Female Influencers: Examining Bahraini Social Media's Portrayal of Female Subjectivity

The study explores the representation of female subjectivity on social media, highlighting the significant impact that these women's images have on the gendered narratives and discourses that saturate the public sphere. The study focuses on the patterns of femininity portrayed by female influencers and the relationships they could form with their followers. It emphasizes how these popular personalities embody post-feminism's core values of self-realization, independence, and empowerment after introducing the notion of post-feminism's sensitivity. Finally, it depicted two of Bahrain’s most well-known social media influencers, Rubi Rahim, and Manal, are examined, emphasizing how well they can serve as examples of successful female digital businesses. The goal of the analysis is to demonstrate how these media personae offer an ambivalent representation of female subjectivity because, on the one hand, they highlight women's capacity to assert themselves as ambitious, competently. They treat women as autonomous, free-choice subjects (as postfeminist culture dictates), but they also use the drive for female self-fulfillment for marketing purposes, turning it into a self-branding instrument.