Coffey, Julia; Dobson, Amy; Kanai, Akane; Gill, Rosalind and White, Niamh. 2025. Cinch, filter, erase: virtual bodies and the editable self. New Media & Society, ISSN 1461-4448 [Article] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

Selfie-editing technologies (including in-phone editing tools, filters, and apps like Facetune) provide the ability digitally edit and “enhance” facial and body features in photos. This article extends a theorization of “the virtual” developing from earlier approaches in feminist sociology and digital media studies, to consider the implications of selfie-editing capacities for how young people navigate selfhood in contemporary visual cultures. We draw on qualitative data, including in-depth semi-structured interviews and participatory selfie-editing group workshops which used an innovative “smartphone live capture” method, where participants screen recorded on their smartphones and narrated how they edit selfies in real time to understand how bodies materialize through the everyday technologies of visual culture. We theorize that editing apps facilitate a “virtual gaze” that can create new ways of sensing embodiment, producing both intensified self-scrutiny and a seemingly increasingly plastic virtual and physical body, available for remaking according to intensifying demands for visual perfection.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251336430
Additional Information:	Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author(s) received funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, DP220100152.
Keywords:	Body image, embodiment, femininity, gender, selfie
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE) Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 17 May 2025 Published Online
Item ID:	39156
Date Deposited:	10 Jul 2025 08:42
Last Modified:	10 Jul 2025 08:42
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39156

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