Young people’s digitally-networked bodies: the changing possibilities of what a gendered body can be, do and become online

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on data from creative and visual group interviews undertaken in 2018 with five LGBTQ+ young people aged 15–18 years old in the South Wales valleys, this paper explores the gendered experiences of the body online. In line with wider research, participants illustrated that commodified gendered and sexualized norms were intensified online through the everyday forceful intrusion of idealized bodies and abusive body-shaming comments. However, they also pointed to the role of food and pet content in experiences of embodied pleasure and feeling good online. Inspired by feminist posthuman and new materialist scholarship, this paper examines how food and pet photography plugs into masculinizing and feminizing bodily assemblages. In so doing, it not only makes an empirical contribution to the field of gender studies, but also offers a contribution to the methodological literature by developing a theoretically informed approach, which expands the boundaries of what a gendered body may be, do and become online.