Social media, dress and body marking: exploring young women's imaginative, “languages of the self”

Abstract

abstractThis article is inspired by mixed methodology techniques that deepen and extend upon a long-standing tradition of archiving the quotidian experiences of ordinary South Africans through empirical research. By tapping into popular imaginaries and the liberatory potential of young women's use of social media and performance of embodied subjectivities in the post-apartheid imaginary, everyday interactions on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are incorporated to demonstrate a shared on-line social space for attention to body politics. The article integrates abstract (feminist) theory in practical ways by utilising creative and visual methodologies strategically to reveal young women who are participants with political questions about liberation, independence and social belonging. Here “body-talk” can be theorised as an action of resistance mediated by the visceral, affective, sentimental and sensual expressions of femininity. The article focuses on various visual and textual ways in which young women in Cape Town make sense of their social identities, understandings of freedom and potential as social actors. The contemporary multicultural democracy encompasses the spirit of an imagined community in which an unravelling or untidiness of difference in terms of race, sex, class and sexuality open up spaces for conversation around meanings of bodyhood. The entanglement of femininity, affect and body politics with social identities are not separable from young women's search for citizenship and social belonging. This search surfaces in the need to share experiences about what constitutes the everyday experience of a young woman's existence, and strategies of self-expression. Ultimately, “body-talk” is shown to inform practical wisdom about the everyday but more importantly, engages progressive social change and new forms of thinking around the “knowing subject” and young women as knowledge producers about themselves and their bodies.