Teenagers, man. Just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they go and come up with a thing like fingermouthing.
Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as obscene as it sounds. It’s just the newest hot selfie trend, replacing the duckface, the fish gape, the sparrow face, and the T-rex hands. (We told you teenagers move fast.)
The term “fingermouthing” was coined by Buzzfeed’s Kate Notopoulos, who wrote:
A beautiful young woman posts a selfie with a specific pose: her fingers dangled in front of her mouth languidly. The fingers in front of the mouth would seem careless, like she wasn’t caught off guard for the photo before she had a chance to move her hand, but the oft-repeated nature of this trope indicates it’s actually extremely calculated.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF7Y3nCnGp6/
Notopoulos speculates that Kylie Jenner, of plumped-up lip fame, was one of the first to become notable with the finger-mouth pose (but it was probably lifted from somewhere else, let’s just be real). Jenner actually explained why she adopted the pose in an interview with Elle last year — as it turns out, it was mostly due to vanity: “I was so insecure about my lips. Even now I always post photos where my finger is always in front of my mouth…it’s a habit. I would always cover my lips.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF4_uIgv_b5/
But then, it’s not always about insecurity. Notopoulos also talked to Kristen Hancher, an Instagram “influencer” who explained her reasons for fingermouthing.
“I do it because it feels more natural than to just pose…I guess there’s some seductive implication as well, considering it brings focus towards the lips, but it also helps frame your face. It’s been my go-to pose for a while as you can tell by my feed and now that I’ve kind of thought about it, the majority of my selfies do include that pose.”
Whatever the reason, fingermouthing is a catching trend. But you might not want to actually hashtag yourself doing it, because the only people who come up on Instagram under #fingermouthing are dorky adults.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BHhCnm9DZMn/
Including the author herself.