If you’re on the ‘empowering women’ side of TikTok, Caylee Cresta is likely a familiar face you’ve seen on your FYP. TikTok has been, for many women identifying people, a space to share their thoughts, feelings, experiences, and frustrations with misogyny and have found catharsis in community of like-minded women and allies. Though TikTok can be a risky place to share opinions due to trolling and cyberbullying, it can also be a way to spread much needed awareness and support to those impacted by harmful systems of oppression.
On this episode of Get Naked with Dr. Kate, Dr. Kate Balestrieri and Caylee Cresta discuss rampant sexism on social media, how women can have empowered conversations with partners, and how to find solidarity and community with others.
Empowering Women on Social Media
Social media is not always the nicest space for marginalized communities and the anonymity that comes with the internet doesn’t help how bold people are willing to be in a comment section. Many women on the internet have countless experiences where people, oftentimes men, who troll or bully women in ways that they likely wouldn’t IRL.
Social media tends to give people a boost of boldness that they likely would not act on when interacting with others outside of the internet. Behind the keyboard, people often feel more emboldened to verbally abuse people who they disagree with as opposed to engaging in meaningful discourse about disagreements.
Women and non-binary folks have been able to build community where they can lament about the struggles of living under patriarchy and although they are usually not able to fully stop online hate, the larger community around them can be helpful in creating support and solidarity around making the internet a safer space for all.
The Internet and Sexism
The internet can be a breeding ground for sexist and other bigoted ideologies to flourish. There are popular websites such as 4Chan and Incel forums that are obvious unsafe spaces, but that doesn’t mean that sexism doesn’t make it way to more mainstream platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
There has thankfully been more light shown on how pervasive sexism is on the internet and popular figures such as Andrew Tate and the like do not help with mitigating the growing radicalization that is happening online with young men.
TikTok accounts like Caylee’s are so important because it’s a disruption to things like gender roles, societal expectations, and patriarchy that gives people permission to think about roles they have been subjected to and how those roles have impacted their sense of self and relationships with others. Caylee is helping to make the internet a more empowered space for women, at least as much as she can, on her ever-growing account and thankfully, other creators like her are also stepping up to do this challenging work.
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Tik-Tok sensation Caylee Cresta’s @cayleecresta TikTok account has gained 2.8 million followers and 46 million likes. Her channel consisted of makeup and comedy videos before she shifted to sharing her thoughts about views on women in society. Caylee is a social media personality on a mission to empower women. With a prior career in the male dominated industry of construction, she was originally inspired by the communication barrier she found between men and women and set out to translate the plight of everyday women like herself in an effort to help couples reconnect and women to see more clearly what they may be feeling.
It was here that she found her passion and became determined to describe every facet of the female experience in hopes of making her fellow woman know they weren’t alone and to feel understood. Caylee is often praised for her ability to articulate tough topics and does so with her blunt demeanor and a comedic twist. Caylee wants to be able to laugh about some of the serious subjects and to know no one is isolated in this, it is universal. She is the mother to a young son, a cat lover, and enjoys playing with makeup when she’s not fighting misogynists. Caylee also reveals on this podcast that she is in fact married and talks about her relationship with Dr. Kate. Dr. Kate and Caylee talk about how this started for Caylee, along with some of her most controversial posts and the threats that ensued.
They speak about men’s societal views of women and how these posts can shine a light on how a woman is feeling and often start great conversations with their partners. This is definitely a fun and enlightening episode we hope you enjoy. Email your questions to: [email protected]
