Yogyakarta, January 27th 2022─The Department of Social Development and Welfare (PSdK) Fisipol UGM held Social Development Talks with the topic “‘Beautiful Student’ Accounts: Glorification or Exploitation?” on Thursday (27/1). The event took place through a Zoom Meeting, by presenting Maulidya Indah Mega Saputri (an undergraduate student of the Department of PSdK) as the main speaker.
The discussion about the exploitation of women occurs in the academic community in a unique and hidden form. In fact, the campus should be the safest and most comfortable place to carry out learning activities. Even interestingly, sensitive discussion like this is often excluded from development and welfare discourse.
This event discusses the accounts of beautiful female students on behalf of a university to display their female students who are considered beautiful. Its function is to repost or re-upload photos of female students who are generally considered to have attractive physical charms.
“If we reflect on ourselves, this is actually a digitalization product where there is a gigantic power, hundreds of thousands of followers, and the system of existence seems to place women like interior items in a window, displayed and consumed together,” Maulidya said.
From the accounts of these beautiful female students, we can see that subjective standards and demands for beauty are becoming increasingly sharp. If this is perpetuated, it is feared that something even worse will happen, namely the commodification of economic products and tools of power tactics. That is, there is a form of disguise or weakening of an identity, and it is women.
“This is actually a trap for the objectification of women. Even though the owner of the photo allows it and the community supports it, if it is continued, the admin can do whatever he wants, he feels free to upload because he feels supported,” Maulidya said.
Although the results of the study reveal that exploitation depends on consent, this has been confirmed by commodification. Because, the owner of a beautiful student account makes a profit from the results of uploading photos of female students who are considered beautiful.
Lecturer of Department of PSdK Fisipol UGM, Milda Longgeita Pinem, said that actually there is no standard beauty standard. However, many women are disadvantaged in terms of beauty construction.
“If we look from the prehistoric era to the digital era, there is one thing that is most clearly visible, that women are objects of a heterosexist society. That is the ultimate truth,” she said.