Open Collections

Abstract

In popular media and some scholarly domains, there is a moral panic surrounding girls and social media, where girls are assumed to be at risk of online predators or body-related disorders (e.g., poor body image, eating disorders). However, literature that explores how pre-adolescent girls engage with this type of social media content is lacking, despite there being evidence that they are using social media platforms. This study used a poststructural feminist lens to examine how girls (8-9 years old) who are gymnasts navigate social media in forming their embodied subjectivities. Theoretically, the study was grounded in feminist poststructuralism and the new sociology of childhood, wherein I aimed to understand the experiences of young girls when engaging with body-related social media content, through their voices directly. Because the feminine body is central to the sport of gymnastics, it is especially important to consider how the consumption of body-related discourses on social media intersect with those circulating within gymnastics in shaping the embodied subjectivities of young female gymnasts. To achieve these research aims, this study utilized an adapted photo elicitation methodology with eight-to-nine-year-old girls, with the hopes of empowering the voices of young participants within this topic of research.