After reading the quilting selections and "Girls' Web Sites," my understanding of Pinterest has changed from a fun and addicting site, to a "whole new cultural realm of play and sociality which go beyond the phenomenal world of place and the linearity of analogue time" (175). Piecing together a board in Pinterest compares to piecing a quilt. Choices of color, image, and texture comprise both mediums. Online sites are offering more opportunities in creativity, and therefore production. As Reid-Walsh and Mitchell offer when discussing images on a girl's web site, "Here creativity as in collections or collages of material culture artifacts, and the meaning for the young person stem from symbolic recycling and attribution of new meaning" (180). An analogy can be drawn between rearranging collections or artifacts online in a selective creative process and the choice of existing patterns and fabric for a quilt or the choice of words and sentence structure in a written text. All of these mediums have pre-existing components, but are rearranged according to the mind of their creator.
Other components of web design reshuffle the female stereotypes of girls' interests and social behavior online as well as off. Instead of participating solely in "fashion doll play, shopping, and chatting" girls become builders (173, 177).
A girl's web site gives her control to decide how much is revealed and how much is hidden. (This counters some male created sites where female images are produced for consumption by revealing as much as possible.) A web site defined as a private space operating in public domain juxtaposes Lockridge's commonplace book theory where "public self is rehearsed in this intensely private arena provided by literacy" (338). Perhaps this is evidence of a shift in society towards production for public consumption. Traditionally the audience for female production was more limited. While quilts, commonplace books, letters had an audience it was smaller and comprised a more traditional talking circle instead of Reid-Walsh and Mitchell's "serial community" (177). So technology is shaping new millennia girl rhetoric.
Colleen,
ReplyDeleteI liked what you said about girls’ websites giving them the freedom about what to reveal and what to conceal.
To me, one of the most interesting things about social media sites is the profile pictures people chose – because I think it provides a glimpse into both how the person views themselves , ideally, and more importantly, how they want you to view them.
Hayley
I'm really glad I read your post. It opened up my mind to how I was viewing (and how I blogged) on today's readings. I was thinking of Pinterest as a rehashing of message and content but in a new mode. I like your idea of "reshuffling" of stereotypes and hadn't thought of it those terms. Also, Hayley brings up a super point about profile pics. Great post.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar impression of Pintrest giving agency to a as a technology enhanced quilt.
ReplyDeleteyou are making fantastic connections between on and offline collection!
ReplyDeleteI like the way you are thinking about the public/private split. What does it mean to collect in public? When does a girl's collection become an act of curation - like for a museum show? Who is the audience for an online collection - the girl, her friends, the world?