Log in to any social platform, and the picture — not to mention The Pose — is almost impossible to miss. The vaccine selfie has gone viral. “I started seeing vaccine selfies almost as soon as the vaccines were available,” said David Broniatowski, an associate professor of engineering and applied science at George Washington University. “It was an almost immediate meme.” And rather than petering out, it seems only to be picking up steam.

Indeed, said Jeanine D. Guidry, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University focusing on public health and health communications, “It may end up being one of the iconic images of this time.”

Also, the designer Marc Jacobs, who posed in pink sparkling shorts with his pink shirt entirely off half of his torso, leopard coat, and some pearls. “It’s a look, and a moment, worth celebrating,” Vogue chortled. Perhaps that does explain the dressing choice: Many of us have been hiding inside for so long, feeling scared and powerless, that there’s something liberating about taking clothes off. Guidry pointed out, it is both a new phenomenon — and a very, very old one. Before there was either the vaccine selfie or the topless vaccine selfie, there was the vaccine photo op. And before that, the vaccine engraving.

Yup, it goes that far back, in part because, for as long as there have been inoculations, there has been unease around the whole idea. (Taking a healthy person and injecting them with a bit of illness to make them better is a hard sell.) And that means there have been conscious efforts by public health authorities to promote them. Which have, most often, involved The Pose. “Images are just very powerful,” said Mark Dredze, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the way vaccine pictures are shared on Twitter. “People relate to them much more than text.”

One of the most famous of the vaccine photo ops is a 1956 shot of Elvis Presley, then only 21 and a full-fledged teen idol, looking dreamy with his sweater pulled up to get his polio jab.

By 1976, President Gerald Ford, fearful of warnings about a giant wave of swine flu, happily posed in a vest and tie with shirt sleeves rolled up while receiving his flu shot. And, in 2009, President Barack Obama was snapped in the White House with a nurse preparing to administer the H1N1 vaccine. In all cases the theory behind the images was the same. Guidry said, “We’ve seen a breakdown in trust in some areas of science and a breakdown in trust in our political leaders.”

That meant that though it was important to see snaps of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris getting their Covid shots on camera, not to mention Dr. Fauci and Vice President Pence, “it’s almost more important to see friends and family getting vaccinated,” Guidry said. While it is possible that all of these pictures of The Pose may cause some resentment (not everyone who wants to get vaccinated can yet get vaccinated), the selfie stream itself represents a tipping point. One that everyone can see.

The New York Times