BROADcasted: Notes on the Promiscuous, Narcissistic Female Body Online

The Internet has made notions of the online self and the corporeal body inseparable. Nearly thirty years before the Net became a public domain in 1991, Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan argued that communications technologies act as extensions of ourselves and “alter sense ratios or patterns of perception,” thereby informing our embodied existence.[1] Elaborating on this, Bernadette Wegenstein, a professor of media studies, argues that the body itself is a medium to communicate meaning and experience,[2] a concept that shares similarities to Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Here, gender is not the rightful property of sex, and any claim to a real or true gender is nothing other than a kind of drag, or a variation of gender performance.

Early pioneers of the Net quickly took to transgress the binary oppositions between technology and nature by engaging in identity creation through virtual reality simulators and online avatars. The practice of embodying technology became a radical, subversive practice for feminists on the early Net who sought to re-gender a patriarchal technology founded upon the exclusion of its women innovators, through a female occupation of digital space. A notable example of women’s cyber-occupation came through the figure of the camgirl, a phenomenon of the late 1990’s in which young women broadcasted non-stop livestreamed footage of their homes and domestic lives onto customized Web domains. With a fascination for inhabiting the online world and a desire to exploit new networking technologies, camgirls attempted to dissolve the barrier between the virtual and the real. However, their constant online presence made them appear to be promiscuous, which invited the intrusion of a gendered discourse which branded these women as narcissistic. This reality is still relevant today in the form of critiques of the female selfie within social media.

The term “camgirl,” as we know it today, is implicitly sexual as it has come to be commonly associated with women who perform livestreamed sex shows. In early instances, brief broadcasted moments of a camgirls changing or engaging in sexual activity became subjects of popular conversation. For example, in a 1998 interview on the Late Show with David Letterman, Internet celebrity Jennifer Ringley of Jennicam was questioned repeatedly about broadcasting moments from her sexual life online and was even hassled by Letterman to install a camera in her shower.[3] Moreover, the anxiety and moral panic behind the Great Cyberporn Scare of 1995[4] may have tainted the discourse surrounding lifecamming and fueled the witch hunt for the cyberslut. As artist Ann Hirsch eloquently proclaims: “Whenever you put your body online, in some way you are in conversation with porn.”[5]

These examples point to a desire yet disdain for the online promiscuous female body. In another example from 2000, Ringley was at the center of a scandal regarding her affair with the fiancé of fellow camgirl Pamela Courtney, all of which was streamed live on Jennicam. Ringley was slut-shamed by the public and media accordingly. The Washington Post proclaimed her a “redheaded little minx” and an “amoral man-trapper” as well as “crazy” and “self-obsessed.”[6] This is a particularly damning example of condemning an available female subject as both narcissistic and sexually deviant, as facilitated by an online platform. The demand for the female body and the condemnation of it exist simultaneously, especially online.

As a pioneer in online broadcasting, Ringley initiated an experiment into personal transparency, acted out through her body. Artist Ana Voog of Anacam adopted this model to create provocative montages that reflect a performance of self, gender, and sexuality through her body as medium. In a series of video stills titled (Untitled) thee moderngrrl iz entertainment valu (1997-98) Voog performs a strip-tease featuring black lingerie, stockings, gloves and heels to ultimately mock the male gaze and the commodification of female sexual liberation.  Another collection titled (Untitled) pussy tv (parts 1thru 4) gotta get me summa dat… (1997-98) shows close-up images of objects submerged in her labia—bloodied tampons and clumps of pubic hair—which are in turn advertised for sale to the highest bidder. One set of images in the pussy tv series is particularly provocative. Voog stands erect in front of a silver backdrop with her torso and hand painted with a metallic sheen, alluding to a cyborgian body. In the first image, Voog points a handgun down towards her genitalia with the caption: “pussy causes war”. In the second, the gun is erect and protrudes from her crotch with the accompanying text: “want to see my dick?”. These photographic performances utilize the gendered body to contest normative images of the desirable female body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camgirls like Ringley and Voog have radically challenged traditional notions of voyeurism and exhibitionism through online performance. Voog clearly establishes agency over her own image with a statement about her work on her website: “it is not a surveillance thing or a peeping thing, because I have invited you.”[7] New-media theorist Terri Senft argues that camgirls operate within an economy of commodity fetishism that allows the body to be figuratively possessed online but ultimately fails to please the consumer at all times, such as the periods when they are away from the webcam for several hours.[8] Senft sees the camgirl as a subversive figure because “sooner or later her gender-as-brand inevitably fails to deliver.”[9] Because they cannot be fully possessed, camgirls are often confronted with accusations of extreme self-involvement and narcissism. This superficiality is irrelevant considering that the majority of these women participate in and facilitate active networking with other camgirls with whom they discussed coding and more philosophical issues of performativity.[10]

The early camgirl seems to have anticipated the phenomenon of reality television and multi-platform social networking that developed throughout the 2000’s. As a result, these media platforms have fuelled a demand for a “publicity culture” of self-sharing and online visibility.[11] As it goes, if one does not share oneself online, one does not exist—and, contradictorily, if one shares too much one is subject to criticism and ridicule.

Contemporary Web artist and self-proclaimed feminist Molly Soda takes these issues head-on in confessional works which utilize the selfie to explore notions of the female body and self-authorship, and demonstrate vulnerability as a radical praxis. Her extensive self-documentation on Tumblr marks her as a contemporary heir to the camgirl. But rather than creating her own domain, she works within the commercial platform’s protocols to spread a hyper-feminine aesthetic and to blog in a manner resembling a tween bedroom confessional, another approach that heralds from the online diaries of young women of the early Net.

In an online zine titled Should I Send This? (2015) Soda exhibits a collection of personal nudes taken with her iPhone as an act of self-leaking. The images of her half-nude body are natural and absent of any overt pornification. With many of them featuring unshaven pubic and armpit hair, they represent a sort of bodily confession. Soda modestly exposes her body and provides the viewer with intimate access, yet purposefully denies the overt sexuality commonly ascribed to camgirls, similar to Voog’s series pms imperfections (1997-98).

Should I Send This? was criticized for its self-glorification and body gore from men and women alike, sparking a discussion in online comment sections and questioning definitions of art and exhibitionism. In an interview with Dazed & Confused Magazine Soda emphasized that the images were aimed at the female gaze alone, promoting body positivity for herself and for other young female viewers.[12] This did not stop Dazed readers from declaring the work as: “Narcissism dressed up as ‘art’,” or claiming, “I’m so sick and tired [of seeing] the once noble word ‘feminist’ paired with all this narcissistic teenage nonsense…”[13] Interestingly, in response to the growing conversation around the “narcissism generation,” Polish researchers at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Wroclaw conducted a study that revealed that there is in fact a correlation between taking selfies and narcissism. However, while women post more photos on average, men who take selfies are more positively associated with narcissistic psychopathologies.[14] Regardless of the artist’s intent, the anger displayed by commenters of Should I Send This? validates the inclination to vindicate women who share their body online according to a gendered discourse around narcissism that in reality reflects the inverse.

For many women the selfie represents an act of repatriation. The accessibility of online networks and their ability to bypass hegemonic systems of power has allowed women control over their own representation. Whether communicated through text or image, these are reactions to what Wegenstein recognizes as an “incapacity to manage our own environment” in a society that continually defines our bodies for us.[15] Women are capable of both complying to a demand and overriding it. In distinction from stereotypes of the cyberslut camgirl—and against patriarchal rhetoric used to diffuse their agency—a legacy of girls and women displaying self-determined images of themselves online demonstrate the provocative and subversive potentials of female bodies occupying digital networks.

 

Notes:

[1] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 33.

[2] Bernadette Wegenstein, “Body,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, eds. W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010), 24.

[3] Jennicam’s Jenni on Letterman’s Late Show,” Youtube video, 7:20, posted by “shesnailie,” October 27, 2013, [youtube.com/watch?v=0AmIntaD5VE].

[4] Time Magazine’s infamous article “Cyberporn” (July 1995) released an in-depth study of online pornography usage conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. To a horrified public, the study revealed the excess quantity of pornographic images that were in circulation online. The study was later found to be widely inaccurate.

[5] Ana Hirsch qtd. in Johanna Fateman, “Women On The Verge: Art, Feminism, and Social Media,” Artforum, April, 2015, [artforum.com/inprint/issue=201504&id=50736].

[6] Libby Copeland, “Weaving a Tangled Web on Jennicam,” The Washington Post, September 4, 2000.

[7] Anacam, accessed on November 24, 2015, [anacam.com].

[8] Terri Senft, “Camgirls: Webcams, LiveJournals and the Personal as Political in the age of the Global Brand,” keynote address, Department of Performance Studies, New York University, New York City, NY. October 2004.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “She Was a Camera,” Melissa Gira Grant, Rhizome Blog, posted on October 26, 2011, accessed on November 24, 2015, [rhizome.org/editorial/2011/oct/26/she-was-a-camera/].

[11] Senft, “Camgirls: Webcams, LiveJournals and the Personal as Political in the age of the Global Brand.”

[12] “The cyber feminist leaking her own nudes,” Dazed, posted in 2015, accessed November 24, 2015, [dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24945/the-cyber-feminist-leaking-her-own-nudes].

[13] Ibid.

[14]  “What Is The Real Link Between Selfies And Narcissism?” Psychology Today, posted on August 6, 2015, accessed on November 24, 2015, [psychologytoday.com/blog/close-encounters/201508/what-is-the-real-link-between-selfies-and-narcissism].

[15]  Wegenstein, “Body,” 30.

 

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