This book is a critical and ethnographic study of camgirls: women who broadcast themselves over
the web for the general public while trying to cultivate a measure of celebrity in the process.
The book's over-arching question is What does it mean for feminists to speak about the
personal as political in a networked society that encourages women to 'represent' through
confession celebrity and sexual display but punishes too much visibility with conservative
censure and backlash? The narrative follows that of the camgirl phenomenon beginning with the
earliest experiments in personal homecamming and ending with the newest forms of identity and
community being articulated through social networking sites like Live Journal YouTube MySpace
and Facebook. It is grounded in interviews performance analysis of events transpiring between
camgirls and their viewers and the author's own experiences as an ersatz camgirl while
conducting the research.
