Writing About the Body and the Body of Writing: The Girl’s Body in Israeli Teenage Girls’ Blogs

Abstract

This qualitative study focuses on blogs written by Israeli girls, aged 14 to 18, concerning their body and the developmental process of identity construction. Using a sociocultural approach, the study examined the ways in which the girls write about their bodies, what issues they raise in their blogs concerning their body and identity, and what blog writing about the body offers to them in the process of identity construction. A combination of thematic-categorical analysis and structural-linguistic analysis was used to analyze 27 blogs (86 posts) written by Israeli girls. The findings reveal a complex picture about the ways in which girls experience their bodies and perceive societal norms concerning their appearance. The blogs included the girls’ feelings of insecurity, stress, and confusion about their body and at the same time served as a place where girls were able to voice resistance to the current ideal of beauty and of social conventions. Findings also reveal the ways in which the girls presented their body to their girl peers. The study concludes that writing blogs is an important channel for Israeli girls to engage in discourse about the body as part of the process of identity formation.