A tale of girl-sends-nudes-to-boy? Unscripting sexting in a Dutch school

ABSTRACT

Most studies of sexting attempt to delineate its main characteristics, to define it and quantify its prominence and its effects. This article studies sexting within a specific ethnographic case. Based on an ethnographic case of a girl’s nude picture being disseminated in a secondary school in the Netherlands, this paper argues that sexting is scripted through media and scientific reports, influencing the way it comes into being and is dealt with in practice. The script emphasizes the girls’ responsibility in sending the picture, taking it to signal a lack of self-confidence, and emphasizes her guilt in its dissemination. On the other hand, it erases several elements, notably the different networks of friends that were tapped into by the actors, and the ‘economy of pictures’ that the picture was part of. Focusing extensively on the days immediately after the picture was spread, as well as on reflections on the event several months later, shows how the sexting script not only describes the phenomenon of sexting, but also prescribes how it is dealt with in practice, and, to a degree, how it produces sexting.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexuality
• social media
• youth
• sexting
• script

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained from the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. All names of schools, towns and respondents are pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.

2. The fieldwork for this paper was conducted before critical conversations about victim-blaming became more mainstream, sparked by the #MeToo movement and a highly mediatized case of allegations of sexual misconduct in the talent show The Voice of Holland (see Prosecutors investigate claims of abuse on Dutch version of The Voice, The Guardian 2022).

3. Tellingly, the pupils present did not respond to the part of the story in which Zoe was supposedly hit by Akhil. Zoe avoided talking about this during our interview and I could not verify this allegation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fund for Scientific Research of Sexuality (FWOS, Project 12.001-w) and by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, VI.Veni.211S.047).

Notes on contributors

Willemijn Krebbekx

Willemijn Krebbekx is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focuses on youth, sexuality and sex education.