<Better Me : Selfie and Internet>

An Interview with Jia Tolentino

By In Jeong Kim

In Jeong: Hi Jia, thanks for talking with me. First of all, I’d like to introduce you to our readers as well as share the overview of this interview with you. After joining The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2016, you worked on your first book, Trick Mirror, between 2017 and 2019. This book includes chapters that share the multidimensional facets of your identity as a millennial like “The I in the Internet”, “Reality TV Me”, and “Always Be Optimizing.” As a writer for The New Yorker and former editor of Jezebel, you have spent years exploring and discussing online culture and social media.

Today, I’d like to talk to you about social media and the “selfie,” which is the subject of this issue of VOSTOK magazine. We’ll consider what role the selfie plays in the identity formation of girls and women and explore to what extent the landscape of social media feeds pushes users to constantly edit or improve their digital presence and actual reality. I’d like us to ultimately return to a question you’ve previously asked in your work, “[What is] the logical end of this escalating back-and-forth between digital and physical improvement?”

First of all, I’d like to begin with a brief reflection on the internet and social media. As a millennial, you have been using the internet since you were a teen: making a personal homepage, engaging with social media, and posting your writing online. Recalling Web 1.0 and the early days of the internet, how did the Internet impact the way you formed your individual identity? How did the internet influence your growth?

Jia Tolentino: It influenced the way I formed my identity the way any other ubiquitous structure did: schooling, gender, weather, capitalism. It was always there, always a connection to an independent kind of self-exploration and a world bigger than the one I could physically see.   

In Jeong: Then Facebook was launched in 2004. Facebook features a person’s individual profile and a “wall” that is used to share images, writing, and comments. Instagram and Twitter also share similar features that revolve around one’s personal profile. In <Trick Mirror>, you pointed out the fact that “the internet’s central platforms are built around personal profiles, [and] it can seem - first at a mechanical level, and later on as an encoded instinct - like the main purpose of this communication is to make yourself look good”. When considering newer applications like Snapchat and TikTok, do you believe these comments are still true?

Jia Tolentino: Yes, though I think the straightforward aspiration of millennial-era social media has given way to something more complicated, more meta, less earnest, but no less constricting. 

In Jeong: I’d like to read another quotation from your book:“Personal lives were becoming public domain, and social incentives - to be liked, to be seen, were becoming economic ones...Everyone tries to look so hot and well-traveled on Instagram; this is why everyone seems so smug and triumphant on Facebook; this is why, on Twitter, making a righteous political statement has come to seem, for many people, like a political good itself.” From this analysis, can we reason that people optimize themselves offline using material objects - makeup, clothing, etc. - but in the Internet’s virtual space, users must curate themselves using the features, filters, and tools provided to them?

Jia Tolentino: Yes, using speech, images, video — using a representation of themselves and their actions rather than their actual physical selves and unmediated actions. 

In Jeong: You have also stated the following, “[Y]ou had to register yourself digitally to exist…” and “You can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet - for anyone to see you, you have to act. You have to communicate in order to maintain an internet presence.” As you said, one’s digital presence is entirely dependent on the frequency with which one creates and publishes posts. On image-oriented platforms such as Instagram, can I, for instance, conclude that if I wanted to build a following of some kind, I would have to make a conscious effort to post evidence of my existence through OOTDs, selfies, memories, etc.?

Jia Tolentino: Yes, though you can build a following without any of those specific things — you could just repost or create memes, for example. But if you wanted people to know you on the internet, you would have to represent yourself personally in some way. 

In Jeong: With this all in mind, let's consider the role of the selfie. Based on successful social media accounts and influencer practices, selfies can be considered to be one of the prime ingredients for maintaining a viable internet presence. Do you remember the first time you took a selfie and uploaded it onto the Internet?

Jia Tolentino: I don’t remember — I’ve never been too interested in selfies as a medium. I do remember being interested in uploading flattering photos of myself (not selfies) in the early days of Facebook, etc. 

In Jeong: Selfies can exist in two forms: simply stored in your phone’s memory or uploaded online. You noted, “how the internet is built to distend your sense of identity.” What role, then, does the selfie play in someone’s grand search for their own identity?

Jia Tolentino: Well, the selfie can stand as a representation of how we see ourselves or would like to see ourselves. People’s preferred selfies usually present a version of the self, captured only fleetingly, that can seemingly make permanent the way people would like to be seen.  

In Jeong: In your essay <The Age of Instagram Face> in 2019 in the New Yorker, you explored the idea of the ‘Instagram Face’ – “one of the oddest legacies of our rapidly expiring decade: the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It’s a young face…with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones…catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes…a small, neat nose, and full, lush lips. The celebrity makeup artist Colby Smith told me, “It’s Instagram Face, duh. It’s like an unrealistic sculpture. Volume on volume. A face that looks like it’s made out of clay.”” The concept of the Instagram Face is absolutely fascinating. How do you think this idealized “face,” which is associated with certain make-up trends and standards of beauty, came to be? In your opinion, what factors lead to the Face’s popularity? How has the “Instagram Face” evolved in 2022? 

Jia Tolentino: As far as the first question I’m not sure I could recapitulate this argument any better than it’s already stated in the essay; as I argued there, it comes down to a beauty ideal that draws on many complex global and economic and racial-capitalist factors, exemplified and reified by ubiquitous social-media filters. I think in 2022, “Instagram Face” is no longer quite as broadly attractive as it was in 2019, because people are much more canny about the artifice involved, including the people who have Instagram Face themselves. But a version of it is still everywhere.  

In Jeong: Selfies on the internet can quantify “how our identities and our physical selves are performing in the [digital] market.” That is, success can be measured by social media engagement and audience reactions. What role, if any, will normative definitions of digital success, popularity, and fame play in shaping the development of young girls and women? 

Jia Tolentino: A huge role. Instagram and its parent company, Facebook (or Meta), have known for years that Instagram us in particular correlates with (if not necessarily causes) higher rates of depression, lower self-esteem, eating disorders, etc. 

In Jeong: Let's also talk about the functions of filters and photoshop in the process of obtaining ideal selfies and achieving unrealistic beauty standards. These filters are already registered on social media services such as Instagram and Snapchat, and people can easily take better selfies with a swipe. The process of using applications like FaceTune is already an essential routine for some Internet users. With these tools, you can stretch and reduce certain areas of your face, smooth your skin, enlarge your eyes and achieve perfect make-up without applying any products to your face. You can cover or eliminate the parts of your body that you do not like. We can create some kind of online avatars of our better selves. You once wrote that “to communicate an identity requires some degree of self-delusion.” Could you share your own experience and perspective on how filters and image editing apps/software allow people to create fantastical versions of themselves? 

Jia Tolentino: I’ve never really used filters except for research, when I was writing that piece. When FaceTune first appeared, though, I would sometimes use it (though I don’t think I ever posted these edited photos) to edit an unflattering photo of myself. I was interested in the way it felt like I was editing toward the truth, rather than away from it. I think it’s natural to want to believe a flattering photo is a true representation of us, and an unflattering photo is a lie. I assume that for the people who primarily look at and present altered versions of their own faces and bodies, those altered versions don’t feel fantastical; it’s the real  ones that feel wrong. 

In Jeong: Like one of your sources explained, “the world is so visual and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.” What is happening to people's minds and bodies when they experiment with so-called trick mirrors online? How are people affected at a psychic level when they adopt the attitude that any part of the body can be modified and enhanced? How are our physical selves changed by our online avatars? Can these exaggerated versions of ourselves even be called “us”? Or are they something else entirely? 

Jia Tolentino: I don’t find it useful to think about a sort of “pure” self, one that predates the various structures whose effects we try to analyze. We change in relationship to every governing factor in American life: our bodies and minds are changed by the norms and coercions around sexuality, gender, labor, class, race. We are always affected at a psychic level by these structures, and we are affected at a psychic level by the identity-giving structures of the internet. 

I also don’t think that people’s online selves are necessarily exaggerated or distorted to some consistent, identifiable degree, or that it’s possible to generalize—outside discussing a particular platform or technology at a particular time in a particular context—about the relationship between online selves and physical ones. We come to our real lives with an intent to perform identity, too, and we do this in ways that are as individual and also as common as we all are. 

And so I do think that our digital selves are us—we are a sum of our adulterations, distortions, performances. 

In Jeong: When we talk about the evils of social media, we usually bring up relative deprivation, or the process through which we feel worse about ourselves after comparing our lives to those of others. Can the types of comparison that are enabled through social media applications ever be positive or productive when we are comparing one version of ourselves with another version? What happens to our egos in the process? 

Jia Tolentino: I don’t think I can generalize about this. For whatever reason, I am not prone to comparing myself to other people, though I am certainly prone to hierarchical thinking and judgment. We were all born with our particular sets of advantages and disadvantages, blessings and flaws. All we can do is work with what we’ve got. 

In Jeong: Promoting yourself online and posting your best image on social media can absolutely be profitable these days. Many of today’s most popular influencers are women. (In your own words, “For many people today, especially for women, packaging and broadcasting your image is a readily monetizable skill.”​​) Influencers’ most powerful and lucrative tools are their good looks and widespread appeal, which impact their ability to promote personal brands, lifestyles, and products. Is there any way that we can view these dynamics as being empowering? Or are women always destined to be “trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy”?

Jia Tolentino: Sure, I think we can view these dynamics as individually empowering, but as I’ve written before (in NYTMag), the idea of empowerment as a concept that primarily affects the individual is reductive and awful. I’m not really interested in individual empowerment at all. Are these dynamics conducive to collective well-being? I think the answer (and any answer that is not overtly anti-capitalist) is no. 

In Jeong: Now, let’s talk about the post-millennial generation: Gen Z. They have grown up on the Internet. Although it may vary by region, Gen Zers use short form video platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok more often than members of older generations. How has their identity been affected by their constant exposure to images? Do you think they will be more or less self-conscious than their millennial counterparts? Will they ever reason that one’s natural beauty and appearance is enough? 

Jia Tolentino: I don’t know and I wouldn’t want to speculate with confidence. I would guess that Gen-Z will always have a less earnest, more self-aware, more vexed relationship with self-broadcasting than millennials, but also perhaps a more addicted, more complex and recursive one, because we at least had some time for our brains to develop before these platforms came into existence. 

I’d say that it would be good to unpack the assumptions behind a question like “Will they ever reason that one’s natural beauty and appearance is enough?” Everyone’s individual relationship to their appearance is dictated by so many more factors than their generation and their technology: it’s their race, their body, their class, the extent to which they conform to conventional ideals, the extent to which their “natural” faces and bodies are approved by society anyway. There will always be people who resist compulsive self-optimization; there will always be people who choose it, and there will always be a vast spectrum of people, and complex beliefs about the whole project, in between. 

In Jeong: With the endless development of technology, the number of artificial devices that humans can use to beautify themselves will increase. In the society you paint in your book, there seems to be no way of avoiding this digital world even if we reject it. You state, “If women start to resist an aesthetic, like the overapplication of Photoshop, the aesthetic just changes to suit us…..We idealize beauty that appears to require almost no intervention.” Can we return to a question that you have previously asked:  “[What is] the logical end of this escalating back-and-forth between digital and physical improvement?” Is this simply our  “inexorable future”? 

Jia Tolentino: I would say again that it’s almost fruitless to imagine that we could answer this question generally. Certainly, I think that algorithmic incentives will continue to become deeply personal individual ones, and certainly I think the mutual escalation of digital and physical improvement will only continue. This doesn’t mean that “we,” or any particular person, or you or I specifically, need to participate or will participate in any of it. In fact I think many people actively hate the idea of being absorbed into this sort of machine. But will there be incentives to allow ourselves to be changed? I think so.