The TikTok algorithm’s promotion of a femininity closely tied to aesthetics and consumerism impacts young women’s formation of identity, causing fatigue with – and rejection of – popular feminist concepts.
The researchers argue that this ultimately undermines the potential for community-creation and collective action.
Research from Chiara Fehr, Dr Lucia Gloria Vazquez Rodriguez and Professor Jessica Ringrose explores how popular feminist rhetoric on TikTok shapes young women’s self-perception.
The researchers worked in-depth with seven women aged 23-27 through a focus group; these young women identified with feminist values and were regular users of TikTok.
Professor Ringrose says, “Lately we have seen so much noise about social media misogyny influencers, the manosphere and its effects upon boys and men. But what about how issues of algorithmic recommendation impact girls and women?
“Our research shows the impact of siloed scrolling and influencer subcultures where femininity feeds have become populated by commodified, depoliticised “feminist” clickbait.”
“Girlscapes” and feminine aesthetics
TikTok’s algorithm prioritises highly individualised content, promoting content heavily tied to aesthetics and the purchasing of products.
Research participants referred to a trend where online personas, tied to certain visual cues and references, are promoted to users based on their predicted interest. These personas do not just signify a fashion preference or colour palette, but a complex assembly of bodily traits, personality markers and lifestyle choices.
These feminine aesthetics are hyper-specific, and viewers are encouraged to purchase particular products – such as makeup or clothing – to help perform a certain aesthetic.
You can be anything you want, but are you a ‘this girl’ or are you a ‘that girl’? Are you a tomato girl or an orange girl?
These products are easily accessed via links in the creator’s profile or through their TikTok Shop. Through this, TikTok pushes an aesthetic femininity closely tied to consumerism.
Within the “girlscape”, feminine bodies, objects and identities are tightly bundled into aesthetic packages.
Although this form of aesthetic labour is framed as a means of self-expression, participants noted the exhausting and restrictive pressure to maintain a personal brand while keeping up with the fast-paced nature of the TikTok algorithm.
I feel like I’ve fallen into this trap.
The fragmentation of feminist identity
On this digital stage, conceptions of empowerment become filtered through monetisation and digital aesthetics. This fosters hyper-individualism over more organic (and naturally diverse) community creation.
As TikTok promotes trends that encourage self-categorisation into shallow, aesthetic groups, participants noted an increasing hyper-awareness of appearance, where the self becomes a project or a product.
Participants noted the “isolating” nature of TikTok interactions; rather than creating community through shared interests, the platform cultivates a culture of digital self-fashioning and self-surveillance.
As beauty standards contract and shift on the platform, the female body is still situated as the primary site of resistance, rather than structural political spaces.
When entangled with the algorithm, the researchers argue that feminist discourse becomes diluted, digestible and depoliticised, eroding any potential for genuine political engagement, activism, or critical consciousness on the platform.
Dr Vazquez Rodriguez says, “Under TikTok’s neoliberal and patriarchal algorithmic logics, feminism becomes a spectacle of self-optimisation rather than a site of collective struggle. The platform’s design turns political critique into bite-sized, commodified content, leaving little room for the kind of sustained, solidaristic feminist organising that earlier social media ecosystems made possible.
“We need to stop mistaking visibility for politics – and start building feminist infrastructures that cannot be absorbed, gamified, or sold back to us”.
Heteropessimism, tradwives and femcels
Participants’ testimonies reveal a growing frustration with the contradictions in popular feminism; they struggled to reconcile the empowerment promised online with their physical lives and the realities of their social context.
This disillusionment lends itself to susceptibility towards fatigue, “heteropessimism” and reactionary femininity subcultures, such as tradwives, female manipulators, and femcels.
The dissemination of heteropessimist content on TikTok circulates narratives of disillusionment, sadness and fear towards relationships with men. This content, which is often sensationalist and emotionally charged, is pushed by the algorithm.
We only hear about the really messed up narratives because that sells, that gets clicks.
Participants reflected on the “fear mongering” content, where men were framed as inherent threats and women perpetual victims. They criticised the content as a form of victim blaming – placing the onus on women to manage male violence by making the “right” romantic choices.
They expressed concern that pervasive tropes of villainised men and victimised women contribute less to feminist empowerment than to a recursive sense of helplessness, narrowing feminist discourse.
Fatigue with popular feminist concepts and a reinforced fear of men then enable the appeal of reactionary femininity.
The researchers note that the pull of certain subcultures, such the “tradwife” ideal, may reflect the impact of global crises and economic anxieties, tied to the rise of hustle culture and the perceived necessity for women to secure financially stable partners.
The popularity of these reactionary femininity tropes, they concluded, may offer temporary relief or empowerment, but ultimately sustain the very gendered constraints they claim to subvert.
Lead author Chiara Fehr says, “In this moment where the construction of gendered identity is largely facilitated by algorithms that are designed specifically to isolate people into obsessive consumption, it is imperative to find active paths of collective resistance.
“This calls for the regulation of platform architecture that pushes individualistic capitalist logics. In addition, on a larger scale, we need an accessible re-definition of popularised feminism that advocates a collectivised struggle to dismantle oppressive gender hierarchies.”
Related links
Read the paper: From Hot-Girls to Femcels: Algorithmic Logics and (Popular) Feminist Fatigue on TikTok
More from the researchers: Girls’ voices are needed to tackle misogyny and the manosphere – but they are being ignored
Image
Davide Angelini via Adobe Stock.
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