Taking up digital space: Moroccan women and visual agency on Instagram

Abstract

This article examines how young Moroccan women utilize visual self-framing on Instagram to assert agency, challenge patriarchal constraints, and resist orientalist narratives through everyday visual practices. Grounded in decolonial feminist theory and based on a content analysis of 30 Instagram posts set in public and semi-public settings, the paper explores how ordinary female users construct agency and disrupt patriarchal and orientalist discourses through gaze, posture, clothing, spatial presence, and composition. These visual strategies position Instagram as a digital public space where Moroccan women engage in subtle, nonverbal acts of feminist resistance and self-assertion.