The Digital Showcase: A Study on Affective Encounters with Women’s Body Representation as Profile Pictures on Facebook

Facebook Profile Pictures, function as Mixed Realities (MR). They are tools that compensate for the physical absence of users. These aim at remedying the accompanying anxiety of absence, including FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Profile Pictu­res are the first component of users’ Facebook profiles that audiences engage with. This study shows that women curate and commodify (Kasch, 2013) their Facebook self-presen­tations. A unique digital identity is aimed at by consciously showcasing elements like attractiveness, lifestyle, and clothing through Profile Pictures. Images are often aimed at gaining a sense of celebrity status evoked through audien­ce’s interactions (likes, comments, etc.) with these images. Here, women feel pressured to represent themselves as ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’ in order to gain attention. Women are also conscious that their images evoke a range of affects amongst their audiences. This feelings of sexual arousal and the audiences attempt to communicate this through inappropriate mes­sages. Such affect, informed by patriarchy, predetermines patterns of self-presentation and perception of female bodies (Bordo, 1993). This article uses in-depth, qualitative interviews and a modified version of Goffman (1976)’s fra­mework of Gendered Advertisements to analyze millennial women’s Facebook Profile Pictures. It concludes that women employ elaborate processes to attain specific goals using these images.