Radical vulnerability: selfies as a Femme-inine mode of resistance

ABSTRACT

In Western philosophy, vulnerability and femininity have been positioned as subordinate and weak. Reparative readings of selfies can offer a way to reclaim both vulnerability and femininity as generative, connective, and political. In this paper, I examine femme selfies collected during an online ethnography of femme Internet culture on Instagram. I draw from critical feminist scholarship on vulnerability and reparative readings of selfies to argue that selfies are a practice in vulnerability, and therefore a mode of embracing the feminine and feminine resistance. Using visual discourse analysis to read the selected selfies, I argue that femmes strategically mobilise vulnerability via selfies to (re)shape femme identity, create femme communities, and to make political claims about femme lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Femme
• vulnerability
• instagram
• selfies
• visual discourse analysis
• femme theory
• critical femininities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This term comes from queer theorist Sedgwick (2003), who offered ‘reparative reading’ as a way of finding pleasure in texts, rather than seeking only to be critical of them.

2. Cheng (2019) has also used the term ‘femme gaze’ to describe audience-driven narratives of queer women’s desire that transgress lesbian norms in Taiwan.

3. This stylisation originated on eBay.com to attract buyers to online auctions.

4. While the terms are often used interchangeably, Jaggar (1989) suggests we might understand ‘feelings’ as physiological or sensory, and ‘emotions’ as more cognitive and socially constructed (p. 153–9). Affect seems to fall somewhere in the middle – defined by its ‘in-between-ness’ – said to be a pre-cognitive, animating force that refers to ‘a body’s capacity to affect and be affected’ (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, pp. 1–2, emphasis in original).

5. Butches and femmes have had strong alliances since at least the 1940s. They enabled each other to ‘pass’ as heterosexual couple during the McCarthy era, for example, which was a critical survival strategy during a time of deep queer repression (see for example, Nestle, 1992). Butches and femmes continued to be allies as they were ostracised by lesbian feminism in the 1970s and 1980s for their gender and sexual expression that was said to mimic heteropatriachal norms (see for example, Hollibaugh & Moraga, 1992). Outside of political alliances, butch/femme eroticism has also been described as healing (Cvetkovich, 2003; Nestle, 1992). The strong history of eroticism and allyship has made butch and femme seem inseparable, which some femmes have sought to challenge in order to define femme as a distinct identity (see for example, Brushwood Rose & Camilleri, 2002).

6. The political nature of crying in public is also explored in a study of online femme grieving practices (Schwartz, 2018c).

7. Questions of authenticity have plagued the internet since its invention (see for example, Turkle, 1997).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andi Schwartz

Andi Schwartz has a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies from York University. Her research interests include femme subjectivities, critical femininities, online subcultures and coun- terpublics, and radical softness. Andi also holds a Master's in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies from York University and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. Her acad- emic work has been published in Psychology & Sexuality, First Monday, Feral Feminisms, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, and the anthology On the Politics of Ugliness, edited by Sara Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo. She co-authored a chapter on Carly Rae Jepsen for the anthology, The Spaces and Places of Canadian Pop Culture, edited by Neil Shyminsky and Victoria Kannen.