The problem with rebellious hyper-femininity: an analysis of social media's undermining of hyper-femininity as subversive praxis

Abstract

This paper analyses a social media phenomenon which I term rebellious hyper-femininity, in which a hyper-feminine identity (involving, for example, embracing the colour pink, self-beautification, or other stereotypically feminine traits and characteristics) is adopted in response to the devaluation of femininity by patriarchal culture. Drawing on the trend bimbocore as an example of this phenomenon, I argue that such an adoption of hyper-femininity is rebellious and involves subversive feminist praxis because, by reclaiming a devalued identity, it engages in a critique of gender norms and anti-feminine sentiment. Rebellious hyper-femininity, as an identity largely performed through the sharing of content on social media, also involves a critique of capitalist society and other socio-political issues by these content creators. Rebellious hyper-femininity has the potential to be the kind of femininity which Marcuse (1974) believed was the antithesis to patriarchal and capitalist oppression. However, I argue that rebellious hyper-femineity’s radical potential as mode of subversive praxis is undermined by its being primarily enacted and popularised on social media. I argue that social media exhibits characteristics which Adorno and Horkheimer identify in their analysis of the Culture Industry and which Marcuse identifies in his analysis of one-dimensional society, such as an emphasis on conformity, standardisation, and the subsuming of that which might destabilise the status quo. In particular, social media turns rebellious hyper-femininity into a trend, a purely aesthetic, easily replicable identity stripped of its subversive intentions. As a trend, it perpetuates the very structures it originally aimed to destabilise, and thus social media undermines hyper-femininity as a potential mode of subversive praxis against patriarchal-capitalist oppression.