Do it For the Vine

When Roxanne was giving her presentation regarding YouTube culture she made some great points that I had never considered before. When I thought about it, I could totally see the sometimes problematic trend in YouTube videos in their representations of women. After her presentation, I was left wondering how these kind of trends could be found in other online video services. What about websites like Vimeo? Or what about those 7-second glimpses you see on Vines?

While I'm sure Vimeo would be an interesting place to examine, for the most part, I think of it as something of a weird corner of the internet that is usually reserved for an art student really trying to reach a certain audience with their newest film project. Vine, however, is much more like YouTube in it's sort of ubiquitous nature. I see Vines linked on Facebook. I see them on newscasts when one starts going viral. There are Vine-famous people just like there are YouTube-famous people. In a somewhat odd twist, I even see them uploaded on what some may consider its competition, YouTube.

Vine is slightly different from YouTube however, in that I think most of the viewers and creators of Vines tend to be fairly young, either teenagers or in their 20s. If I told my mom to 'Do it for the Vine', I'd most likely get the strange look of someone completely oblivious to the concept. She does love, however, to show me her favorite YouTube videos she gets through her email. It's pretty cute.

It's probably because of this younger demographic that I think considering the messages of Vine videos would be more interesting. We spend a lot of time talking about the media and messages about sex and gender, and most of that time is spent detailing the effects media has on teens. Vine is also much shorter than your typical YouTube video. While a YouTube video may take up to a minute or more showing you cute puppies, a Vine shows you a quick 7 second of video entitled "When girls play video games...". Because these videos are shorter, they also tend to rely on simpler messages or cultural stereotypes to get their comedy across. What's funny about girls playing video games? Well, it's common believe that they aren't good at video games, and because we only have 7-seconds to show you a joke, we're going to hope you understand and accept this belief in order to come across as funny.

(NSFW-ish, also turn your volume down)

From my position, though I do love quite a few Vines, it seems to me that there is an obvious trend of showcasing women either as sexual objects or highlighting their inferiority to men in some regard. I can't really pick out just one or two of these Vines, but there are hundreds I bet just of women being shown in one or both of these ways. When I search the terms 'women vine videos' the top two results are 'Hottest women of Vine' and a YouTube video of 'Top 80 vine girls'. While the YouTube shows a diverse number of Vines, a lot of them use gender stereotypes. Girls are overly jealous in these Vines, or they are constantly cat fighting. Some Vines aren't comedic, and those Vines are typically just of girls Twerking or making a pretty face.

While I totally think it's fine for people to post their own Vines with what they think is funny, and for girls to post a Vine when they think they look good, I wonder if some people are not getting the messages that these Vines are just jokes, and that women aren't just objects. Last year, Vine Star Curtis Lepore was accused of raping a fellow Vine star Jessi Smiles. During the case against Lepore, some of the most ardent support for him, and harshest criticism for Smiles, came from teenage girls.This is not okay. Smiles was targeted and often called a 'slut' by these girls.

Lepore's 'Love Salsa' Vine.

Again, I want to stress that I don't ever think that a single video can turn on a switch in any viewers head to make them into a misogynistic slut-shamer. But when the pervasive and overwhelming view of women on Vine seems to fall on harmful, stereotypic representation, you can't help but wonder if they help to make that switch just a bit easier to turn on.