Kilroy, Eleanor. 2024. Performing the Perfect on Instagram: Applied Theatrical Interventions with Young Women. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

The central purpose of this research is to examine what is unearthed when applied theatre workshops are used to explore pressures on young women to perform ‘the perfect’ (McRobbie, 2020) on Instagram. The perfect, as defined by feminist cultural theorist, Angela McRobbie, suggests a kind of entrapment for predominantly white, middle class young women, in which they must work hard to portray online, beautified faces, sculpted bodies, stylish spaces and sparkling social lives (Ibid). Drawing on the outcomes of an applied theatre workshop project with white, working class young women, this research reconfigures how this entrapment plays out in daily life and examines a certain sense of dissatisfaction.

My findings indicate that young women are routinely gripped by ‘expressive stasis’: an inability to post for fear of not meeting the gendered and classed terms of Instagrammability. In turn, this causes young women to invest in individualised mental labour of staging a future perfect self, which alienates them from the materiality of their perceived ‘imperfect’ bodies. Worryingly, this phenomenon is set against a cultural backdrop where popular feminist resilience languages promote intensely individualised coping methods (Ibid; Banet-Weiser, 2018). This interdisciplinary research positions applied theatre contexts as capable of offering new insights and enabling embodied disturbance of the inevitability of these overlapping media languages of the ‘perfect imperfect-resilience’ (McRobbie, 2020).

Methodologically, I examine the outcomes of this research through a combination of discursive and affective traditions. Through analysis of the theatrical outcomes of ‘reworlding’ Instagram, I observe the power of performance to enable participants to reawaken corporeal perception in ways that interrogate the discourses of expressive stasis and the perfect-imperfect. This thesis also attests to the potential of embodied modes of interpersonal engagement to interfere with notions of resilient individuality that undergird young women’s experiences of their mediated social worlds.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00035870
Keywords:	Feminism, Gender, Class, Applied Theatre, Popular Feminism, Instagram, Social Media
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Theatre and Performance (TAP)
Date:	29 February 2024
Item ID:	35870
Date Deposited:	05 Apr 2024 16:56
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2024 11:09
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35870

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