Perfect Bodies and Digital Influencers

In: Cultural politics: an international journal ; exploring cultural and political power across the globe, Volume 18, Issue 1, p. 28-43

Abstract

AbstractThe quest for the so-called perfect body has been an issue in Brazilian society for a long time, especially for women. A number of "digital influencers" perform a fitness lifestyle, producing subjectivities entangled with an idea of success and "well managing oneself." However, as happiness is constructed as a mandatory "individual engineering project," more recently, female influencers have emerged who go against standards of beauty taken as oppressive. They embrace other physiques as forms of self-expression and finding joy, mostly the "big" body. Both forms of self-construction are appropriated by consumer culture and are perceived as authentic, reinforcing individualistic agency in a neoliberal context. But what happens when a fitness influencer accidently leaks the information that she underwent a liposuction procedure? Or when a "body positive" model is criticized for appropriating a plus-size agenda and not having a "true" plus-size body? Based on two Brazilian cases and literature review, this article proposes the notion of "gendered ruptures of performances," which reveal expressive incoherence in the "narratives of the self," thus breaking ideals of authenticity. It is argued that little attention has been paid to female self-presentation dynamics that do not occur as expected. Moreover, since their bodies are constantly subjected to the scrutiny of others, they are more susceptible to having their performances invalidated online.