You know that scene in coming of age movies, where boys ‘read’ their dad’s Playboy magazine under the covers? Talk about ancient history.
In 2016, every millennial with a smartphone is openly scrolling through their Instagram feed of hot girls. Not only did free porn kill the business models of traditional lads mags, Instagram has furthered their irrelevance by making sexy pics safe for work (there’s a no-nudity policy but we all know you can get pretty close), discreetly viewable, and more accessible than ever.
The most crucial part of this Insta-heavy reality though is that self-publishers are changing the way we view female sexuality. For too long, men have been in charge of photographing the female body. We’re now in an age where straight men are consuming photos produced and directed by women, and those photos are coming with a voice.
That’s a powerful statement. For women online who court male attention (or make their cash monies from it), self-publishing allows them to meet the male gaze on their own terms. They control the aesthetic of the image and define their bodies, all from their own safe-space. Moreover, they have space to to make their opinions heard.
You needn’t look much further for an example than Amber Rose – former stripper, now model, and general celebrity businesswoman, who has 9.3 million people following her feed. In between hot pics of herself and memes, she’s reclaiming the words that have been used to put women down, and using her platform to support feminism and health causes she cares about.
That’s the difference in the social media age. Glamour models on page three don’t talk back to you. They don’t talk, period. If you follow someone on Instagram, you’re not just getting a picture – you’re hearing their views.
Nadia Lee Cohen is one photographer big on the ‘gram who is reinventing the female nude from her own perspective. Although at first glance, her blonde bombshell selfies and naked photos of women in her art photographs appear to replicate the male gaze, look closer and you’ll find unconventional beauties in strange, cinematic scenarios, that in her words, “promotes positive female nudity”, rather than invite male objectification.
Of course, men might still be looking at her feed, but to Cohen, it matters little. Cohen photographs herself, for herself, and for the strength of other women – "I'm not always completely confident, seeing myself in a strong photograph is a good feeling. I want the women I photograph to have that same experience. When there's an image of yourself that looks beautiful, you look at it and think 'well that's me', even if you don't always feel great."
It might surprise some, but Instagram isn’t a dedicated space for male gawking. Most women on the platform are simply documenting their life, ‘gramming selfies for themselves, and for other women – male attention is irrelevant.
Just ask Eileen Kelly. The 20-year-old Instagram star, more commonly known as @killerandasweetthang, was made the unfortunate hack job of a recent New York Post profile. Displaying Kelly’s pictures of herself in lingerie and swimsuits, the article labeled her as a new-age Lolita, content with fueling the “fantasies of men who want to have sex with young girls”.
In response to the article, Kelly made it abundantly clear both on her blog, and to a number of other media outlets, that the photos she posts of her body had nothing to do with arousing men. “The article was hyper sexist,” she wrote on her blog. “Yes I take photos of my body. Yes! Some of those photos are provocative. You think I don’t know that? …posting photos of myself…has zero correlation to my sex life.” She later told Cosmopolitan US:"I post those photos for myself. I'm body-positive, and I like my body, so why not?”
Seeing women online comfortably express their sexuality (and enjoy it) is inspiring to other women. For the moralistic news media, it’s easy to forget that women are still the predominant users of Instagram. Of women who use the internet, 31 per cent use Instagram, while the figure for men stands at 24 per cent. How shocking that women are capable of celebrating their own bodies amongst themselves.
Further, if you look in the right places, you’ll find the faces and bodies on Instagram more diverse than any form of traditional media. The platform continues to be more popular among non-whites. It’s an outlet for women of colour, for art girls, alt-girls, queer girls and anyone else left out of the mainstream’s views of desirability, to celebrate themselves.
It’s interesting to see how this has impacted men’s magazines. Instagram’s popularity has left them clinging to relevance, with many incorporating ‘hot girls of social media’ into their content. As part of Playboy’s new business strategy, involving a ban on nude photos and a safe-for-work website, the ‘sexy’ part of their main site now subsists off Instagram galleries of models, sports stars and Insta-celebs. Maxim, FHM and Esquire have acted similarly. To be fair, it’s worked: since re-launching its ‘clean’ site, Playboy’s web traffic has quadrupled, and the average reader age has dropped from the 47 to 30.
From the publishing perspective, it’s a no-brainer. When free and plentiful visual content abounds, you take it. But in doing so, you relinquish the aesthetic control of pricey photoshoots – in Playboy’s case, that’s a tenet the business was founded on.
In many ways, the aforementioned men’s websites are simply publishing the same model of beauty (young, genetically blessed white girls who are neither ‘political’ or outspoken) in the form of Instagram’s candid self-photography. But in the very least, it’s making men look at women on a woman’s terms, and that’s gotta count for some progress.
Compared to the soft focus, ‘real’ Instagram hotties, the Playboy and crew view of sexy now seems outdated, if not vulgar. Not that that matters to women on Instagram. Nudes didn’t die when Playboy stopped publishing them and no one’s holding their breath for traditional media to be more inclusive of their beauty.
Women are making their own spaces to redefine ‘erotica’, and to celebrate their own bodies. Whether that’s through self-publishing with the help of a strategically placed emoji sticker, or starting an erotica mag that hires female photographers and shoots women of varying body shapes and races – more and more, women are shaping the aesthetics of their desirability, and no one can take their eyes off it.
