Would you ever do something so self-indulgent as to write a blog post about your favorite selfies you took over the past year?! No, me neither.
Wait, that’s not true. I’ve done exactly that for several years running now. Whoops.
Anyway, without further self-effacing lampshading, here are 7 of the most meaningful selfies I took this year, with a bit of context for each. Look, I’m cute!
January 1
Despite writing a song around this time called “Alone on New Year’s Eve,” I was not, in fact, alone on New Year’s Eve. I went to spend it with my parents.
There was a time when that last sentence would have made me feel like I wasn’t cool enough or social enough to line up other plans. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less interested in listening to the “mean popular girl” voice inside my head that judges me for such things. A girl like that hasn’t had power over me since I was a preteen, except within my own mind. Instead of taking her criticisms to heart, instead I can just ask myself in any given moment: What is it that I most want to do? And then I can do that.
And truth be told, it’s been years since I’ve wanted to spend New Year’s out at a dance club, bar, or party. I’ll swig some midnight champagne and yell a countdown at the TV, sure, but from the comfort of my own (or a loved one’s) home. New Year’s is a hugely self-reflective time for me (as this blog series makes clear), a time when I like to think back about who I’ve been that year and who I want to be in the coming one, and I find it easiest to be introspective when I’m operating from home base.
Anyway, I chose this picture because my mum and I look super cute in it, and because she’s so sweet and funny and delightful and a really important part of my year every year. Love you!
February 3
To the extent that I had any kind of defined personal style this year – which is dubious – a lot of the time it fell into what could be termed “lovecore.” This is a style of dress in which “romantic” colors like pink and red are emphasized, and in which the (non-anatomical) heart symbol plays a big role.
I truly would dress like this nearly every day if I had the energy to do so. And frankly, maybe that just means I need to transition my loungewear and sleepwear wardrobe into a more lovecore-y vibe by gradually phasing out all colors but red, pink, and black. Who knows what the future may hold for my look.
In scouring the internet for lovecore-centric inspo images, I kept stumbling across pictures of this heart-print sweatsuit. Megan Fox famously wears a jacket like this one in Jennifer’s Body, and it’s a showstopper. After going back and forth on it for a while, I eventually sprung for a duplicate of the full sweatsuit made by a random Etsy shop.
It’s certainly not what you’d call sophisticated or understated. It is LOUD, and it hugs my curves in ways that would have made me feel uncomfortable and insecure just a few short years ago. But I love it. When I took this selfie the first time I wore it, I actually liked the photo so much that I put it into my Tinder profile almost immediately. It’s always been important to me to be fully forthcoming about what my body looks like in my online dating profiles, because I don’t want to risk ending up on a date with someone who isn’t chill about me being adorably chubby, and this photo feels like one of the best ways to do that. It’s where romance meets sexiness, baby.
February 13
When a reader of mine asked me to write a blog post about her jeans bondage fetish, it occurred to me that I’d need some photos to go with the post. Originally I was just going to take some normal arm’s-length selfies wearing jeans in bed, but I tried that and they just didn’t come out looking the way I’d hoped.
It was then that I realized I needed to do something I’d only done one other time before: a solo photoshoot in the corridors of my building, complete with tripod and self-timer. The risk was high – a neighbor could walk out at any moment and witness the whole denim-clad scene – but I knew the pictures would be much better than those I’d half-assed in bed.
The lighting in those hallways is creepy, and the whole vibe is very The Shining, albeit with less glamour and less blood. But I liked how the photos came out, not least because they were meant to emphasize the tightness of the jeans moreso than whether the jeans were “fashionable” or “flattering” or any other such dirty word. I saw the denim squeezing my thighs and hips and, instead of feeling ashamed or like I needed to fire up Photoshop, I simply thought about people who are into jeans bondage and how much they’d relish the constrictive look of this pair of skinnies.
I also like that there’s something a bit lonely about this photograph. Standing alone in a long hallway, with a KN95 mask underlining my hopeful upward gaze. It has a “trapped” feeling that makes it feel very 2022-appropriate.
February 16
I think my Honni Music electric baritone ukulele might be my favorite thing I bought this year. I was debating between this custom-made instrument from Australia and a much more generic, off-the-rack acoustic baritone. I asked my spouse and my brother what they thought, and they both said roughly the same thing; in mb’s words, “I think the electric one will bring you more joy and spark more creativity.”
I don’t know how or why, but the artisanal luthier behind Honni Music only charges about $300 (CAD) per instrument, despite the fact that he makes them all by hand to the specifications of each customer. But I decided to treat myself, and ordered one. It didn’t even take very long to arrive all the way from Australia!
I took this picture the day I received the uke in the mail. My face here is genuinely reflective of the excitement I was feeling. There is something so special about an instrument that has been hand-crafted from scratch. This one is stunning.
I had never owned an electric guitar or electric ukulele growing up, because they were too loud with an amp and too quiet without one, and they didn’t really fit into the style of music I was interested in making then. But I always secretly sorta wanted an electric guitar, because they were the epitome of cool, and I thought that owning one could usher me into a whole new way of making music.
So it felt deeply nourishing to my li’l music-lover heart to buy this for myself, and to play it, plugged into a tiny practice amp I bought from some rando on Facebook Marketplace. It felt like a gift to my younger self, the one who’d stood in front of her bedroom mirror playing air guitar to Aerosmith and John Mayer. And it’s inspired me to write a lot of great songs since I got it, too.
July 9
My roommate Sarah and her boyfriend Dan (who I’ve actually been friends with for even longer than I’ve known Sarah) have been two of my closest pals for years, but especially so during the pandemic, when we made a regular ritual of gathering in Sarah’s room to play Jackbox games and Use Your Words over cocktails and ciders. It felt so important and healing to have an outlet for the kind of casual socializing we lost out on when self-isolation became the new normal.
I took this photo with the two of them on the night we went out (yes, went out! To an actual bar patio! Wow!) to celebrate Sarah’s birthday. She is a mega-femme whose signature color is pink, so I always wear pink for her birthday festivities, whatever and wherever they may be.
While writing this just now, I couldn’t recall the name of the bar we went to, but remembered that all the drinks were themed around various nerdy, sci-fi and/or cult-y media properties (Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Beetlejuice, etc.) so I googled “nerd bar gay village Toronto” and the name of the place popped right up: Storm Crow Manor. Gotta love any place where the drinks glow and the waiters wear short-shorts.
Shout-out to these two pals for being there for me in a major way these past few years!
September 19
Matt and I are both so accustomed to posing for selfies that it can be hard to take “candids” of either of us. So I love that this picture captures us genuinely laughing together in a way we do constantly but not often on camera. I don’t know what we were laughing about, but we look cute and in love.
The night that this was taken, we headed out for a drink at Martiny’s, a very dark and serious bar that serves (as you’d expect) fantastic martinis, among other things.
I don’t have much more to say about this one except, like, look how adorable we are!
October 29
Appropriately to its almost-Halloween date, this is probably one of the weirdest and most chilling selfies I took all year. But it’s kinda great, too.
I did solo shrooms trips several times this year, partly recreationally and partly for the drug’s potentially trauma-healing effects. (One day I’ll write all about how shrooms are helping me heal my inner child, but I don’t think the time for that is right just yet.)
This picture was taken around 5 p.m. after a full day of shroomy goodness. In glancing through my trip notes for that day (which I think I’ll be diving into more in my “favorite journal entries of the year” post later this week), it seems that some of the things I did during that trip included watching Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, drifting in and out of trance, and weeping profusely while watching a funny video of a guy playing Zelda games. (It’s a long story, idk.)
After being high for around 6 hours – by which time I’m usually feeling somewhat sober-er but reality still feels a bit fuzzy at the edges – I opened up the camera on my phone and looked at myself in the selfie-cam. There was something about this sight that seemed almost mystical to me – the way my hair was arranged like a peacock’s tail or a lion’s mane in a Renaissance painting, the way my slip dress’s spaghetti strap sagged off one shoulder, the way my makeupless face told a tale of peace and tranquility that was somehow also haunted. I snapped a few shots. This was the best one.
It’s been a weird year – although I probably say that every year – and I’m glad that I have these photos to remember it by. What were some of your fave selfies you took this year?