It’s interesting how new words come into our vocabulary, and
sometimes become very popular in a short time. A selfie is a self portrait, usually
taken with the digital camera on a smart phone, and usually posted instantly on
the Internet, on Facebook or Instagram.
If you search for #selfie on Instagram, you get 103 million
hits (I just did it). Today everybody knows what a selfie is, but who had heard
this word just a few years ago?
Self portraits are not new. Many of the greatest artists made one or more
of them. Picasso, Dali, van Gogh, and Munch all painted self portraits. Making a
self portrait with paint and pencil took so time (and some skills).
Making a self portrait with a digital camera is so fast and
easy that nobody have the time to pronounce the full word anymore, and then we
got the selfie.
Everybody are taking and posting selfies. My kids do it.
Rihanna and Beyonce do it daily. Even Obama and the Prime Minister of Denmark do
it (on inappropriate occasions).
I don’t post pictures of myself on the Internet, but I think
I need a selfie, just to show that I’m following the trends of the time. Above is a picture I took on the chairlift a couple of days ago when I was skiing in the mountains. It shows the tips of my skis and my shadow. Does that count as a selfie?
