“微笑挑战”中性别与自我表征的关系

“Smi Smile Challengele ”: Smiling faces, gender and self-representation

微信朋友圈的"微笑挑战"活动中,用户的照片不仅是资讯的分享,亦是其线上自我的表征和建构。而性别是影响自我表征的关键要素之一。通过对443张"微笑挑战"照片的视觉内容分析表明,用户的自我表征存在显著的性别差异,主要体现在:(1)女性相对于男性,更多地使用遮挡、化妆、各种"装"的表情,以及照片的编辑/美颜等对其自我表征进行操弄;(2)在"装"的表情中,男性倾向于使用"冷酷或面无表情"以展示其男子气质,而女性则倾向于使用"可爱或天真卖萌"以及"有趣或浮夸搞怪"来展示其女子气质;(3)在照片拍摄的垂直角度选择上,则没有表现出显著的性别差异。

The“Smile challenge”has gone viral in Wechat.In this activity,participants posted their smilingfaces to their friends in the Moments.Yet,this is not only online image-sharing but also representation of participants’selveswhich is inevitably refracted by gender.In current study,a quantitative visual content analysis has been conducted to examine the gender difference in participants’self-representation in these smiling faces.The result indicates that(1)female participants are more likely than male participants to manipulate their self-representation by employing several strategies such as shielding faces,making-up,artificial facial expression and image editing or beautification;(2)in those artificial facial expression,male participants tended to exhibit coldness or fierceness to show their masculinity while female participants mainly present“cute or innocent”and“funny or dramatic“expression to show their femininity;(3)there is no significant gender difference in terms of the vertical position from where their face-shots were taken.