Article:
Living whose best life? An intersectional feminist interrogation of postfeminist #solidarity in #selfcare

dc.creatorWiens, Brianna
dc.creatorMacDonald, Shana
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-16T08:59:38Z
dc.date.available2021-07-16T08:59:38Z
dc.date.issued2021-06-05
dc.description.abstractThis article argues that one of the many ways that white supremacy functions within digital culture is to obscure the realities of social inequity via neoliberal dictums for self-improvement and individ-ualist calls to live our ‘best lives’. For decades Black feminists have been advocating for self-care as preservation and community building. This article highlights the need for self-care to return to its roots in Black feminism and to distinguish itself from popular feminist enactments of self-care. To do so, we critically analyse ex-amples of postfeminist enactments of #selfcare on Instagram to highlight how they exacerbate societal inequities. We first explore the relationship between #selfcare and Instagram itself, outlining the effects of Instagram’s affordances on its users to demonstrate how both users and the platform shape each other. Next, we inter-rogate #selfcare as a space of #solidarity, arguing that current itera-tions privilege white upper-class frameworks that benefit from various oppressions. Last, we closely analyse The Nap Ministry, an Instagram account that highlights Black feminist self-care princi-ples that intervene into prevailing white frameworks and, in doing so, co-opts the platform affordances of Instagram to model forms of action and offer frameworks we need for the present. In sum, this article suggests that genuine #solidarity through #selfcare must decenter whiteness and take up a more intersectional feminist lens.en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/16254
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/17107
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherNECS
dc.publisher.place
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0217
dc.relation.ispartofseriesNECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectDigitale Kulturde
dc.subjectFeminismusde
dc.subjectHashtagde
dc.subjectNetz-Aktivismusde
dc.subjectSoziale Mediende
dc.subjectdigital cultureen
dc.subjectfeminismen
dc.subjectactivismen
dc.subjectsocial mediaen
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.titleLiving whose best life? An intersectional feminist interrogation of postfeminist #solidarity in #selfcareen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-07-16T11:22:08
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://necsus-ejms.org/living-whose-best-life-an-intersectional-feminist-interrogation-of-postfeminist-solidarity-in-selfcare/
local.source.epage242
local.source.issue1
local.source.issueTitle#Solidarity
local.source.spage219
local.source.volume10

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