Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Misogyny; choice policing. Video may autoplay at link.]

"To all the young people out there in particular, banish this… This is disgusting and vile. What if this is the only thing that survives in the time capsule?"—Tim Gunn, increasingly unlikeable, as he flipped through Kim Kardashian's selfie book Selfish.

A couple of thoughts:

1. If you don't like Kim Kardashian and/or don't like selfies, here's a thought: Don't pay any attention to Kim Kardashian and don't buy her book. That's my strategy, and it's working out great!

2. To be abundantly clear, I'm not suggesting that Kim Kardashian is above criticism. I just happen to disagree that rank misogyny and choice policing transparently disguised as cultural critiques are "criticism."

3. Again, I will point to this. That Vincent Van Gogh and all his self-portraits—disgusting and vile, amirite?!

4. This is a building in London. It is the National Portrait Gallery.

image of the exterior of the National Portrait Gallery in London

I have been there! It is a building literally filled with paintings commissioned by (mostly) dead old white people who lived before the age of mobile phones outfitted with cameras. And all those paintings are of themselves! Or other dead old white people they knew! None of them (that I recall) have their tongues sticking out in the photos, but, hey, there's no accounting for taste!

5. What if Kim Kardashian's book of selfies is "the only thing that survives in the time capsule"? A book full of pictures of a woman who is recording her own image, in total control of her own presentation? OH THE HORROR. The only problem with that being the only thing surviving in the time capsule is that it might suggest the woman's culture was a lot more accepting of female power than it actually was.

[Related Reading: Selfies; Selfies Again; #365feministselfie.]

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