“Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity
Taking seriously the global trend of selfies becoming marketable and entangled in ecologies of commerce, this article looks at Influencers who have emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers and for whom taking selfies is a purposively commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. Based on i...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/79388 |
| _version_ | 1848764045470990336 |
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| author | Abidin, Crystal |
| author_facet | Abidin, Crystal |
| author_sort | Abidin, Crystal |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Taking seriously the global trend of selfies becoming marketable and entangled in ecologies of commerce, this article looks at Influencers who have emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers and for whom taking selfies is a purposively commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and grounded theory analysis, I examine Influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram and their appropriations of selfies as salable objects, as tacit labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity. Through these practices, Influencers achieve “subversive frivolity,” which I define as the under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of an object or practice arising from its (populist) discursive framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:13:07Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-79388 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:13:07Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-793882020-08-05T01:13:23Z “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity Abidin, Crystal Social Sciences Communication selfies social media Instagram Influencer gendered labor Singapore Taking seriously the global trend of selfies becoming marketable and entangled in ecologies of commerce, this article looks at Influencers who have emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers and for whom taking selfies is a purposively commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and grounded theory analysis, I examine Influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram and their appropriations of selfies as salable objects, as tacit labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity. Through these practices, Influencers achieve “subversive frivolity,” which I define as the under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of an object or practice arising from its (populist) discursive framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive. 2016 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/79388 10.1177/2056305116641342 English http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Social Sciences Communication selfies social media Influencer gendered labor Singapore Abidin, Crystal “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title | “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title_full | “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title_fullStr | “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title_full_unstemmed | “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title_short | “Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity |
| title_sort | “aren’t these just young, rich women doing vain things online?”: influencer selfies as subversive frivolity |
| topic | Social Sciences Communication selfies social media Influencer gendered labor Singapore |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/79388 |