Challenging Normative Beauty Ideals by Undressing Online? Body Acceptance, Identity Politics and Construction of Non-normativity : A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

• This thesis is concerned with the problematics of contemporary identity politics of body acceptance as situated in the visibility logics of digital media. It examines how seemingly progressive narratives of body-acceptance can rely on normative discourses and dominant ideologies. Thus, it carries out a case study of an American online body-acceptance platform called StyleLikeU which claims to strive for social change by challenging normative beauty ideals. StyleLikeU, also claims to create visibility for everyone, interviews individuals as they take off their clothes while talking about their experiences of suffering due to their non-normativities. This study applies multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the textual, visual and audio-visual online content created by StyleLikeU. Theoretically, the Foucauldian understanding of neoliberal governmentality is applied. Moreover, emotional capitalism is mobilised in terms of the commodification of affect and affective publics of digital media. Lastly, postfeminism is adopted and viewed through the lens of depoliticisation and inclusion. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on how SLU represents its movement, its actions, its participants and its aims as an online movement. The study concludes that although StyleLikeU claims to challenge normative beauty ideals, it heavily relies on normative neoliberal, postfeminist and middle-class discourses around identities, bodies, beauty and suffering. The study also finds that while StyleLikeU claims to liberate people from normative judgements of beauty with their online content, it creates a new category of non-normativity of its own. The study argues that StyleLikeU makes use of online content to create and sustain affective publics by highlighting personal experiences of suffering which, in turn, become colonised and commodified as they are situated in the landscape of emotional capitalism.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Medievetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Media Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Body positivity

self-acceptance

identity politics

online social movements

non-normativity

multimodal critical discourse analysis

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

dok (subject category)