Anna O’Sullivan (she/her) is an undergraduate student in the School of Foreign Service, where she studies International Politics and Security. She is from Great Falls, Virginia, about half an hour from the Hilltop. Anna is interested in how ideals of womanhood are shaped and politicized, especially how online portrayals of white conservative femininity uphold patriarchal norms and marginalize women of color. She has long worked with the Democratic Party of Virginia to help draft legislation promoting female empowerment and limiting online hate speech and coercion. At Georgetown, Anna is involved with the International Relation Club’s DIAS Sub-board, the Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and the SFS Academic Council’s DEI team. Anna plans to pursue a career in International Security, with a focus on preventing and responding to femicide attacks.
The Color of Submission: White Femininity and the Digital Politics of Belonging
The Color of Submission: White Femininity and the Digital Politics of Belonging investigates how the romanticization of white conservative femininity on social media, exemplified by the “trad wife” aesthetic, contributes to the normalization of racial exclusion and the broader cultural turn toward conservatism in the United States. Centering gender as the core analytic framework, this study examines how algorithmically amplified portrayals of domesticity, modesty, and submission construct white womanhood as a moral and aesthetic ideal. Through a mixed-methods approach combining digital content analysis and qualitative reflections from women of color, the project explores how these online performances influence cultural aspirations, emotional identification, and patterns of digital marginalization. Drawing on Black feminist thought and critical race theory, it seeks to understand how whiteness operates as a central organizing principle in the construction of gendered digital identities and how these dynamics reinforce both patriarchal and racial hierarchies within online environments.