What happens if digital capitalism privatises feminism, separating it from the collective dimension and turning girls' sexual freedom into an individual performance? Online hypersexualisation and monetisation of bodies reveal patriarchal dynamics based on persuasion, where the line between consent and compliance has become increasingly blurred
The illusion
of sexual freedom
Hypersexualised culture has found fertile ground in social media, where displaying the body is framed as an individual and empowering choice. But can a decision truly be considered free when it is shaped by algorithms, social validation, and gender norms?
Through media, advertising, and entertainment, today’s culture perpetuates a persistent message to women: being desired has value; appearing available, even sexually, can be profitable. From this perspective, the female body, stripped of its complexity, continues to be represented as a visual product for consumption. A commodity to be shown, to seduce, and to monetise.
Platforms like Twitch.tv reveal how these dynamics intertwine with the attention economy. After analysing more than 1,900 clips, we found that women are overrepresented in less popular but more sexualised categories such as ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) or Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. They often appear scantily clad, in erotic settings, performing exercises at subscribers’ requests, or simulating suggestive acts.[1]
This hypersexualised aesthetic has been conceptualised by sociologist Brian McNair as Porn Chic, a blend of soft pornography and digital celebrity culture. In contrast, their male counterparts are usually found in video game or Just Chatting categories, focusing attention on their speech or gameplay content.
It is undeniable that these representations have deeply permeated adolescents, who grow up internalising the belief that women’s validation can depend on appearing sexually attractive. For girls, it’s not merely an aesthetic preference, but a systematic pressure that shapes self-esteem, aspirations, and behaviour, especially during adolescence, a period of heightened psychological vulnerability. What once may have seemed like an external imposition now presents itself as an expression of autonomy.
“They do it because they want to,” many teenagers – especially boys - say when asked why their female peers post suggestive photos, imitate hypersexualised aesthetics, or even consider opening accounts on platforms like OnlyFans. But from the perspective of developmental psychology, this so-called free choice becomes much more ambiguous: the adolescent brain, still maturing, is highly sensitive to social validation and the immediate rewards of likes or positive comments.
According to Hamilton et al.’s concept of cultural assimilation, adolescents don’t just consume sexualised content– they also absorb the implicit norms and values within it, internalising them as if they were natural. Indeed, Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory argued that sustained exposure to certain media messages shapes one’s perception of the real world. Therefore, if social media reinforces the idea that being attractive, desirable, and sexualised equates to success and recognition, it’s likely that these expectations will be normalised as legitimate individual choices.
From a critical feminist perspective, this apparent individual freedom has been widely questioned. Ariel Levy warned in Female Chauvinist Pigs how women had begun to actively participate in their own objectification under the guise of empowerment. Today, hypersexualisation is no longer imposed from the outside – it is internalised and reproduced as if it were a form of individual freedom. Eva Illouz has shown how emotional capitalism turns romantic and sexual relationships into symbolic transactions based on visibility, erotic capital, and market performance.
This framework directly connects to the postfeminist neoliberal discourse, which celebrates individual autonomy, entrepreneurship, and self-exploitation as signs of empowerment. In this narrative, the woman appears as a free agent who consciously chooses to show her body, monetise her image, or participate in erotic digital dynamics.
What is omitted is that these decisions are made within a deeply unequal structural context. Scholars such as Rosalind Gill and Angela McRobbie have argued that postfeminism functions as an ideology that privatises feminism, detaching it from the collective and transforming liberation into individual performance. “You choose,” says neoliberalism. But what seems like choice is often adaptation.
This leads to the concept of the “patriarchy of consent,” proposed by authors like Ana de Miguel and Katherine Angel, where it’s no longer about imposing desires or controlling bodies through direct coercion, but about creating an environment in which women voluntarily consent to what is expected of them, believing they are doing so by choice. As De Miguel states, “the new patriarchy has learned that to maintain its power, it doesn’t need to impose, it only needs to persuade.” In this framework, consent becomes a more effective tool for legitimising patriarchal order than prohibition.
Are we, then, facing a freer generation or a culture that has recycled its mechanisms of control so that subordination is experienced as empowerment?
It is undeniable that the pressure to appear attractive starts increasingly early. Girls grow up knowing that looking sexy is not only desirable but nearly mandatory. The rise of cosmetic surgery among adolescents, early use of makeup, and the obsession with appearing “Instagrammable” are merely symptoms of a system whose goal is to teach women that their main capital is sexual.
The problem is that the psychological and physical consequences of these dynamics are often ignored – eating disorders, anxiety, low self-esteem, difficulty concentrating, and poor academic performance, among others. And while social media rewards certain behaviors with likes and visibility, the message sinks in: sexualising oneself is a free, empowering way to gain attention, recognition… and, of course, money.
But are we really talking about empowerment? Sexual agency, understood as the ability to make free, informed, and non-coerced decisions about one’s own body and desires, requires more than mere will. It requires context, material and symbolic conditions that allow for real choice. For consent to be ethically valid, it must also include the ability to say no without consequences. But when everything around you, social media, culture, models of success, tells you that being sexy is the best (or only) way to be visible, how much room is there to choose another path?
Feminism’s response must not be moralising or punitive. The goal is not to blame those who use their bodies as tools for survival or visibility. Rather, it is to critically analyse the contexts that push those choices. In this scenario, comprehensive sex education from an early age is crucial to provide tools for critical thinking, self-awareness, and boundary setting. Equally important is regulating access to and circulation of content, protecting minors, and questioning an economic model that has turned the body, especially the female body, into a market commodity.
Because yes, posting sexualised content might make you money. But if validation continues to come from the male gaze, the power still belongs to them.
Notes
[1] The acronym ASMR refers to the sensation of mild tingling in different parts of the body and a feeling of well-being that some people experience in response to certain auditory stimuli, such as rustling and whispering. On platforms such as YouTube, Twitch and TikTok, ASMR has become a trend, with videos produced by people specialising in the production of these audio-visual stimuli reaching millions of views.
References
A. De Miguel, Neoliberalismo Sexual, Madrid, Ediciones Cátedra, 2016.
G. Gerbner, L. Gross, M. Morgan, N. Signorielli, J. Shanahan, Growing up with Television: Cultivation Processes, in Media Effects, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 53-78.
E. Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity, 2007.
A. Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, New York, NYZ Free Press, 2005.
B. McNair, Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire, London, Routledge, 2002.
A. McRobbie, Post-Feminism and Popular Culture, in Feminist Media Studies, 4, 3, 2004, pp. 255-264.