Is this what a feminist looks like? Curating the feminist self in the neoliberal visual economy of Instagram

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social media, particularly image sharing platforms such as Instagram, has changed the nature of what it means to be “visible” in the contemporary political climate. The accessibility of Instagram offers hitherto unimaginable opportunities for users to perform their political beliefs. The feminist potential of Instagram as a platform is apparent in the number of overtly feminist accounts. Such accounts go some way towards harnessing the power of the spectatorial gaze by turning the camera on themselves as they challenge traditional constructions of gender and beauty and perform for an audience other than a presumed able-bodied, white, male, heterosexual spectator. This article analyses the potential of instagram as a site of feminist activism, resistance and visibility. Using examples from instagram accounts that engage in feminist discourse it demonstrates the ways in which Instagram facilitates the performance of feminist politics for its users. However it also interrogates the limits of Instagram as a space for feminist action. Taking into account the normative boundaries imposed by dominant neoliberal capitalist discourses and instagram’s own rules and regulations, it will explore the limitations of feminism on Instagram.