<p>The aim of this study was to try to identify what young women see as typically female and how this affects them as individuals, focusing on the female body. How free or limited do they consider themselves to respond to prevailing ideals of beauty, to men and other women. Our questions are how young women construct femininity through the body and why? We do this by using a holistic gender perspective and with the help of key theoretical concepts; gender, normative femininity, heteronormativity, performance, freedom/power and the female body,. We have had a qualitative approach and we have done interviews with six girls in secondary school age. The material is processed and analyzed on the basis of the IPA model, which aims to build themes from the interviews. The themes we have stressed in the study are: <em>Female with large F, To find balance, I want to be unique... (but in the right way), Get a good boyfriend and learn to socialize with girls, To be something for everyone</em> and <em>desire after impossibility and the road ahead.</em> By letting our informant´s voices be made visible in our analysis, we have been able to answer the question of how they experience their own construction of femininity. What becomes visible in the analysis is the great knowledge and awareness which are among the girls on this subject. This shows the complexity that exists around young women today. More conclusions that can be drawn is that whichever way the woman construct her femininity gives different degrees of social status. Lack of freedom is not about the limited possibilities for action it is rather the impact the effectiveness of the choices made and the awareness of those who provide the experience of not being free. </p><p> </p>

The aim of this study was to try to identify what young women see as typically female and how this affects them as individuals, focusing on the female body. How free or limited do they consider themselves to respond to prevailing ideals of beauty, to men and other women. Our questions are how young women construct femininity through the body and why? We do this by using a holistic gender perspective and with the help of key theoretical concepts; gender, normative femininity, heteronormativity, performance, freedom/power and the female body,. We have had a qualitative approach and we have done interviews with six girls in secondary school age. The material is processed and analyzed on the basis of the IPA model, which aims to build themes from the interviews. The themes we have stressed in the study are: Female with large F, To find balance, I want to be unique... (but in the right way), Get a good boyfriend and learn to socialize with girls, To be something for everyone and desire after impossibility and the road ahead. By letting our informant´s voices be made visible in our analysis, we have been able to answer the question of how they experience their own construction of femininity. What becomes visible in the analysis is the great knowledge and awareness which are among the girls on this subject. This shows the complexity that exists around young women today. More conclusions that can be drawn is that whichever way the woman construct her femininity gives different degrees of social status. Lack of freedom is not about the limited possibilities for action it is rather the impact the effectiveness of the choices made and the awareness of those who provide the experience of not being free.

Consumption of surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures are increasing every year and are consumed by women to a far greater extent than by men. To bear the role of an influencer has also become increasingly common. When influencers post on their social media, they reach out to a large audience with the intention of  influencing their followers to consume the goods or services that they share. Since consumption of beauty procedures has increased in Sweden and continues to increase, we want to investigate whether influencers convey messages about consuming beauty procedures. The aim of the study is to analyze Swedish female influencer's opinions and arguments about the consumption of surgical and nonsurgical beauty procedures. To fulfill the aim of the study, the following questions will be answered: what opinions and arguments about the appearance and consumption of beauty procedures do influencers express? and What norms and values are visible in influencer's opinions and arguments? In total, 14 YouTube videos and 10 Swedish female influencers were examined. The women's ages range from 18 to 35 years old. The phenomenon was studied through netnography because influencers are very much active online and do sometimes share their opinions about beauty procedures online. The theories and concepts we analyze and interpret our empirical material with is Bauman’s (2008) theory of consumer society, Bordo’s (1993) view of feminism, western culture and the body and Cooley’s (1902) concept the looking-glass self. The findings showed that there were five values and norms that the influencers in our survey expressed, these were: believing the human being to be autonomous, women need to look a certain way to be accepted as beautiful, beauty procedures lead to happiness, the body should be subjected to examination, evaluation, modification and objectification, that beauty procedures should not be taken very seriously but instead accepted as an everyday practice.