An instagram analysis of body and self -presentation in female icons through popular culture and social networks

This study focuses on the messages of popular discourses and images of female body and gender representations on image-oriented social media platforms about what is idealized in today's women's self-perception. The increase in technological developments and the widespread use of the internet have brought intensive use of new media environments. In today's era, it has become very important to examine the role of social media in the formation and transmission of the popular culture. Nevertheless, social media provided a new platform to display women's body images. In this study, women's representations made through famous actresses and models in traditional advertising were evaluated through the new media environment Instagram and Western pop-icons. Pop-icons that reflects popular and Western culture were selected as the research sample. In addition, the visual shares of each of the female pop-icons in the last 6 months were primarily subjected to a categorical content analysis and one of the thematic categories that emerged after the analysis was carried out to examine how famous women presented themselves outside the media authorities. Throughout the study, the phenomenon of body, self, popular culture and celebrity culture were examined from the perspective of various thinkers and sociologists, and the cases were handled multidimensionally. The aim of the study is to examine the popular women images based on the idealized women celebrities on Instagram, and to reveal the idealized ideal-self features in women in contemporary culture.