ABSTRACT
In Western philosophy, vulnerability and femininity have been positioned as subordinate and weak. Reparative readings of selfies can offer a way to reclaim both vulnerability and femininity as generative, connective, and political. In this paper, I examine femme selfies collected during an online ethnography of femme Internet culture on Instagram. I draw from critical feminist scholarship on vulnerability and reparative readings of selfies to argue that selfies are a practice in vulnerability, and therefore a mode of embracing the feminine and feminine resistance. Using visual discourse analysis to read the selected selfies, I argue that femmes strategically mobilise vulnerability via selfies to (re)shape femme identity, create femme communities, and to make political claims about femme lives.
