Sex & Gender on Pinterest

The material that we covered in class, from readings to class discussions, have become more real to me as a result of conducting my final project on Pinterest. Not only was I able to relate my pins to concepts and thoughts that we read, and spoke about, but it became apparent to me that these issues are recognized by the masses.

I chose to do my project on Pinterest because it is a such a liberal website, equipped with exorbitant amounts of information on any topic you could be interested in. As I had mentioned in class, my thoughts about a Pinterest semester project had stemmed from my personal usage of the website. Since I do not utilize social networking, I decided that it was necessary for me to have some type of media outlet in order to express myself. Before I had transferred colleges, I was a Social Work major. So, naturally, my personal Pinterest consisted greatly of social justice images, novels, and works regarding individuals and society. I soon came across some very powerful, feminist voices on Pinterest. This surprised me, because it seems that social media tends to focus on, what they call "first world problems," where people simply post statuses and tweets about their lives, without going above and beyond to understand and empathize with the plight of others. Viewing the Pinterest boards that related to sex and gender sparked a fire in my brain, encouraging me to use Pinterest as the main platform of this final project.

As I worked on this project, (luckily, Pinterest is smartphone friendly, so of course I was always pinning and commenting) I did notice that a majority of pins that related to my designated boards, were pinned by women. Out of the select few people that I followed for my material, one of them was male, and the others were females. (That is to say, my perception of these pinners was that they were male and female, excuse my generalization of gender expression) At one point, I did sift through feminist boards in hopes of finding some men who pinned on behalf of women. However, the fact that Pinterest is a female dominated website, as discussed in class, I was unable to find many male feminists.

My favorite boards, out of all five, are Feminist Musings and Media Portrayal. I commented on nearly every single pin, relating them to material or viewpoints that were addressed in class. Although each board is extremely informative, implemented by videos, images, links to outside websites, and my own comments, these two boards effectively depict sex and gender as it is perceived by society.

After doing this project, it is safe to say that I have not only learned new things, but have been able to apply our classroom education, outside of Hunter.


Sex & Gender on Pinterest