Tumblr is for Girls: Disidentification, Failing and Passive Masochism

in the Artwork of Girls on Tumbr

Eden Redmond 

Abstract

            In this essay I will examine the artwork produced by girls, about girlhood as found on the online on micro blogging platform Tumblr. I will then analyze the work deploying Jose Esteban Munoz’s theory of disidentification. Disidentification is a strategy where someone of a marginal identity appropriates materials and behaviors that are normalized by the dominant narrative and in doing so subverts that normalcy. I will also apply J Halberstam’s notions of failing and passive masochism. Halberstam suggests that chosen complicity can be a form of resistance and subversion. In the case of girls this looks like weaponizing stereotypes of girlishness such as emotional visibility, the color pink, softness, bodies and the bedroom.

A Pink and Fluffy Landscape

In this essay I will examine the artwork produced by girls, about girlhood as found on the online micro blogging platform Tumblr. I will then analyze the work deploying Jose Esteban Munoz’s theory of disidentification. Disidentification is a strategy where someone of a marginal identity appropriates materials and behaviors that are normalized by the dominant narrative and in doing so subverts that narrative. I will also apply J Halberstam’s notions of failing and passive masochism. Halberstam explains that to fail or chose complicity can be a form of resistance and subversion. In the case of girls this looks like weaponizing stereotypes of girlishness such as emotional visibility, the color pink, softness, bodies and the bedroom. I argue that these decisions to appropriate and subvert normative symbols of girlhood complicate girl identity. To do this on Tumblr produces an archive of cultural production as well as forms community. To borrow the question from online journalist Kaitlyn Dowling: “How is content … influencing teenage Tumblr users as they begin to shape their social and political worldviews… These users are getting a social education, and it’s not happening in the classroom — it’s happening online.” (Dowling)[1]

            In the dominant American narrative young girls are measured against certain qualities: manners, beauty, and delicacy to be a few. When visualizing American girlhood there are very specific markers- pastel colors, pink in particular, soft textures, kitties, bunnies and lambies- we see pretty, we see composed we see a fine bedroom. What may not be discussed outright but is implied are ideas about virginity, moderation, and submission. These ideas are not novel, but their proliferation is striking nonetheless, even more so in the age of the Internet.

            Tumblr is a microblogging image driven platform founded by David Karp in February 2007. As of November 30, 2014 Tumblr has 213 million blogs and comes in in 13 languages[2]. Tumblr provides a unique combination of material - from pornography, to photography suites of international people and places, cute baby animals, current events, and geek spaces. Tumblr definitely has a vicious side, but it also has an incredibly tender and socially conscious audience. “Tumblr generation — a young, bright and tech-savvy group of international users who seek what might seem counterintuitive: Genuine online connection bolstered, not hindered by anonymity.” Forbes[3]

            One type of connectivity produced on Tumblr is in the form of artwork produced by girls talking about or talking back to girlhood. Entire Tumblr collectives are dedicated to this practice including The Coven, The Le Sigh, and The Bunny Collective. According to their mission statements, these online collectives highlight women art producers and include queer, non-binary, and feminist voices. A general aesthetic, recognizable across collectives includes baby pink, loaded but minimal text and nudity. Each of these characteristics are tools to play out disidentification. They look like normative expectations of girlhood, but act as something entirely different.

            Disidentifications

            As I said earlier, disidentification is a strategy of survival, where people of a peripheral identity appropriate normalized materials or behaviors. In appropriating these things, what was normalized now is made strange and new dialogues are brought to the surface. A key example from the girls on Tumblr would be the use of the color pink.

All the Signs: Pinked

Gabby Bess of Paper magazine just wrote an article on Nicki Minaj and how she and other women artists have turned pink into a weapon[4]. “[Pink] is her armor, she wears it in male dominated spaces to make it clear that she isn’t there to be one of the boys”(Bess) One could argue the same idea is being developed here. 

Pink serves as a marker for audience but it also serves as a marker for time. Soft pink is typically associated with young, pre-pubescent girls. The quintessential hue is called “baby pink” after all. When an image is placed in pink, it is immediately located in youth. This contributes to complicating imagery, especially sexual imagery. Consider this piece by Hobbes Ginsberg, “still life (protection)”.

Still Life (Protection)

In Hobbes Ginsberg’s “still life (protection)” (Fig 1.) we see a pink and purple backdrop and foreground. This pink background should suggest youth but its super saturated hue distorts this location. One could argue that showing the range of pink hues could correlate with the chronological suggestion of baby pink, and that the image stays with girls at all ages. Right in the center of the frame is a bright green, needled cactus, a phallus. The phallic cacti and the finger hold a homoerotic tension that is escalated by the presence of the studded collar draped around the base of the cactus.

Reaching for the phallus is a bloodied finger in the iconic pose of God reaching for Adam.  This blood on the finger could be the residue of the finger interacting with menstrual blood, it could be the curious finger inserted into Christ’s ribs in Caravaggio’s “Doubting Thomas”, or perhaps evidence of an act of violence. There are several blurry boundaries here; between sex and violence, normative and queer encounters, the innocence of youth and the depravity of being older.  One of the more subtle gestures about this image is that the hand is not eager. The reach is unhurried and passive.

Failing and Passive Masochism

In their book “The Queer Art of Failure” Halberstam calls on theorist Saidiya Hartman’s idea of passivity as an alternative to limited notions of freedom[5] (that is- the one to one logic of action as freedom and inaction as imprisonment) and Leo Bersani’s notion of masochism[6] (as a condition of wrecked negotiations with the world, broken intimacies and interrupted connection) to propose a politicized inaction. This political inaction, that is inaction as freedom, claims that in stepping outside of limited rhetoric, one can affectively step out of the system of colonizer and colonized entirely. (Halberstam, 131).

I am proposing that feminists refuse the choices as offered—freedom in liberal terms or death—in order to think about a shadow archive of resistance, one that does not speak in the language of action and momentum but instead articulates itself in terms of evacua- tion, refusal, passivity, unbecoming, unbeing. This could be called an anti- social feminism, a form of feminism preoccupied with negativity and nega- tion. (Halberstam, 129)

Anti-social feminism is very visible on Tumblr. These posts are to the tune of “I had a bad day, I’m just going to be alone watch Netflix and take a bath but hey this is how I can take care of myself for now, emotional visibility=feminism!” There is a public acknowledgement and support around socially withdrawing and allowing space to be sad. But visibility of sadness especially for girls can be a slippery slope. Does lending visibility to a trope of emotional vulnerability contribute to harmful narrative for girls? How do we acknowledge expression that is diarist or activist, and not topple the idea of strength? Can we include both? The stakes of this question are escalated when the subject becomes nudity and pornography.  

All the Signs: Selfies and Nudity

Those who grew up Online had images of sexuality and sexualized bodies more readily available than ever before. We quickly learned the postures, lighting and facial expressions of mainstream pornography. This enormous collection of material presented the online community with a stencil when producing one’s own erotic imagery. For girls on Tumblr the language of online mainstream pornography is deployed in order to discuss and critique images of normative sexuality. Artist and writer Ann Hirsch would argue,  

 “The internet is a place where for the first time (more or less) individuals are able to create imagery of sexuality in their own image and disseminate these images widely. We are also able to be part of communities who share our sexual interests without causing shame. The one-to-many hierarchy of traditional media no longer has to be the arbiter of normative sexuality, but can be figured on an individual level.” [7]

Girls on Tumblr make the efforts to protect this imagery- often nude selfies will be captioned “not for porn blogs”. An ask is made here, to allow for the existence of sexual expression without direct consumption. This image now operates as a representation for the producer rather than a product for the consumer. More than mere representation, these images nod to the normative field being referenced but retain queer and instable messaging. One of the aspects that make this image fail is the passivity of the figure and/or action.

Leslie Jamison’s essay The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain[8] articulates Susan Sontag’s critique and flipside of passive imagery of women. Susan Sontag wrote about the heyday of “nihilistic and sentimental” nineteenth century logic viewed the sad woman as having a type of refined sensibility.  Jamison asks the reader how can we acknowledge pain and not glorify women as noble sufferers? “Women still have wounds…how do we talk about these wounds without glamorizing them? Without corroborating an old mythos that turns female trauma into celestial constellations worthy of worship?” (Jamison) For the artwork about girlhood on Tumblr, redirecting trauma into a public dialogue and space for connectivity is how pain is acknowledged and at the same time not worshipped. With tools such as passive masochism and failing are very much activated in artwork produced by girls on Tumblr; soft core images that fail to seduce, portraits of inactive girls choosing to be out of harms way.

Florence is Babe

Here is the work of Maisie Cousins (Figure 2). In this piece called “florence is babe” we see all of the signifiers of girlishness and coquettish sexuality. The background is a baby pink flower. The figure is nearly nude and curvy, her gaze is out of frame and her posture is languid.

But this image is also failing isn’t it? The figure’s pose isn’t submissive at all. When considered horizontally we can see that this image was originally taken landscape and has been turned 90 degrees. The pose of passive sexuality has now been activated when turned upright, as well as turned blue. The idea that her posture can hold weight and is in action is also unbelievable. She is awkward and contorted. If this was taken vertically her breasts according to normative standards are flattened and uninteresting. There is also an oddly cropped buttocks and dirty feet at the top of the page close to the central figure’s hand. The hand and the ass are not interacting directly but the hand could be reaching but the reach is passive.

Any mode of actual seduction is now replaced by a disjuncture between expectations and reality. The pink dewy flower in the background, symbolic of the receptive pussy, has been cropped in so far that the image fuzzes and looks more like internal organs. It has been transformed from pure and receptive to grotesque. The orange, yellow, blue and pink shapes make the image buzz uncomfortably, our attention is scattered. Labrador sized prawns are at the figure’s feet. Any association of seafood with sexual engagement conjures the notion of the vagina smelling fishy and like ocean instead of like packaged rainforest flowers.

Conclusion

The art about girlhood on Tumblr get a bad wrap for being vapid, shallow, sad girl diary entries or white girls whining. Ultimately there are complications and kernels to be considered in these accusations. What does it mean that in the American girl narrative it is implicit that we mean a white American girl? Where is the line between engaging with emotions and being a “wound dweller”[9]? Does the idea of passive masochism work in practice or only visually? Does it require a great amount of privilege to enact passive masochism?

Each of these notions is an idea I am considering and girl artists are addressing. Initially thought let’s focus on the incredibly legible cultural production happening on the blogosphere that is largely unaccounted for. If 15% of Tumblr users are 13-17[10], and the approximate age group of these artists is 20-27, then there is an impressive visual encyclopedia developing that is normalizing critical analysis of the normalized world. This wide spread of cultural production suggests that a new generation of self taught critical thinkers is on the rise. As Juana Maria Rodriguez says about online communities “ It is not that a truer, more genuine or essential self emerges; instead the mere act of continually communicating the self generates textuality of the self. A written record of interior ruminations, a constant coding and decoding of the self and other.” (Rodriguez, 128) [11]

Bibliography

Bess, Gabby. (December 1, 2014). “How Nicki Minaj and Female Artists are Turning the Color Pink into a Weapon”. papermag.com. http://www.papermag.com/2014/08/pink_friday_how_nicki_minaj_an.php

Bogost, Ian. “The New Aesthetic Needs to Get Weirder.” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-new-aesthetic-needs-to-get-weirder/255838

Dowling, Kaitlyn. (December 2, 2014). “Ferguson, One Direction, Tumblr and Why you Need to Pay Attention to Teenage Girls”. Medium. https://medium.com/thelist/ferguson-one-direction-tumblr-and-why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-teenage-girls-66b6640d83f9

Halberstam, J. (2011). “The Queer Art of Failure”. Duke University Press. Durham, NC.

Hirsch, Ann. (June 4, 2011). “Women, Sexuality and the Internet”. poooool.com, http://pooool.info/women-sexuality-and-the-internet/.  

Humphrey, David. (September 27, 2013). “A Maker of Anonymous Comfort for the Tumblr Generation Wants David Karp’s Ear”. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhumphrey/2013/09/27/a-maker-of-anonymous-comfort-for-the-tumblr-generation-wants-david-karps-ear/

Jamison, Leslie. (2014) “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” VQR, Issue 90/2. http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-pain

Mitchell, C.A. Reid-Walsh. (2006) Girl Culture An Encyclopedia Volume 1. Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut. London.

Muñoz, José Esteban. “Disidentifications.” University of Minnesota Press, 1999

Rodriguez, Juana Maria. (January 2003). “Welcome to the Global Stage: Confessions of a Latina Cyber Slut”. New York University Press. New York, NY.

Sontag, Susan. (2003). “Regarding the Pain of Others”. Picador, New York, NY. 

[1] Dowling, Kaitlyn. “Ferguson, One Direction, Tumblr and Why you Need to Pay Attention to Teenage Girls”. Medium. December 2, 2014

[2] www.tumblr.com

[3] Humphrey, David. (September 27, 2013). “A Maker of Anonymous Comfort for the Tumblr Generation Wants David Karp’s Ear”. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhumphrey/2013/09/27/a-maker-of-anonymous-comfort-for-the-tumblr-generation-wants-david-karps-ear/

[4] Bess, Gabby. “How Nicki Minaj and Female Artists are Turning the Color Pink into a Weapon”. papermag.com, December 1, 2014.

[5] Halberstam, J. (2011). “The Queer Art of Failure”. Duke University Press. Durham, NC.

[6] Halberstam, J. (2011). “The Queer Art of Failure”. Duke University Press. Durham, NC.

[7] Hirsch, Ann. (June 4, 2011). “Women, Sexuality and the Internet”. poooool.com, http://pooool.info/women-sexuality-and-the-internet/.  

[8] Jamison, Leslie. (2014) “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” VQR, Issue 90/2. http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-pain

[9] Jamison, Leslie. (2014) “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” VQR, Issue 90/2. http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-pain

[10] Dowling, Kaitlyn. (December 2, 2014). “Ferguson, One Direction, Tumblr and Why you Need to Pay Attention to Teenage Girls”. Medium. https://medium.com/thelist/ferguson-one-direction-tumblr-and-why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-teenage-girls-66b6640d83f9

[11] Rodriguez, Juana Maria. (January 2003). “Welcome to the Global Stage: Confessions of a Latina Cyber Slut”. New York University Press. New York, NY.