Social Media vs. Misogyny: What My Sources Say

Hello all!!! For those of you who don’t know I recently set out to discover whether or not social media has increased the social and sexual pressures on young girls (research questioned explained in Research Question: Social Media vs. Social Pressures). For the past three weeks I have spent endless hours researching a variety of sources to figure out how experts, and teenage girls themselves, feel about this topic. Throughout my research I saw a number of opinions, although the overwhelming majority of my sources did argue that social media is leading to the increased sexualization of women and the false/unrealistic perception of female perfection.

Source Breakdown:

1) One of the only sources I found that argued social media has not increased these pressures was, “Is Misogyny Worse Now Than Before The Internet?”. This article, which features the opinions of five different feminists, argues that misogyny (or male pressures/ discrimination put on women), hasn’t increased but simply become more publicized since the introduction of social media.

Would we want to say that there is quantitatively more sexism now the internet exists? I think not. We could tentatively say that sexism looks slightly different online. The allure of anonymity certainly appeals to some, just as honking horns and shouting abuse from cars does to others. (Power et al.)

In addition to pointing out that female pressures and discrimination exists in all domains, online and not, the article also points out that many third world countries, without internet access, have far worse misogyny and female discrimination than America. Although this argument was by far the minority, I do think it made some valid points which cannot be overlooked.

2) The next set of sources that I found argued that social media has largely increased the social pressures on young girls. Not only this but many articles stressed the extreme sexualization of women that social media often promotes. Nancy Jo Sales, the author of American Girls, pointed out many examples of this ranging from obvious things like sexting and sending nudes, to more discrete things like the hyper masculinity/sexualization in male vs. female posts.

Guys tend to have a picture like, I don’t know, they’re standing on a mountain looking like they’ve climbed the mountain, or they’re holding a big fish or they’re doing something manly, or in their car. … But the girls’ pictures … tend to be very different; they tend to be a lot more sexualized. (Sales)

Additionally, these sources made a big deal of pointing out the lack of female role models presented on social media. They argued that platforms like Instagram encourage girls to place self-worth in their outward appearance, thanks to so-called “famous” accounts that focus a majority of their posts on what I would call “unrealistic beauty ideals” (yeah that’s right Kardashians I’m talking to you).

3) The third set of articles I read focused more on the sexual pressures that both social media and the increased accesibilty to porn have created. These articles suggest that the casual “hook-up” culture we see on many college campuses (including my own) can be contributed to the frequency in which we see references to sex in the media. Not only this, but the articles went as far as to argue that there’s a certain level of violence in today’s pornography that we are seeing reflected in real life encounters more and more. This is likely referring to the male domination we almost always seen sexually in the media (Fifty Shades of Grey, etc.).

Young women grow up in a porn-saturated, image-centered, commercialized culture in which ‘empowerment’ is just a feeling, consumption trumps connection, ‘hot’ is an imperative, fame is the ultimate achievement, and the quickest way for a woman to get ahead is to serve up her body before someone else does. (Klein)

Conclusion: Throughout all my of research, the idea that misogyny is being seen on a larger scale thanks to social media was confirmed. Although it was argued whether or not misogyny is actually increasing or just appears to be thanks to our access to the internet, almost every author agreed that the sexualization of women is, at least, becoming more apparent. While collecting sources, I found many examples of real life social media posts, such Kim Kardashian and Rihanna’s “sexual selfies”, or famous Instagram accounts featuring almost naked women, that portrayed women as more of a sexual item then an actual human being. Even looking at my own posts, I found it alarming how many more likes I received on an Instagram picture in a bathing suit than in regular clothes. Although, like any outlet, social media can be used to promote almost everything, including feminism, I discovered through my sources that an overwhelming amount of posts objectified women.