The selfie and the slut bodies, technology and public shame

The selfie, which has become a default aesthetic of self-representation, is either mocked at as a fad, or considered as a digital photograph. This paper looks at the phenomenon of "selfie-shaming" to see how either of these approaches of dismissal or trying to regulate the selfie through the same regulatory frameworks as the photograph fail to capture the complex practices of body, technology, control, and regulation that are implicated in this phenomenon. In looking at selfie-shaming and the subsequent processes of "slut shaming", it argues that we need to think of selfies not only as cultural artefacts but also as born digital objects to show how it produces new regimes of control and visibility of women's bodies online. Drawing from software studies, cyber-feminism and digital cultures, it constructs the case of #GamerGate to show how we need to expand the scope of women's problems of consent and agency online beyond the instances of revenge and non-consensual pornography.