(Consider this work of art.) The real issue, I believe, is that women and girls are constantly working to find safe spaces for themselves on the Internet. I don’t think that #GPOY has changed what girls struggle with as they mature in our culture. IRL, young women play out their issues with empowerment, vulnerability, attention-seeking, and objectification in much the same way they do online. “I feel like there’s a sort of arrogance associated with posting pictures of yourself too often on the internet? I’m a pretty anxious person in general so I might be more prone to this than others, but I do worry that people will judge me in that way so I try to keep the gpoy postings scarce.” #GPOY could be one of these categories.) I thought that was curious - why would she post pictures of herself, but hope that they’d be hidden under a script? Her response eloquently mingled both the self-promotion and the vulnerability that are in play with #GPOY. User yoccu, also 21, told me she used the tag for pictures of herself, but added, “i kind of hope people will tumblr savior it, honestly :P.” (Tumblr Savior is a script that weeds out categories of pictures you don’t like from your Tumblr dashboard. “I think girls like to take pretty pictures and get positive feedback about their appearance.” “Girls can just be more vain than guys in general,” she said. She said that #gpoy played up to feminine insecurities. I asked India, 21, whether or not she thought girls used #gpoy more than men, and if so, why. When I changed tactics and simply asked, and later identified myself as a reporter, I got an avalanche of responses (which I got permission to post), ranging from the cursory - here’s what the acronym means, I tag it for my face, it’s kind of ironic, look it up - to the surprisingly thoughtful and enthusiastic responses, punctuated with emoticons and explanations. Initially, when I identified myself as a reporter, no one responded. They’d all tagged something of their own with #gpoy in the last ten minutes or so most were still online when I asked. I messaged about 40 young women on Tumblr and asked them how and why they used #gpoy. Some are of just feet, or just hair, or just a goofy grin. Some are funny some are “selfies,” what an older generation (born in the 1980s) might call “MySpace” pictures, taken with a webcam. You don’t have to go far to get to the first images of women. It’s telling of the circular culture of vulnerability and approval on Tumblr that you can post an idea that is not actually you and tag it #GPOY to communicate to the rest of the world that you identify so much with that idea, you might as well be that idea - in fact you are so strongly identifying with that idea that it is “gratuitous” for you to have even posted it. GPOY has evolved to mean anything you identify with. As Tumblr is one of the few platforms that started out dominated by women, and offered the ability to post photos and tag them, it was the ideal place for #GPOY to start.Ĭlicking on the #gpoy tag in tumblr takes you to some pretty interesting places. These are not photos for your "profile," these are just photos of yourself (or, as the girls themselves sometimes say, "My Face"). #GPOY allowed the Tumblr user to abandon almost all pretense of modesty. However, Tumblr was the first platform to provide the option of hashtagging a photo, or of course, a set of photos, for no particular reason. The tradition began maybe most notoriously on MySpace, which managed to brand not just the act of taking a photo of oneself, but also a particular angle and pose. To the extent that one can trace the origins of a meme, GPOY seems to have arisen from the murky depths of Tumblr's earliest days, when the microblogging website was populated primarily by young, anonymous women. Sexualized pictures of young women, sometimes uploaded by themselves, sometimes uploaded by others, have always been a kind of currency for pageviews and attention on the Internet, from the lowest common denominator (4chan, for example) to more mainstream sites like the Huffington Post. But because this is 2012, the tag has irony preloaded into it - people might be posting pictures of themselves, but they know it’s self-serving. It is, after all, pretty much the point of Facebook. If you haven’t, GPOY stands for a “gratuitous picture of yourself." Posting pictures of yourself on the Internet is not new. If you’ve spent a lot of time on Tumblr, you’ve noticed #GPOY.
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