Exploring the politics of gender representation on instagram : self-representations of femininity

This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopts a broad understanding of the political in terms of “everyday politics” and “everyday activism”. This allows for exploring the political potential of self-representation on Instagram and Instagram's ability to enable more diverse forms of gender representation. It starts from the assumption that Instagram can play a role in reproducing and reinforcing traditional gender norms, and then explores the technological affordances and limitations that shape representations, such as Instagram's Terms of Use and the diffuse power exerted by Instagram users' feedback. These theoretical arguments are illustrated by discussing the recent ban of Marisa Papen, a popular Instagram model