For those of you who do not know what Instragram is or have not seen it, it is an application for smart phones in which users can upload pictures (personal or not). Their "followers" can then like or comment on pictures. There are also hashtags (#) which sum up what the picture is about such as a picture of an elephant would have a hashtag #elephant #animal.
In the past few weeks, I've noticed a new hashtag called #mancrushmondays and #womancrushwednesdays. The user uploads pictures of men or women celebrities, generally, who they think are attractive. It didn't really phase me at first, but this week was different. At first, I acknowledged that perhaps this new trend was not the worst thing ever since it caused women to post pictures of women they thought were attractive and vice versa breaking down social constructions of how women should not think other women are sexually attractive and so on.
Today (on women crush Wednesday) I started noticing other captions individuals were placing along with their celebrity crushes. One of them hashtagged the picture with the word #idol. It shocked me. The only reason this women celebrity was this certain individual's "idol" was due to her looks (from what I've noticed most of the pictures uploaded are very sexual much like the pictures from magazine we hung up). It had nothing to do with the celebrity's character, life aspirations, etc.
Another question that popped into my mind since we have been discussing this often -- who do we think created this new trend? a man or a woman? and why?
I don't use instagram, but I do use twitter and I have noticed this going on recently, too and have wondered most of the same things. When people have been putting someone as their idol it is always someone famous. I've always wondered who had started a trend like this, myself. When I really think about it, I honestly think it was a girl, since on my twitter, I mostly see girls doing it and don't often see guys doing this. I don't follow many people because it really isn't too important to me, but I do see this trend a ton and it's almost always a female doing this. Girls do it because they're telling their "man crush" but they also do it more for the #WomanCrushWednesday I have noticed. Men do it on Wednesdays, but never on Mondays, and I have asked the question, why is this? Men don't want to interfere with their masculine side and think they'll be considered homosexual, but it seems as if women don't care at all.
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