#micro-celebrities

[faceplant-bassplant-archive]

There are some new 196 micro-celebrities but where are the ones I know from reddit? Did they all moved to Tumblr? What are their names now? Identify yourselves!

[maisie-mitchell]

Week 6: Digital Citizenship and Health Education: Body Modification on Visual Social Media

With the increased representation of micro-celebrities on social media, body modifications are at an all-time high. Whether this is through beauty practices, lighting and posing, editing and photo-enhancing apps or surgical procedures. (Drenten, Gurrieri & Tyler, 2019) stated that "the body plays a critical role in the ‘selfies’ that are the end product of their prosumer labour." Influencers are using themselves as a selling point for products and brands and the way their body looks is seen as a fundamental factor in gaining attention.

Influencers are a type of ‘micro-celebrity,' which is a type of online presence where an individual attempts to grow their popularity through digital media technologies (Senft, 2012). In 2021, this is most popularly done on Instagram or TikTok. Creating a niche group of followers that are interested in what they are wearing, eating, doing etc... With digital communities like Instagram being predominantly about the appearance and look of things, these micro-celebrities are constantly shifting themselves to fit beauty standards. Apps like FaceTune or Photoshop are being used to slim waists or smooth skin so undetectably that the young impressionable audiences watching are questioning why they don't look like that and are wanting to permanently modify themselves through surgical procedures.

In this weeks reading it was discovered that statistics from 2017 by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery showed "42% of surgeons report that their patients are seeking aesthetic surgery to improve their appearance on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and other social media channels." (Dorfman, Vaca, Mahmood, Fine & Schierle, 2018). This statistic displays the extent that people will go to improve their online aesthetic and to match expectations.

'Sexualised labour' is becoming mainstreamed onto our social media feeds and it begs the question, are these women empowering us or just adding unrealistic beauty standards?

References

Drenten, J, Gurrieri, L & Tyler, M 2019, "Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention", Gender, Work & Organization, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 41-66.

Robert G Dorfman, Elbert E Vaca, Eitezaz Mahmood, Neil A Fine and Clark F Schierle 2018, ‘Plastic Surgery-Related Hashtag Utilization on Instagram: Implications for Education and Marketing’, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3, pp 332–338

Senft, T 2013, Microcelebrity and The Branded Self, 1st edn, Blackwell Publishing.