TY - CHAP

T1 - Madeline Stuart as disability advocate and brand

T2 - Exploring the affective economies of social media

AU - Christensen-Strynø, Maria Bee

AU - Eriksen, Camilla Bruun

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Madeline Stuart is a fashion model from Australia who lives with Down syndrome. She became a social media phenomenon in 2015, and ever since she has travelled around the world to attend fashion industry shows and events. This chapter explores the dynamics and tensions related to the co-existence of Stuart’s self-commodification and disability advocacy by looking into the ways in which she manages and negotiates her different roles and identities through transformative processes of celebrification on social media. We analyze the Stuart case through a conceptual framework of affective economies which is operationalized for the purpose of thinking about disability as a form of emotional currency, and which through circulation and exchange acquires surplus value. In this framework, disability is seen as in itself an empty sign to which meaning and value attach itself through its continuous circulation. This is effectively demonstrated by paying analytical attention to Stuart’s framing of the common cultural trope of weight loss as a significant transformative process which, we argue, performs as a gateway to legitimizing and branding Down syndrome and disability as a particular capitalizable identity. The chapter should be read by anyone interested in the complex entanglements of commercialized logics on social media and disability identity politics.

AB - Madeline Stuart is a fashion model from Australia who lives with Down syndrome. She became a social media phenomenon in 2015, and ever since she has travelled around the world to attend fashion industry shows and events. This chapter explores the dynamics and tensions related to the co-existence of Stuart’s self-commodification and disability advocacy by looking into the ways in which she manages and negotiates her different roles and identities through transformative processes of celebrification on social media. We analyze the Stuart case through a conceptual framework of affective economies which is operationalized for the purpose of thinking about disability as a form of emotional currency, and which through circulation and exchange acquires surplus value. In this framework, disability is seen as in itself an empty sign to which meaning and value attach itself through its continuous circulation. This is effectively demonstrated by paying analytical attention to Stuart’s framing of the common cultural trope of weight loss as a significant transformative process which, we argue, performs as a gateway to legitimizing and branding Down syndrome and disability as a particular capitalizable identity. The chapter should be read by anyone interested in the complex entanglements of commercialized logics on social media and disability identity politics.

UR - https://soeg.kb.dk/permalink/45KBDK_KGL/1f0go08/cdi_informaworld_taylorfrancisbooks_9780429469244

U2 - 10.4324/9780429469244-3

DO - 10.4324/9780429469244-3

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781138603011

T3 - Routledge Research in Disability and Media Studies

SP - 35

EP - 50

BT - Disability, Media, and Representations

A2 - Johanssen, Jacob

A2 - Garrisi, Diana

PB - Routledge

ER -