R7: Selfies

Personally, I've never been a big fan of taking actual smiling selfies. I always feel incredibly awkward looking into a camera and smiling at nothing but myself, and then seeing myself smile and thinking, "ew why am I doing that?" Up until Snapchat came around, I never really took pictures of myself at all. Then they started adding filters and things that made your face look funny, and I was all about it. 

I think in the selfies that I chose, it is fairly clear that I am a white female. I don't have any other nationalities or anything, so it's not like there's anything hidden in my pictures- although not everyone knows that. One of the things I like to showcase in my selfies, rather than my identity or cultural background, is my sense of humor. I use Snapchat daily to post quirky selfies on my story that everyone can see. 

#FitFam

The image to the left was taken yesterday. I see a bunch of Instagram accounts that post their daily workouts, or what they eat for every meal so that their followers can try to eat and act like them. I recently started doing a mock #fitfam post every couple days (or whenever an idea pops into my head). I started with a post of an XL coffee from Wawa and a bag of flaming hot Cheetohs that I posted to my story with an extra long satirical caption about how breakfast is the most important meal of the day and "follow my account if you want more #fitness updates." In this photo, I was walking to work and wanted to check out the new Snap filters. I saw this one and my first thought was "oh god it's like I'm eating myself." Then I chuckled and came up with that caption. I think this selfie and those like it are the most significant to how people see me; I don't like to take life seriously, and I tend to make fun of things a lot, including myself.   

Babies R Not Mine 

These selfies came from a couple days that I was babysitting for one of my friends. She has a little girl named Esme who I watch every Thursday, and never fail to post Snapchats of. I think my favorite thing about the selfies that I take with Esme is that all of my high school friends that I have on Snapchat who I haven't talked to in a couple of years think that I had a kid. I've seen multiple people screenshot the pictures, and even more message me saying "Oh my gosh is she yours??" to which I usually reply "Lol no I don't have time for that sh*t." The selfies that I post with Esme give out a sort of "fake" identity to those who don't know me, but a real one to those who do. If people who don't know me saw those photos, it wouldn't be hard to assume that I am Esme's mother. To those who do know me however, the idea is ridiculous; they know that I am just a babysitter who loves her job. 

Chicas Cansadas

In this selfie, I was in Costa Rica on a service trip. These are two of the girls that I met while working down there. By just looking at the picture, you can't tell much, but if you look at the post on my Instagram and read the caption, you would know that we had just finished up a 2-hour clean up session on the beach. We were all exhausted and just wanted to sleep, but we were proud of the work we had done so we took a selfie to commemorate it. I think that this shows how much I like to travel and volunteer, two large parts of my identity.