Taking selfies has progressed beyond a cute little habit that only some people participate in — it has become a national past time. From cameras that easily facilitate the process to the little bump of affirmation that a Facebook “like” or an Instagram heart on these miniature self-portraits provides, selfies are here to stay.
Which means that people are taking the concept and expanding it into social and political realms, op-eds and other projects, like Chicago comedian Bente Engelsoft, who decided to take a selfie every morning when she first woke up — no matter what.
On the Instagram account ijustwokeup — which Bente created before Beyonce dropped her album, believe it or not — she has posted a selfie with #nomakeup and #nofilter every single day for a year. Engelsoft told The Daily Dot that her goal was to emulate performance artists like Tracey Emin and Tehching Hsieh, both of whom both had similar projects that involved cataloging the passage of time.
She began the project with this selfie on October 2, 2013:
And as of today, October 3, 2014, she has officially completed her goal. Surprisingly, Bente came up with the project six years ago (!), but when Instagram became popular she realized it would be the perfect vehicle for her idea.
Over the course of the year, she posted photos with her boyfriend:
With her mom—which was her most-liked photo:
And even with friends:
Although Bente said she didn’t originally start the project with any specific message in mind, along the way she began to see it as an empowering take on selfie culture. She realized it partially through her college roommate, Michelle, who works for an education program called this This Little Bird, which focuses on workshops that try to instill self-confidence in young people.
“Michelle and I turned it to be like: Here’s a woman doing selfies who is not trying to show that’s she’s beautiful or super-fun or cool, she’s just trying to be really honest with them,” Engelsoft said. “It made me feel really good that I could be seen in that light.”
This kind of self-empowerment is just what makes the art of the selfie so incredible! And, you know, selfies have been around longer than you thought. Kudos to Bente for her awesome social experiment — we’re sure Beyonce would be proud.
For the full year of selfies go to Bente’s Instagram account here.
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