Political Display and the Mediated Body: Exhibition and Politics on CollegeHumor.com

• In Event: Visual Communication Concepts

Abstract

This essay examines a “contest” created by collegehumor.com that encouraged women to write the name of their preferred presidential candidate on their naked bodies and submit a photograph to the website. Although the majority of these women simply wrote names on their bodies, many of them used their bodies as visual arguments through strategic presentations of self. These images provide a way to explore issues of embodiment, political expression, mediated communication, and visual argument.

Author

• Brett Lunceford, University of South Alabama