The selfie and Sojourner Truth
Little did tennis star Andre Agassi know that he was speaking prophetically when he declared in 1990s Canon camera commercials that “image is everything.” The truth of his marketing statement seems everywhere today. Pope Francis was not only Time’s “person of the year.” He was also Esquire’s “best dressed man of 2013.” The new pope is what he says, does and wears.
2013 was also the year of the “selfie.” Named word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary, the selfie begins with a person holding a camera (or camera phone) at arm’s length, pointing it toward oneself, and taking a picture. The self picture is then shared through Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It would be weird if I had dozens of photographs of myself in my kitchen, living room, office, basement, bathroom and garage. But on my computer or phone, it is acceptable. Social media sites have become halls of mirrors and museums of the self where we invite others to gaze upon us. When I look at the screen, I stare back at me.
“Image is everything” in Christian book culture, too. When Joel Osteen publishes bestsellers, it is impossible to walk through an airport without dozens (if not hundreds) of slick-haired Joels smiling at us. Osteen did not invent this tradition, and we cannot pin it to his prosperity gospel. Billy Graham’s face was front and center on the cover of Peace with God in 1963. Reinhold Niebuhr was not on the first edition of Moral Man and Immoral Society from 1932, but subsequent editions placed his face on the cover.
