Forget the selfie, forget the belfie: it's now all about the 'illfie', showing off how unwell you are. Layla Webster dislikes the new celebrity Twitter trend
Oxford Dictionary named ‘selfie’ the word of 2013 as celebrities and civilians everywhere clogged Instagram with self-taken photos (complete with flattering filter, naturally); we even saw the term ‘ belfie ’ coined for those choosing to showcase their, ahem, assets from behind. But sadly, the selfie trend doesn’t stop there.
Welcome the newest addition to the selfie family: an illfie. That is, a selfie taken when you’re ill. While the rest of us bury our painful heads under the duvet and hide from the world when we have a case of the flu, celebrities looking worse for wear have managed to crawl onto Twitter to show off their blocked noses and puffy eyes.
Kelly Brook had ‘Saturday night fever’, Fearne Cotton’s ‘Classic Christmas cold has hit hard’ and Miley Cyrus’s twerking has caught up with her as her ‘neck, belly, throat, head all hurt’. These are just a few of the tweets shared to their followers over Christmas while they still managed to strike a pose from their sick beds. Carol Vorderman, on the other hand, tweeted a picture of her black eyes and broken nose after a fall while Justin Bieber uploaded a photo posing on a hospital bed hours after fainting on stage. And, wait for it, Jessie J posted a selfie of a papercut on her finger. Ouch.
While we can all sympathise (papercuts really hurt), we’ve only just got on board, reluctantly, with the selfie itself; the belfie alone was unnecessary and so maybe they should keep their bugs to themselves in future. Let’s hope that this illfie trend isn’t catching…