Health Selfies Aka "Healthies" Are Not A New Trend

Jennifer Gale, writing for the UK's Evening Standard, says the hot new trend on Instagram is "healthies," which are selfies intended to show off your body or physical fitness. Who's perpetrating these terrible crimes of fitness onto the unsuspecting public? Celebrities, of course. She writes:

Not content with sharing pictures of themselves looking impossibly perfect and glamorous, the latest posts show everyone from supermodel Gisele Bündchen to singer Craig David (Re-Rewind, Fill Me In, er ...) working out and flaunting their fitness regimes for all to see.

And what's wrong with healthies, you might ask? Well, apparently they are (gasp!) inherently narcissistic. Although I can't disagree that both selfies and healthies are narcissistic, I have to say that I don't think fitness shots meant to show off are anything new, especially in the fitness world, where the strict visual standards for bodybuilding contests and fit models are de rigueur. Hell, a quick search through YouTube or Blogger will yield thousands of hits of "before and after" weight loss photos, videos of people working out in their living rooms, artful shots of healthy green juices. And have you ever searched the Instagram hashtags #sweatpink or #fitfluential? It's an onslaught of sports bras, smoothies, and yoga mats.

Perhaps fitness and health-inspired snapshots been proliferating to a greater degree now that everyone and her mom has Instagram, but people who work hard for their bodies have always wanted compliments and approval and they always will, whether it's a celebrity like Bar Rafaeli or your friend's mom who posts a screenshot every time she logs a run. It's hardly a trend, although I do wonder, like Tara Rasmus at Refinery29 points out, if all of these pictures are contributing to competition and extreme weight loss measures.

{h/t Refinery29}

Photo: Tracy Anderson's Instagram