I personally find that theres nothing wrong with selfies. They’re a quick and effortless why to show how good my makeup looked before it sweated off or my immediate expression to when I found myself locked out of my house again.  But selfies aren’t and they certainly don’t represent anything permanent. This is what I feel is the main distinction between a selfie and a self portrait. Take snapchat for example; its a app that allows users to share photos up to 10 seconds and unless they are screenshoted by the viewer they disappear. However even if these images are saved, are uploaded they are still lost and forgotten because there will always be another selfie whether it’s yours or the billions of over people posting online.

A friend linked me an interesting article (nsfw) about an artist who wove selfies used in sexts (inducing her own) into tapestries. These tapestries work to pull these selfies out into the public eye, and gives the viewer something to marvel at as it is not often that cross stitching is linked to anything sexual. This is what not only gives these selfies their permanence but transforms them into art, which is more widely regarded as a respectable form of expression.

But aside from their permanence or respect “self portraits” also offers the creator to express something abstract about who they are while the selfie demands that your face or body is always the subject. This is what I believe is the most important difference between the two.