When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, and Responsibility in the Surveillance of Celebrity Twitter Megan M
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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School January 2013 When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, and Responsibility in the Surveillance of Celebrity Twitter Megan M. Wood University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Wood, Megan M., "When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, and Responsibility in the Surveillance of Celebrity Twitter" (2013). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4855 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, and Responsibility in the Surveillance of Celebrity Twitter by Megan M. Wood A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Rachel Dubrofsky, Ph.D. Kimberly Golombisky, Ph.D. David Payne, Ph.D. Date of Approval: September 12, 2013 Keywords: post-feminism, Twitter, social media, race, gender Copyright © 2013, Megan M. Wood ACKNOWLEDGMENTS After a considerable amount of dedication and effort, I am proud to present this master’s thesis. First and foremost, I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Rachel Dubrofsky, for providing me with numerous hours of assistance and guidance leading to the success of this project. Her open-door policy and care that I only submit “brilliant” work to her every time is the kind of advising that cultivates the sense of accomplishment I feel today—thank you. I am also extremely grateful to my committee members, Drs. Kim Golombisky and David Payne, for their support, flexibility, and guidance through this process. Dr. Michaela Meyer was also essential to this success; she was frequently my sounding board and encouragement as I navigated through complex ideas and relational dilemmas. I am forever grateful for their time and commitment to seeing me through. I also want to thank the USF Department of Communication for providing me with the funding I needed to make this degree possible. I want to thank my “cohort” and friends in the trenches for not only being great friends, mentors, and drinking buddies, but also listening to my struggles and providing insight and hugs when necessary. Thank you specifically to Maddie Southard, Tasha Rennels, Amanda Firestone, and Alisha Menzies for the hours of laughter and reading (not reading) that we did together, the bike rides and boat trips and movie nights and dinners that recharged me every so often. It was truly a joy sharing offices, lesson plans, and staplers with you. To my family I am forever grateful for your vast and continued support. Dad and Renee, I would not be where I am today without your guidance and encouragement through this program. Thanks for always answering or calling me back when I just needed to chat and/or a reminder that i you love me and are proud of me. To my fiancé, Brandon: you are my best friend and biggest supporter and I am truly grateful to have you by my side through all of life’s challenges and successes, now and in the future. Thank you for putting up with my “crazy days” and for making me feel better by having a few of your own. I promise this will pay off for us! ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................... v Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Defining “Race” and “Gender” ........................................................................................... 2 Twitter and Surveillance ........................................................................................................ 4 Surveillance Studies and Digital Media Research ............................................................... 5 Surveillance Studies and Feminist Research ....................................................................... 7 Surveillance and Post-feminism ............................................................................................ 8 A “Call to Authenticity” ...................................................................................................... 12 Method ................................................................................................................................... 14 Chapters ................................................................................................................................. 15 Chapter Two: Tweeting the Body: Investigating Celebrity Women and the Gaze ................................ 18 Surveillance and Celebrity ................................................................................................... 20 Cyberfeminism and the Post-Feminist Way of Life ........................................................ 22 Twitter, Celebrity Women, and The Gaze ........................................................................ 23 White Women on Display: Fashioning the Body ............................................................ 27 Women of Color on Display: Out-Of-This-World Bodies ............................................ 30 Male Celebrities ..................................................................................................................... 34 Twitter, Surveillance, and the Male Gaze .......................................................................... 35 Chapter Three: Authenticity and Feminine Excess: Tweeting Failed Hegemonic Femininity ............ 37 Surveillance and Authenticity .............................................................................................. 39 Hegemonic Femininity and Authenticity .......................................................................... 41 “Hegemonic Post-Feminist Femininity” ........................................................................... 44 Pathologizing Excessive Displays of the Body ................................................................ 46 Pathologizing Excess Through Emotional Displays ....................................................... 50 iii Male Celebrities ..................................................................................................................... 55 Authenticating (Failed) Hegemonic Femininity ............................................................... 57 Conclusion: Where Does Tweeting Leave Celebrity Women? ................................................................ 59 The Parameters of “Ideal” Femininity .............................................................................. 61 References ......................................................................................................................................................... 64 iv ABSTRACT This thesis is a textual analysis of stories in online celebrity news articles about celebrity women and their use of Twitter. It adds to the burgeoning discussion about gendered and racialized bodies online using scholarship from critical feminist, surveillance, and digital media studies. Throughout, my work attends to notions of authenticity and surveillance, examining how what I term a “call to authenticity”—the use of technologies of self-surveillance to verify “authentic” displays of the self—serves to animate contradictory post-feminist paradigms of femininity which function together to discipline and subjugate femininity. I ask: How do post-feminist questions of empowerment and responsibility become articulated when individuals operate the technologies that functionally surveil them? What are the particular implications of surveillance for gendered and racialized bodies when thought about in the context of a post-feminist culture? What might a focus on the relationship between surveillance and post-feminist logic uncover? v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION From breaking news of pregnancies, weight gain, or engagements, to speculating on the nature of mental breakdowns, the coverage of celebrity activity on Twitter by online gossip blogs and websites is a large part of the mediation of celebrities in today’s media culture. According to the New York Times, more and more celebrities are skipping the tabloids altogether to break personal news and instead address their fans directly through the social networking site Twitter (Holson, 2010). The mainstream tabloid publications and gossip blogs have responded to this pattern by making celebrity tweets a main feature of their publications. Twitter offers these celebrity gossip publications access to information about the everyday activities of celebrities more quickly than ever before. Celebrities now seemingly have the power to carefully craft their own image outside of the paper tabloids on the grocery store magazine rack, but those same publications are capitalizing on the seemingly “real” stories of celebrities that Twitter enables access to. My thesis is among the first critical feminist analyses of “celebrity Twitter.” In this work, I engage the idea that Twitter