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Boobs, back-off, six packs and bits:

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Mediated body parts, gendered reward,
and sexual shame in teens' sexting
images
a b
Jessica Ringrose & Laura Harvey
a
Deparment of Humanities and Social Sciences, University College
London, Institute of Education, London
b
Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey,
UK
Published online: 19 May 2015.

To cite this article: Jessica Ringrose & Laura Harvey (2015) Boobs, back-off, six packs and bits:
Mediated body parts, gendered reward, and sexual shame in teens' sexting images, Continuum:
Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29:2, 205-217, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2015.1022952

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2015.1022952

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 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2015
Vol. 29, No. 2, 205217, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2015.1022952

Boobs, back-off, six packs and bits: Mediated body parts, gendered
reward, and sexual shame in teens sexting images
Jessica Ringrosea* and Laura Harveyb1
a
Deparment of Humanities and Social Sciences, University College London, Institute of Education,
London; bDepartment of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK

In this paper, we explore a contemporary panic around teen sexting considering why it
focuses mostly on girls bodies and breasts. Drawing on empirical findings from
research with 13- and 15-year olds in two London schools, we ask: How are girls and
boys mediated bodies and body parts constructed, negotiated and made sense of in the
teen peer group? How are images of girls breasts surveilled and owned by others? In what
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ways can images of girls bodies be used to sexually shame them? How do images of
boobs work differently than those of six-packs and pecs? When and how is digital
proof of sexual activity shamed or rewarded? Our analysis explores the affective
dimensions of digital affordances and how relative gendered value is generated through
social media images and practices. We demonstrate how our qualitative research approach
facilitates exploration of the online and offline relational, material embodied performance
of negotiating gender and sexuality in teens digitally mediated peer cultures.

Introduction: gender, sexuality, bodies and images in sexting and social networking
research
Sexting is a contemporary topic of girlhood crisis (Aappola et al. 2005) or postfeminist
moral panic (Ringrose 2013) in the Global North where debates over whether girls are
now too sexually empowered in the wake of feminist gains repeat in the international press,
informing educational and research agendas. Teen girl sexters are viewed in schizoid
ways (Renold and Ringrose 2011) as simultaneously sexually out of control agents of
self-sexualisation and hapless victims of exploitation who are to be shamed, condemned,
protected and saved (Karaian 2012). News media has tended to dramatize extreme
incidences of youth sexual images gone wrong so that sexting becomes synonymous
with cyberbullying. Take for instance the case of Amanda Todd from British Columbia,
Canada, where a camcorder image of her bare breasts circulated without her consent
through new media. This particular story is a menage of girlhood crisis where the
spreading (Jenkins et al. 2013) of the topless photo is said to have directly led to cyber
and physical bullying at several schools, severe depression and panic disorder, self-
mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse, two attempted suicides and finally death.2
International anti-sexting educational awareness campaigns echo this media risk
discourse, positioning sexting as a problem of under-aged girls lacking vigilance in
their uses of social media, with boys constructed as predatory and over-sexed (Albury and
Crawford 2012; Dobson and Ringrose, in press).
Although there is a growing research literature on teen sexting from a range of
disciplines, the majority is quantitative, measuring the rates and incidences of sexting
through surveys in ways that have largely neglected attention to the gendered and sexual

*Corresponding author. Email: j.ringrose@ioe.ac.uk

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

 206 J. Ringrose and L. Harvey

content of sexting images (e.g. which gendered body parts and sexual acts are
represented?). Quantitative research has defined sexting in rather vague ways such as
receiving or sending sexually suggestive, nude, or near nude images (Lenhart 2009) and
talk about having sex or images of people naked or having sex (Livingstone et al. 2011).
There are serious methodological limitations of statistically measuring what is sexually
suggestive talk or nearly nude images without qualifying the content (Wolak and
Finklehor 2011). Mitchell et al.s (2012) research on sexting is one of the only quantitative
studies to differentiate whether images showed the breasts genitals or bottom of a
minor, yet bottom and genitals are still gender un-differentiated categories.
Qualitative research on sexting has also tended to not focus on the gendered
representations of the bodies in images that are circulated on social media (Albury and
Crawford 2013; Harris et al. 2013; Salter et al. 2013).
Research on social networking has offered a wider range of findings on gender and
sexual representations in networked images. Quantitative analysis of MySpace has
included measuring increased levels of sexual comparison and bodily objectification
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online (Manago et al. 2008) and cataloguing the rates of a range of social networking
images including revealing sexual poses, partial frontal male nudity, partial frontal
female nudity, full male nudity and full female nudity (Pierce in Patchin and Hinduja
2010, 201). Qualitative research on social networking has explored the content of
gendered images in relation to a popular culture. Dobson (2011) considered how
discourses of sexy femininity were represented in a wide range of images of lips, midriffs
and breasts in her case study of MySpace profiles of young women over 18 years of age.
Van Doorn (2010) explored gendered identity construction amongst 18- to 24-year-old
MySpace users, conceptualizing social networking as a space where subjects construct a
digital body online that is iteratively performed through gender norms. De Ridder and
Van Bauwel (2013) similarly explored how gender shapes commenting practices on
pictures in Facebook amongst 13 18 year olds. However, both studies focused on the
online text/comments rather than the gendered/sexualized content of images.
Concentrating on teen girls and feminine embodiment, Ringrose (2011), Ringrose and
Eriksson Barajas (2011) qualitative research explored new performative pressures around
displaying sexy bodies on Bebo, yet went beyond discourse or semiotics of images to
suggest social networking images work as affective assemblages that materialize gender
through digitized, networked relationalities. This resonates with Van Doorns (2011) work
on how digital identity operates as part of networked practices with range of material
effects/affects shaped by normative gender schemes.
Following this direction, in this paper we begin by exploring how images of female
breasts in teens digital social networks represent a prime example of an over-coded
gendered and sexualized body object (Braidotti 1994; Sanchez Taylor 2012):
While breasts play a significant role in the construction of the self, they are rarely seen as
belonging to women [or girls] themselves . . . although they are housed on her person, from
the moment they begin to show a female discovers that her breasts are claimed by others.
Parents and relatives mark their appearance as a landmark event, schoolmates take notice,
girlfriends compare, boys zero in, later a lover, a baby take their propriety share. No other
part of the human anatomy has such a semi-public intensely private status and no other part of
the body has such vaguely defined custodial rights. (Springgay and Freedman 2009, 359 60,
references omitted, emphasis added)

Our interest is in the (re)mediation of bodies through images and how networked
digital images may re-stage the collective ownership and shaming of teen girls bodies in
new ways. As Rebecca Coleman has argued Images do not reflect or represent bodies but
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 207

produce the ways in which it is possible for bodies to become (2009, 94). As mentioned,
shame around the viewing of an image of her bare breasts has been at least partly credited
with destroying Amanda Todds life. Body shaming and slut shaming has historically
been an endemic part of the sexual regulation of femininity and girls and womens bodies
in culturally specific formations (Dobson 2014; Johnson and Moran 2013; Ringrose and
Renold 2012). Elspyth Probyn (2004) has written instructively about the affect of
everyday shame, suggesting that we need to find new descriptions of what bodies do and
say as they inhabit everyday places. We explore how digital affordances of producing,
posting, sending, tagging, liking and commenting upon images mediate bodies,
materializing gendered affects, sexual differences and hierarchies in teens networked
cultures.

Methodology
This paper explores data from a qualitative research project on youth sexting (Ringrose
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et al. 2012), which involved focus groups, individual interviews and digital observation data
of Facebook pages with 35 young people aged 1315 years. The research was conducted in
two mixed gender, multi-ethnic comprehensive schools in London boroughs with high
levels of economic deprivation. We asked young people to walk us through their online
and mobile phone practices and combined this with observation of young peoples
interactions on their Facebook profiles. Unlike projects which only explore publicly
available online data, we invited focus group participants to take part in a digital
ethnography component where we friended our participants through a researcher Facebook
account (Brockman et al. 2014). Our focus group discussions shaped the selection of the
online content we observed, which in turn shaped individual interview discussions about
digital postings. Where many online ethnography projects with young people have neglected
discussing social media images in depth3, our process enabled exploration of images and
online comments with the youth produsers (Bruns 2008). Drawing together data from this
range of in-person and virtual methodologies (Hine 2013) enabled us to analyse young
peoples gendered performativity through their digital images and texts as well as during
discussions of networked life in focus group and individual interviews.

Girls mediated bodies: boobs, bras, bikinis and back-off

Many youth and girl studies scholars have discussed the rules that regulate the sartorial
bodily expression of femininity as culturally and racially specific (Duits and van Zoonen
2006; Raby 2012). These bodily ideals play out in particular ways in relation to the
performance of online teen heterosexualized feminine identity through image production
(Ringrose 2010). The style, angle and proportions of images of girls bodies circulating
through digital social networking were a source of avid attention.
Monique: Like if you take a certain picture because girls are girls, they understand each
other, like they know that you are doing this specially for boys, like . . . if
someone goes and takes a picture of me without makeup and she has got her
cleavage out and like short shorts, like revealing herself . . . or her belly out . . .
and showing like her body and she goes, Oh me without makeup but you
know she is trying to show her body to a boy. (Year 10 girls focus group)
Here we see the staging, premise and imagined audience of the photo is closely
interrogated, with the perceived intentionality of what girls are trying to show as critical.
 208 J. Ringrose and L. Harvey

If girls are judged as showing off on purpose and trying to solicit attention through self-
image posts4, they were called attention whores who dont respect themselves
(Rebecca, year 10). There were complex rules around what makes someone slutty or a
sket5 online with breasts being the focal point of discussion amongst our participants:
Irina: It is like you know skets, as in like they will give some random one to anyone and
they show off their body.
Interviewer: What do you mean when you say random?
Irina: They can like post half naked pictures as their profile picture then people will ask
about it and then get naked pictures and
Alexandra : - what they are doing and stuff like that, they hide it . . . .
Indigo: Yeah, in the lower years but not our year . . .
Rebecca: . . . It is just immature I think. They are just doing it to get attention.
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Irina: Exposing them, like huge boobs or whatever.

I: So cleavage?
Irina: Yeah, you can basically see the boobs. (Year 10 girls focus group)
The heavy surveillance placed upon girls images is evident, where simply being able
to see the boobs marks the girl as slutty. The size of the breasts was also significant, with
huge boobs seeming to indicate greater sluttiness (Springgay and Freedman 2010).
Almost always, visible breasts are positioned as a dislocated body part or organ without a
body (Braidotti 1994) through which you can read on sexual intentionality. The girls
discuss this as a way of labelling that girls are consciously choosing:
Irina: Well most girls, Im certain most girls know that if they are going to put a certain
picture like that up they are going to be labelled as a slag and them putting it up
means, it almost means that they want to be called that, because if they know that
they are going to be called that. (Year 10 girls focus group)
In individual interview Alexandra in year 10 explained further how knickers and bras
images were different from those in bikini:
Alexandra (15): . . . because when you put up a picture like that obviously you are
saying like . . . you will have sex or stuff like that, like you are already
showing them your body and all you need is them to come and like do
the rest. I dont know. Thats what I think.
I: So you wouldnt put yourself up in your bikini?
Alexandra: No, unless it is like on holiday with my friends in a bikini or whatever.
I: Okay.
Alexandra: But not in my underwear like posing in the toilet or something.
A girls body is read as on display and further read as signalling sexual availability
where boys can come and do the rest. The sexy image is constructed as giving
something away by showing your body that should be guarded. The bra and bathroom
mark the image as private, whereas a beach and bikini code it as public (Salter,
forthcoming). But bikinied bodies were still subject to surveillance, critique and rules. For
instance, some of the year 8 girls desired and aspired to post photos in bikini but said it
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 209

would not be appropriate yet at their age, and they would do it later in year 10, if it was in
natural circumstances like going to the Lido (outdoor swimming pool).
Comments upon body parts were also particularly racialized. For the black girls in the
focus groups, big buttocks (Gilman 1985) were spoken about like a severed, discrete body
part in ways similar to breasts. When they discussed Blackberry broadcasts to widen their
friend network, they mentioned the highlighting of the buttocks:

Cherelle: Like add this chick she got a back off6

Mercedes: Back off. That is a big bum.
Cherelle: . . . it is what they [boys] are like expecting in girls. It is like good features.
Mercedes: Yeah, like their dream girl is probably like a big bum, nice breasts and long
hair and like a nice skin tone. (Year 8, focus group)
The black girls discussed how their buttocks came under intense visual scrutiny. For
instance, there was heated discussion in relation to an image posted on one of the year 10
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black girls Facebook page of her buttocks in a skirt and tights as she walked down the
street with comments from two boys, labelling the image as tasteless and the girl a sket
because it was an image focusing on her butt.
We think it important to emphasize that the level of attention paid to images of girls
bodies online took place in the context of many girls experiencing increased visibility of
and verbal commentary about their bodies, in particular their breasts and buttocks, in the
offline world at school or on the street:
Stacey: I saw some boy yesterday on Facebook was trying to say he owns my bum. I saw
him today and I shouted at him, and he thinks Im joking with him. (Year 8
girls focus group)
We would suggest, extending Springgay and Freedmans arguments about owning
breasts that the digital circulation and discussion of images of girls mediated breasts and
buttocks intensifies a networked relationality where feminine body parts are understood as
the collective property of others to survey and regulate in complex ways. Girls being asked
for an image of their body (particularly breasts) from boys had to be managed carefully
since being asked was a sign of desirability, but sending one carried the risk of being
labelled a slut. We would argue that girls labelling girls who send images as sluts is actually
a form of competitive, heterosexualized girl on girl aggression that could in part be
resisting submission to boys sexual control but one that re-regulates some girls as sexually
abject (Ringrose 2012).
We also, however, found evidence of a range of creative and humorous strategies used
by girls to trouble and queer and/or resist the heteronormative space of female to be
looked at desirability:
Veronica (year 8): when like someone asks . . . I put a picture that is not like of me and
I put a picture of my cat yeah.
Using the highly favoured cat meme Veronica responds with a pussy picture.
Alexandra (15) also discussed refusing requests for sexy photos:
I: Do you have people asking for photos?
Alexandra: No, I would be like, No what are you talking about? I would say
Obviously not, because I am not that kind of person that would do that.
 210 J. Ringrose and L. Harvey

I: Okay, so Im interested in how boys know that about you? Like are you quite tough
with them?
Alexandra: No, if they like try and touch me up or something, obviously it sometimes
happens but like I will obviously do something about it and like tell them not
to and stuff like that . . . Someone came up to me and was like, Can I touch
your bum? and I was like, No go away you idiot and just hit him like, not
proper hard, but just like that, and then he went away.
Alexandra conflates being asked for an image with being asked to be touched in the
school corridor the digital bleeds into the material space of peer culture in complex
ways. Whilst Stacey (above), Veronica and Alexandra all resist boys attempts to own,
view and touch their bodies, it would seem claiming a position of power requires girls
to refuse posting or sending body images in these particular peer networks. It did not seem
possible for girls to inhabit a public digital space in which they could actively request,
take, send or post sexy photos of their own bodies without risk of sexual shaming.
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Boys owning girls mediated body parts?

In order to make sense of how digital images remediate ownership of body parts, we
explore how boys relate to images of girls bodies. As noted, boys asking girls for images
of their bodies was routine and came up in all of the focus groups. Images of girls bodies
played a part in a system of peer ratings in which boys could gain value by tagging,
collecting and showing revealing images of girls bodies, they claimed were sent to them
by the girl (Ringrose et al. 2013). For instance, both Kamal (13) and Kaja (15) in two
separate age-specific focus groups talked about having 30 such images on their phones.
Pictures, screen munches and posts could all be used as proof of boys ability to
negotiate access to particular girls bodies, but these were judged on a hierarchy with
girls deemed less likely to send an image garnering greater reward for the boy if he
acquired one.
Kaja (15): Say if I got a popular girl to do it that looks like one of those girls who
wouldnt do it then it would make me look even better.
There also seemed to be a collective negotiation of the norms and ethics (Albury et al.
2013) around the ownership and showing of images and what circumstances justified
showing friends privately, which was markedly different from publically exposing or
posting the pictures online as revenge against a girl:
Santo (15): if the girl gives you a picture of something like that and then like the next
day she will start getting rude to you and
Tarek (15): And like then you will say, I will just expose you . . . So if like you do that,
all the girls are going to be suspicious and stuff . . . they wont do it
anymore.
Because showing images of girls is part of a homosocial exchange (Sedgwick 1992)
between boys, there is a careful negotiation around being able to show physical evidence
through an image that you can get a girl to do something and maintaining girls trust.
Hakim (15) said boys feel the need to tell and show them off as evidence of having
game, so showing images of girls to boys and girls on boys phones was routine. Public
online posting or exposure was, however, much less likely. Still, to get around the
possibility of exposure, girls undertook practices like cutting off their heads or greying
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 211

out their faces in images of their bodies. For instance, there was a widely discussed
game for girls to enter into a competition to send an image of a boys name drawn on
a girls body to show the boy owns it (Year 8 girls focus group). One of these
images was an image of cleavage from the neck down taken in a mirror with Kaja
owns drawn in black marker on the top of the breasts, which was posted on Kajas (15)
Facebook page. Kaja said the girl was shameless because he didnt even know her or
where she lived and she posted the image on his page. Danvir (15) and Tarek (15) said
likewise:
Danvir: when like girls take a picture of their breasts and stuff that is why most boys
call them slags and stuff because they . . . have no respect for themselves and
they know that obviously the boy is going to show their close friends. (Year 10
focus group)
I: What about the girl like you are chatting and then they send a picture and then they
meet up with and stuff would you call that girl a slag that you met up with?
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Tarek: Yeah, I would.

I: Why is that?
Tarek: Because you dont really know her yet, she has never met you and she is sending
the picture.
I: So is it the picture that makes her a slag or is it the meeting up?
Tarek: The picture. And sometimes the meeting up.
Sending an image to someone unknown, who you havent met in person, was thus
particularly judged. The boundaries around the heterosexual cover of relationships (Rubin
1984) are being reasserted here where girls who independently send, post or tag themselves
in images of their breasts (particularly if unsolicited) seemed to imply sexual agency that
comes under heavy surveillance and is critiqued as slaggy.
Some boys, however, also spoke quite critically about soliciting, sharing and viewing
girls images as boys using their power, positioning boys who would show off by
digitally circulating or posting pictures of girls as less popular:
Hakim
(year 10): I wouldnt respect them for doing that . . . if youre going around doing that
then the girls arent going to respect or want to talk to you or be nice or
something . . . cause you dont seem to be trustworthy or like you dont
deserve respect then either.
Some boys even denounced the threat of exposure facing girls as sexist. But it
seemed that directly challenging the performative practices of heteronormative masculinity
of collecting and showing images of girls bodies would prove far too risky in the wider
everyday sexist peer culture, since Hakim (15) also said If they had a picture of a girl naked
and you told them Thats wrong they will think straight away you are gay.

Boys mediated bodies: six packs, pecs, bits and blows

Recent work on masculinities has explored the increasing objectification of boys and men
in relation to idealized notions of physical appearance in the visual culture of social
media (Siibak 2010; Manago 2013). Topless images of chest, pecs, six packs and back
 212 J. Ringrose and L. Harvey

muscles on Facebook (at least for the older boys) were positioned as relatively
commonplace:
Kaja (15): People just said it [self-image of his chest and stomach taken from above]
was nice and that I should put it upon Facebook so I just put it up . . .
I: Do people ever say anything bad about that?
Kaja: It depends on how your six pack looks . . . it depends if they like it or not
I: you wouldnt get called names or anything?
Kaja: No, no, no.
Whilst Kaja had commented that the girl that posted an image of her cleavage on his
page was shameless, the image of his torso is just nice. Racialisation around skin tone
was important, however, as the image was lit/edited to emphasize darker skin, and boys
commented on the angle, pose and shading as critical so they wouldnt appear to have
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little pecs. There is, however, seemingly no danger of being called names like sket or
slut for displaying their body, rather 13 year old boys seemed envious of having six packs
like that!. Boys could again be called gay for posting too many topless photos, which
marked a boy as effeminate or vain, but it depended on the Facebook audience liking the
image:
I: Yeah, so on Facebook . . . you have posted up a picture of your muscles and that . . .
what do you want people to think?
Kamal (13): It is not really what I want them to think it is just that, wow this picture is
good! I think it should go on Facebook.
I: And like do you get ratings if lots of people like the picture?
Kamal: Yeah right now Ive got 42 likes on the picture and lots of comments . . .
I: And do people ever write mean things under the picture?
Kamal: Yeah, but only like your friends, like they would say something like, say you are
trying to put a picture of a six pack up and it is not like quite a six pack, they will
say, Keep trying harder until you get like me and lots of people will start
laughing.
Kamal feels confident to say wow this picture is good showing a different sense of
affective ownership over his self-body image than we saw from girls. He clearly
remembers and discusses the number of likes received and rather than being called
names he says his friends would offer encouragement to keep trying harder. Kamal also
had a picture of his stomach taken in the bathroom mirror a year and a half earlier when he
was 12 and much less muscular. This picture was much less valued in Facebook terms,
with only 2 likes. The back muscle picture taken a year later is a more successful
depiction of hard masculinity where hard work is paid off.
In another six pack image posted by Assed (15), he received positive comments,
including one girl who asks is dat really you? raaaah, tomorrow your showing
me. The image and the comments work to construct Asseds idealized muscular and
fit masculine subjectivity in the public space of Facebook where Asseds friends can
see that the image is not only liked but also carries the possibility of offline
flirtation, which confirms masculine desirability. Thus, the sexual intentionality and
comments on the pictures are read differently and rewarded for boys, whilst this
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 213

implication is potentially shameful for girls. Pictures, screen munches and posts of
girls declaring their intention to hook up could all be used by boys as proof of
their ability to successfully talk to girls and negotiate access to seeing their bodies
and potentially sex.
Whilst topless images of boys were seen as relatively commonplace, it was less
ordinary to send an image of ones dick7. Kamal, for example, said it was wrong for
boys to send images of their manly parts and noted girls did not actually ask for images of
penises in the same way that boys asked for images of girls breasts:
Kamal (13): Because boys are smart, so like they would get the girls pictures and then
expose the girls but the girls wouldnt really like a boy will go out of their
way to get a picture of a girls breast but a girl wouldnt like go out of their
way to get a picture of a boys breast. I mean a boys like dick . . .
The equivalence made between the breast and the dick is particularly interesting.
It also emerged that one of the main ways of shaming boys was around discussion of the
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size and stature of their penis:

Tarkek (15): you know she will show it to her friends . . . if someone has got a small dick,
they will show it to their friends and try and expose you and stuff.
Hakim(15): I know a guy that got basically trapped like the girl must have sent in a fake
picture of him her breasts and then the boy took a picture of his bits and sent
it to her. The girl basically exposed the boy on Facebook saying this boy has
a small bit.
As the boys note, dick exposure was not nearly as common as the non-consensual
showing or posting of images of girls breasts, but still possible. Penis images could also
work in boys favour, however, if they captured boys being sexually serviced in some way,
which could garner very high ratings. During the first focus group with year 8 girls, they
discussed an image of a boy in the year above getting blows (fellatio) from a girl, which
was his current Blackberry profile photo. Girls were concerned that they could be caught
on film performing fellatio and be exposed and how this would generate a reputational
risk (Burns, Futch, and Tolman 2011). Even girls promise of a blow job on text or private
message could be used without consent as evidence of sexual reward for boys through
screen munching where the text is captured and displayed. Capturing digital evidence of
girls textual sexual suggestions can, therefore, garner boys reputational rewards. And yet
in ways that mirror the sexual double standards we have been exploring in this paper,
evidence of boys performing cunnilingus for girls could be used as another way of
sexually shaming boys:
I: Does it ever happen to boys? Like do boys get exposed or not?
Tarek (15): Yeah sometimes . . . like about that bocatting thing they will say, This
boy bocatted a girl and stuff.
I: . . . bocat is a word used for oral sex?
Tarek: Yeah.
A bocat (a boy who goes down on a girl)8 was discussed as really nasty and the
worst of insults (Tarek). Capturing mediated bocatting (image or text) was, then, another
way that boys could be potentially sexually shamed for being seen to give up something
around a hard, sexually aggressive, to be serviced, version of hetero-masculinity.9
 214 J. Ringrose and L. Harvey

Conclusion
In this paper, we have explored how social networking sites are spaces in which gendered
discourses and material embodiment are mediated and performed through digital images.
The new affordances of digital technologies mean images of bodies are exchangeable,
differentially valued commodities that circulate via an economy of posting, tagging,
sharing and looking on social networks (Ringrose et al. 2013). However, in line with age-
old sexual double standards, we found images of girls bodies are highly sexually
regulated. Particularly, images connoting sexual attention seeking outside the cover of a
heterosexual relationship marked girls as slutty and lacking self-respect. Boys, in
contrast, can gain value and reputational reward from possessing images of esteemed girls
bodies and the implication of sexual services from girls, in the form of images or text.
Boys are rewarded for bodily displays of hard masculinity, highlighting shifts in
requirements for boys to increasingly engage in self-work on the body (Manago 2013).
However, the performance of heterosexual masculinity could be policed in relation to
shame around penis size and ridicule for association with, or implications of pleasuring
Downloaded by [Jessica Ringrose] at 23:33 19 May 2015

girls.
Despite clear gendered hierarchies around bodily display and sexual shame, young
people sometimes challenged these practices. There were inventive refusals of the
pressures around feminine sexy bodily display and requests for an image of ones body
parts, such as sending an image of a cat (pussy?). Some boys explicitly challenged the non-
consensual sharing and posting of images as sexist, not smart and undeserving of
respect. But there were highly gendered heteronormative performances of boys asking for
and girls refusing to send images of girls bodies and participants consistently positioned
girls who self-posted or sent revealing images as lacking of self-respect. Consequently,
it seemed difficult for girls to display and perform the sexy self in ways that implied
active sexual intent in their digital peer cultures. These negotiations are all indicative of
the complex, networked relationalities through which digital images materialize gender
differences. They offer insight into how sexuality is performed in digitally networked
spaces in ways that both capture and expand the affectivity of the body in largely still
unknown and yet to be mapped out ways.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. Email: l.j.harvey@surrey.ac.uk
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd.
3. For more extensive discussion of the ethical aspects of this research, including friending
participants, please see Ringrose et al. (2012).
4. At the time of the research in 2011, none of the research participants referred to self-images as
selfies. However, our research supports new research which suggests that sexy female selfie
posting is increasingly being judged as a new psycho-pathologized form of feminine narcissism,
vanity and attention seeking, with avid selfie producing girls judged as less as attractive and
competent (Daniels and Zurbriggen, 2014).
5. Sket is British slang for slut.
6. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?termback off.
7. The relatively scarce discussion of dick pics in the research may relate to the 13 15 age range
but also again to the way dick pic practices seem to have grown exponentially in the past few
years (Salter, forthcoming).
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 215

8. Bocat: Someone who licks pu*sy. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?termbocat.

9. Although we do not have space for an extended discussion of digitally mediated sexual
practices, when girls mentioned being asked for blows by text from boys, we asked whether
they asked for oral sex in return. For girls, the idea of girls texting or messaging boys for
oral sex was largely incomprehensible at year 8, and considered not usual and disgusting at
year 10.

Notes on contributors
Jessica Ringrose is a Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the Institute of Education,
University of London. Her recent research includes projects on youth digital sexual cultures and
digital feminist activism. Her books include Post-Feminist Education? Girls and the Sexual Politics
of Schooling (Routledge, 2013); Rethinking Gendered Regulations and Resistances in Education
(Routledge, 2012, edited); Deleuze and Research Methodologies (Edinburgh University Press, 2013,
co-edited with Rebecca Coleman); and Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (Palgrave,
forthcoming, co-edited with Renold et al. (2015)).
Downloaded by [Jessica Ringrose] at 23:33 19 May 2015

Laura Harvey is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her work takes an
interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sociology, gender studies, social psychology and cultural
studies. Her interests include sexualities, everyday intimacies and inequalities, research with young
people, the mediation of sexual knowledge, feminist methodologies and discourse analysis.

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