Young Bodies, Images, and Social Media

This chapter maps a number of significant shifts and trends in recent scholarship about young people and digital media cultures. We foreground new and emerging research on young people’s image production, with a particular focus on young femininities. The chapter is divided into three parts. In the first part, we offer a brief review of the research about sexualization, femininities, normative beauty standards, and the media. Next, we chart the turn to an interest in self-images as communication, highlighting the ephemeral and affectively charged nature of body imaging, and the shift towards curating and editing the self, and tensions between the dual demands for “authenticity” and “perfection.” The chapter then presents a case study of the Kardashians to highlight debates about gendered and racialized ideals and authenticity.