A Social Movement
The selfie has many positive outcomes, for example the selfie can act as a medium for social movements. One of the biggest social movements of today is the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. This movement is referring to the 200 missing girls in Nigeria ( Katz). Its aimed to get the government to find the girls who were captured by Boko Haram, which is translated to "Western education is a sin". This terrorist group captured young girls in school and are selling them to militants for $12 each (Kristof). It urges the government to go out and look for the kidnapped girls. Lauren Katz writer of the article " Say It with A Selfie: Protesting In the Age of Social Media" talks about Di-Tu-Dissassa a graduate student at the University of Missouri. Katz quotes Dissassa when she explains the effect of the selfie. She says, " I know that although I cannot go to Nigeria and find those girls myself, at least I can raise awareness and pray that the girls are found." The selfie plays a large role in not only showing the world that people care about the issue, but now the thousands of faces are associated with the movement it becomes more personal .
This movement reached one of its peaks when Michelle Obama took a selfie and tweeted "' Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to # BringBackOurGirls'"( Katz). However, this is not the only movement that is taking place as it pertains to the selfie. The Hashtag FeministsareUgly is a trending topic on twitter. It began as what many people thought was an insult to feminists, but it ended up being a powerful movement that helped women define beauty for themselves. The point of the movement was to take that idea that woman of color are ugly and "'change the narrative on that...inspire others to reclaim the narrative and define for ourselves what beautiful or ugly mean" ( Dickson). People everywhere can take a selfie and make an impact on any social movement. The new generation is playing a hand at changing the world one selfie at a time. |