Kvinde kend dit brand: Et casestudie om den moderne kvindes selvfremstilling

Karlsen, Rasmus Werge ; Wallin, Dea

4. semester

Kommunikation, Kandidat

2023

2023-05-31

Using the case study of American media personality, socialite, and businesswoman Kim Kar-dashian, this thesis examines current media self-presentation in an attempt to understand how postfeminist notions are embodied in the modern woman’s online performances. We highlight how post-feminism provides an ambivalent and contradictory mode of self-representation, as it on the one hand accentuates the modern woman’s ability to assert herself as an emancipated, autonomous, and free-choosing subject, while it on the other hand deploys the unshakeable myth that her femininity can only be formed through a multitude of regulatory and disciplinary practices that will allow her to appeal to the male gaze. Drawing on theories of post-feminism, persona, and gender performativity in combina-tion with multimodal discourse theory, we analyze the construction of both visual and verbal gendered discourses in Kardashian’s self-presentational and self-branding practices across plat-forms. The results of our analysis recognize that Kardashian makes use of a series of postfemi-nist expressions in the construction and representation of her ‘self’. Our findings suggest that the modern woman’s presentation of self is characterized by continuous negotiations between emancipation, regulation, and commodification. We argue that Kardashian has become an expert at working the system that exploits her via embracing sexualized, often nude self-representations in which the female body is transformed into a branded commodity to gain eco-nomic benefits. The thesis points to the centrality of structures of power and suggests that the way in which the modern woman presents herself to a great extent is shaped by society.

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