Selfie for women empowerment ?

Samarjit Kambam *

Nobody looks the same. Some are terminally pretty, some brutally handsome, some terribly ugly. Subjugation of the human mindset had already taken place since invention of the looking mirror in the history of mankind. The beautiful ones beam with pride, talks with ease, attract people and naturally have an air of confidence around themselves in public places. Same with the handsome ones too.

The more handsome, the probability of greater personality. Of the nine plus billion people in the world, a huge percentage of the people lead a lonely and recluse life, afraid to socialise, scared to mingle among the crowd.

Researchers say that is kind of personality disorder, a disorder among many other disorders that can be weeded out or cured. Men with big biceps and broad shoulders always try to flaunt their bodies in front of others by barring their upper half and walking tall with head held high while the thin and fickle ones try to wear jackets, sweaters and overcoats during hot summer season and droops while walking.

To them barring the upper half in front of others is more of a nightmare. Money, power and fame are also other factors that come into play. The opulent ones talk with an air of superiority and prejudice. The powerful ones use power-packed works with power-packed but negative attitude by seeing the commoners like cattle in a farm. The famous ones always love to be in front of a crowd and try to infuse his air of aura to others.

India is a fast growing economic power giant in this contemporary world. But the plight of women in the country doesn't seem to lessen much from the previous century. In our society, women are still considered as weaker sex, taken as inferior to man in almost every spheres of life.

Many women in the world are living life as a living hell due to subjugation by the male dominated societal set-up and most particularly in the Islamist world. In this digital era, even the highly educated ultra modern and cosmopolitan men still possess the mindset that women are to be confined to the four walls of the kitchen and are usually considered only as a living machine to produce offsprings thus giving them a low rung in the societal set-up of the country as well as the state of Manipur.

Thirty three percent reservation for women put up by the Grand Old Party, women empowerment, equal rights of women and men have been the components of the media since decades back. The latest being Modi's "Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao" campaign. Of late the dawn of a new phenomenon known as "selfie" which is a self portrait of one taken by himself or herself plays an important role in social media sites and platforms.

Before the birth of the word 'selfie', the very act of selfie was carried out many years back with automatic camera having timer. But that's hardly practical and not user friendly. Now a smartphone with front camera of a modest 5 megapixels or more is more than sufficient to give a "not so bad" picture of oneself. In fact, it is a powerful way for people to express control over how they are perceived.

Selfie has revolutionised the world and the stand of female of the human species has taken a different turn. The girlie, ladies and women themselves often characterise the selfie on virtual social media sites as a radical act of political empowerment, self preservation and as a means to resist the male-dominated media culture's obsession with an oppressive hold over their lives and bodies, to break from the shackles of submission and bring forth aggressiveness over discontentment.

It gives women the opportunity to express themselves and find out how they are depicted and viewed by her social media peers. Course selfie is one of the great factors that come to play when it comes to women empowerment. Selfie provides self confidence to the recluse, loners and women with low self esteem in a very fundamental way.

Selfies allow women to show themselves as they are or how they want to be without having to be filtered or uncensored through anyone else's lens or ideas. Over the past years, selfie has pushed its way into our collective consciousness like a beautiful musical tune which you can't get out of your head. It is Oxford Dictionary's word of the year 2013. Selfies make possible a vast array of gazes that simply were not seen before.

A selfie can act as the root cause for a positive attribute. However, different concepts arise in this particular area. Many consider it as a means of reflecting narcissism, humble-braggy, egoism and "I am the best" mentality and sort of personality competition in the social media sites.

Some use it for fun, some to show off his or her dexterity over a particular set of skills possessed by oneself, some to remove loneliness, some for fashioning, grooming and gathering feedback and has become a new trend cocktailed with new concepts and new outlooks. Course, selfie has a positive as well as negative side and it can be a two edged sword, depending upon its use. Wrong use of selfie or selfies can land you in prison if it gets audacious enough to become a byproduct that can mature it to become a progeny of cyber crime. We have concrete examples in our state of Manipur. I need not elaborate on that.

However, selfie has its pretty share of criticism. To some, selfies aren't empowering; they're a high tech reflection of the botched way society teaches women, that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness and physical assets, that it is an act as modern as it is narcissistic, perfectly capturing the self-regard of our age. To some, it is a worrying trend that could leave young girls in particular, with low self-esteem. Some have the opinion that selfies are a cry for help, a tool to get constant approval and attention by social media friends for attention is power in a visual culture.

Though selfies push back against traditional beauty norms, many women believe social media is having the most pivotal impact on today's definition of beauty. That's because it's a world where girls rule. Teens and young women use social media often and in more ways than men on almost every site from Facebook to Instagram.

Selfies give women control and it really allows them to express themselves in a way that they feel comfortable with as selfies showcase faces not normally on display and gives the women the opportunity to be displayed in social media sites if not mainstream media. Selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, "Hello, this is me".

Many women have adopted the selfie as a means to promote social change and challenge the boundaries and social and cultural norms enforced on them and challenge limitations of accepted female appearance and public behaviour by culture, promote causes they believe in, share knowledge of important female concerns, stigmatisation and monetise it as a means of empowering themselves.

Selfie isn't a harbinger of pride, nor is it narcissistic as commented by many. It is a logical and technically enabled option brought up to think that what really matters is if other people think you're a normal human being, just like others. To those who need other's attention, selfie is a prerogative to expose himself or herself to the social media platform as an experimental micro-project and get other's comments and approvals.

It acts as a tool for a shy and introvert woman who live her life in a cache to present herself to the world without fear of rejection. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement in Maan ki Baat in Haryana to take selfie of girl daughter along with parents especially the father was welcomed and taken as a bold step to bolster the image of girl child.

There was overwhelming response of selfies of girl child or children with their dads put up to media houses and social networking sites. It was an audacious step to change the outlook of our male dominated society and also acts as a factor to bridge the gap of disparity in the ratio of male to female, especially in northern parts of India. The bold step was, however, not short of derisive criticism from various corners.

Nevertheless, it was a well applauded and positive step that deserves appreciation. True, selfie is a tool for women empowerment. It takes out one from the cocoon of the individual's "perfect world" and helps the individual join the mainstream society boldly. It gives one the 'feel' that she goes in cadence with the society and bolsters up one realm ahead from her previous reclusive state. Selfies can be taken as a keen initiative to bring up the connectivity and camaraderie amongst the people towards the next level and empower women at the societal set up allowing women to shine in their own terms.