Communicating identity: Gendered representation and the influence of the megadiva

In this article I argue that the emerging Dominican media icon referred to as the megadiva, a representation that influences and reflects Dominican notions of beauty and femininity, plays an important role in identity construction. I discuss how this particular representation influences my primary sample group: female communications students at an upper-middle to upper class university in Santiago, Dominican Republic. I argue that as the communications students are being exposed to the megadiva they are uniquely influenced by the representation due to their aspirations for entering the Dominican media industry. They are then forced to articulate their own identities and future careers through this specific representation. I draw on performative theory to discuss how the visual embodiment of the megadiva representation by this group of communications students operates as the performance of their gendered identity. The ethnographic data, combined with an investigation of Dominican television media forms, revealed a reciprocal process where the representation of the megadiva acts as a socializing agent that influences standards of Dominican beauty, reinforces Dominican gender ideologies, and contributes to Dominican female identity negotiation of my sample group of communications students through imitation, participation, and rejection.