Breannah Worthy - BGM

[breannahworthy-blog]

Social Media Self

One immediate affect that came to me after this week’s readings was the differences between Facebook and Twitter. I specifically leave all my inappropriate humor, and quick judgmental  and without purpose rants to twitter. As for Facebook, my Facebook represents my perfect me. Only the best pictures, best quotes, encouraging statuses, and anything that exemplifies that I am making the right moves in life. I use to think that I created the two platforms like that because of my selection of “friends” on each social media platform. My Facebook includes family, co-workers, old classmates, and potential employers and my twitter contains peers of my age and social background, celebrities, and online personalities. However I wouldn’t say that one site represents the fake me or the real me.  Both are me just different layers of me and levels of appropriateness. In the article by Tanya Kent she speaks on the re-appropriation on social media elements that make a reflection to self. For myself I play a word game that requires me to share what level I am on the game in with my Facebook friends in order for me to receive helpful hints. However sometimes I don’t want to share it on my page because I feel like I am annoying people or that my game is corny. I may not want everybody to know that I am playing that game. Or another element is the like button which Facebook has recently changed up. Sometimes people post sad things or even things that require more emotion than just a like. If a person post that their child is in the hospital, I don’t want to “like” it. Or if my friend post that she just broke up with her boyfriend, again I don’t want to “like” it but I still may want to show my acknowledgement that I seen her post and that I am here for her. They changed that in the app updates allowing users to use different emotions to pick on a status. Such has sad, laughing, love, and more. This week’s reading made me more cognitive on how I am really represented through my social media pages.

[breannahworthy-blog]

Week 5: Cyberutopia

When it comes to the internet and its ability to intersect with real life one must take into consideration the impact of apps. Apps specific to social media such as SnapChat and Instagram are designed to bring people together. To share moments and glimpse of real life. Our apps on our phones have become our security blankets to avoid real life awkward moments. Photos original use were to share memories for your self and people you shared those memories with. Now photos on these social media apps are used to judge people as to what kind of person they are. Users as well as application developers have now developed ways to enhance physical features on those moments and glimpses of real life. The filters on Snapchat and Instagram blur blemishes, pronounce curves, apply make up, and whiten teeth. This feature specifically targets women and persons who identify with women gender roles. 

Other users who use these apps see these enhanced photos and hold these people real life selves to reflect their snapchat selves. Snapchat creates a cyberutopia because using these facial filters on SnapChat degenderizes a person because it can reconstruct the face. For example, the dog filter. On average a person would say a small puppy is cute. The dog filter puts any face into dog filter replacing the ears, mouth and nose. Other examples of filters are the Bob Marley filter, the flower crown filter, and alien filter. It gives every person who takes the picture that same appealing face. “This cyber utopian theme relies primarily on the principle of disembodiment. Leaving behind the body an its associated sex, gender, sexuality, race, religion, disability and so on.” Digital inequality is still apparent in app use. The most clear inequality would be for people who do not have smart phones who simply would not have access. Inequalities extend to people with poorer quality smartphones as well as access to wifi and data sources. Even an app created to bring people together and identify as one is not able to escape the same discrimination and judgment of real life.

[ajonesy4791-deactivated20171128]

Week 4

In the article Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: an investigation of suicidegirls.com by Shoshana Magnet, she portrays the resistance online through women who do not fit ones typical image when envisioning sexual, nude photographs. However, these women display the image of punk women with a great deal of tattoos and piercings. The twist to the website is these explicit photos are not simply put for ones viewing pleasure, but have a more in depth meaning placed behind them by attaching a blog to the photo about life experiences they have endured (Magnet, 2007). Ultimately, this website is exclusive to a specific “type” of woman and is not equal to all. We see this all around — from websites to big name companies. While others are welcome to view the site, an individual must fit a certain image to be exclusively involved. Another example of this is Victorias Secret. Victorias Secret promotes women being sexy in their product, however, there is huge lack of diversity amongst their models. While anybody can purchase VS products, the representation of their products can be misleading. The models consist of tall, toned, light skinned girls. To me, this is the same concept that surrounds the idea of suicidegirls.com  On the flip side of Victorias Secret, is Aerie. Aerie is the lingerie brand for American Eagle that launched a game changing campaign with real models that were not airbrushed. They advertised flaws amongst girls with all different body types. While many girls fantasize about achieving the looks of a Victoria Secret model, it is not real. I feel that within society we need to normalize normal again. Varying body types, stretch marks, cellulite, different skin colors, acne, etc., is all normal! Yet we have these sites that are exclusive to girls that only fit a certain image. What type of company would you want to represent?

VS

[breannahworthy-blog]

These body campaigns for real girls are invigorating. And while I am proud to see a company like Aerie and others displaying real model with what we would call flaws and blemishes, it is not Aerie who has to have the courage. It us woman who buy women’s products who set the tone for what we want. When we express how we feel about our products and their representation of the female gender we want to be heard. Luckily technology supports us to do that. These companies have Facebooks, Instagrams, Twitters, an Snapchats that we can communicate with on a customer based level. Our response supports they’re corporate decisions. A good example would be the young girl who stood in protest in from out Seventeen magazine head quarters and pivoted the change of Seveteen magazine being an airbrushed free publication. If we want to see a change in the images forced to us we have to respond so that it is understood that there are so many stages of sexy.

[breannahworthy-blog]

Perpetuated Online Racism

In this week’s readings, the case study of the “emoji” keyboard showcased how racism and colorism can be perpetuated in a system that was designed to be inclusive. Unfortunately, it is not the technology that has brought upon racism but the users themselves. For example, now that the emoji keyboard allows the user the option to change the skin tone of the “avatar” some may explain that giving the emoji’s skin tones moves them from being models of expression to representational of people.

 Now that users can manipulate the emoji to represent themselves they can also us the emoji to represent others. Such as a white supremacist group using a dark skin emoji to represent black people and then commenting with racial slurs. Or even people of the same race such as African-Americans dividing themselves among light skin people vs. dark skin people because the variations of brown skin tones. A new cyber place that I can see there is inequalities reproduced beside the attempt to be inclusive is google searches. For example, when googles searches a name that would be given to a person of the dominant white culture such Mary Keller, social media accounts and positive connotative sites are associated with the name. However, when a name primarily associated with African American people such as Tyrone Johnson, jail bondsman sites and sites associated with arrest records are populated. This could be especially discerning when thinking of the possibility that future employers may take that route to seek additional information about a perspective employee. Again, these prejudice outcomes are not embedded into the algorithms of the google search rather the next popular clicked sites to those name associations.These cyber spaces have the potential to be neutral like the yellow men the Lego creators made but it is the use of the people and society that allow for inequalities to surface in technology.

[breannahworthy-blog]

Good Evening Everyone!

My name is Breannah Worthy and I am a liberal studies major graduating in May 2017. It feels great to be in my final courses discussing content that I choose discuss and that is relevant to my real life. I chose this class because I have enjoyed all my previous Women’s Studies courses and thought it would be a good idea to continue taking more specific courses in Women’s Studies. Cyberfeminism was most interesting because I really had no idea how the two would link. Now that I have had an opportunity to read some of the readings for this week I realize that I have been exposed to Cyberfeminism more than I originally thought through. Ways that cyberfeminism is webbed into my own life includes YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.

 I first was introduced to YouTube simply searching for new ways to do my hair. My hair can be unmanageable at times and I thought I could get useful tips from other girls who shared my similar hair texture. What I found was so much more than just a few simple tips. I found girls that not only shared my similar hair texture and could achieve attractive styles but they also opened their world and allowed me to see that I also shared other similarities in areas such as family, school, boyfriends, religion, and even weight. To see girls, talk on the internet about issues that I secretly was insecure about helped me to be prideful and build my self-esteem back up. Some of my first You tubers I subscribed to included ItsMyRayeRaye and Fabulosityisme. I’ve never seen these girls in person or even wrote a comment on their page but I they both have brought so much to the free time in my life. I don’t have hours of free time a day but on average I spend about 10-15 hours a week on some type of social media for what you could describe as meditation purposes. These videos get me through the day and it feels good to put a name to a method. Cyberfeminism.