Perfect
Feeling Judged on Social Media, a Roundtable Discussion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7154284 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rosalind Gill (0000-0002-2715-1867, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1038-1042 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Media Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-0777 • E-ISSN: 1471-5902 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14680777.2024.2422343 |
| OpenAlex | W4404325161 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 6 |
Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media (Rosalind Gill, 2023a) is a book rooted in careful and attentive listening to a diverse range of young women talking about everyday life on their phones.In an earlier short piece for Feminist Media Studies, when I was part way through the research project, I wrote about some of the key themes and ideas that emerged from the interviews and the survey (Gill 2022).I discussed young women's experiences of the tyranny of perfection and of constantly being made to feel that they are not good enough.I explored their multiple senses of feeling watched and being subject to minute and forensic surveillance on and off their socials.And I discussed what became a key finding of the research-namely how feeling watched is connected to feeling judged, generating intense anxiety and a potent fear of "getting it wrong."The "fails" here could be posting too much so people feel like you are constantly "popping up" in their feed, or posting too little and prompting sarcastic comments about how boring you/your life must be, or impugning you for "mental breakdown;" it could be posting a picture that is not good enough or posting one that is "too perfect;" or posting a picture that looks "fake;" or seeming too vain; or looking like you have tried too hard; or coming across as "attention-seeking."As I discuss in Perfect, the list of ways in which young women fear getting it wrong is seemingly endless, extending to what they shared, how they caption their content, what they repost, or indeed whether they post-particularly at moments where they felt implicitly or explicitly called on to take a stand.As I show in the book, young women do not inhabit these social relations passively, nor is this sense of being judged the only thing going on.There is also fun, pleasure, community, and the experience of being "in the know" about "what is happening," and "in the flow" of connections with others.Participants were expert and highly creative in how they managed their social media lives, how they navigated relentless and often contradictory demands.But, as I argue, their digital fluency did not somehow magically erase pain and difficulty.For example, it was perfectly possible to critique the operation of platform capitalism's racist, disablist, fat-hating, cisheteronormative appearance standards, yet at the same time still feel deeply invested in trying to live up to them
Feeling · Social media · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |