Empowered Women & Social Media: Analyzing #YourBeautyRules in Cyberfeminism Perspective
Nicky Lestari, Andi Nur Fadilah, Eka Wenats Wuryanta
2020
Jurnal Aspikom
This research aims to explain about cyberfeminism. It is a part of the new media discourse, discussing mainly the context of the development and empowerment of women. The main approach of this research was a qualitative approach, which included research methods of literature and documentative studies. This method mostly analyzed content through the perspective of cyberfeminism and how the Female Daily Network built campaigns through #YourBeautyRules content. This research showed that the
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... n was built with narratives based on the experiences of FDN employees and some vloggers in Indonesia. This campaign has the potential to educate, motivate, and develop women so that they can prioritize character and self-development. Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan dan menjelaskan tentang cyberfeminisme yang masuk dalam diskursus media baru membahas tentang terutama yang berkaitan dengan konteks pengembangan dan pemberdayaan perempuan. Pendekatan utama penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan menyertakan metode penelitian kajian literatur dan dokumentatif. Metode ini lebih banyak dilakukan dengan analisa konten melalui perspektif cyberfeminisme dan menganalisis bagaimana Female Daily Network membangun kampanye melalui konten Your Beauty Rules. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa kampanye dibangun dengan narasi berdasarkan pengalaman karyawan FDN dan beberapa vloger di Indonesia. Kampanye ini memiliki potensi untuk mengedukasi, memotivasi dan mengembangkan perempuan agar dapat mengutamakan karakter dan pengembangan diri. Introduction Female Daily Network (FDN) is a female community forum that often discusses beauty, health, parenting, works, and education. FDN aims to empower and educate women to be smart consumers. The majority of the FDN editorial activities theme, for example, beauty in general, beauty product discussion, and tips on women's health and parenting. FDN is the biggest virtual community forum for women in Indonesia. In 2018, FDN held a campaign theming #YourBeautyRules. The theme of the campaign was picked to promote Jakarta X Beauty. The theme of the event was added with a hashtag #YourBeautyRules to make the campaign spread vastly through social media. The campaign initiated by FDN also is educationally potential for women. It urged that women as an individual should not be confined in constructions of beauty. Along with the campaign, FDN also released the same theme on its YouTube channel. The speakers in the video, composed of FDN's employees and vloggers, promotes the idea that women should be proud of themselves with their discrete advantages and disadvantages and be confident of their appearance. FDN released two videos in its YouTube channel that is in the category of #YourBeautyRules campaign, namely: "Be Proud of #YourbeautyRules | Jakarta X Beauty 2018 by Female Daily" and "Rachel Goddard, Soraya Hylmi, Allyssa Hawadi, Body-Shaming Experience Sharing #YourBeautyRules." The rationale of the campaign is the ubiquity of patriarchal constructions of women that at that time seemingly see women as a merely physical object, ranging from faces, body shapes, to appearance. It is suspected that this construction is responsible for bullying and cyberbullying that are experienced by women. #YourBeautyRules campaign by FDN, therefore, can be categorized as a form of cyberfeminism. This is because, in the campaign, the speakers encouraged anyone, especially women, to be confident of themselves and presenting it to the broader society. FDN hopes that Indonesian women that have the same condition as the speakers can be confident of their physique, appearance, and characters. Cyberfeminism supports women empowerment through technology and helps them self-sustain amid the diversity of male-dominated discourse that controls technology use. Cyberfeminism creates an electronic online space that is capable of holding back the construction of dominant gender and empowering women throughout the world (Alatas & Sutanto, 2019). Cyberferminsm encourages women that they should express themselves independently so that they can deliberate themselves from social construction stigmatized to women, and open room for women to be creative on digital media. Cyberfeminism emphasizes how women use digital media in their lives to improve themselves, express their opinion, and establish a virtual community. Kanai and Dobson (2016) mentioned that digital media could benefit women empowerment. Firstly, women can be more creative and publish work. In 1970, the media represented women with a narrow definition. Women were described as housewive, mothers, sexual objects, and consumers of media and not producers. However, with the advent of the internet and digital media technology, women can produce and distribute media and create their discrete contents. Secondly, women can promote a feeling of respect for victims of women's exploitation and digital media culture. Previous activities in media digital are responsible for categorizing women in unequal categories, such as class, sexuality, and geographical location. With a high rate of activity and participation in digital media, the diversity mentioned can be revealed, retold, and shared. Also, it can be interpreted collectively to establish a feeling of respecting the same media users. Thirdly, women can have their space to express and love themselves. By exploiting
doi:10.24329/aspikom.v5i2.664
fatcat:xylbjewamrar7p5oi672qt437i