The female self on the web
Although males have always outnumbered females in terms of their presence on their internet, the girls seem to be slowly catching up. However, the 'self' that is so often demonstrated by these females is rarely an equivalent of the true physical self. This can be seen predominantly through analysing personal home pages and the use of online chat forums.
In the real world, we are all limited to one true self. No matter how hard we sometimes try to hide this through creating different personas (eg. when we are work we are likely to act differently to when we are socialising with friends), the person we really are will almost always shine through (or at least glimpses of it).
Often, the photograph women choose to use on their personal home pages are glamour snaps or sexualised images, those that make them feel better about themselves. The major problem this causes is that it leaves these women open to judgement on the way they look rather than being judged on the quality of the website. Is this just another representation of reality?
The heated, sexually explicit discussions that females sometimes find themselves taking part in on the internet are unlikely to ever happen in a real life situation. Most women tend to separate their sexual identity from their personal identity when using the internet medium.
In Mary Kibby's article 'Babes on the web. Sex, identity and the home page' she uses 'Dragon Lady' to exemplify this suggestion. This account talks of a woman who spoke to a male on an internet chat forum. Over time, Dragon Lady began to express many desires and thoughts that would have never been said in a face-to-face discussion. When she was asked for a photo of herself she sent one of her tattoo, rather than expressing her true identity by showing her face. This clearly demonstrates that she was reluctant to mix what Kibby calls her 'hotchat persona' with her real persona; something reflected throughout the realm of the internet.
Articles relating to this topic:
Kibby, Marj (1997) 'Babes on the web. Sex, identity and the home page'. Media International Australia, (84), pp. 39-46.
Renov, Michael (1999, August) The end of autobiography or new beginnings?, or everything you never knew you would know about someone you will probably never meet, Unpublished paper presented at Visible Evidence VII, Los Angeles.
Stern, Susannah R (1999) 'Adolescent girls' expression on web home pages: spirited, sombre and self-conscious sites'. Convergence: the journal of research into new media technologies, 5 (4): 22-41
posted by Danielle Tralli @ 3:36 AM
3 Comments:
Hello.
I think it is interesting that scholars base the ways in which individuals construct their identity on the web in reference to gender. I have a myspace page and i dont think that i present myself any differently than i do in the 'real world' and i guess the only evidence i have to back up my thoughts is that the people to which my myspace is constructed for are people i already know from the 'real world' so why would i need to construct a different identity just because it is part of a different sphere? :) mel
That is an interesting point, I suppose the 'created self' that I spoke about in my blog just like any other concept does have some exceptions. Where a person puts themself on the web for people who they already know to see, it makes sense that their true identity will always be the one that is shown. It is when a person puts themself on the web for people they don't already know to see that the concept i spoke about is more likely to be true.
The web is not an homogenous space. MySpace sites are places where people present their 'real' selves - hotchat sites are spaces where people present only one aspect of themselves, or a fantasy self.
My pointing out that Dragon Lady did not want to combine her hotchat self and her realworld self was not meant to suggest that noone presents a realistic image of themselves on the internet.
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