Early thoughts

March 2015

10/03/15

A new kind of curator is emerging, less decked out in Scanlan and Theodore and more obsessed with One Direction. She doesn’t pay for her phone credit and thinks her mum is totally embarrassing but she is as skilled in the art of structuring and manipulating interpretations of the works of herself and others (#regram). I speak of the tween, an 11-13 year old menace to the peace of train commutes, who has grown up immersed in technology without novelty- something she already knows the full potential and power of. She curates a version of herself online, ordering the viewer through the gallery of her life in a deliberate loop aimed at promoting the prettiest possible version of herself. I’d like to examine the effect of “clean eating” messaging on this extremely vulnerable yet tech savvy audience. I’d like to ask what the implications of being urged to live “cleanly” are for a young female’s sense of self and body image, alongside a discussion of how this idea of “living cleanly” might be assessed through the lens of feminist theory. I’d also like to examine the use of the “thinspirational” hashtag in facilitating a community of young women suffering from eating disordered behaviours, offering consolation as well as inspiration in the most sinister of ways.