Of Real Identities: Expressions of Femininity and Sexuality in Online Spaces (original) (raw)
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While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.
Sexy selves: Girls, selfies and the performance of intersectional identities.
European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2019
Teen girls’ ‘sexy selfies’ have become highly politicised over the last years, and while feminist scholars have comprehensively analysed present day discourses about this topic, research about teen girls’ own reflections is still scarce. Studies that did include girls’ voices demonstrated how girls’ navigations of sexiness are related to the performance of gender and sexuality. The present article, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch young people, contributes to and extends this strand of research by exploring how girls’ navigations of sexy selfies are related to the performance of not just gender and sexuality, but also other intersecting axes of social differentiation, including axes that have remained undertheorised such as smartness, maturity and popularity. Through their navigations of sexy selfies, girls perform complex, intersectional identities in interaction with dominant discourses about sexiness, the materiality of their bodies, their social position and the specific context of self(ie)-making practices. Involving this complexity in discussions about sexy selfies can create promising opportunities for interrogating social norms, stereotypes and power inequalities.
This paper examines how children aged 11-16 in three European countries (Italy, UK and Spain) develop and present their online identities, and their interactions with peers. It focuses on young people’s engagement with the construction of an online identity on social media through pictures, and explores how peer-mediated conventions of self-presentation are appropriated, legitimated, or resisted in pre-teens’ and teenagers’ discourses. In doing so, we draw on Goffman’s (1959) work on the presentation of self and “impression management” to frame our analysis. Mobile communication and social network sites serve an important role in the process of self-presentation and emancipation, providing “full-time” access to peers and peer culture. Our findings suggest that there are gender differences and the presence of sexual double standards in peer normative discourses. Girls are positioned as being more subjected to peer mediation and pressure. Boys blame girls for posing sexy in photos, and negatively sanction this behaviour as being aimed at increasing one’s popularity online or as an indicator of “a certain type of girl.” However, girls who post provocative photos chose to conform to a sexualised stereotype as a means of being socially accepted by peers. Moreover, they identify with the pressure to always look “perfect” in their online pictures. While cross-national variations do exist, this sexual double standard is observed in all three countries. These insights into current behaviours could be further developed to determine policy guidance for supporting young people as they learn to manage image laden social media.
Young women and ‘technologies of the self’: Social networking and sexualities
Previously, cellphone ownership in South Africa was for a privileged few, but today it has become an essential part of the adolescent fashion accessory. Similarly, access to the internet is more widespread with the rise of the mobile internet, and online social networking applications are very popular in South Africa, particularly among young people across all social classes. This study explores young women’s use of mobile and online social networking sites, with specific reference to expressions and experiences of sexual identity via their mobile phones and popular application Facebook. Through a qualitative approach, this study argues that Facebook and MXit provide a space for play, especially for those whose freedom of movement is limited by parental concerns about safety. Online social networks create a cult of femininity and reflect women’s role in society and also socialise young women into these roles. Gender and sexuality are lived social relations and ongoing performative processes that are continuously being negotiated. The micro-narratives and practices highlighted in this study present a snapshot of the lived practices of young women and indicate similarities with global trends in terms of online youth cultures. Young women’s use of online and mobile social networking resonates with a global youth culture, with tensions around relationships, self-presentation and sexuality located firmly at the centre.
A poststructuralist review of selfies: Moving beyond heteronormative visual rhetoric
Mobile devices can instantly create and distribute a digital self-portrait, or ‘selfie’ across a myriad of social networks. The word ‘selfie’ summarises a particular kind of cultural and photographic practice that is motivated by a combination of the agency and aspirational biases of the selfie producer and where they prefer to share on social networks. With a specific focus on gendered selfie production, this paper aims to explore the relevant theories for gender identity within online communities in which selfies are shared. From a theoretical starting point, firstly this paper employs the poststructuralist theories (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) as interpretative filters for a decisive understanding of the inner “rhizome” of an individual’s ideal of “becoming”. This paper argues that the embodied human subject is transformed by self-exploration with the production and distribution of their selfies.
Towards a Sociology of Selfies
Towards a sociology of selfies: The Filtered Face, 2023
This book examines selfies as a relational and processual networked social practice, performed between people within digital contexts and that involve online/ offline intersections and tensions. It offers an analysis of selfies through a rich and interdisciplinary framework that explores the ritualized and affective engagements selfies provoke from others. Given that selfies by definition are shared and posted through networked platforms, they complicate notions of traditional photographic selfportraiture. As such, this book explores how selfies invoke broader, stratified patterns of looking that are occluded in discourses of "empowerment" and "visibility," as well as the subjectivities these networked practices work to produce. Drawing on extensive qualitative research conducted over a period of three years, this book questions not only what selfies are but what they do, the worlds they create, the imaginaries that organize them, and the flows of desire, affect, and normativity that underpin them, questions that can only be addressed through research that closely attends to the experience of selfie-takers. It will be of interest to those working in the fields of Sociology, Cultural studies, Communications, Visual studies, Social Media studies, Feminist research, and Affect Theory.
Girls on Fotolog: reproduction of gender stereotypes or identity play
In recent years a great deal of contemporary research has centred its attention on teenagers' online presence and behaviour, thus responding to educators and parents' increasing concerns regarding privacy and safety on the Internet. This article is the result of an in-depth qualitative study looking at anonymous girls' picture albums on Fotolog, one of Spain's most popular social networking sites (SNS). The main goal is to gain insight into these girls' self-representation strategies, looking at what kind of images they choose to upload and which of the gender displays found in mass media portrayals they incorporate. Coding was done according to Goffmanian categories of gender display and performance (feminine touch, ritualization of subordination, licensed withdrawal), combined with findings from other studies (male gaze, representation as sexual subjects, pleasing ourselves and lesbian pose). Results that girls are quite skilful in their self-representation techniques – and become more successful in conveying a specific image of themselves over time by using Fotolog affordances – which suggests that these sites allow them to freely experiment with identity and play with conventional codes of gender display. We identified at least three gender display codes girls play with: the supermodel, the languid romantic and the trash chic girl. Further research involving interviews with Fotolog teen users should reveal the extent to which these girls are aware of privacy and safety issues related to their self-representations.
The Selfie and the Slut: Bodies, Technology, and Public Shame
The selfie, which has become a default aesthetic of self-representation, is either mocked at as a fad, or considered as a digital photograph. This paper looks at the phenomenon of "selfie-shaming" to see how either of these approaches of dismissal or trying to regulate the selfie through the same regulatory frameworks as the photograph fail to capture the complex practices of body, technology, control, and regulation that are implicated in this phenomenon. In looking at selfie-shaming and the subsequent processes of "slut shaming", it argues that we need to think of selfies not only as cultural artefacts but also as born digital objects to show how it produces new regimes of control and visibility of women's bodies online. Drawing from software studies, cyber-feminism and digital cultures, it constructs the case of #GamerGate to show how we need to expand the scope of women's problems of consent and agency online beyond the instances of revenge and non-consensual pornography.
Social media, dress and body marking: exploring young women's imaginative, “languages of the self”
Agenda, 2018
Here “body-talk” is theorized as an action of resistance mediated by the visceral, affective, sentimental and sensual expressions of femininity. The article focuses on various visual and textual ways in which young women in Cape Town make sense of their social identities, understandings of freedom and potential as social actors. The contemporary multicultural democracy encompasses the spirit of an imagined community in which an unravelling or untidiness of difference in terms of race, sex, class and sexuality open up spaces for conversation around meanings of bodyhood. The entanglement of femininity, affect and body politics with social identities are not separable from young women's search for citizenship and social belonging. This search surfaces in the need to share experiences about what constitutes the everyday experience of a young woman's existence, and strategies of self-expression. Ultimately, “body-talk” is shown to inform practical wisdom about the everyday but more importantly, engages progressive social change and new forms of thinking around the “knowing subject” and young women as knowledge producers about themselves and their bodies.