Reflections

Writing my proposal, I assumed it would be easy to find 10 Instagram pages that were similar enough to each other to create a curated list however what I actually found was that too many Instagram pages that I had in mind were TOO similar, resulting in me having to explore Instagram a little bit and find other pages that had similar themes but were different enough so that I had enough 'meat' to talk about without becoming too repetitive. In my exploration of Instagram's many accounts one thing I found challenging was deciding where to draw the line on what was too obscure or too distant from my central theme to include in my collection. However in the end I think I achieved a good balance. In my proposal I mentioned that my curation was to have a 'human/cultural beauty/aesthetic' theme. Most pieces in my collection did have this central theme but I think some of my pieces shifted a little bit more toward looking at social attitudes/ideas, pop culture and the influence of Instagram to create communities within the platform. (For example the 'Kanyedoingthings' or 'Baddiewinkle' pages) I enjoyed writing about these aspects as well as the ideas of human and cultural beauty and I think that it added some quirkiness/humour to the collection. I enjoyed that my theme gave me some opportunity to discuss social issues that I think are important like breaking the socially constructed ideas of a 'Normal' body, ageism and recognising cultural beauty. When writing my proposal I didn't think that I would be discussing such issues, rather focussing on the aesthetics of the images on these Instagram pages only but I think my light commentary added some depth to the collection. Especially considering that Instagram is seen to be mostly an informal and casual media platform ( compared to something like Facebook or Twitter which has transformed into a sort of 'news hub' where legitimate sources report current events, create movements etc), I think creating my collection was a good opportunity to highlight different aspects of Instagram to show it's flexibility and point of difference from other social media platforms.