Abstract
The viral Twitter hashtags #DistractinglySexy, #StayMadAbby and #BeckyWithTheBadGrades produce micro-counternarratives to stereotyped characterizations of women in science and race-based affirmative action in admissions, respectively. They exemplify an emerging mode of online resistance by marginalized subjects: using social media platforms to gain wide visibility, creating hashtags for grass-roots collective participation, and viral spread of content, and using humour to destabilize the institutional framing of these conflicts by dominant groups.
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Notes
- 1.
Black cultural labour is erased and appropriated enough already: as Evelyn Atieno notes, there’s got to be some reason that Daniel Lara, the handsome white teenager who is back at it again with the white Vans has a name we know and several endorsements deals, while “Peaches Monroee” (Kayla Newman), whose eyebrows have always been on fleek, goes uncredited and uncompensated for her lexical innovation. There is a further danger of appropriating these labours, of repacking them for a different audience in a totally alien context and then profiting from them—it’s great that images from both campaigns are heavily reprinted in mainstream media, but the campaigns are not always credited to their creators, or, when acknowledged, these creators face harassment campaigns and backlash.
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Morrison, A. (2019). Laughing at Injustice: #DistractinglySexy and #StayMadAbby as Counternarratives. In: Parry, D.C., Johnson, C.W., Fullagar, S. (eds) Digital Dilemmas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95300-7_2
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