‘Hang on, why am I editing my photos?’ Disrupting the virtual gaze through selfie-editing workshops

This article presents findings from a qualitative study that aimed to provide some of the first detailed accounts of how young people use selfie-editing apps, and the implications for young people's embodiment, body concerns and wellbeing. In particular, the article introduces the method of ‘smartphone live capture' in selfie-editing workshops as a way of studying the actual practice and meanings associated with editing in ‘real time’ with small groups of young people, which can also work to unsettle the normalisation of a ‘forensic gaze’. Participants described how the process of editing ‘out loud’ altered their understanding and experience of editing. Some registered a new sense of ‘strangeness’ about their self-talk while editing. Others described the method as assisting them to feel a sense of solidarity and unity with others: ‘I’m not alone’. Other examples showed how the process of editing alongside someone else helped them to see how critical others are of themselves, and to interrupt their own critical reading of their ‘flaws’ while editing: ‘I don’t see what you see’. Overall, through aspects of the workshop's collaborative processes, including collective discussion and analysis, the selfie editing workshop method indicated possibilities of interrupting the silent, closed loop of identifying ‘flaws’, then resolving them through ‘correction’, again and again. This method, we suggest, could thus open up the individualising impacts associated with selfie editing, which is usually viewed as a pathologised or risky practice harmful to body image and self esteem for young people.