The role of women in the society has been a subject of interest especially following the emergence of feminism that targets to empower woman across the globe. The female body has been the center of debate throughout history with different cultures presenting varied opinions on the way a woman should present herself. The evolution of photography has been of major focus because it enhanced the way images would be shared in a globalized world with conflicts arising as a result of the differences in cultural appreciation of a woman’s body image. As a result, women have for a long time been placed at the center of photographers’ attention to catch the attention of the interested audience (Muto 2015, n.p.). The phallic social order developed a widespread interest to distribute and capture commercially the nudity of the female. The initial naked ‘beauty” daguerreotypes appeared in 1855, where the female nudity taboo became widely available and suddenly exposed to the fantasized male gender. Gifted photographers with a sensibility of the arts started to explore the new technology in a much proper manner through further exploration of compositional factors of the way female body needs to be represented. The emergence of photo compositions has attempted to reflect the poetic ambiance of the fragile psychological beauty of the female figure. Additionally, the image of women body has often been objectified or sexualized for marketing campaigns.
The society today seems to define that the perfect body for a woman should be that which is thin as it is supposed to the one that is associated with success in the contemporary world. The result has been a craze for women as they desire to get the perfect body which in truth is not the normal body but rather a fabrication by the male gaze on what constitutes the female beauty.
Figure 1. An image showing the objectification of women (Zazzle 2018, n.p.)
The advert above is a good representation of objectification and sexualisation of women. Many other adverts at the time portrayed women in the same way. Fashion is another industry in which women’s bodies are objectified: fashion dictates the ideal standard for women’s bodies. Both are industries in which women’s bodies are subjected to the scrutiny of male and female gaze.
Figure 2. An image depicting the ideal body of a female (Muto 2015, n.p.)
When feminism was on course for the first time, women started to change the way they perceived themselves, as they shifted their perception from the structured ideal that described that the perfect wife was supposed to be clean and sexually attractive. The movement claimed that women did not deserve to be thought of as objectives anymore, as there was a need for freedom of their actions and how they represent themselves. The with technological advances and increased social media reach, self-representation has become an everyday habit. If one was not famous before, their body would not be exposed to others. The trend has changed since because nowadays everyone can represent and show their faces, body using filters to play or arrange their images, showing what they are doing in which places and their “to do list” in a daily basis. In the contemporary world, one could get famous on social media if they learned the art of “selling” themselves to please male and female gaze, using social media as a workspace. Furthermore, the present society presents two different type of women representation. To compare those methods of representation the study has chosen to analyse the work of the photographer and feminist activist Zanele Muholi against the social media queen Kim Kardashian (Lake 2014, p. 72).
Chapter 1
It is critical to examine the female body representation through images mainly in the fashion industry. The fashion industry is most popular and it is influenced by attitudes such as popular culture and media. However, the fashion industry has enforced an unrealistic picture of the female gender to the society through the media worldwide. The fashion media is continuously widening the female gender gap through the use of beauty enhancers, sexualised images, publicizing flesh, and promoting skimpy clothing revealing fashion through popular designs and vogue campaigns. From the upshot of celebrity beauty and fashion culture to advertising on young girls’ and women’s body images, to chronic under female representation news subjects, the attitude of the society is moulded by the social media and wider cultural women representations. (Wissinger 2016, p. 142). According to Wissinger (2016, p. 144), glamour labour for models encompasses physical work on the body, for instance, gym, dieting, cosmetic surgery. However, currently it concerns not models. Wissinner (2016, p. 145) believes that all the people, especially women, should do glamour labour to deliberately present a visual self. This tendency is most recognizable on social media, mainly Instagram. However, social media at large offers a platform for the exhibit form that not only objectifies women as sex-awes but also as commodities and its norm. It would be a fair game, if fashion ads and designers objectified representation of men the way do women. Moreover, mainstream social media depicts women objectification at an alarmingly higher rate when contrasted to man.
It appears that going by the media representation, the society today does not seem to perceive anything wrong with a half-naked female’s body as the cover picture for a fashion magazine. The society does not concern when vogue fashions women are sexually arousing and flesh revealing as it appears as normal and cultural. Therefore, the culture of frivolous fashion advertises to girls and women a hurtful fiction that their worth is based on how sexy they appear to others. Other women portrayals in fashion ads for example normally exhibit a woman caressing an object, eyes closed not alert and confused, woman touching self, dressed like a child, body contorted, seductive, holding a man or an object for support, lying on the floor, and sitting on a chair or bed. A culture which is sexed-up not only objectifies women, but also encourages young women and girls to objectify themselves. Women self-objectification occurs when a female adopts a form of self-consciousness where they habitually screen their outward appearance of the body and pay significant attention to the way others perceive their physical appearance. In turn, the perceptions shade unrealistic expectations by men on the way women have to behave or look. Therefore, since fashion media promotes skinny models, girls and women go all miles to attain the TV fashionable size of a model. Women and girls internalize all messages of fashion trends as what society deems equate and beautiful that with their self-worth.
The present-day culture has created a societal pressure especially among the females that is based on the “ideal body image.” As per Orbach (2016, p. 370), the society seems to be more obsessed with the women’s body shape and size, where thinness and fatness are still perceived as markers of person’s worth. Models are getting smaller and younger, often resembling the undeveloped tween’s bodies or the teenagers. The thin body shape is still the constant ideal to aspire to, although all other body-based objectives from clothes, makeup, and hairstyles regularly change over the seasons. Products and images presented to the general public by the mass media are still trying to nurture the concept that women need to possess the thin ideal body. With the new mobile phone technology and social media, self-representation and sexual objectification of women is an even more widespread, bigger issue now that it was during the second wave feminism.
As described in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Mulvey (2003, p. 50) comments on the notion of the male gaze in cinema, a concept which also functions when applied to advertising. Mulvey believes that individuals behind the camera is perpetually male, making the constructed image an active view and a male-dominated, thus creating the female as a passive object to be looked upon. Considering that women images in media are framed to be viewed as a passive object, women also perceive themselves as objects with disastrous results. Self-objectification takes place when an individual has an intense awareness of their outward appearance and starts to view themselves from the perspective of the third person. Individuals who self-objectify always have an obsession about themselves, hence comparing themselves to images found in social media platforms such as Instagram which they tend to believe to be real. The perception is, therefore, leading today’s female to have an aspiration to attain an appearance which matches one portrayed in the media.
Chapter 2
2.1 Social Media
The role of social media within the last decade has been critical in defining the way people live and how they relate in every sphere. It has revolutionized the way people communicate, interact, and the spread of information on any subject that they are interested. Social media can be defined as a series of application and websites designed to allow individuals to share content efficiently, quickly, and in time. In other words, social media is any form of website which allows people to interact socially. Today, most teenagers and adults are joining sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Myspace, Snapchat, and Twitter to interact with strangers, family, and friends (Shellabarger 2016, n.p.). However, social media introduction has changed the world as well as people in several ways as it influences each individual in different ways. Furthermore, social media can be utilized as a very powerful tool in changing life of people, although at the same time lead to conflicts which can negatively affect an individual. While there are some negative linked with use of social media, the positives in communication across the globe, has made the world a better and a stronger place to live in.
Social can be differentiated from the traditional broadcast media in various ways. Perloff (2014) comments that social media is a more interactive platform when contrasted with traditional broadcast media, and thus offers users with more agency to control and personalise theirs experience. Users have an option of selecting the platform of social media and expressive tools that suit their personality and needs. Along with the personalisation sense, social media has a more relationally motivated and identity-based nature compared to traditional media since it encourages users to exhibit their unique selves as well interact with other users on a personal level. As such, social media has emerged an important tool for people to create and maintain their online and offline reputations and relationships. Furthermore, social media consists of relational communication and identity display which shows that these venues might possess varying audience effects from traditional media. Numerous studies demonstrate that consumption of mass media can influence several dimensions of users’ body image. However, the connection between social media and body image remain less clear.
2.1.1 Instagram
Social media has developed more non-text form of media like Snapchat or Instagram. Instagram is defined as a social networking app that is popular among the millennial generation designed for sharing videos and photos from a smartphone to their personalised, and further disseminate the information by linking through other social media accounts. To start using Instagram, an individual, corporation, or group need to register an account and the offer specifications of some fundamental profile information. Once an individual to the application, the user is allowed to upload videos and pictures, apply digital filters to the pictures, and also share them in various social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Twitter. The most significant and distinctive feature of Instagram is that it confines pictures into a square shape which is similar to Polaroid and Kodak instamatic image. Additionally, Instagram is made of six tabs which a user can utilise to navigate within the application including camera tab, home tab, profile tab, news tab, explore tab, and photo map. The profile tab is used to indicate the user’s Instagram photos or videos and bio. The tab can also be used to edit the profile of change the settings of the account. The camera tab is used to take pictures using the Instagram camera or share the device’s gallery photos. News tab is used to exhibit comments and likes on the post of the user. The home tab shoes photos’ feed posted by the user and their friends. Lastly, the user can utilise explore tab to search for new and interesting people to follow, find other users, and navigate hashtags. Since 2010, Instagram has emerged to be an app that is used by millions of individuals and currently becoming a profitable mobile app. For instance, Users on Instagram has increased, there are 800 millions of users on September 2017 for 400 million in two years. Instagram’s popularity is often associated with the upsurge of a new social phenomenon known as selfie which is a self-portrait style photographs (Tiidenberg & Gómez Cruz 2015, p. 77). The phenomenon of selfie has acquired a great deal of public attention, where selfie emerged as the 2013 word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. Regardless of its social importance, the phenomenon of selfie is till comparatively untested in the scholarly community. The void is noteworthy since selfies might aid users of Instagram exhibit their identities in a body-centric or physical manner such as the case of photos shared by showing breastfeeding mothers (Locatelli 2017, p.5). A focus of selfie on physical form might lead to unintended relations for users who have different confidence levels and comfort with their bodies. The current study aims to address the issue by investigating the selfie posting and taking prevalence among young women and girls of the millennial generation, while endeavouring to examine whether the frequency of selfie posted and taken to Instagram are associated with users; sense of body dissatisfaction and users’ actual body size. The knowledge obtained in the study will aid identify the degree to which the trend of selfie is linked to larger issues women body representations.
2.2 Selfie Culture
A new culture among women in the contemporary world is the emergence of the selfie for taking cameras. The subject has attracted feminist attention as it is described to be a new dimension for objectification of women. The selfie culture appears to have motivated many young girls and women to internalize stereotypical narratives on female sexuality and beauty. Another related and critical question that has been of concern has been whether it is appropriate to perceive the selfie as a self-portrait. The selfie could be the new self-portrait as it is made with new technologies which conduct to different methods. If one was to take pictures of themselves before turning the camera or put a timer to be able to have their face plus or less in the frame, then they would be though to have used the selfie as a self-portrait. With the advances in technology, it is easy to just at one’s phone with the front face camera and take a picture. It still a capture of a moment that the individual decides to catch. Technology has increased the amount of it, it does not cost anything to take a selfie, save it, share it or delete it the choice is multiple. With previous technology, the process was much longer. The selfie culture brings quantity, everyday life diary, autobiography and self-construction (Tiidenberg & Gómez Cruz 2015, p. 79).
As per most people, selfies encourage preoccupation with self-image which is intensified through editing filters and facilities that allow individuals to display their best look. Others argue that selfies display people general appearance since it makes individuals focus on the flaws, blemishes, and imperfections. Moreover, taking as well as posting selfies draws attention to how one looks especially young ladies and women. While posting a selfie is not gender or age specific, women -especially young women-appear in a significant number of photos and are always tagged by other Instagram users. Other women state that they untag themselves from the photos as they are not satisfied with their appearance. However, body dissatisfaction among girls and women has been an issue for many years as it is not unrelated to the long standing pressures on women, who are judged against a blemish-free, young, and slim ideal. For some time now, psychological studies have argued that social norms nurtures women to embrace the beauty standards, for instance, through pursuing a natural look by dieting and cosmetic dieting. Today’s social value nurture the body ideals (blemish-free, young, and slim) and such young girls and women are promoted to believe their bodied are an ongoing betterment project hence positioning women under a continuous pressure to improve their physical appearance.
A research on women representation on Instagram found while young girls and women do invest in generating a good photo of themselves, having a good appearance was not only aim of generating a good selfie (Locatelli 2017, p.6). As per the study, young girls and women reported that the selected images for upload expressed something real or authentic about themselves. Additionally, posting a good looking pictures, through use of filters or other type of editing, is not merely about faking a perfect look online. Scholars have discovered that individuals reported utilising filters to generate photos look like themselves to correct the distortions produced by photo technologies. Studies have also show that young adults generally display a fairly accurate representation of their offline identity on social media
2.3 Female Body Image
Body image is used to refer to the attitudes and perceptions that people hold about their own bodies in relation to significant expectations of the culture. Body image is essential since it comprises of making cultural and social comparisons that might feed into an individual’s sense of larger self-worth and physical attractiveness. Although body image is crucial for both male and female, the theory of objectification suggests that women are more likely to be perceived as sexual and physical objects whose social worth can be based on the body appearance. As such, young girls and women are more likely to take part in self-objectification forms that confirm the connection sense between their sense of self-worth and physical bodies.
Expectations’ or perceptions regarding the ideal female body shape and size have differed across culture and time. In today’s Western society, the female body that is considered as ideal, typically, involves forms of thinness that is likely to range from athletic and toned to lanky and slim. For millennial women, the current privileging of the thin female body could have significant ramifications. Over half of the US adult population can be categorised as obese or overweight, which shows a growing sense of discrepancy between social norms and real bodies of female body beauty. Indeed, around half of American girls between 11 and 16 years report unhappiness due to their body image. IndividualsTechnological advances that indicated there is a correlation between self-esteem and body image among young adult women (Rettberg 2014). Rettberg affirms that the way women perceived themselves is also likely to have an impact on the way they behave in a particular setting. Other researchers have noted that individuals who have a poor sense of body image are more likely to have physical and mental issues such as eating disorders. However social media platforms such as Instagram are often cited as culprit behind the increasing pattern and trend of body dissatisfaction among young girls and women. Instagram tends to portray women of below average thinness, and airbrushes and retouches their subjects until they achieve unrealistically perfect levels of physical beauty. Young girls and women are likely to develop issues of body image if they compare themselves to social norms of beauty as exhibited in the Instagram representations. Indeed, the perceptions of idealistically thin physical media models has been discovered to correlate with negative body image.
Chapter 3: Comparisions
3.1 Zanele Muholi
Zanele Muholi born on 19th July1972, from South Africa. Zanele Muholi is a photographer and a visual activist who was born in Umlazi, Durban, and lives in Johannesburg. The self-proclaimed mission of Zanele Muholi is to write South Africa’s black queer as well as trans-visual history again in order to know the existence and resistance at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond. Zanele is dedicated to rising the visibility of the black gay, lesbian, intersex, and transgender people. Through her approach in arts Zanele Muholi has a vision to document the journey of the queer community in Africa as a record for future generations (Lake 2014, p. 69). Therefore, Zanele’s work focuses on sexuality representations of the women. In regards to woman body representations in the social media, queer women and lesbian are often perceived as individuals who do not strain to pursue the dominant cultural ideal of thinness in the society since they do not pursuit for men’s approval and thus “immune” to the cultural embedded slenderness norm. Gauntlett contends that bisexual, gay, and lesbian individuals are under-represented in the social media, although tolerance of sexual diversity has been slowly emerging in society.
Through her work, Zanele Muholi demonstrates that norms and ideals of body image as well as self-presentation in the lesbian sub-culture is very different from the mainstream heterosexual culture. She portrays that lesbians have larger body ideals when contrasted with heterosexual women, and tend to heavier themselves. Further, Zanele Muholi through her work she shows that lesbians also value strong and fit bodies as they opt for a more androgynous physical appearance (Lake 2014, p. 69).
Figure 3. An image of Zanele Muholi obtained from (Mocaa 2018, n.p.).
3.2 Kimberly Kardashian
Kim Kardashian was born in 21st October 1980. Kim Kardashian is the number one on social media for representing and exposing her body, life and way to live. She constructed her fame using social media as a workspace. Furthermore, Kardashian gained social media attention at first as a stylist and friend, although she later acquired a wider notice after a sex tape in 2003 which was leaked to the media in 2007. Currently, Kim Kardashian has grown an influential social media and online presence, tracing back her roots to the Kardashian clan who have placed a value of the body within certain regimes (Wissinger 2016, p. 141). She has primarily focused on glamour labor, which constitutes dedicating time and effort into editing the body to appear polished.. Furthermore, in her work she portrays the ideal body of a woman in Instagram as curvy rather than thin as demonstrated by most feminists.
Figure 4. An image of Kimberley Kardashian (A&E Television Networks 2018, n.p.)
Kim Kardashian is perceived as a queen of social media. Kim Kardashian has portrayed the black female body as the opposite of the ideal body “thinness” as she presents herself in the social media as curvy woman. The female body has particularly been of major concern for the black population because of the different perception on the ideal body shape that a black woman ought to have. Additionally, she is the decisive endorsement for a positive body image.
Conclusion
The woman in the society and her image in social media are arguably among the most discussed subjects in the contemporary world. The emergence of feminism has attempted to bring order and give women the power to overcome the social order that places them below men. However, the advances have had a negligible impact on the way the society perceives a woman’s body with their objectification and used to please mean becoming a hot topic. The society itself does not seem to have focus on the need to empower women but instead it has put pressure on what the ideal shape and appearance of a woman should be to be acceptable. The outcome has been a rise in the sharing of women’s images on social media especially with the increased internet access and the emergence of the selfie world that has changed the whole concept of social networking. The role played by celebrities has also been significant in the revolution of how the society thinks about what a perfect woman ought to possess. Thus, going by the findings, it implies that the subject ill still attract interest from parties across all cultures with the emergence of globalization and even faster networking.
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