#femalebeauty, #socialmedia, #Instamodel, #Instafamous, #Instagram, #female #Instagrammers, #femaleInstagrammers, #ideology, #subjects, #fetishizinggaze, #identity, #fashion, #real, #representation, #aesthetic, #society, #internet, #teenager, #curves, #body, #gender, #woman, #sexualized, #idealized, #nofilter #algorithms, #image, #photographs
Despite the rise of the [body] positivity movement, when examining the top (most followed) 100 [female] [Instagrammers], it is clear that there is a very specific formula for the ideal [female beauty] standard. Although [social media] and the [internet] may perpetuate this notion that anyone from anywhere around the world can post and possibly become an [Insta model] or [Insta famous], it is clear that the [algorithm] embedded within [Instagram] pushes one specific “type” of the female.
[Instagram] perpetuates [female] and male [beauty] standards across the globe through the [internet]. For the purposes of this entry, I will be focusing specifically on [female beauty] standards. When considering a list of physical attributes such as hair color, hair length, neck length, face shape, [body] shape, eye color, flatness of stomach, lip size, eye size, nose size, skin color, chest size, butt size, age, and height, the top female [Instagrammers] are all seen to have the same sorts of characteristics. In her study, fitness blogger Cassie Ho found that the top [female Instagrammers] all had “large eyes, (typically brown) hair that reaches the mid-back, plump lips, and flat (but not muscular) abs” insider.com. She also found that only 5 out of the top 100 [female Instagrammers] were plus size, and only 8% were people of color. What does it say that only 8% of the top [female Instagramers] were people of color? The [ideology] of the “perfect [woman]” is usually an image of a white [woman], reinforcing colonialism, white supremacy, and Western [beauty] standards as the ideal way for a [woman] to look. However, are we able to contest this through an oppositional gaze as bell hooks suggests within “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”? Through adopting a confrontational and political gaze, can we fight this fetishization of women and this white supremacy that upholds this “ideal [woman]” as white?
The illusion that these Instagram models are [“real”] breaks down when you analyze their use of apps like photoshop and facetune to digitally enhance their [photo]s. The [ideology] of the most beautiful [woman] is reproduced on the [Instagram] app; however, we ourselves as [subjects] are also reproducing [ideology] constantly within our culture. As Althusser states in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, ideologies are enacted in material practices, which makes us not individuals but [subjects]. [Instagram] is a [social] platform where we as [subjects] can reproduce, unconsciously, the [ideology] of the most perfect, beautiful [woman]. The [Instagram] [algorithm] is even involved in this ideological reproduction as it continues to push and promote these top followed accounts to people around the world. Furthermore, this ideological [female] body type is subject to the male gaze and the [fetishizing gaze]. As Laura Mulvey states in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, women connote this to-be-looked-at-ness. As the male spectator scrolls, his [gaze] flows across the screen, and the [female Instagrammer] easily becomes the [subject] of his fetishization. Although these females have the autonomy and the power to post any [image] of themselves, rather than be subject to a male director’s camera movements and edits, they still, as [subjects], reproduce the [ideology] of a perfect [woman] that falls under the [fetishized gaze] of the male spectator.
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