of a small child in my hands, with the caption “I woke up like this.” There I am after a long night of writing, my face drained but at peace with what I’ve made.

我就在那里，头发在我的脸上形成一圈静止的光环，没有化妆，手里拿着一杯孩子大小的咖啡，标题是“我像这样醒来”。经过一夜的写作后，我的脸色疲惫不堪，但对自己所做的一切感到平静。

There I am, red lips and false eyelashes; less myself, more drunk woman in a Weimar cabaret.

我在那里，红唇假睫毛；少了我自己，多了一个魏玛歌舞厅里醉酒的女人。

There I am, sweat-stained and piglet pink after the gym.

健身房结束后，我满头大汗，脸色粉红。

There I am, tears running down my face, after I capture myself crying (YET AGAIN) after watching the final scene of A River Runs Through It .

当我看到自己在观看《大河流经》的最后一幕后哭泣时（再次），泪水从我的脸上流下来。

There I am, stunned with grief after receiving bad news and the only thing I could think to do in the moment was capture it.

收到坏消息后，我悲痛欲绝，当时我唯一能想到的就是捕捉它。

There I am in an outfit that cinches my waist and shows off all the dimensions of my body, dimensions I used to hate and now find sumptuous and human, dimensions that make me feel stronger, even hulk-like, every time I share them.

我穿着一套收紧腰部的衣服，展示了我身体的所有尺寸，我曾经讨厌的尺寸，现在发现华丽和人性化，每次我分享它们时，这些尺寸让我感觉更强大，甚至像绿巨人一样。

There I am, a book in my hand, peering over its edges into the frame.

我就在那里，手里拿着一本书，从书的边缘凝视着画框。

There I am, looking serious, or carefree, or intense, or demure, or bold — I have looked a thousand different ways.

我就在那里，看起来严肃，或无忧无虑，或紧张，或端庄，或大胆——我看起来有一千种不同的方式。

Someone who chooses to encounter me for the first time on my feed, like my partner did, is making a compassionate choice.

像我的伴侣一样，选择在我的动态中第一次遇到我的人正在做出富有同情心的选择。

Because that’s where you can find my prismatic selves, my multitudes.

因为在那里你可以找到我棱镜般的自我，我的众多。

Like everyone else, I own the copyright to my face.

和其他人一样，我拥有我的脸的版权。

I am the one who gives birth to her self(ie).

我是那个生出她自己的人。

I know the messages I want to convey with each picture that I post, they are all arrows aimed at a big target, the one that could one day convey a larger truth about myself than any one image could.

我知道我发布的每张照片想要传达的信息，它们都是瞄准一个大目标的箭头，有一天它可以比任何一张图片传达更多关于我自己的真相。

If we tell ourselves stories in order to live, sometimes those stories come in the form of pictures of your own silly miracle of a face, taken from as many angles and expressed in as many colors and shadows as technology will allow.

如果我们为了生活而给自己讲故事，有时这些故事会以你自己愚蠢的面孔奇迹的照片的形式出现，从尽可能多的角度拍摄，并以技术允许的尽可能多的颜色和阴影来表达。

We are writing the story of how we want to be seen.

我们正在书写我们希望如何被别人看到的故事。

In this way, selfies are teaching tools.

从这个角度来说，自拍就是一种教学工具。

When I learned that my mother checked my Instagram, my first reaction was fear, followed by gratitude.

当我得知妈妈查看了我的 Instagram 时，我的第一反应是恐惧，然后是感激。

I think that selfies (first mine, and now the ones she takes and sends to me via text or Facebook) have helped us get to know each other better, an adult daughter and her adult mother learning how we each view ourselves.

我认为自拍照（首先是我的，现在是她拍摄并通过短信或 Facebook 发送给我的自拍照）帮助我们更好地了解彼此，成年的女儿和她成年的母亲了解我们如何看待自己。

Selfies can inform the people who love and know you how to really look at you.

自拍照可以告诉那些爱你、了解你的人如何真正地看待你。

I wonder if parents who feel their child takes too many selfies would do better to ask questions about these images instead of trying to shut them off at the source.

我想知道如果父母觉得自己的孩子自拍太多，是否应该更好地提出有关这些图像的问题，而不是试图从源头将其关闭。

Hugely instructive conversations can come out of asking a person why they posted a particular selfie on a particular day.

询问一个人为什么在某一天发布一张特定的自拍照，可以产生非常有启发性的对话。

Spoiler alert: it often has more to do with “I just thought I looked hot.” Asking someone in your life about how and why they put up their own portrait can be a vital new step in gaining a deeper understanding.

剧透警告：它通常更多地与“我只是觉得我看起来很性感”有关。询问你生活中的某人如何以及为何展示自己的肖像可能是获得更深入了解的重要新一步。

Selfies are begging for this question, and every picture posted is an invitation to ask it.

自拍照正在乞求这个问题，发布的每张照片都是在邀请人们提出这个问题。

Back to top J ust as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd.

返回页首 就像你们中的任何一个人都是活着的人群中的一员一样，我也是人群中的一员。

I look upon hundreds of faces every day and I feel refreshed.

我每天看着数百张面孔，感到神清气爽。

I feel refreshed by watching other people look upon those same faces, and so on.

看到其他人看着同样的面孔，我会感到神清气爽，等等。

This second-order looking, this swelling communal river, is the aspect of selfies we need to fight to protect by not shaming those who take them.

这种二阶外观，这条不断膨胀的公共河流，是自拍的一个方面，我们需要努力保护自拍，不让自拍者蒙羞。

If you are afraid of wading into this river, if you feel there is nothing to see there, then selfies might not be meant for you.

如果你害怕涉入这条河，如果你觉得那里没什么可看的，那么自拍可能不适合你。

And just to put it on the record, to make things clear, here are some of the other people who selfies are not for :

郑重声明一下，为了明确起见，以下是其他一些不适合自拍的人：

B ut there are millions of people who selfies are for.

但自拍的对象有数百万人。

There are millions who use them, love them, and are loyal to them — these are the people talked to, emailed with, gazed at, and become a fan of while scrolling through my feeds, the people I have watched being watched.

有数以百万计的人使用它们、热爱它们、忠于它们——这些人是在滚动浏览我的动态时与之交谈、发电子邮件、注视并成为粉丝的人，是我观察过的人。

These are the people who find comfort and life force in their selfies, and who give the most to the community in return.

这些人在自拍中找到安慰和生命力，并为社区做出了最大的回报。

These are the bodies that you tear down when you are afraid of them, these are the lives at stake.

当你害怕它们时，你就会拆毁这些身体，这些是危在旦夕的生命。

T his is the radical potential of selfies.

这就是自拍的巨大潜力。

This is what I think about most when I take them, when I channel women of the past, when I think about Julia and Clover and Frida and Francesca, when I think about all the people who wanted so badly to be seen but were born too soon to ever have an @ handle of their own.

这是我在拍摄她们时想到的最多的事情，当我引导过去的女性时，当我想到朱莉娅和克洛弗、弗里达和弗朗西斯卡时，当我想到所有那些如此渴望被人看到但出生得太早而没有自己的@手柄的人时。

I wish, all the time, my great-grandmothers (women I never knew; a gentle seamstress, a boisterous lawyer’s wife) could have taken a million selfies.

我一直希望我的曾祖母（我从未认识的女性；一位温柔的女裁缝，一位喧闹的律师的妻子）能够拍一百万张自拍照。

I feel like I owe it to them and to those who feel unseen now, to keep posting, to keep sharing, to keep liking, to keep seeking out new faces to like.

我觉得我欠他们和那些现在感觉自己被忽视的人，继续发帖，继续分享，继续喜欢，继续寻找新面孔来喜欢。

I feel that I am, that we all are, writing our own history with every selfie.

我觉得我，我们所有人，都在用每张自拍照书写我们自己的历史。

This is the way that selfies become death masks, memorials to the idea that once, we existed.

这就是自拍照成为死亡面具、纪念我们曾经存在过的想法的方式。

There is joy in confirming that you have a self, that you have a life, that the ultimate gift you didn’t ask for is real, that your body takes up mass.

确认你有一个自我，你有一个生命，你没有要求的终极礼物是真实的，你的身体占据了质量，这是一种快乐。

And then there is the sorrow of knowing the gift must be returned, that your ship has holes in it and will one day sink, that no body makes it to the other shore in tact.

然后，你会感到悲伤，因为你知道礼物必须归还，你的船有洞，有一天会沉没，没有人完好无损地到达彼岸。

The ego, then, is about loving oneself enough to temporarily forget that we are all disappearing, loving oneself out of the terror of nothingness, loving oneself out of bed.

那么，自我就是爱自己，足以暂时忘记我们都在消失，爱自己脱离虚无的恐惧，爱自己起床。

Seen this way, self-regard is nothing to be ashamed of; it is merely a survival tactic.

从这个角度来看，自尊心并没有什么可羞耻的。这只是一种生存策略。

And selfies are an instrument in this survival, tiny rages against the dying of the light (or the iPhone battery, whichever comes first).

自拍是这种生存的工具，微小的愤怒对抗光线的消失（或 iPhone 电池，以先到者为准）。

They are a chance to create images that will last longer than we will, mediated by ourselves, passed along by ourselves, with targets we might not yet know but who will nonetheless be grateful to discover them.

它们是一个创造图像的机会，这些图像将比我们持续更久，由我们自己介导，由我们自己传递，其目标我们可能还不知道，但谁会感激发现它们。

Your selfie is never sick, never has its heart broken, never ages.

你的自拍照永远不会生病，永远不会心碎，永远不会变老。

It doesn’t need sex or food or pharmaceutical assistance.

它不需要性、食物或药物帮助。

Your selfie is able to travel to places you cannot, and it will outlive you.

你的自拍照可以到达你无法到达的地方，而且它会比你更长寿。

Remember this: your selfie is an artifact and a gift.

请记住这一点：您的自拍照是一件艺术品和一份礼物。

People in your own time might not see it that way.

你们那个时代的人可能不会这么看。

They will call you narcissistic for giving birth to hundreds, maybe thousands, of fractured little selves.

他们会说你自恋，因为你生下了数百甚至数千个支离破碎的小自我。

They will wonder why you need so much confirmation, so much attention, so much visibility.

他们会想知道为什么你需要如此多的确认、如此多的关注、如此多的可见性。

They will experience your face as an assault.

他们会把你的脸视为一种攻击。

Pay them no mind.

别理他们。

Your selfie has already ventured off to the future, where all of us are dead.

你的自拍照已经冒险前往未来，在那里我们所有人都死了。

This story was written by Rachel Syme .

这个故事的作者是雷切尔·赛姆。

It was edited by Mark Lotto and copy-edited by Rachel Glickhouse .

它由马克·洛托 (Mark Lotto) 编辑，雷切尔·格里克豪斯 (Rachel Glickhouse) 校对。

Animated GIF illustrations by Alex Thebez and Marisa Gertz for Matter.

Alex Thebez 和 Marisa Gertz 为 Matter 绘制的动画 GIF 插图。