The continually theorized notion that the internet allows the user to be disembodied and hence relieved from the immutable characteristics of gender, race and age are contested in the study by Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel. The stood looks at the practice of Mexican and Colombian women’s use of the internet and the relationship with technology they have.
Women from the aforementioned areas turn to the internet as a tool to lift them out of poverty because of the fact that it enables them to transcend physical state boundaries “The inequalities of mobility, invisible in the corporate marketing narratives, are quite apparent in the transnational marriage industry” (Grabiel” 2006). They get themselves out of poverty by looking for U.S men to marry. The reason they choose the U.S specifically is as a result of the imagined perceptions they have of life in the U.S which they infer from the mass media messages about the U.S. The life style they aspire to emulate through the marriage forms part of an imagined community which they perceive to be ubiquitous. Not only do these women use the internet as part of their technological resource to attain their goals but they combine it with the use of cosmetic surgery. The cosmetic surgery comes into play as a tool for enhancing their ‘authentic’ features. The category of transnational marriage is hence structured by the marketplace of desire.
This raises the question of why American men would desire to marry women who are not American and vice versa? The answer lies in the very stereotypes that the internet is meant to liberate people from. The stereotypes of Latina women as being hard working, family oriented and exotic are the reasons and indeed the unique selling points of transnational companies. Women then “invest” in themselves by undergoing cosmetic surgery in order for the internal qualities to meet the physical expectations of the U.S male market. The currency of the market gains through stereotyping. This again is an illustration of how external social practices of capitalism enter the cyber world how current gender roles of patriarchal inequality are appropriated in the internet and then through the mediation get reinforced in the real world. “Participants turned to technology and the foreign other to mobilize dreams across borders” (Grabiel: 2006). A lot emphasis is on the male gaze which in turn causes these women to momentarily consider themselves as the male gazing at themselves. The body is no longer a natural part of life but any other tool constantly needs maintenance and can be remodeled and transformed for a perceived better version. The interactions in the cyber world are such that the alter ego can come alive and essentially have a life of its own separate from the creator of the other ego. Latina women consider men from the U.S to be hard working and financial capable of enabling them to be a part of the imagined all inclusive American society as exuded by the media. The other fundamental thing the business of transnational marriage does is allow Latina women to make the shift from being the producers of consumable goods into being consumers. The paradox is that the women themselves also become consumable and consumed by the industry they have created under the guise of providing them with more life choices. As products the advertising presents the only use value of these women as being their appearance and their ability to be engulfed by U.S expectations and wants. For the consumers the women are the product and the emotional benefit of these women is that they can molded into the desire of U.S men in a relationship that brings to mind the interactions of master and slave during the colonial era.
The concept of love has been converted into a neo-liberalist economic practice through the rise of this industry. The union of the two people in the transnational marriage meets at a potential site of conflict between tradition and modernity. This is in fact a networked subculture as defined by Castells because of the distinctive feature which is that the identities of the people involved are extremely malleable.
The industry also brings up the idea of cultural alterity and otherness. Seemingly men from the U.S are dissatisfied and feel emasculated with western modern women on account of their desire to be freed from the historical oppressive gender norms and roles. The Latina women feel that through the internet and transnational service they are able to expand their knowledge about other ways of life and societies, which in my opinion is highly contestable on account of authenticity. Over the internet both the men and the women are exhibiting their ‘best’ behavior in order to be attractive to the other and hence anything about life styles should be taken with a bag of salt. I feel like the service is openly marketing insecure desperate men and openly gold digging women who reinforce western notions of the developing world as being a barren wasteland that they should rescue the inhabitants from in what is guised as a safe and mutually beneficial romance. This is a stark contradiction considering that love is the last criterion that either party considers when they make the choice to use the service. Poverty is framed not as a social pathology but as a minor issue that can be fixed by fixing external appearance and a preferred division of labor. The dictum is that technology and the internet “offer people the flexibility to not only be themselves, but to produce themselves” (Grabiel: 2006).
The practice of stereotyping is referred by Nakamura as cybertyping. Media technologies operate in two layers: the software creation and the social use. Through the complexity of software languages created by the West they were able to restrict access to the developing world which contributes to the global digital divide. The digital divide can never fully be transcended because of the fact that even the so called equilibrium effect of internet use is nowhere near becoming a reality. Statistics of internet penetration are used by companies to identify the ethnic inhabitants of the area and hence discriminate against them as was the case with Kozmo.com. The solution to the problem of otherness on the net does not lie in the disembodiment of the self and concealing of race, gender and age, but in the acknowledgement of the difference and acceptance of difference as part of a persona and not as being tantamount to it. The very fact that the utopian view wants to erase discrimination on the net through disembodiment creates it through a resistance of individuals to the totalizing effect it has “cyberspace itself as monoculture, the West’s “dark side” and thus a powerful continuation of the imperialist project” (Nakamura: 2006). Otherness and difference has a role in the technology and social industry which is why great lengths are taken to cultivate and nurture it, unfortunately this also questions its authenticity at the end of the day because the cultures of the others become part of a process of creation of culture according to the tastes of the consumerist west. This is seen in films such as Guess Who, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Something New. Stereotypes of inherent qualities are based on racial profiling of the other. Said stereotypes are deconstructed in these films and in the end of all of them the desirable outcome is to align with the conventionally Westerner in order to achieve true contentment. Everything about the digital economy feeds into the West as the gatekeepers who are above any of the social issues that they do not get classed with the rest because they are the ones who through internet and media technology determine where and how sociality is structured.
Something New
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