Has Our Self-Obsession Gone A Bit Too Far With Selfieccino?

The human obsession with self-photographs seems to have reached its pinnacle with a London based café serving Selfieccino. Yes, you read that right! The recent viral hashtag on Twitter #Selfieccino is courtesy The Tea Terrace, a café on Oxford Street, London.

The café started selling a new kind of coffee called “Selfiecinno”, where they print the self portrait of the customers on the frothy top of their coffee.

As it is with anything that has to do with selfies, this idea is going viral.

I am praying to god almighty that the café copyrights its selfieccino idea, before it spreads like flu in schools. Soon, this thing is going to find its way to India, and then every single coffee shop will be crowded with idiots gawking and clicking photographs of lattes covered with their “beautiful” faces. The coffee will lie untouched, till they get the perfect click, and upload it on social media. Not fair to other customers, or to the coffee.

A few years ago, self-obsession had found its way to birthday parties, with selfies, and photographs of the birthday boy/girl printed out on birthday cakes. People would request such cakes for their birthdays, and watch in glee, when the attendees would gobble up their nose, eyes, ears or hair happily. Imagine a red velvet cake under such a picture cake, and you would know how morbid this idea is. Now we can get our faces inked on almost everything. Ceramic tiles and cups, pillow cases, blankets, bed sheets, table cloths. Soon maybe on soaps, shower curtains, mobile phone cases (I am pretty sure someone is doing this) and every object it is possible for us to own -- solid, liquid or gas.

This selfie obsession needs to stop now. Why? Because it is costing people more than a coffee or a ceramic tile. It is costing them their self esteem and a disconnect from reality

We all know how we get a perfect self-photograph. The perfect angle, the perfect lighting, the perfect hair, and of course, a perfect photoshop app to remove all the fat, dark spots, pimples and any signs of your face being covered with skin. The perfect plastic faces, courtesy photoshops, have distanced us from reality. So much so that now we refuse to approve of any photograph of us which shows us otherwise.

This obsession is unhealthy simply because it leads to self-loathing eventually. People dread for their lives if someone tags them in group photos on social media. All the body weight and crow lines they have been hiding because of the control that self-photography gave them, will come undone.

People are more interested in showcasing a cool virtual life, than living it out in reality

Instead of accepting our bodies, we want to believe in the mirage that photoshop creates. Instead of making memories out of holidays, we concentrate more on making nature into the perfect background for photographs.

I am not saying that taking selfies and photographs is wrong. Photographs are a great way of capturing moments of life, which we want to relive. Friends, whom we might not see as frequently as we want, grand kids who live thousands of miles away, learning new skills...photographs capture these memories, and let them be with us for a lifetime and beyond. But now, we insist more on good looks and want to make memories just for the sake of social media. Now this obsession overshadows everything from family gatherings, to holidays to even a warm cup of coffee. We should know we have gone too far.

Life is indeed like a good cup of cappuccino. Enjoy its bittersweet warmth and let it fill you up with joy. Or let it go cold and tasteless, while you try to take that one perfect shot of it. The choice is yours.

Also Read: Body shaming and popular media: the Selfie Culture

Dr Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section.  The views expressed are the author’s own