Maybe I’m dating myself or not grasping a hidden layer of the concept, but I truly do not understand the bathroom selfie craze. More specifically, the couple selfie.
Enter teenage Snapchat and the bathroom selfie of a couple with arms intertwined and young love in their eyes; a smartphone strategically pointed toward the oversized bathroom mirror.
I have seen these duo poses struck by my own kids, and I’ve seen them on the social media feeds of many others. While seeing is believing, I’m not quite sure why I’m seeing this, or what I’m supposed to be believing.
I am over the moon about my husband, but there has never been a time when I have wanted to pull him into the bathroom and grab a forever memory of our love. The potty pic is not one that will be donning a social media feed of mine anytime soon. The only time love and the bathroom may cross paths in my mind would be during a hair-hold-back in the heart of flu season or when calls of a towel missing from the rack are answered. Neither of these scenarios would create impulsivity for capturing the moment with a smartphone, though.
I mean, come on. The reality is that old married couples should be the ones with all the bathroom selfies. We actually share the bathroom on a daily basis. Will the rehearsal dinners of today’s youth be peppered with slideshows entitled Our Bathroom Love Story? I’ll let the cringe-worthy reality of that one sink in for a moment.
I have racked my brain for some rationale regarding the privy portrait, and a few possibilities come to mind.
1. The design industry has dropped the ball on oversized mirrors. The art of the selfie can be a tricky one. Grabbing a good angle with more than one person can be a challenge. While we do have multiple oversized mirrors in our home, maybe the bathroom one offers the best angle with no bulky furniture blocking the way.
Solution: Scour garage and estate sales to pick up more oversized mirrors and do not place cumbersome furniture in front of them.
2. The push for self-sufficiency has been too much. The chore charts and articles detailing the need for our tweens and teens to be self-sufficient have backfired. We’ve asked them to pack their own lunches, do their own laundry, etc., and they have inferred that taking their own photos also falls under the self-sufficiency umbrella.
Solution: Remove all responsibility causing the art of the selfie to become obsolete. Teens, tweens, and the like will look to others to capture all of their photo needs (and all of their other needs as well).
3. Today’s homes are lacking in well-lit spaces. In designing our spaces, we have both cut off access to most oversized mirrors and created lighting issues with the mirrors found outside of the bathroom. There could be no overhead light, too much natural light, too much reflected light, etc. A windowless bathroom with overhead lighting becomes the only space to capture that perfect love-struck moment.
Solution: Call in an electrician to rewire and place overhead lighting in front of any and all oversized mirrors throughout the home (see Solution #1).
Social media has offered a great way to share the ins and outs of daily life. But, is stepping out of the bathroom to capture those moments really too much to ask? Here’s hoping for a new venue to catch on in the selfie trend, so the memory books of today’s youth don’t find themselves appropriately stored on a medicine cabinet shelf or the back of the tank.
