Aesthetic normalization of gender in the Instagram application: A portrait of the Brazilian woman

Abstract

Social media’s embedded artificial intelligence (AI) plays a role as a behavior shaping in modern society. Two crucial aspects of this tool are related to content production and reproduction that allow exceptional dissemination capacity while creating a feeling of engagement among users. This research aims to assess the aesthetic normalization of brazilian women as portrayed on Instagram's top-ranked content. Data analysis follows a two-step methodological approach that searches and stores public profile’s meta-images as displayed on Instagram and, then, automatically processes gender labeling and features classification according to pre-selected aesthetic standards commonly associated with Brazilian women. A human auditing process was set to increase accuracy in the sample categorization. Methodology development uses état de l'art developments of computer visions and a semi-supervised Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) machine learning model. The typical woman is portrayed in full-body, dressed in swimming suits or gym-outfit, and aged around 30 years old. Altogether, the results suggest the recurrence of real-world aesthetic-related stereotypes for Brazilian women on Instagram.