The slut-shaming phenomenon in social media: A case study on female English literature students of Binus University

Celebrity appearance-shaming: Innocent bashing forms or reconfirming gender norms? A study into the explanations of adolescents’ celebrity appearance-shaming intentions

“…Based on existing research on celebrity appearance-shaming, we know that such cases are disproportionally targeted at female celebrities (Ayuningtyas & Kariko, 2018;Eronen, 2014;Mitra, 2020;Ouvrein et al, 2021). In a recent content analysis by Qamar et al (2020), for instance, it was found that almost 7 out of 10 comments toward female celebrities on social media dealt with physical appearance.…”

“…Concerning the tone and content of these comments, many appearance-shaming comments compare celebrities with other celebrities or even with food or animals in a sarcastic and mockery way (Hamid et al, 2018;Mitra, 2020). Such types of celebrity appearance-shaming incidents have been observed across different platforms, such as Instagram (Ayuningtyas & Kariko, 2018;Hamid et al, 2018), Twitter (Demirhan & Çakır Demirhan, 2015;Felmlee et al, 2018), and, recently, TikTok (Omana, 2020Strapagiel, 2020).…”

“…Online celebrity bashing is a common practice on social media (Eronen, 2014;Ouvrein et al, 2021). Research indicates that many of these bashing cases take the form of publicly shaming (female) celebrities by writing or sharing negative content about their appearances (Ayuningtyas & Kariko, 2018;Eronen, 2014;Mitra, 2020;Ouvrein et al, 2021;Qamar et al, 2020). Indeed, recent evidence indicates that it only takes a few seconds to find an online comment calling a female celebrity too fat, too ugly, or too slutty (Eronen, 2014;Felmlee et al, 2018Felmlee et al, , 2020.…”

“…We define the concept here as an online practice of public shaming or critiquing in which a celebrity is criticized on his/her appearance (physical or sexual; Gam et al, 2020). Similar to public-shaming cases of ordinary people, these comments might hurt celebrities (Ayuningtyas & Kariko, 2018;Gam et al, 2020) and, in some cases, hinder their private and professional development and functioning (McMahon et al, 2022;Ouvrein et al, 2021). One difference, though, is that many adolescents are exposed to these public cases of celebrity appearance-shaming, as they massively follow their idols online and use features such as liking, sharing, and retweeting to contribute to spreading celebrity-bashing (Felmlee et al, 2018(Felmlee et al, , 2020Giles & Maltby, 2004).…”