ABSTRACT
This paper discusses feminist discourse in the practice of mountain tourism through the images of female mountaineers on Instagram. Ideologically, participating female mountaineers on mountain tourism are a manifestation of women’s existence to deconstruct gender stereotypes by reconstruction new identity through the images. This paper examines four Instagram sites who have tens of thousands of followers and specifically showing thousands pictures of female mountaineers in high frequency. Data analysis focused on photos posting totaling 9677 posts. Subsequently, data reduction and categorization were carried out to tease up for common themes contained in all photo posts. Textual analysis was used as a method to interpret the visual texts, caption, and comments. The results revealed a paradox condition. On the one hand, pictures were representing gender equality through reconstruct of women’s identity image. But on the other hand, the pictures are perceived as objectification women’s body for visual pleasure and economic motive.
