This document discusses the trend of "headless boobs selfies" on the internet. It notes that anonymously posting photos with just breasts and no head allows women to celebrate their beauty while maintaining mystery over their real identity. The document traces the history of such self-portraits back to 1828, but argues that posting nude photos online now risks them being seen as amateur pornography. It also provides technical information on the photo editing tools used and credits the original sources of the images.
4. INTRODUCTION
My very early memory of fascination for boobs comes from the film ¡°Amarcord¡± by Federico Fellini and I am talking
about the very big breasts of the ¡°tabaccaia¡±, the tobacconist that filled the sexual fantasies of the main character of
the story. Boobs dominates the screen, would it be for adult contents, political campaigns or selling goods. The boobs
invasion of the world wide web. Among many internet trends focusing on boobs, like the kind of the Italian #escile and
the under boob selfie, the one boob selfie, free the nipples and so on, I have noticed a particular type of self depiction
where girls post their bare breasts pictures on their blogs/websites where only their chests are visible, their heads are
out of the frame establishing a new trend in nude selfie, the #headlessboobsselfie.
The very first ¡°only boobs¡± self depiction in history is probably the one by Sarah Goodrich with her ¡°Beauty Revealed:
Self Portrait¡± made in 1828 but now it has become a common self-portrait style and a trend on many websites,
especially on Tumblr, an the world wide web becomes the common scenario for revealing owns beauty. Just like Sarah
Goodrich revealed the beauty with paint and a paint brush, some girls do with webcams, phone and tablets cams. But
painting tends to turn the nude subject into ¡°art¡±, surrounded by cultural aura, maybe ends up in either a museum or a
private collection and of course that of Goodrich¡¯s was a different historical circumstance. Online nudes leads towards
the context of pornography and it is affected by uncontrolled sharing so that the act assume different connotations with
some positive and many negative consequences and reactions, mainly becoming perceived and labelled as internet
amateur pornography by the majority of society.
The headless nude selfie hides real identity. The headless shot builds a sort of mystery around the persona and it gets
enriched with a very strong sex appeal in what could be a game of seduction based on hide and seek, where the
subject teases and the audience dream and fantasize upon a photo. But those pics are also a sign that people of the
internet age, in this particular case girls, like to get undressed and exhibit their bodies as a work of art. The world wide
web is the stage where people like to put on their own show, be protagonists, build their online presence showing
themselves in photos, videos and live web cam without inhibition. Free the body and show it and share it to/with the
world.
I believe this to be not just an internet game of seduction, a plea for attentions that could be the result of either an
exhibitionist personality, horny feelings or a need for affections, and not just online amateur pornography but I consider
this to be mainly a manifestation of self confidence of showing the body to online audience helped by the possibility of
hiding behind the mask of the unknown, dressing the real identity with a veil of mystery and celebrate owns beauty.
Head(her)less is not meant to offend anybody as it is not to be interpreted as ¡°foolish¡± but as a body having not head. The title ¡°Head(her)less¡± is also inspired by a
type of files on which I have applied various databending tricks, the file format .raw, where at the moment of saving it, one of the option, the one about the header,
must be equal to zero(0) to be fully working once saved.
5. TECHNICAL INFO
The original images were ?save image as..? from various blogs on Tumblr.*
DIGITAL IMAGE FORMATS FOR DATABENDING :
.raw - .bmp - .tiff - .psd ¨C .jpg - .jpf - .png - .sct - .tga
TOOLS :
- Audacity 2.1.0
- GoldWave V5.70
- Note++ V6.7.5
- Photoshop CS6
- Tumblr
- PhotoScape V3.7
*I do not own the copyright of the original pics. If you recognize your pic and you would
like it to be removed, please contact me on domenicobarra.db@protonmail.com