Revenge bodies and antisocial media ecologies
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The present article theorises the emergence and persistence of a notable cultural archetype prevalent across 21st century media forms: the revenge body. The promise of personal inviolability offered by this corporeal project is compelling in an era marked by an increasingly insistent discourse of gender polarisation and conflict. Given a contemporary public culture in the global North in which social and political antipathies prevail, we note the emergence of revenge as a public affect that crosses ideological divisions and thrives in a media ecosystem that algorithmically stokes the flames of antisocial feeling. The article tracks this corporeal type across reality television makeover show Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian (2017–2019) as well as online message boards for the Looksmaxxing community, highlighting the differently gendered manifestations of the revenge body and the wider social conditions that seed such corporeal projects. By couching a self-making project in antisocial rhetoric the revenge body indexes the fraying of bonds of interpersonal intimacy, variously exhibited through the production of heteropessimistic and heteronihilstic cultural texts, and the emergence of post-intimate digital communities.
Source: Media Culture & Society
Language: English
Topic: Gender, Feminism, and Media
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,650
OpenAlex ID: W7221155784