Grotesque Bodies and the Teenage Girl's Social Life

Amy Shields Dobson's piece, "The 'grotesque body' in young women's self presentation on MySpace" stuck out to me in her application of Bakhtin's grotesque body theory. This theory compares the classical body, as depicted by Renaissance-era statues, that are very "closed," most notably their mouth, to the grotesque body of social festivities, which is open-mouthed and more "vulgar." In relation to MySpace photo galleries, this theory is presented by Dobson as a proliferation of grotesque bodies presented by young girls, with open-mouth poses, alcohol consumption, and mimicked sex acts.

I can relate to this piece because in high school, a certain set of female friends would periodically post albums of forty or more images to Facebook. Often titling them as a "Photoshoot," which would more directly connect with Dobson's depiction of fashion magazines as the classical body than the tabloidish grotesque body, these albums contained photos of the girls in various states of undress, miming sexual acts on one another. I cannot recall exactly, but these albums likely utilized terms like "hoes," "sluts," and "wifeys" in their captions, as Dobson also cites in her article.

Other students would openly discuss when these albums were posted, discussing these girls' outfits, poses, and captions. In some ways, the way these "photoshoots" were consumed by other students reflected Mulvey's concept of "voyeuristic narratives." Friends of mine would often mimic these "photoshoots" in a mocking manner, rambling off quotes from captions on the photographs. The gossip and mockery that these photo albums fostered suggests to me that while this, as McRobbie puts it, "phallic girlhood" is indeed a type of self presentation on social network sites, it is not necessarily the most socially approved self representation.

If I were responding to Dobson, I would say that her analysis of the types of photos posted by young girls on MySpace and the general categorization of them is great. I would encourage looking into the social repercussions of this self representation, but not within the context of this article. The use of these images in cyberbullying could be an intriguing next step in this research, though.