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Marvel’s Jessica Jones is a dark and reluctant hero. An alcoholic private detective, Jones’ super-human physical strength remains largely underutilized when we meet her in the Netflix series  opening episode. As the story unfolds, we learn that Jessica self-medicates to deal with a traumatic past in which a man named Kilgrave, who controls people with the use of his voice, held Jessica captive as his lover while forcing her to engage in violence and even murder. Their relationship ended when Jessica was finally able to resist his control—a quality unique to her—and Kilgrave was hit by a bus, leaving him presumably dead. The storyline of the first season is premised on Jessica learning that Kilgrave is still alive, has captured another victim, and is coming to reclaim Jessica. In turn, Jones hunts for Kilgrave to ensure that he dies, once and for all.

About halfway through the season Jessica realizes that Kilgrave is tracking her whereabouts by controlling her friend and neighbor Malcom Ducasse. To wrest Malcom from Kilgrave’s control, Jessica strikes a deal. She agrees to send Kilgrave a selfie at precisely 10am each day. At his direction, Jones even includes a smile. 

Jessica Jones’ selfie is a significant cultural artifact.  With super-human physical brawn and impenetrable emotional toughness, Jessica Jones is an icon of strength. Jones’ image—how it looks, who it’s for, and how it’s produced— represents the potential of feminist self-documentation. It therefore shines light on what a selfie can do given the tangled relationship between feminism and patriarchy in self-documentation.

The selfie has become a key battleground for gender politics in a digital age. Although front-facing cameras are for everyone, cultural tropes most often place them in the hands of women. The selfie then becomes a vehicle for the critique of femininity. The selfie-posting woman is vapid, needy, and hungry for Likes. As Anne Burns explains:

Beyond a critique of photographic form or content, the online discussion of selfies reflects contemporary social norms and anxieties, particularly relating to the behavior of young women. The knowledge discursively produced in relation to selfie taking supports patriarchal authority and maintains gendered power relations by perpetuating negative feminine stereotypes that legitimize the discipline of women’s behaviors and identities.

Combating the haters, feminist media commentators and scholars (like Burns)  offer alternative readings of the selfie as an expressive cultural form. Counter readings of selfies generally take two tracks: Concern (We’re Fucked) and Confidence (Fuck You).

Concerned feminists worry about the meaning of selfies. Selfies are not an indictment of those who post them, but of a culture in which the worth of women and girls continues to hinge on sexual desirability.  The selfie then signifies complicity in patriarchal reproduction. That is, selfies are a consequence of women’s pervasive subordination. In this vein, Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel calls selfies a “cry for help” and rejects any notion that selfies are good for women:

Selfies aren’t empowering; they’re a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness.

The Confidence crew, however, insist that turning the camera on the self is a way to take control of one’s own image, lest that image remain captured and configured by an amorphous, patriarchal, controlling, Other. The selfie is a source of Gurl-Power. For Amy McCarthy, selfies are a political act of both feminist strength and personal confidence, especially for those who don’t fit normative body ideals:

When you look in the media… there are very few examples of fat, trans, or dark-skinned women. As such, selfies present themselves as a way to make our bodies visible, and in a radical way. So you take your selfies, peeps — they’re one way to say “fuck you” to the body standards that have made us miserable for so long.

Jessica Jones’ selfie, at once an expression of agency and subservience, is a microcosm of the selfie phenomenon more generally. So tell us, Jessica, what does it mean to take a selfie? Is it empowering or is it self-inflicted oppression? The answer, of course, is “yes,” It is both.

By turning the camera front facing, Jones freed herself from external surveillance, freed Malcom from Kilgrave’s service, and took power over her own image. When watching is ubiquitous, showing becomes the agentic option. While surveilled through Malcom, Jessica could be photographed in any moment. The surveillance was potentially everywhere, all the time.  As Foucault so clearly illustrates, potential surveillance is a powerful mechanism of control. When the surveilling eye remains hidden, all moments are documentable and therefore never entirely one’s own. With the selfie, Jessica purchased privacy. All of the non-selfie moments were once again, hers. When she did self-document, Jones selected the timing of this documentation and configured her body and face in a manner of her liking. She could then review the images and select which to send. In a word, the selfie enabled Jessica to document with intention. We see this intentionality manifest in Jones’ masterfully accomplished Fuck You smile.

Yet, despite its Fuck You quality, Jones still smiles, as per Kilgrave’s request. She still sends him pictures, at the time he instructs (10am). She still operates, ultimately, under Kilgrave’s gaze. Jones’ life, and the lives of those she cares about, depend on her compliance. The selfie buys Jones freedom, but within heavy confines.

It is not until the final episode of Season 1 that Jessica untangles herself from Kilgrave entirely. This disentanglement comes when she kills him. And killing Kilgrave is perhaps the perfect metaphor. The selfie is empowering, given a persistently oppressive arrangement. The selfie as a cultural artifact is both a product of and response to gender relations.  As long as women are objectified, turning the camera on the self is a means of intentionality. It takes the power from the other and places it within the self. Artist and subject become one. But only by killing patriarchy—and the sexual confines, normative beauty standards, and persistent microaggressions patriarchy entails—are women and girls truly free. Within patriarchy, the selfie will always carry the weight of feminism upon its  shoulders.

Jenny Davis is on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis