40+ year old women posting selfies on social media - is this a new trend?

[bogeywoman]

Quite a few of my friends/acquaintances have recently started posting very posed selfies (without much in the way of a description) on FB and instagram. Women who are well into their 40s, married with children. Is this some sort of lockdown related insecurity? I find it so strange.

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains you market yourself, your lifestyle or products you're trying to sell and that's the whole purpose of it. Don't start with "oh I use it to connect with friends" which is a yes but at the same time to show off with the things I mentioned such as "oh look at me dining at a Michelin restaurant"

It's that horrible attention seeking that's annoying aka Christine mcguinness 🙄

Wasn't she flogging underwear though?

To tell the truth, I'm slightly embarrassed for anyone who posts lots of carefully posed selfies, no matter what their age.

On the other hand, whatever. Maybe that's their hobby! I'll just mute them, unfollow, whatever, and focus on something more interesting than other people's vanity.

I posted a LOT of selfies when i started going to the gym and lost a lot of weight. I posted even more when i split up with my exH, because i wanted a bit of attention and validation. It was harmless fun, and it gave me a boost at a time when i needed it. If any of my friends thought i was a disgrace/ugly/ too old, they at least had the good manners to keep their opinions to themselves.

I dont do many selfies now. I get all the admiration and validation i need from my DP, and i post other things on my SM instead.

Selfies hurt noone, and its good to find a picture of yourself that you like, and share it with your friends. Those animal filters are a bit weird though!

@Newbiehere123

Before I was 30, married and with a child I was like that because my shallow self back then wanted to be liked especially by men. Now I see so many women and men in their late 30's and early 40's doing it, some divorced, some married or in long term relationships. Maybe I will go back to it as well but for now no. Yes it is weird and looks desperate to me tbh and in fact I hid all my photos from before because I looked so desperate to be out there and it's very cringe .

But I'm now married with a child, see. So I'm morally unimpeachable and incapable of vanity. You sad, desperate, over 40s with your indeterminate marital statuses and your desperate behaviour should all be locked up in old people's homes and leave the internet to us normative suburban types with our two up two downs.

you market yourself, your lifestyle or products you're trying to sell and that's the whole purpose of it. Don't start with "oh I use it to connect with friends" which is a yes but at the same time to show off with the things I mentioned such as "oh look at me dining at a Michelin restaurant"

I aren't marketing anything definitely not myself (married and have been for years) so any rare pics of me are because I want to take one and put one out there, not because I'm putting myself back on the market or flaunting my wares
Same with pics of being out - eg for dinner, it's not to show off, it's to connect and it's for ME - For example I like FB memories popping up to remind me of stuff I did over the years.
I really don't know why people are on social media if they seem to hate it so much, or resent seeing what their friends are up to?
I do like it for seeing what people are up to nowadays, connecting with them, seeing snapshots of their lives/heck even their lunch.
More your issue than mine if you see everything on it as a marketing ploy or friends are just trying to wind you up and rub in your jealous little face their day out
More likely they haven't given you a second thought and couldn't give a shiny shit whether you approve of their postings or not

ButI'm now married with a child, see. So I'm morally unimpeachable and incapable of vanity. You sad, desperate, over 40s with your indeterminate marital statuses and your desperate behaviour should all be locked up in old people's homes and leave the internet to us normative suburban types with our two up two downs.

I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.

@ShebaShimmyShake

ButI'm now married with a child, see. So I'm morally unimpeachable and incapable of vanity. You sad, desperate, over 40s with your indeterminate marital statuses and your desperate behaviour should all be locked up in old people's homes and leave the internet to us normative suburban types with our two up two downs.

I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.

Is the issue that they are women, that they are over 40, that they are married, or that they have children? Which of those factors makes it inappropriate for them to post selfies on social media?

^ this.

Perhaps they take selfies because they’re always the person behind the camera, taking photos of the other members of their families.

That's a bit bitchy, OP. You'll be over 40 one day yourself and it comes around a lot quicker than you think! One week everything's looking hot and the world's your lobster and the next week you're being insulted almost daily by people who use the phrase ''over 40'' as a byword for anything that's obviously old, ugly and embarrassing!

Anyway, I agree about selfies being attention seeking behavior. I thought they were absolutely cringe on the first day they were ''invented'' and now they're nothing more than past-it old cringe.

Personally, I was hugely obese until the age of 41. I had never allowed any sort of photo of me - the notion of taking a selfie would have been ridiculous.

At the age of almost 41, I joined SW, lost 7.5 stones & realised that actually I wasn’t “big boned” my face wasn’t “naturally round” and that I could possibly look nice in clothes.

That is when I started posting selfies - of a new hairstyle, if I felt confident in a new outfit (confidence previously being an alien concept to me). On a night out with friends.

You think that’s wrong? Says way more about you than me.

I really don't know why people are on social media if they seem to hate it so much, or resent seeing what their friends are up to?

i often think i must be doing SM wrong because i don't hate the people I'm friends with on fb, i have some really good conversations on twitter and i follow people on Instagram who post interesting photos, foodblogs etc.

My family/friends are scattered all over the globe and we share photos of birthdays, achievements, when we're having a good day, bad day, new babies, have made something whatever… it's how we communicate. People who make me or bored get unfriended or muted. It's quite easy.

But I'm waaaay over 40. I'm thinking that what i should be doing is setting up an IG account just for selfies of me and will post one everyday for a year. Just because.

@Brefugee

I really don't know why people are on social media if they seem to hate it so much, or resent seeing what their friends are up to?

i often think i must be doing SM wrong because i don't hate the people I'm friends with on fb, i have some really good conversations on twitter and i follow people on Instagram who post interesting photos, foodblogs etc.

My family/friends are scattered all over the globe and we share photos of birthdays, achievements, when we're having a good day, bad day, new babies, have made something whatever… it's how we communicate. People who make me or bored get unfriended or muted. It's quite easy.

But I'm waaaay over 40. I'm thinking that what i should be doing is setting up an IG account just for selfies of me and will post one everyday for a year. Just because.

Brefugee

Social media is now the socially acceptable home of snobbery. It's a safe space for people who know they are no longer allowed to publicly sneer at someone's affluence, the way they speak or their dress size.

Woe betide anyone who steps over the line on Facebook.

Selfies are ridiculous at any age. I do agree with you though, you'd hope that older women (I include myself) would be a bit more secure in themselves to be bothered with that nonsense.

@Thurmanmurman

Selfies are ridiculous at any age. I do agree with you though, you'd hope that older women (I include myself) would be a bit more secure in themselves to be bothered with that nonsense.

Don't know where to start.

Why are selfies ridiculous? Can you actually explain why? Or are you just rushing to jump on a nasty bandwagon which involves sneering at people for doing something totally harmless? Why is a selfie any more ridiculous than, say, telling your friend you've had a nice new haircut?

Why should older women in particular refrain from doing this? Are they required to hide themselves away in seclusion?

Whether you agree doesn't it make it strange behaviour ( I cant believe the amount of posters who have commented on it being 'weird' just because they wouldn't do it).
She could be proud of her look or she could be unhappy with it, and anything in between. At the end of the day as long as she is happy, we should be happy and supportive for her.

There’s the argument that women of all ages post selfies because they are confident and happy with themselves, the other side of the coin is women that don’t post selfies of themselves are confident and so happy with themselves they don’t need the validation or likes from others.

Can we just let women enjoy things? Even if it is for attention, think about why you don't think women should have attention? I don't need people to tell me I look nice as I know I do. However it is nice to hear it. Women over 40 should not be invisible, ageing is seen as such a bad thing we should be 'anti'. That needs to change.

I've just gone back and reread the op as several later posters seemed to be angered by references to women "on the wrong side of 40". The op said nothing of the sort.

I don't think the op was in anyway ageist; there's no implication that older women should hide themselves away. If anything, I inferred a respect for older women; an expectation that they would be less narcissistic, more self-confident and less reliant on social media likes than teenagers.

I've got a 17 year old dd who posts selfies (not just pictures because she's been somewhere interesting, has a new hairstyle etc but pictures just for the sake of it.)

Seems pointless to me but we all do stupid things when we're kids so it doesn't bother me. I would think that it was very odd if she was still doing it when she was older.

I think it is less about taking selfies but more about why so many people seem to need constant validation? Whether it is for how they look, their new hairstyle, where they holiday, what they eat, how great their husband is, child is and so on and so on. I just think it must be an exhausting way to live. It is not about posting a picture of themselves or their lifestyle it is about how many comments, likes etc they get and I am concerned with why this is so important to people. Pre-social media you got your hair done maybe before a night out and you were obviously boosted by a few of your friends commenting on how nice it was but it ended there, now people seem to need more and more comments and likes more and more often it is kind of like an addiction "hit" and I find that quite worrying for society tbh.

Of course I could be over thinking all this but I have 3 daughters on the cusp of adolescents they aren't on any social media yet but they are already starting to make little videos of themselves replicating what they see on youtube. For now they aren't allowed post these videos anywhere but I am sure that will come as they get older but I just hope they won't hang their raison d'etre to how many likes they get.

I believe posting things that other people aren't interested in is one of the main reasons for the internet.

@
Correct the OP didn’t make that reference. It was another poster, cociabutter, who charmingly described a ‘friend’ who posted selfies as the wrong side of 40. I think that was quite rightly called out as sneery ageism.

Gah. Last message was in response to @cariadlet