Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia
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 mu...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
2014
|
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68002 |
| _version_ | 1848761715622150144 |
|---|---|
| author | Dobson, Amy |
| author_facet | Dobson, Amy |
| author_sort | Dobson, Amy |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:36:05Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-68002 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:36:05Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-680022018-09-19T01:07:25Z Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia Dobson, Amy 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. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68002 10.1177/0959353513510651 restricted |
| spellingShingle | Dobson, Amy Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title | Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title_full | Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title_fullStr | Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title_full_unstemmed | Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title_short | Performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: Shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| title_sort | performative shamelessness on young women's social network sites: shielding the self and resisting gender melancholia |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68002 |