Nivel de satisfacción de los hogares que cuentan con la protección en salud

Across the dataset, the participants do considerable rhetorical ‘dancing’ around simultaneously distancing themselves from and orienting to bodies, beauty and appearance.

As in the vlog Extracts 7-9, there were many instances of apparent contradictions with respect to appearance across the dataset. The next extract, however, is particularly interesting as the participant herself drew attention to what might be seen as contradiction.

Extract 13

Participant 2, 1.st interview, campus:

MP: I read in a report (.) about lad culture on campuses (.) that some women feel that 1

in order to speak up in class they have to be very confident that they look right and this 2

was more in terms of wearing makeup and so on (.) is that (.) have you noticed 3

anything like that (.) the people who speak look a certain way 4

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Participant 2: Yeah (..) Yeah (.) I do (..) they just seem to have nice expensive clothes 5

and flawless make-up [Laughter] and that kind of thing (..) erm (...) which I don’t have 6

all the time (...) the decision I had to wear makeup today (..) I don’t really know (..) I 7

was just wearing yesterday as well (.) I’ve got it on today(..) 8

MP: mm 9

Participant 2: But (...) it’s true (.) you know(.) you’re typically a pretty white girl with 10

nice clothes, they all look the same (.) they have the same kind of style (.) it’s like 11

they’re androids or something (..) I don’t know. 12

In the latter part of this extract, and indeed several times earlier in the interview, the participant distanced herself from other people and their appearance, but her own appearance now seems to create a troubled position, in that the subject position of ‘not like everyone else’ has been rendered potentially implausible, by her own wearing of make-up. Her own appearance in the interview has now become relevant and something that she orients to, by almost making excuses for it Lines 6-8, ‘(...) the decision I had to wear makeup today (..) I don’t really know (..) I was just wearing yesterday as well (.) I’ve got it on today(..)’. The appearance can then be interpreted as a mismatch with how

she otherwise positions herself, as someone who does not want to look like the ‘androids’ who follow externally imposed beauty-standards. As ‘androids’ invokes images of unthinking machines, the participant may be heard as presenting herself as not only different to those other women she is describing but, importantly, as more of a thinking person than those who unthinkingly make themselves up to look like everyone else. However, taking up this subject position is interpreted by the participant herself as troubled by her wearing make-up, as she starts attempting to account for why she does this, while indicating that she does not always, do it. By including the word ‘today’ in her account, she marks it as something she does sometimes, but not always, before

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abandoning the accounting and returning to the critique of those whom she has positioned as different to her.

This puts a slightly different twist on the occasioned emphasized femininity engaged in by the participants in the research by Dilley et al. (2014), who in the authors'

interpretation, engaged in such practices to assure femininity. This participant, in this interaction, distances herself from such assuring of femininity by implying that she only wears make-up occasionally. Emphasized femininity can in this interaction be

interpreted as potentially undermining her positioning of herself as a thinking woman who is different to the other women described.

Dilley et al.’s research specifically asked participants about their choices of footwear. Consequently, the participants in their study were reflecting in hindsight on various occasions when they had chosen ‘emphasized femininity’ by wearing high-heeled

shoes. The analytic approach used here, while also eliciting talk about what women choose to wear when, recognises that participants complicate the categories of

emphasized or not-emphasized femininity as it is often not simple or clear-cut whether a person is doing emphasized femininity or not. When the performances in talk and body presentation do different things, it becomes overly simplistic to try to make judgements about whether or not women are engaging in displaying emphasized femininity, or how any such engagement can or should be interpreted.

This participant’s position became troubled when what might be communicated by her appearance appeared not to match the words she was speaking. It is worth noting that in my field notes I had recorded that it had not been obvious to me whether she was

wearing make-up or not. Yet although she was not obviously wearing a lot of make-up, the participant evidently treated her own wearing of make -up as something that needed explaining, probably in light of the way she had been distancing herself from make-up wearing in the preceding parts of the interview. Thus, it appears that appearance and the

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extent to which women can be read as embracing some forms of ‘emphasized femininity’ is never neutral or absent; rather, they can be held to account for their

appearance regardless of how they look.

One of the interesting things about this extract is that the participant drew attention to the issue at all. It seems that appearance ‘speaks’ and speaks so loudly that it cannot be ignored, if it does not match the spoken words. Furthermore, the wearing of make-up can become ‘the wrong’ thing to ‘say’ over the course of a conversation. While Stuart

and Donaghue (2011) (discussed in Chapter 3) found that the women in their research described wearing make-up as the default or neutral position while deviating from this required accounting for, the interaction in Extract 7 above indicates that even such a ‘presumed neutral’ appearance can unexpectedly become non-neutral and become something that needs accounting for. This indicates that it cannot be assumed that appearance can ever be considered a non-choice, or that the choice made will be ‘right’ for all situations encountered on a given day. It seems that ‘neutral’ cannot safely be assumed as what is expressed by appearance may be interpreted as appropriate in one situation but not in another.

This points to a dilemma for young women around questions of appearance and whether to wear make-up or not. Either decision may unexpectedly need accounting for, an accounting that may in itself produce troubled subject positions if the appearance and the views expressed appear not to match.

While it is not surprising to find that what is deemed appropriate appearance is context dependent, (most people will recognize the idea that they ‘should’ dress differently e.g.

for work or a party), what is interesting is the detailed complexity of appearance and choices made regarding emphasized femininity Young women’s appearance and choices around which aspects of emphasized femininity to take up can be brought to

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attention in micro-level interactions, where appearance may be used to confirm or deny a claim to be a certain kind of person.

This participant can be seen as presenting herself along the lines of ‘I am the kind of person who doesn’t care about wearing make-up or looking like all the others’, a position that can be seen as becoming troubled when her appearance could be seen as not being consistent with this.

In light of the NUS report finding that some women in their research linked confidence about speaking in educational settings with confidence around their own appearance (Phipps, 2013), it seems that who can say what, and when, may be influenced by

appearance in ways more subtle than any simplistic notion of ‘looking good’. Evidently, it may become problematic if what is expressed in talk can be seen to be contradicted by what others may assume is expressed by appearance. Wearing make-up may be read as performing femininity in a certain way, which may be interpreted as at odds with other performances of femininity Thus, it may be that displaying versions of emphasized femininity by wearing make-up, makes it difficult to critique societal pressures for women to wear make-up, as the two performances can be read as contradictory. In light of the NUS report finding that some young women are reluctant to speak up if they are not looking ‘good’ (which most likely refers to some version or other of emphasized femininity) and Stuart and Donaghue’s finding that wearing make-up was seen as a neutral position while not wearing make-up was an active decision, young women are clearly navigating complicated territory around matching performances of femininity in talk and appearance. These complexities of what is communicated may limit the

possibilities for what young women can say and do in given contexts and situations.

In this context, it becomes interesting that most vloggers embody some aspect of current beauty standards and/or emphasized femininity (e.g. being slim, wearing make-up, carefully styled hair and nails), which raises the question of whether this is necessary

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for women to vlog in the first place. While it is difficult to define what ‘necessary’ would entail, that they practically all do it can be taken to demonstrate some level of ‘necessity’, at least in the sense that this may be one of the conventions around what a vlog by a woman looks like even as they vlog about body-image issues and the

undesirability of pressures on young women and girls regarding appearance. There may thus be a risk that speaking against appearance-related pressures will be undermined by the appearance of the speaker. While vloggers do not draw attention to any potential mismatch the way Participant 2 did, it remains possible that messages spoken by women, even when they do not orient to what might be seen as contradictory, may be interpreted as such by others. Therefore, spoken critiques of pressures may be

simultaneously undermined by appearance, as it may be that only women meeting certain standards of beauty or engaging in practices of emphasized femininity may be able to speak at all. (It is also worth noting that comments on YouTube vlogs by female vloggers often focus on the vlogger's appearance.) In light of this, it hardly seems surprising that participants seem to be engaging with body-related subjects in complex and complicated ways.

Many participants did a to-and-fro ‘dance’ around claims not to worry about appearance while also orienting to it.

If we look at the first part of Extract 1 again:

Participant 2: I’d always tell her take pride in your appearance (..) in how you look, because when I was younger I had massive body issues (.) I don’t have any more I’ve overcome them but I think every girl grows up feeling insecure because of how they look so (...) I want to shield her from all you know all the crap like (... )

In this response to my question about what she would wish to be different for an imaginary daughter, the orientation to appearance and a claim that she would bring the issue up with a daughter, may seem at odds with the critique voiced by the same

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participant of the beauty and diet industries. However, this engagement with appearance at the same time as repudiating the idea that it matters, was echoed across the data set. It may best be interpreted as indicative that while women may use a repudiation of caring about appearance to position themselves as strong individuals who have overcome youthful or immature weakness and impressionability, appearance cannot be forgotten.