Feeling grateful, kind, and empowered. Rules of feeling in Instagram’s #womenswellness digital intimate public

Abstract

As one of the largest social media platforms, Instagram has an essential role in shaping emerging cultural values in contemporary culture. Instagram is also home to myriad digital intimate publics—one of which centers on both tackling and celebrating daily experiences of women striving for health and wellness. This paper explores the affective practices of Instagram’s wellness culture, drawing from Arlie Hochschild’s concept of “feeling rules” and from recent scholarly work on feminist sensibilities in contemporary media. The analysis suggests that, in the #womenswellness intimate public, women are encouraged to 1) be honest about their feelings, 2) be grateful even in the face of failure, 3) be kind towards themselves, and 4) be empowered and ready to take down “diet culture.” The paper concludes that the enforcement of specific feeling rules makes recent changes in gendered cultural sensibilities visible: the emotions present in #womenswellness manifest a shift from postfeminist rhetoric of confidence and “bouncing back” towards popular feminist affective formations tied to self-love, kindness and vulnerability. Still, even if the rules of feeling in contemporary feminine culture are changing, the rigorous self-governing needed to survive as a woman in neoliberal culture remains apparent in the #womenswellness data.