The Magaluf Girl: a public sex scandal and the digital class relations of social contagion

Abstract

This article takes a case study of a particular media scandal, generated from Twitter feeds and a YouTube posting which propelled a young woman, who became known as “The Magaluf Girl,” into infamy. From discussion on social media sites her story also quickly hit the national tabloid headlines, the broadsheet press, as well as broadcast television. This case study is revealing of the way in which historical class relations are part of the contemporary world of online misogyny, especially as it is fuelled by tabloid commercial and promotional culture. The initial posting was a video of the young woman apparently performing oral sex on 24 men at a bar in Magaluf as part of a party game where she had been told that she could win a “holiday”—that “holiday” turned out to be only a cocktail drink. This article is an attempt to trace how the story spread and produced the symbolic intensification (rather than transformation) of classed and gendered disgust. The article goes on to suggest that the power of this discursive framing serves to complicate the working-class girl’s right to privacy in the digital age.