Reconstructing Gendered Narratives Online: Nudity for Popularity on Digital Platforms

Abstract

https://adanewmedia.org/2014/07/issue5-mukhongo/ 1/12 The focus of this paper is on how young female internet users in Africa, with emphasis on Kenya, are constructing their own gendered narratives online. The emphasis is on how they are appropriating social media by posting controversial and often nude pictures of themselves online, a major shift in the production and consumption of such images in a patriarchal culture, which is driven by mainstream discourse that often assumes that the patriarchal culture exploits the female body in mainstream visual cultures. Today, we are witnessing female internet users carefully manipulating social media whether in a bid to feed into the patriarchal dominated culture that exploits the female body, or as a method to exploit that very patriarchal culture that draws its life from visuals that exploit the female body.