‘… but I haven’t got a body to show’: Self-pornification and male mixed feelings in digitally mediated seduction practices

Abstract

Digital seduction, that is, practices of flirting mediated by social media and other digital applications, usually involves the display and exchange of self-portraits, commonly known as 'selfies', displaying nudity and self-pornification. This is a playful and complex presentation of the self, where making, displaying and sharing self-portraits reveal a complex gaze game. Participants are both the subject who takes pictures and the object pictured. They also put themselves in the place of the potential viewers, introducing their preferences, expectations and evaluations. This article presents the results of a preliminary research carried out in Madrid about these practices and the pleasures, gender displacements, disquiets and ambivalent feelings elicited in the case of heterosexual men.In Figure 1, a picture used by an online dating user, we find a male depiction that would have been unusual just a few decades ago. The nude male body, the ironic incorporation of the baseball bat, the messy setting, the head cropped out of the

“If you could just see me”: The construction of heterosexual men’s sexual selves and the hierarchy of desirability

“…In recent years, coupled with the presence and accessibility of web pornography (Cook, 2006; Dines, 2010), as well as a booming pharmaceutical industry marketing erectile dysfunction products, there has been increased emphasis on sexual performance and stamina. Thus, sex becomes an area in which men have much to prove and men’s bodies become a place where their value is measured (Lasen and Garcia, 2015). In this way, being seen as desirable—more desirable than other men—is important.…”

Autofotografia e relato de si: materialidades digitais e audiência algorítmica na prática de selfie

“…However, the current researches 3 about the phenomenon work with diverse objectives and perspective. We have identified some of them: the relationship between public and private (LASÉN, 2013, SANTOS, 2016BAKER, 2016); the observation of psychological or behavioral factors (CARBON, 2017, LINDELL, 2017, MEESE et al, 2015TEWARI, 2016, SUNG et al, 2016MARQUEZ, 2015); the transformations of intimacy or relationship between selfie, gender, and sexuality (ČUŠ BABIČ;ROPERT;MUSIL, 2018, LASÉN, 2013GARCÍA, 2015, MIGUEL, 2016, NAEZER, 2018; and those that understand selfie as a set of practice or sociotechnical networks (CRUZ;THORNHAM, 2015, FROSH, 2015, HESS, 2015BAYM, 2015), or that take into account digital materialities and/or platform studies and digital methods (MONTARDO, 2019, WARFIELD, 2016. In other studies, it is assumed that there is a direct link between selfies and individualistic and narcissistic social formats, seeking to understand the reasons for this involvement (HALPERN;VALENZUELA;KATZ, 2016, OLIVEIRA, 2015, PERSICHETTI, 2013SUNG et al, 2016).…”

Visual Intimacy on Social Media: From Selfies to the Co-Construction of Intimacies Through Shared Pictures

“…What differentiates most contemporary popular social media platforms from bulletin boards or chat rooms is the increasingly extensive use of images. Scholars (e.g., Ardèvol & Gómez-Cruz, 2012; Lasén & García, 2015; Mendelson & Papacharissi, 2011; Van Dijck, 2008) have analyzed the performative use of photographs in social media platforms and emphasized the important role they play in self-presentation. In recent years, the pervasive use of smartphones has boosted the popularity of self-portraits in front of a mirror or at arm’s length, the so-called selfies, as discussed by Gómez-Cruz and Miguel (2014), which are often uploaded on social media.…”