Feminism Today: Self-branding and the Democratisation of the Female Body

Fact: women dominate social networking sites, with 54% of Facebook and Twitter accounts owned by females.

Females dominate Facebook and Twitter use,

according to Quantcast. [Image source: TechXav]

Thanks to social media’s self-branding functions¹, female users have democratised the dissemination of their image. But what are the rules of free speech in a public sphere that consists of personal personas?

According to a court ruling, women (and men) have a constitutional right to be naked online, even if it’s to post what Forbes calls “slutty photos of themselves”.

Social media has helped democratise images of the female body.

What does that mean for feminism today? [Image source: The Guardian]

Social Media’s High (and Low) Ideals

At its best, social media enables women to reach out to each other on the Internet and create feminist communities which direct the narrative of self² on their own terms.

At other times, social media alternatively democratises and trivialises representations of the female body.

While Editor Zed has sought to investigate the pitfalls of disaster Twitter, we realise that the feminising of Twitter and Facebook resonates more personally for us, a team of young women. We aim to investigate the space between the high and low ideals of social media and, as before, challenge existing cyber-utopian visions.

---

[1] Alison Hearn, “‘Meat, Mask, Burden’: Probing the Contours of the Branded ‘Self’”, Journal of Consumer Culture 8, no. 2 (2008): 198..

[2] Hearn, 199.