Facebook's Female Spectacle

Let's talk about Facebook. In an era of rampant technology, Facebook has risen to the top as one of the most widely used and accessed websites, bringing with it a way for humans to establish a virtual connection otherwise unheard-of. The nature of Facebook promotes both positive and negative aspects of the internet, as well as serving as a reflection of human choice. What to post or what not to post? That is the question. 

As a social media site, Facebook users are constantly bombarded with the sharing of information through words and images. New news becomes old news with each and every status update. Facebook has revolutionized the way people communicate. However, that advancement also calls into question the ethicality of the freedom Facebook offers its users. 

As Guy Debord might say, Facebook has enhanced the "Society of the Spectacle" (Debord authored a philosophy book under that title). Although his analysis of social theory relates more to commodity fetishism and its connection to capital, women, especially where Facebook is concerned, are no exception to an adaption of his view. 

All Facebook users participate in the sharing of personal information. As participants, each member must decide what content to post on their site, what to comment on, and who can see their actions. Given that nature, Facebook can give its members too much information through images that border on a collective notion of "the gross," that writer Linda Williams describes in melodramatic movies, horror films, and pornography. 

Each of the three genres that Williams defines as somehow "gross," as an overstepping of accepted social boundaries, becomes "gross" through the camera's treatment of the female image, or female spectacle. Put simply, women are usually the pursued victims in each type of movie, possibly with the exception of pornography (where actresses can choose to participate in the genre). Facebook might be added to this category of grossness when the proliferation of pictures bordering on nudity are posted by females. 

Whether the majority of female Facebook users post these pictures as devices through which one can display themselves to the male (or female) gaze, thus objectifying themselves through the image, or simply to post an image of bodily beauty, can be disputed. Although nudity (or near nudity) is common in artwork, the ethicality of such art-like images comes into question when displayed on a website where someone's employer or younger sibling may have access to such photographs. Furthermore, "sexy" pictures posted on Facebook pose a double bind: are the said images simply an expression of beauty, or are they a deviation into voyeurism through the ability of a spectator to leave comments? 

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This topic was thoroughly and thoughtfully discussed in my Global Feminisms class. Generally, I would tend to agree that there are images posted on Facebook as simply a display of beauty, and that others are intended as something more. Women are not the only ones posting such pictures, either, and men are not the only ones viewing them. Though every Facebook member should be aware of the content they post, and what their images and words reveal about them, every user has been charged with such freedom. Ultimately, the fate of an image is constructed between the craftwork (captioning, picture-editing, cropping, etc.) surrounding how a user displays his or her image and the eye of its beholder.