Instax, baby: My instant film selfie experiment on the cusp of the pandemiversary

I originally wrote a deep personal piece about self-love, and how this selfie project came to be. It involved so many things about feeling insecure and growing out of it, but after taking a step back, I realized that wasn’t exactly why I had my sudden spike in selfies with my instant camera. It just felt inauthentic telling some grand story about why I took a gajillion selfies on polaroid film, when there was no deep insightful reason why. But I decided I would still talk about it anyhow after something that happened this week.

At the beginning of March, I was on twitter– completely avoiding my unpublished selfie blog, when I saw this new trend going around. It was sort of a pandemic “before and after,” and it was asking users to post two photos:

-a selfie from the beginning of the pandemic, (March 2020)
-and… a selfie of you at this moment (March 2021)

I felt like the universe was calling me out, since I never posted the blog about my selfie project. Of course, selfies were having a moment after I gave up on my selfie blog post, right? Anyway, I was ready to hop on the trend. I searched “March 2020” in my photo gallery, and to my surprise I had no photos of myself from last March. I thought, “okay, so clearly there must be one in April,” but once again, my face was elusively non-existent in that month too.

I came to a realization: I’m writing and producing selfies for a blog post about self-care and selfies, and exactly one year ago, I would not have been able to do this. Back then I wasn’t feeling like myself, which lead to a selfie-deprived existence. Tragic, I know– and yet the world kept moving forward, even without a March selfie on record. That experience inspired me to post the selfie blog anyways, without the hokey self-growth story.

Uke Uke Baby: A photo of me delicately holding two black and white photos of myself. The top selfie is me hugging my Kala Ukulele. My plants and colorful glass collection are vaguely showing out of focus behind the photos.

At the end of 2019, I was working first, and caring about myself second. When the pandemic began, I remember being excited for a two-week paid vacation, because in all the time working at my previous job, I took a grand total of 2 weekend trips, and zero actual vacations. To make matters worse, I never carved out time to shop, so my personal style was dated, and sort of basic. Add this to years worth of perfectly forced and contrived social media presence curated through instagram, and I was the least “myself” that I had been in all of my twenties.

In the summer of 2020, I bought a few sundresses and a bike, and realized that caring about myself really improved my lifestyle. I would wake up in the morning, make a coffee, maybe play my ukulele, write, or draw in my sketchbook. Half a year went by as I reconnected with my hobbies. The carpal tunnel in my wrists throbbed painfully, but I didn’t care. I was on a mission to do all the things I never had time to do. Naturally, as I had more time for myself, I also had more time to implement self-care into my daily regimen. I was obviously getting enough sleep, and I did the whole skincare thing, and in February, I got my first haircut since the fall before the pandemic! I hope you see where I’m going with this. That’s right– It was selfie time.

Top view looking down: Here’s a look at my camera, my new graphing/cutting mat, and four exquisite selfies.
(left to right: A good makeup day, my Lady Gaga Oreo inspired makeup look, and a quick kiss from Eric… Of course, my eyes were closed, but its cute!)

One day I took a mirror selfie(or ten) on my phone, and I had a tough time getting a good photo. I decidedly gave up on my mirrored self and went to my living room to play Animal Crossing. As I sat down, my cat knocked my Instax Mini camera from the tv stand onto the floor. I scooped the camera from the rug, and to my surprise, there was still film loaded into it. I turned it on, turned the lens toward myself, and snapped a selfie. The film poured out the top of my small oblong white camera, and I set it down, and patiently waited. I didn’t shake it like they tell you to in the song Hey-Ya (Sorry, Andre 3000), because the instructions say that shaking the film messes up the development.

Eventually, the photo appeared, and it was so much better than the mirror selfie on my phone could have ever turned out. I thought, “No filter, no delete button, no 10 identical photos that all somehow look lop-sided… This is exactly what I needed.”

For the rest of February, I chose to take the majority of my selfies using my Instax camera.

After a couple weekends, I was really having fun with it. I would make an adult beverage, put on a great playlist, and get dolled up for a self-photoshoot. Sometimes the photos were just of me (duh), with no makeup, just hanging out around the house. Other days, I’d take my selfie and Eric and Bruce would be nearby, so they would hop in and join me for a little family photo session. Toward the end of February, I felt insanely confident. I looked very nice, and the selfies on film were a great excuse during the “love” month to give a little ode to me, myself, and I.

It’s so easy to go on the internet and see everyone else taking amazing selfies, and sort of doing cool stuff in general and think, “what, why am I not that cool/good-looking,” but after dedicating 20 dollars worth of instant film(thats about 19 photos) to appreciating myself for the shortest month of the year, I realized that maybe all that bad-talking is just coming from too much phone usage. It felt nice to unplug… a little too nice, actually.

My four saddest selfies. I just look cooler when I’m sad. These were from two different times of day, Left selfie: Pre-makeup, the other three: post makeup This was probably before valentines, just based on the hearts and red. same shirt, same roll of film, same look of pure indifference. The selfies must go on!

About two years ago, I told a couple friends of mine while at CC Club that I felt frumpy in my clothes, and one of them said, “Love your body, no matter what! It’s the only one you’ll ever have.” And I think of that whenever I feel like my image isn’t matching how I want it to be. Appreciating the only body I have can be a comforting thing. I may not have any selfie evidence from this time last year, but now I have an uncomfortably large number of polaroid selfies from this last month, and now I feel pretty good about myself (way better than I did last March at least).

After my selfie project was complete, I went on a deep dive through the internet, and collected some older selfies I had on my old-as-heck Tumblr and Instagram, saving them all to a folder on my computer. As I clicked through the folder I remembered how I felt about myself in my early twenties, and thought, “I can’t believe she ever felt insecure a day in her life! She was doing just fine.” And I was.I was doing just fine.

Back when I took some of those selfies, I probably felt like I did exactly one year ago. The internet is a hell of a drug, and it makes you think crazy ridiculous things about yourself. Thankfully now I know how to take a step back, and have a little self-appreciation moment. I hope someday, when I’m old and grey or something– that I look back at my photos and see these polaroid selfies and say, “yeah, she was looking great back then. She was doing just fine.”