“I Click and Post and Breathe, Waiting for Others to See What I See”: On #FeministSelfies, Outfit Photos, and Networked Vanity

Abstract

This article critically examines the political uses and potential of “networked vanity.” While popular online practices of self-regard and self-promotion have been disparaged as examples of “digital narcissism”—a new culture of self-absorption wrought by social media—this article insists on a more historically and politically nuanced understanding of the politics and practices of self-composure. Analyzing the #feministselfie hashtag campaign that emerged on Twitter in November 2013 in which women (and to a lesser extent, men) silently but powerfully declared their self (or rather “selfie”) love and RAISE Our Story a project of visual activism that employs street style blog conventions and aesthetics to bring visibility to the issue of immigration reform, this article demonstrates how online acts of sartorial and corporeal displays of physical attractiveness are being incorporated into social activist movements in ways that recall and are coextensive with a longer multiracial history of vanity.

KEYWORDS:

• networked vanity
• #feministselfie
• digital activism
• RAISE Our Story
• politics of self-composure