Social Identity & Gender

The reading I related to most concerning social identity is Banet-Weiser's "Branding the Post Feminist Self." This article discusses the many YouTube videos posted by adolescent/teen girls that feature them dancing and/or singing to popular music and referencing commercial pop culture. Banet-Weiser argues that this presentation of self for public display is a way for these girls to create a "brand" for themselves, but within the context of what is prescribed by the media and culture industries. She relates this to McRobbie's post feminist discourse in which cultural spaces are formed that reflect the way feminist values are engaged with and incorporated across society in institutional practices, education, the work environment, and media. This article claims that the self-branding in these videos often emphasizes hegemonic female sexuality (what Dobson would call "hetero-sexy") and encourages girls to BE a product available for "consumption" by themselves and other viewers.

I found this piece especially relevant to my own experiences because, as I tweeted a few days ago, I have made numerous YouTube videos like the ones Banet-Weiser describes with my friends over the years. In them my friends and I would dress up in my old dance costumes, choreograph dances and create a full-blown music video to whatever song we happened to be obsessed with at the time. Banet-Weiser says that girls who produce these videos don't create a new image of gender but work within and against cultural definitions. My videos always featured us performing hegemonic feminity, confining to that particular gender representation because we thought it was fun to be sexy. Thinking critically about it now, I would agree that what we were doing through these videos was self-branding: we wanted to be "those hot girls that make the music videos," and to this day we get comments on Facebook asking when we're going to make another one.

Banet-Weiser talks about the importance of comments/feedback to the self-branding process and its valuation. When viewers comment on a video, it provides a conscious recognition for the producer that people are "buying" their brand. Often, she says, these comments are objectifying the girls' bodies and brings them back to a familiar gender script, which doesn't quite fit with the way these post feminist videos allow for simultaneous performance and contradiction of gendered identity. I would argue that the objectifying comments go hand in hand with the effort to present hegemonic female sexuality--if, as Banet-Weiser claims, girls are not truly creating new gender representations, why should we expect anything but old responses to gender? For my friends and me, these videos were a way to display femininity specifically to elicit these types of comments from our friends--because honestly, who doesn't like to be called hot once in awhile? Banet-Weiser notes that self-branded girls are encouraged to be self-reliant and empowered; it seems that one way to empower oneself is to embrace the gender norms that have been in place for so long and make them one's own.

Nicole - @nmf255

(I was thinking about including this link. I know I will regret it, but my videos are here: www.youtube.com/user/shoproightproduction )