6 Do New Images Mean New Mothers?
6.3 Commodification of the New Maternal Images
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6.3 Commodification of the New Maternal Images
It is therefore not surprising that commodification takes place when striving to create new impressions. The participants admitted their purpose of transforming the traditional beliefs, albeit ignoring the fact that they are commodifying themselves.
Strictly speaking, the revealing of their appearance, possessions, and lifestyles comprises this theme. As discussed, good mother impressions are a product of the culture. In a similar vein, the participants’ new maternal images are not safe from commercialization.
The mother participants were not aware that they are incessantly presenting their followers with the images of ideal body shapes. As Khanom (2010) referred, “The human body has become a commodity” (p.62). Appearing in versatile scenarios, the participants are always attractive. Schlenker and Leary (1982) argued that people tend to present themselves by appearing reasonably attractive. Cathy believes that maintaining an attractive appearance is essential in her mothering life. She shared her thought with the interviewer:
“I want to reveal myself as a young and beautiful mommy. I want people to look at me and say, ‘Wow, are you a mother? You look like you haven’t given birth yet’. That’s why I take good care of my appearance and treat myself strictly. I exercise a lot and control my diet very seriously, even when I just gave birth to my son two months ago.”
Having the youngest child among the participants, Cathy explicitly mentioned her desired impression when other mothers see her of looking young and beautiful.
Moreover, she is strict with herself in keeping a fit body. Khanom (2010) explained that the body has become a “vehicle for consumerism”, in which culture has
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lose weight after pregnancy (Prinds, Nikolajsen, & Folmann, 2020). In Reischer and Koo (2004), bodies are transformed into icons of social value, social power, control, or even products under social pressures. Women’s bodies are symbols of the social norms of attraction, such as fat, which is an undesirable trait within women (Bordo, 2003).
Mothers not only seek the best impressions through their appearance, but also their possessions. The underlying meaning behind their possessions serves as an “extended self” and is used in self-evaluation (as cited in Isaksen & Roper, 2012, p.123). Scholars suggested that the possessions used to judge “the self” play a significant role in other’s evaluation (as cited in Isaksen & Roper, 2012, p.124). Annie, Cara, and Katie identified themselves as influencers who shared fashion items.
Luxury is the dominant theme among several participants’ fashion styles. As Allison suggested, the positive perspective regarding a luxury product could transfer the idea of who they are (2008, p.3). In a sense, luxuries convey an individual’s status (Allison, 2008, p4). Inherent to the concepts, the mother influencers gained their reputation by presenting themselves with luxuries. Scholars argued that new possessions increase “feelings of self-worth” (Isaksen & Rower, 2015, 125). The pictures entail their aim of sharing as well as signaling their status. The entitling of social status is transformed into goods for trading their reputation under the “gaze.”
Mentioning social status, Annie is the salient example. As discussed in the previous chapter, Annie’s ideal impression in at-home scenarios is as a fashionable mommy. Annie’s representation of herself at home runs in contrast to the mother discourse that is in present-day society. Mothers are capable of all kinds of housework, but at the same time can they be pretty? A question arises: “Is it even possible to be pretty when you sweep off the spider webs on your ceiling?” Annie as an influencer
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also has a babysitter and foreign helper at the same time. This significant factor portrays her wealth. Annie shared with me her current mothering life:
“I have a nanny to look after my son. I also hired a foreign cleaner in my house.
When I go out, I’ll ask my assistant to accompany me. She takes care of my pictures. Moreover, if I go out with my baby, I’ll ask the nanny to look after my son.”
Through elaborating on her current life, it is evident that she continuously lives in a financially-sufficient situation. She does not have to take care of most of the chores at home. Moreover, she does not look after her kid most of the time. The pictures reveal that she could be fashionable at home, hinting that she had an assistant take them of her.
Compared to most of the homemaker mothers, she is capable of affording the great expense of hiring a nanny, a foreign cleaner, and an assistant.
There is also a contrasting image of most Taiwanese mothers. In reality, mothers occupy themselves with so-called mother duties and regard doing chores and raising children as their obligation. In contrast, Annie’s new maternal images turns out to be a product restrained the mothers in this system.
Moreover, the participants’ photographs are mostly taken outside to displaying a wonderful lifestyle. Their mothering life presented on Instagram is significantly different from the mothers we see in the offline world. According to the participants, the photos taken in beautiful coffee shops, fancy restaurants, and foreign countries are closely related to self-love. The “curated lifestyle image” had indeed become commodified products for marketing and capitalism, which restrain followers (Cao, 2020, p.140).
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6.4 Summary
Mothers who experience pregnancy go through altered identities that spark their
“mother instinct.” The “surveillance” significantly pushes mothers to present themselves with ideal maternal images. Their content presented online indeed complies with aspiring motherhood, which can meet their mother identity and new maternal images. In other words, reflecting upon the images the mother influencers construct through their Instagram profiles, it becomes crystal clear that they have not gotten rid of the traditional beliefs and good mother ideology. They are aware of the surveillance inflicted upon themselves. Social expectations leverage their self-presentations and modulate them into positive, professional, and attractive ones for fear of condemnation and stigmatization.
When it comes to the images of an ideal mother, the mother influencers exert more influence on transmitting new impressions by their new maternal images. In order to transform the long-existing traditional mother beliefs, they promote the idea of self-love and self-care. As the pictures are different from what most mothers do in the real world, the content with contrasting mother images has become material for selling their ideal maternal images to the public. When they present themselves, the undergoing commodification signals their sublimity of being a mother and a role model for other mothers. Mothers are coined as a subject “responding to the individualistic pressures of contemporary society”, in which they develop themselves as “infantilized” and “sexual desired” subjects. (Littler, 2013, p.238).
To gain a more profound understanding of the participants’ images, I would like to elaborate more on the contradictions made through the recreation of new impressions.
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Chapter 7 Conclusion
This research has adopted a qualitative approach to understand maternal impressions’ motivations and to deconstruct the underlying meanings behind mothers’
self-presentation. Concerning the topic’s strict surveillance, I recruited seven mother influencers to solicit answers to the research questions. The research started with reviewing self-presentations on Instagram and continued with a socio-cultural discourse of mothers in patriarchal systems. Next, I briefly introduced the participants and their Instagram profiles. Lastly, critical insights are extracted to explain the impacts of these Taiwanese mother influencers. The analysis started with the information obtained from both online observations and in-depth interviews among the seven Taiwanese mother influencers on Instagram.
This study’s findings highlight the interviewees’ motivation towards presenting themselves on Instagram. It also involves other mothers’ online and social expectations.
In order to provide detailed findings of this research, I explicate the answers to the proposed research questions as follows.
RQ1: What spurs mother influencers to present themselves on Instagram?
After obtaining both visual and verbal data from the participants, I find several factors encompassing their motivation to present themselves online. The mother influencers share some resemblances behind their content, albeit with varied manifestations on their profiles. To detach themselves from any restrictions and to empower themselves, the mother influencers have sought solutions via social media and the virtual peer community. The information exchanges have facilitated the mother
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the aid of mobile technology, their desired impressions have become easier to attain.
The factors that have spurred the mother influencers to present themselves tangle together with patriarchal beliefs’ underlying meanings. As patriarchal beliefs continue to exist, the mothers are unable to spare themselves from being influenced.
First, the traditional household pattern has leveraged mothers’ isolation, meaning they are unable to fully attach themselves to their family, friends, or even their previous lifestyles. Physical remoteness or mental gaps exert a significant influence upon their mothering life. As a marry-in daughter, these mothers thrive on being a favorable individual to their mother-in-law, but having to bear long embedded traditional values, the mothers-in-law also subliminally influence their daughters-in-law. In Rose’s salient case, she has suffered from a collision between modern maternal beliefs and traditional patriarchal myths as a marry-in-daughter. Consequently, the confrontation has worsened her isolation as a mother and led to the manifestation of herself online. Such experiences motivate the mother influencers to establish connections with other mothers in the Instagram community. Peer support helps maintain the mothers’ mental health, which improves their predicament of “being alone” under the structure.
Second, these mother influencers are motivated to present themselves due to economic benefits, as the purposeful motivation for attracting sponsors allows them to earn more money. Moreover, they are able to construct their images according to the products they desire to have, as Cathy explained. Economically benefiting from the influencer career helps the homemaker mothers and provides the single mother with a better living. Rose, a single mother, has significantly maintained her financial situation with the earnings as a mother influencer. In contrast, even though her family is already comparatively wealthy, Annie has utilized her fame to promote her jewelry brand, which has led to her entrepreneurial career success.
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Third, the mother influencers wish to help other mothers through their own professions. They are inclined to share their profiles that contain professional information. For example, Cathy likes to present herself and her baby with nurturing tips, while Katie likes to share products she uses herself. The aspiration to be ideal mothers for their followers results in their constant sharing of motherly life.
Fourth, the mother influencers’ self-presentation on Instagram helps them to retrieve their already established identities. Closely related to the traditional mother belief in this system, children and family are at the center of a mother’s life. These influencers feel that mothers in this society are destined to forget their previous lifestyles and sacrifice themselves in order to keep a family “organized” as a caregiver or even a homemaker. In a sense, they thrive on reforming the mother impressions through their content.
RQ2: How do mother influencers recreate their mother impressions through self-presentation on Instagram?
The mothers’ pressure of being confined by traditional mother discourse has driven their ambition to transform the mother impressions through new maternal images. Visualizing a mothering life can be done by embracing relaxing moments, delicious food, high-end clothing and accessories, and an attractive appearance.
Transmitting self-love and self-care caters to the above contents. This kind of portrayal often creates a care-free feeling and pleasing ambiance. However, the Instagram contents offer specific socio-cultural meanings.
Under strict surveillance, the mother influencers have not changed their traditional beliefs nor eliminated specific motherhood restraints. They reveal themselves as being
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The contents reveal their motherhood, which affirms that the mother influencers are not free from patriarchal social expectations.
The new maternal images prevailing in their content contrarily do not show that traditional motherhood and good mother ideologies have a significant influence on them. The images instead aim to transform the long-existing mother beliefs and recreate mother impressions. However, the recreation of mother impressions through their new maternal images in fact becomes more binding on the mothers. Leisure time, outdoor activities, and attractive appearance thrive in the participants’ Instagram profiles since their followers seek ideal maternal images from the participants. Their contents create an illusion that the perfect mothering life is easy to attain. Moreover, their self-presentation implies a fear of failing to meet social expectations. Being afraid of stigmatizations and condemnations labeling them as “a failure to be a mother” also contributes to their deliberate impressions. The mother-blaming has greatly compelled the mother influencers to create an ideal, positive self-presentation.
7.1 The Consequences and Implications of the Phenomenon of Instagram Mother Influencers
By soliciting the underlying meanings behind the influencers’ self-presentation, I have probed into these mothers’ motivations for presenting themselves online and constructing their maternal beliefs. The traditional mother discourse or the long-existing good mother ideology is still perpetuated in the system, for which the mothers find it hard to eradicate. I have found that several types of consequential and implicated information are neglected by the mothers presenting themselves online. They are not aware that they are the products of the patriarchal beliefs.
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7.1.1 Creating a spontaneous mother fantasy
When I asked the mothers if they manifest themselves purposely on Instagram, several replied with a negative answer, but they specifically mentioned several images related to the maternal instincts they aim to present. A contradiction thus emerges.
Mothers have inevitably framed themselves under the patriarchal system - that is, new impressions do not emancipate the mothers from traditional values. The mother influencers’ impressions have become more ideologies in this system. The participants reveal their wonderful life, which is full of beautiful clothing, high-end accessories, fancy restaurant experiences, and travel photography, as ways to love themselves.
Furthermore, the participants’ profiles are full of attractive maternal images, such as being slim and beautiful, looking young and positive, and pursuing wonderful lifestyles.
They have given themselves into consumerism in the name of transforming the traditional mother beliefs, demonstrating the influence of patriarchy.
It is intriguing to ponder over whether the mothers can attain a life like that in reality. Moreover, the participants’ contributions to the dominating beauty criterion and professional mothering images constitute the illusion that they believe it is easy to achieve in their mothering lives. Additionally, to attain the ideal maternal role in this system, mothers might have to go down the proverbial rabbit hole. The intensive representation of new maternal images on social media is the source for speculating about consumerism’s best impression. The followers of these mother aim to seek inspiration from these mother influencers, yet, conversely, they could fall into the predicament of trying to achieve this “fantasy.”
7.1.2 Othering the mothers who have failed to meet social expectations
The maternal images created by the participants have confined the mothers into
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the process of social stratification. Concerning the consequence that the participants have created, othering is a term with which I would like to conclude. As Brons (2015) argued:
“Othering is the simultaneous construction of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual and unequal opposition through the identification of some desirable characteristic that the self/in-group has and the other/out-group lacks and/or some undesirable characteristic that the other/out-group has and the self/in-group lacks. Othering thus sets up a superior self/in-self/in-group in contrast to an inferior other/out-group, but this superiority/inferiority is nearly always left implicit.”
(p.70)
The participants’ fabulous lifestyles and attractive appearance on their profiles turn out to be the new maternal images that Taiwanese mothers should consume. The participants recreate the mother impressions through social expectations on maternal images, in which the othering takes place among the mothers who cannot meet the new impressions. Furthermore, the participants with luxuries are mostly in the higher financial echelons. The lower echelon mothers may find it hard to achieve a luxurious lifestyle when the mother influencers become their maternal role model. Their pictures of including luxuries are insinuating images that intensify the stratifications among mothers in this system.
Unable to be set free from the patriarchal beliefs, the traditional mother beliefs are still deep-seated in the participants’ minds. The mother influencers have constructed their maternal images deliberately and carefully to avoid othering from their mother followers. The professional motherhood demonstrated on the participants’ Instagram platforms reveals that the othering is exerted on both the mother influencers and their
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followers. Without acknowledging the undergoing process, the mother influencers fall prey to patriarchal beliefs. The fear of a negative evaluation from other mothers is significantly displayed on the participants’ Instagram profiles. Their manifestations become an activity under intense surveillance, continuously strengthening the mother myths and generating more maternal concerns due to the aspiration for ideal motherhood in a contemporary structure.
7.1.3 Circulating pressure
Circulating pressure appears like a vicious circle as in Figure 22. The circle starts with the mother influencers’ images exhibited on their Instagram profiles, contributing to new mother impressions. The pressure of pursuing new impressions among the mother followers has reinforced the new mother impressions in this system. Eventually, the new impressions have resulted in the mother influencers’ pressure to transmit more new impressions or to maintain their impressions. In a sense, the mothers today suffer more pressure when new impressions are created visually on Instagram.
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As we can see visually on Instagram, the mother influencers with high follower counts share consistent themes and features - that is, the maternal images the mother influencers manifest are intensely intertwined with their followers. The mother followers’ aspiration to meet the new maternal images leads to the mother influencers’
motivation to transmit new impressions. With the help of pictures, the mother influencers could deliberately convey their new impressions on Instagram. Furthermore, Instagram’s algorithm recommends a similar type of mother influencers when a mother follower follows a mother influencer, dominating this new type of mother impressions in this system. The mother influencers’ new impressions will haunt the mothers in this system, especially the mother influencers themselves.
7.1.4 Double-binding the mothers
In addition to the journey of attaining the fantasy, the mothers are immersing themselves in a double-bind world. Specifically, when women confront their motherhood for the very first time, they experience a brand-new identity in life. As cited in Johnston and Swanson (2003), a double-bind emerges when expectations and condemnations are tied together (p.244). Continued into motherhood, it is consequential that “motherhood roles and ideologies [a]re contested” (as cited in Johnston & Swanson, 2003, p.244). Therefore, a double-bind arises from the mother influencers’ profiles.
The double-bind that emerges on the mother influencers is closely associated with ideologies in this system, in which traditional beliefs and new mother impressions operate simultaneously. To be more specific, the mother influencers have generated a new image of mothering life, in which they are living their mothering life leisurely and
The double-bind that emerges on the mother influencers is closely associated with ideologies in this system, in which traditional beliefs and new mother impressions operate simultaneously. To be more specific, the mother influencers have generated a new image of mothering life, in which they are living their mothering life leisurely and