Performative shamelessness on young women’s social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia

Abstract

In this paper, I ask what the self-representations of young women on social network sites can tell us about the conditions and experience of inhabiting femininity in the digitally mediated post-feminist context. First, I outline four conditions of post-feminist girlhood that I suggest young women must navigate in the processes of subjectivity construction. I then describe some of the common kinds of performativity found on a small selection of social network site profiles owned by young Australian women. I suggest that a ‘shameless’ affect may be a necessary form of self-protection for these young women, operating in contexts that appear to require copious amounts, and intense forms, of self-display. The kind of ‘shameless’ affectations we can see on young women’s social network site profiles may also be a way of resisting the dominant terms by which contemporary femininity is understood as normatively ‘melancholic’ or damaged.

‘If I don’t look good, it just doesn’t go up’: A qualitative study of young women’s drinking cultures and practices on Social Network Sites

“…In a separate analysis (not published here) of the young women's drinking photographs displayed on the SNS Facebook (Atkinson et al, 2015), photographs were found to reflect the notion of the hyper-sexual and feminine 'look', in that short skirts, fake tan and eye lashes, glamorous makeup and the heel in particular, were the basis of their carefully constructed appearance required for participating in nightlife (Bailey et al, 2015;Dobson, 2013;McRobbie, 2009). Photographs commonly depicted and regarded as the 'ideal photo' showed young women posing, in a group, wearing glamorous outfits and makeup, hand on hip, whilst smiling or pouting in a sexual manner, or pulling tongues, whilst holding wine or cocktails (Atkinson et al, 2015;Dobson, 2013).…”

“…Among this group of young women, SNS were discussed in ways that reinforced drinking as important to the friendship group by acting as an extension of the space in which they documented the fun and pleasurable interactions bound up with their active social lives as post-feminist subjects through uploading drinking photographs to SNS (Dobson, 2013;Goodwin et al, 2016;Hutton et al, 2016). Moreover, they provided the opportunity for being seen, for expressing popularity and for peer attention and appraisal through practices such as Facebook likes and comments .…”

“…As will be discussed, despite the positive, fun and social aspects of group drinking being displayed on SNS to document their active social lives, popularity and participation in public drinking spaces as post-feminist subjects (Brown and Gregg, 2012;Dobson, 2013), the overly positive online accounts of nights out drinking were the product of labour intensive self-management within the realms of traditional notions of respectability Hutton et al, 2016).…”

“…Photographs commonly depicted and regarded as the 'ideal photo' showed young women posing, in a group, wearing glamorous outfits and makeup, hand on hip, whilst smiling or pouting in a sexual manner, or pulling tongues, whilst holding wine or cocktails (Atkinson et al, 2015;Dobson, 2013).…”

“…Although research has begun to explore the growing role of SNS in young people's drinking cultures and the role that both SNS and alcohol play in identity formation and self-expression in a neo-liberal context (Lyons et al, 2014(Lyons et al, , 2015McCreanor et al, 2013;Niland et al, 2016), there remains a lack of UK based research exploring young women's own uses and meaning of SNS in their drinking cultures, and the display of drinking in the performance of femininities . As extensions of drinking spaces, SNS are an important area of enquiry, allowing us to explore the ways in which young women display drinking cultures and the difficulties and pressures they face in presenting the 'right' form of femininity in relation to drinking and intoxication (Bailey et al, 2015;Dobson, 2013;Hutton et al, 2016). SNS act as an additional space in which women face pressure to perform 'ideal' and narrowly defined femininity, where they experience the dilemmas in contemporary femininity created by drinking and intoxication, and the gender sexual/double standards placed upon them within contemporary drinking cultures .…”