‘… but I haven’t got a body to show’: Self-pornification and male mixed feelings in digitally mediated seduction practices

Abstract

Digital seduction, that is, practices of flirting mediated by social media and other digital applications, usually involves the display and exchange of self-portraits, commonly known as ‘selfies’, displaying nudity and self-pornification. This is a playful and complex presentation of the self, where making, displaying and sharing self-portraits reveal a complex gaze game. Participants are both the subject who takes pictures and the object pictured. They also put themselves in the place of the potential viewers, introducing their preferences, expectations and evaluations. This article presents the results of a preliminary research carried out in Madrid about these practices and the pleasures, gender displacements, disquiets and ambivalent feelings elicited in the case of heterosexual men.