Failure In Encoding and Decoding
~Example of Emilia Wong~
Nextplus. “《我嘅身體由我話事》中大法律生Emilia挑戰規範 以性感相向道德塔利班挑機.”
The promotion of self-governance and the empowerment of the body are always Emilia's encoded messages in her “sexy” photos. These photos are uploaded to the online platform like Instagram. By uploading these photos, she tends to alter the mainstream discourse of female and mocks the society for limiting women’s freedom, which intends to encourage netizens to gain critical thinking on a female’s body and eliminates their stereotyping towards women.[1]
However, the netizens are having an alternative reading to the encoded message of the photo uploader. Based on the negative comments from LIHKG, netizens tend to possess a sarcastic attitude towards her claim in the self-governance of her body as an objectification of female by commenting her for making money with her body. Additionally, netizens have tried to link the self-governance of the body in relation with the commodification of the body, which has distorted the original intention of Wong in promoting the rights of the female as well as empowering the female body.[2] Her actions have become a kind of reinforcement to the stereotyped image of a female under the patriarchal platform of LIHKG and discussions.
LIHKG as a male-dominated platform does not benefit her promotion of female rights since “male gaze” is the dominant means of perceiving female. Female seems not to have much right of speaking for themselves in the forum of LIHKG as they seem to be the minority of the users (It is hard to tell the gender of the LIHKG’s users as the information are not necessarily true, however; those who initiate to admit they are female users are just a minority of the users) and they are always the topic of male-privileged discussion. It is formidable for a female to comply the image of themselves and the original intentions under the limitation of the platform.
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[1] “《我嘅身體由我話事》中大法律生Emilia挑戰規範 以性感相向道德塔利班挑機,” Nextplus, accessed November 20, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoCdicKkPNU
[2] “［派糧］中大法學女神Emilia Wong深夜全裸示人,” LIHKG, accessed November 20, 2017, https://lihkg.com/thread/109038/page/1
