DISTINCTLY DIGITAL: Subjectivity and Recognition in Teenage Girls’ Online Self-Presentations DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Adriane Brown Graduate Program in Women's Studies The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Mary Thomas, Advisor; Jill Bystydzienski; Linda Mizejewski; Julia Watso Copyright by Adriane Brown 2011 Abstract This dissertation examines the ways that teenage girls’ online interactions reflect their psychic and social struggles to negotiate contradictory and constricting discourses regarding contemporary American girlhood. Literature on girls’ online interactions has tended to fall into one of two categories. In the first, scholars sound alarms about the ubiquity of risk in digital spaces (for instance, on websites that supposedly promote eating disorders). In the second, scholars celebrate the ways that teenagers engage in social activism online. In contrast, I argue that emergent media scholarship often fails to question the messages of autonomous selfhood that characterize girls’ digital personas. I utilize feminist and psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity to suggest that girls’ voices and agencies are always embedded in normative ideals of gender, race, sexuality, and class. I examine a variety of digital spaces that cover a diverse range of contemporary American girlhoods, including queer girls’ MySpace pages, pro-bulimia message boards, and fan sites for young musicians such as Taylor Swift. I utilize a three-pronged methodology: analysis of the textual and visual elements of websites, instant messenger interviews with girls, and a research blog that explains my project to my research subjects in understandable language. Website analysis and interviews reveal that girls feel personally empowered by the ability to express themselves and demonstrate “who they really are” online in ways they cannot offline, but their digital personas are deeply embedded in discourses that privilege normative femininity, whiteness, heterosexuality, thinness, and middle-class status as conditions to aspire to. This ii research shows that despite girls’ proclamations about articulating independent selves online, their self-presentations are consciously and unconsciously motivated by a yearning for recognition by real and fantasy online audiences. Elucidating girls’ desire for recognition illustrates the limited range of possible subjectivities to girls under post-feminism and hegemonic white consumption ideals. My dissertation thus points to the inadequacy of media scholars’ reliance on teenage girls’ explicit statements about their intentions for their online personas, demonstrating the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective to reveal the ways that allusive and unspoken desires—especially the subject’s fundamental longing for recognition— underpin girls’ digital self-presentations. iii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family. ivii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Mary Thomas, for her tireless efforts in reading drafts, brainstorming ideas, and offering constant support. This dissertation certainly would not exist without her help. I am also indebted to the rest of my committee—Jill Bystydzienski, Linda Mizejewski, and Julia Watson—for their invaluable perspectives and assistance in developing my project. David Dagg, Clinical Director of the Center for Balanced Living in Worthington, Ohio, provided critically important feedback in developing protocol for responsibly interacting with bulimic research subjects. I am grateful to the Department of Women’s Studies for funding my dissertation through the Elizabeth Gee grant. Finally, I am grateful to the teenage girls who were willing to participate in my study. Their enthusiasm for the project was both humbling and infectious, and my work would not have been the same without their perspectives. iiv Vita 2004…………………………………….B.A. Women’s Studies, Wichita State University 2006…………………………………….M.S. Women’s Studies, Wichita State University 2006 to present …………………………Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Women’s Studies, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Women's Studies viii Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….v Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….vi List of Tables………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………xi List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….xii Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Girling the Subject in Feminist Thought…………….……………………………………………………………6 Digitizing Subjectivity……………………………………………..…………………………………………………….13 Subjectivity and Recognition……………………………………….……………………………………………….18 Visual Culture Theory…………………………………………………….…………………………………………….24 Life Narrative Theory………………………………………………………….………………………………………..31 Chapter Overview………………………………………………………………….…………………………………….37 Chapter 2: Methodological Issues in Conducting Online Research with Teenage Girls…….………..40 Constructing the Project………………………………………………………………………………………….……40 Timeline and procedures……………………………………………………………………………………………..46 Visual and Textual Analysis……………………………………..……………………………………….48 Instant Messenger Interviews…………………………………….……………………………………52 viiii Research Blog……………………………………………………………….…………………………………57 Research Ethics……………………………………………………………………………..……………………………..60 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………….62 Chapter 3: “I Hope Sum1 Out There Understands Me”: Girlhood, Recognition, and Identification on MySpace.com………………………………………………………64 Digitizing Queer Girlhoods..........................................................................................…...67 “MySpace Is So 2005”: Making the Case for Studying Yesterday’s Technology……………..71 “I’m Gay and I Like It That Way”: Lesbian and Queer Girls’ Self-Presentations on MySpace……………………….…………………...77 “Ready 2B Ur Wifey:” Queering Imagery on MySpace………………………………………………….83 “It’s easier to meet girls on the internet”: Digitizing Lesbian Dating………….………………….97 “U Look Hott!!!”: Photographs, Friends’ Comments, and Desires for Recognition….….101 “i just like knowing they can look at it and relize who i really am”: Girls’ Desires for Recognition……..………………………………………………………………………………106 Adolescent Queer Sexuality and Trauma……………….……………………………………………………112 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…..115 Chapter 4: “What’s Your Grossest Purging Experience? Recognition, Jouissance, and Intimacy with the Abject in Pro-Mia Digital Spaces……………….…..117 Framing digital representations of bulimia…………………………………………………………………119 Race, Pro-Mia Forums, and Therapeutic Culture………………………………………………………..124 “What’s your most embarrassing bulimic experience?” Embracing the Abject in Pro-Mia Digital Spaces……………………………………………….………..128 “Emptying my stomach felt sooooooooooooo good”: The Binge/Purge Cycle and Jouissance……………………………………………………………………….133 “No one understands me like you guys do”: Failures and Refusals of Recognition from Non-Bulimics…………………………………………….144 viiiii “Get Out, Wanas!”: Policing the boundaries of the Pro-Eating Disorder Community…………………………………147 Picturing Consumption: Pro-Mia Uses of the Visual……………………………………………………154 Do They Really Understand? Questioning the Realities of Recognition in Pro-Mia Cyberspace………………………………..169 Chapter 5: “She Isn’t Whoring Herself Out Like a Lot of Other Girls We See”: Identification, Recognition, and ‘Authentic’ American Girlhood On Taylor Swift Fan Forums…………………………………………………………………………………………………….173 “If you listen to my albums, it’s just like reading my diary”: Taylor Swift, Autobiography, and Musical Authenticity…………………………..………………….177 Taylor Swift, the Can-Do Girl Next Door…………………………………………………………177 Creating the “Authentic” Musical Girl Subject……………………………………………….181 Contextualizing Fandom and Celebrity……………………………………………………………………….186 “Imma let you finish, but…”: Kanye-Gate and the Specter of Race………….………………….192 “I’m just a girl, trying to find my place in this world”: The Affective Pull of Ordinariness in Swift’s Music and Extratextual Persona……………..197 “She's like...perfect. All-American”: Idealizing Taylor Swift’s Image of Proper Young Womanhood……………………………………208 “Everyone calls me a lesbian because I love Taylor so much but I’m NOT one”: Queer Identification, Heterosexual Melancholia, and Homophobic Practices…………….216 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….227 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…229 Implications ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….236 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………240 Appendix A: Blog Entries…………………………………………………………………………………………………………256 Introducing the Blog 3/8/10……………………………………………………………………………………….256 Describing My Project 3/9/10…………………………………………………………………………………….257 ixiii Interviews! 3/10/10……………………………………………………………………………………………………259 Adventures in internet research 3/14/10……………………………………………………………………261 Interviews redux/intro to pro-ana/mia websites 4/5/10…………………………………………….262 The last of the interviews for now... 4/18/10……………………………………………………………..264 Interviews, anxiety, and pro-mia cyberspace 8/27/10………………………………………………..266 Brief interview update 8/29/10………………………………………………………………………………….268 Pro-mia sites—update 9/6/10…………………………………………………………………………………..269 I didn't know it at fifteen... 10/5/10………………………………………………………………………….271