Internet Post
One of my Facebook friends recently shared a post which was originally made by a girl who goes to BYU in Idaho. The post was about how the girl is tired of the social pressure her friends and family have been giving her to get married, and in the post, the girl featured an entire photo shoot of pictures of herself posing with a life-sized cardboard cut out of Zayn Malik in a beautiful park. Alongside each photo was a caption of one of the annoying statements people had made to her, such as “your biological clock is ticking” and “focusing on a career is not your duty as a woman”.
This jumped out to me right away on my Facebook feed because, as a lot of you have probably guessed by my project, I’m a huge fan of One Direction, and when I saw Zayn in the pictures I stopped scrolling and was like “OMG what is this!!!”. When I proceeded to read what she had to say, I was impressed with the message behind the photo shoot, and the way it efficiently highlighted the many different ways women can be pressured every day into fulfilling what some people might consider their “duties” or responsibilities.
I think this post is definitely spreadable — as of now it has ninety shares and over three hundred likes on Facebook, and just the fact that I saw it when I don’t know anyone in Idaho is impressive. The use of a celebrity that many people in my generation recognize, alongside the silliness of the entire situation (she was in full make-up and a cute outfit just to pose with a piece of cardboard) definitely increased its spreadability. Combined with a feminist message, it was relevant to issues women still have to face today, but stuck out amidst all the shared links to political articles that dominate the rest of my Facebook newsfeed. I wouldn’t consider it a producerly text, because it’s not really something people can add on to, unless they’re commenting on the post with a similar experience. It wasn’t really a continuation of any personal conversation, since my friend just shared it with all of her friends, but in my opinion it was significant to the larger political conversation going on in the public sphere of Facebook currently. Women are told all the time from so many different sources how they need to be living their lives, facing many double standards that men never do, and this post helped draw attention to this problem in a clever, humorous way.
