Jasleen
In some sense, social media has facilitated the “global village” dream of the tech industry. It offered social connection when isolation was the norm.
The female social media user experience is no different. Once logged-in the app (as if she ever logged out), she is exposed to algocracy which is inevitable to these platforms. As she “chooses” to scroll by and “decides” to watch entertaining reels, she is made to work for these platforms. She is not only producing “user” data but helping with the targeted advertising which underlie the political economic logic of these platforms.
One scroll and she’s exposed to an influx of “easy” cooking, “beauty,” and “beginner pilates” “at home” tips and tutorials from all over. This may feel like a Covid phenomenon, but it has become an integral part of our current techno-culture environment. “Papa’s Princess” was doing it all again, even though this time, partially, virtually.
Her culinary skills have to match with that of the “kitchen influencer,” while also having to maintain her health and beauty standards in accordance with “slim and Korean glass skin”. This leaves her with questions about her own worth, self-esteem. She is made to participate in an increased self-surveillance – as if Mohalewale log (translated to: people in your neighbourhood) were not enough, we need a couple thousand virtual yardsticks to compare ourselves, our bodies.
Techniques such as guilt tripping and silence-ing have been used on our females for centuries; albeit internet content makes it easier to impose hierarchical social comparison and subjugation.
Not only this, by engaging with these apps and platforms, she is somehow also fueling the socio-culturally constructed notion of “good” daughter or wife or mom. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are full of such long form and short form video content. These interactions of the “real” world social expectations and social media usage patterns are telling. She is rendered a cog in the patriarchal and hegemonic reel and real world. But I’m sure, and we all believe, that she can do it all!
The do-it-all syndrome reaffirms the gendered hierarchies and furthers discrimination through means of increased expectations. Free domestic and emotional labour of the care-giving role that women provide is starting to surface.
Various waves of feminism hit India, differently. Arguably, we are currently in the fourth one. It seems that in certain weird ways, the post-pandemic world order (though COVID-19 continues to spread) has helped to retain the (unequal) status quo for women. The “YouTube-neighbour” has become a “new normal” for economies of the “at home” content. Such an economy generates revenue for the virtual platforms and extracts by subjugation and control on the basis of gendered-role classification.
What’s next? I’m sure, with AI, she will be able to do-it-all!
(The writer is postgraduate (MA/ MBA), presently
connected with the community through a women-centric NGO in Vancouver).