| dc.description.abstract | Researchers have explored the electric guitar as a gendered instrument, showing how gender has been an influential factor in the instrument's history. A male dominated arena, the world of the electric guitar has excluded women through a variety of mechanisms. Women's role in this realm has often been reduced to being passive objects for the male gaze and the female sexed body has been used extensively as a sales tool. Much of the existing research has understandably been devoted to the study of the challenges and barriers women have faced, while also elucidating problematic uses of the female sexed body. This present text devotes a substantial amount of time to presenting the existing research on the electric guitar and gender. After establishing this foundation, this paper will then put forth a slightly different approach to the object of study. Rather than focusing on the challenges and barriers faced by women electric guitarists, this thesis discusses how a woman electric guitar player uses the instrument in the creation of her artist persona. By applying a transmedial persona analysis to Tora Dahle Aagård, this present text shows how Aagård uses the electric guitar and its history as a gendered instrument in the construction of her artist persona. Ideological currents such as neoliberalism and postfeminism are important for Aagård's artist persona and will be discussed. Seeing how queer sexuality plays an essential role in the construction of Aagård's artist persona, this present text also unveils some problematic aspects of using queer sexuality as a marketing tool. In the final part of the thesis, some remarks on the contemporary landscape of the electric guitar and gender is presented. Based on the current wave of successful women electric guitarists on Instagram (including Tora Dahle Aagård), this research project argues that the platform provides women with new opportunities to shape their own roles in the world of the electric guitar. However, there are clear indications that some of the problematic aspects of the electric guitar's history as a gendered instrument are reproduced on Instagram; the female sexed body is for example still objectified. Considering how Instagram gives its users a great amount of freedom when it comes to how they present themselves, representations of the objectified female sexed body has turned into an individual affair, seemingly influenced by both postfeminism and neoliberalism. | eng |