Negotiating Fashion and Visibility: A Case Study of a Javanese Influencer’s Instagram Self-Presentation

Abstract

This article examines how a young Javanese influencer negotiates fashion, visibility, and audience interpretation through Instagram self-presentation. It reanalyses an existing qualitative corpus comprising an in-depth interview and three selected Instagram posts from a 20-year-old woman living in Surakarta, Indonesia. The analysis uses Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical concepts of frontstage and backstage together with Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics. Rather than treating body-conscious clothing or posed photographs as direct evidence of self-sexualization, the article investigates the gap between visual cues that may invite sexualized readings and the participant’s own descriptions of her posts as “cute,” fashionable, and oriented toward outfit sharing. The findings show that her online identity is collaboratively shaped through peer feedback, commercial opportunities, female followers’ interest in outfit coordination, and perceived approval from her parents. Her case also complicates a rigid distinction between frontstage and backstage: although Instagram content is selected and publicly displayed, she reported wearing similar styles in everyday life and sharing the images with her mother. The article argues that fashion-oriented Instagram posts should be analysed as polysemic signs whose meanings are negotiated among creators, peers, family members, followers, commercial partners, and local cultural expectations. The case contributes to research on influencer culture by showing that visible bodily presentation cannot be reduced to a single explanation such as sexualization, rebellion, or commercial strategy.