Lo-Fi Femme: The Messy Hypermediacy of Aspirational Femininity in Melisa Liebenthal’s "Las lindas" (2016)

Abstract

This article merges discursive-based scholarship with a phenomenological approach to analyze the media convergence in Melisa Liebenthal’s Las lindas (2016), a personal documentary which explores thresholds of femininity through liminal life stages of girlhood, adolescence, and womanhood. Lo-fi aesthetics and post-production techniques reduce the primacy of the visual logic of feminine allure, highlighting the physical exchange of media and heightening audience awareness of cultural practices that reinforce standards of femininity. The film thus filters the reality of femininity in such a way as to make it unsteady, incomplete, and never quite in focus, forestalling any notion of its completion or attainability.