Disembodiment and cyberspace: Gendered discourses in female teenagers’ personal information disclosure

Abstract

At present, cyberspace tends to occupy a growing part of the social realities of most teenagers. The present study suggests that personal weblogs collectively can be said to comprise a social institution which serves to foster and maintain a cult of femininity. In promoting a cult of femininity, these personal weblogs are not merely reflecting the female role in society; they are also supplying one source of definitions of, and socialization into, that role. The main business of this study is to engage with a fairly large amount of data and try to answer some basic questions about how personal weblogs open up a new context for female teenage identity construction. More precisely, this article analyses the different gendered discourses British and Spanish female teenagers live out when they narrate their current and former romantic relationships. The study suggests that these female teenagers’ self-concepts, floating free of corporeal experience, derive from a struggle between their social relational identity and their individual-based social identity.