Men Taking Selfies vs Women Taking Selfies

In their study, Sedgewick, Flath, and Elias (2017) collected 962 (508 women, 454 men) profile photographs from Tinder in order to analyse gender differences in the way heterosexual men and women wanted to be perceived by the opposite sex. The results were consistent with the predictions: Men's selfies were angled significantly more often from below while women's selfies were angled more often from above. The authors come to the conclusion that - intuitively or consciously - the illusion of a height disparity is created which again is consistent with height ideals of the opposite sex: Men's selfies from below "facilitate the perception of tallness", women's selfies from above "convey relative shortness".



Several more studies support the prediction that men and women use different strategies with the first taking selfies from above and the latter from below. Makhanova, McNulty, and Maner (2017) discuss reasons in addition to the illusion of height disparity. By taking their photographs in a low relative physical position, women "highlight their youthful features and appear attractive" while men "highlight their size and appear dominant" when they portray themselves in a high relative physical position.

Women were perceived as more attractive when they were photographed from above and that’s particularly because they were perceived as younger and thinner from those angles.
Makhanova 

For men, perceived attractiveness wasn’t affected by camera angle. Dominance, however, was. When viewing photographs shot from below, male evaluators looking at photographs of other men found them to be more dominant. “Men were only doing this for other men, and incidentally only men were picking up on this as a cue.” (via)

Diane Cleverly surveyed 352 selfies and found that the same small number of men and women displayed Duchenne or genuine, authentic smiles while significantly more women favoured the non-genuine, polite Pan Am smile compared to men who preferred neutral expressions.

I believe that the social norm of pressuring women to smile, and women feeling as though smiling improves social interactions, might be so ingrained that they tend to smile subconsciously, even when taking selfies in a home setting with no other people around. Men may not be as aware of their facial expressions or may not care for the look of their face smiling. So they take a more neutral expression selfie. Other reasons could include the fact that women take more selfies than men and are more “practiced” at smiling for selfies, albeit not an authentic, emotional smile, or that people taking selfies tend to copy magazine advertisements, which more typically show women smiling, and men non-smiling. (via)

Döring, Reif and Poeschl (2016) investigated gender stereotyping in selfies with a quantitative content analysis of 500 selfies (50% males, 50% females) that had been uploaded on Instagram:

The degree of gender stereotyping in the selfies was measured using Goffman's (1979) and Kang's (1997) gender display categories (e.g. feminine touch, lying posture, withdrawing gaze, sparse clothing) plus three social media-related categories (kissing pout, muscle presentation, faceless portrayal). Additionally, gender stereotyping in selfies was directly compared to the degree of gender stereotyping in magazine adverts measured in the same way (Doring € & Poschl, 2006). Results reveal that male and female Instagram users' selfies not only reflect traditional gender stereotypes, but are even more stereotypical than magazine adverts.
Döring, Reif & Poeschl (2016:955)

Vivian Maier's (1926-2009) brilliant self-portraits:

"The meta quality (the photographer is almost always seen with her camera in the act of taking the shot) and obliqueness (she’s reflected in car mirrors, shop windows, or hubcaps, or seen only in shadow) that characterizes nearly all of these portraits might come across as over-determined, too earnestly artful, if not for Maier’s droll approach not only to composition, but to her own facial and bodily demeanor. Maier often affects a deadpan, somewhat distracted look, her eyes blankly regarding something just outside the photo’s frame. She is her own unwilling subject, just tolerating the intrusion of the camera she’s holding, arms akimbo, below her chest. And then there are the hats: berets, fedoras, straw, that lend her profile a rakish air, sometimes undermined by a slightly doleful expression. Maier presents herself as someone aloof and contentedly so. (...)
In a few images, Maier can be seen without her camera. In a 1960 shot, she broods purposely — chin in hand, beret appropriately tilted — in a snowy park. But in most of these self-portraits, the tool of her trade is unmistakably present, often vying with her face for prominence. The camera is carefully held — offered? — to the viewer as the object deserving our attention. The formality of her poses, her studied impassivity, lend an iconic note to several of these photos, as if she were seeking not to capture herself but to delineate some Platonic notion of “the photographer.” If the potential aesthetic missteps that attend this sort of self-mythologizing are numerous, Maier appears well aware of them and equally confident of her ability to avoid stumbling."
Albert Mobilio



- Döring, N., Reif, A. & Poeschl, S. (2016). How gender-stereotypical are selfies? A content analysis and comparison with magazine adverts. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 955-962.
- Makhanova, A. McNulty, J. K., & Maner, J. K. (2017). Relative Physical Position as an Impression-Management Strategy: Sex Differences in Its Use and Implications, link
- Sedgewick, J. R., Flath, M. E. & Elias, L. J. (2017). Presenting Your Best Self(ie): The Influence of Gender on Vertical Orientation of Selfies on tinder. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, link
- self-portraits taken by Vivian Maier via and via and via and via and via