This article explores the nexus between digital literacies and identity in the online graphical chat environment of the 'palace'. With a focus on the adolescent cybergirl, it examines how girls use words and images to create a digital presence, and in so doing, 'write' their bodies and their selves. I discuss how the cybergirl is discursively constructed as well as self-produced within discourses of sexuality and idealised beauty. A grammatical analysis of both words and images is presented to describe the resources girls are using to construct their identities. In doing so, I highlight the particular ways that girls are creating cyberbodies that are encoded surfaces of the girls' fantasies and desires. I argue that the palace is a site that produces new forms of femininities through allowing girls the space to explore, experience a sense of empowerment and find new ways of reinventing themselves. |
