Online and In the Spotlight: A Critical Analysis of The Beauty Vlogger

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the beauty vlogger, who I define for purposes of this project as an individual who produces beauty content across multiple social media platforms as her full-time job. Through textual and discourse analysis, personal observation, and interviews with content creators, I theorize the beauty vlogger through the multiple identities that she simultaneously embodies – those of the female entrepreneurial laborer, the public persona, and the social media “influencer.” Not only does this dissertation critically interrogate the beauty vlogger as she exists within the contemporary post-Fordist and neoliberal capitalist context, but it also historicizes the figure of the beauty vlogger by looking to other modes of gendered, raced, and classed entrepreneurialism within and around the beauty industry over the course of the twentieth century. In the current moment, the beauty vlogger exists within a highly commercialized environment, both through her engagement with online video and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat which monetize the content she creates and through her positionality vis-à-vis the traditional beauty industry. In her role as a public persona and social media influencer who tests and reviews beauty products, the beauty vlogger functions as a critical part of emergent marketing and advertising strategies that capitalize on the relationship the beauty vlogger fosters with her audience. Increasingly, this content has materialized into formalized, paid partnerships between the beauty vlogger and beauty brands, which provides the beauty vlogger with additional revenue streams. The lifestyle that the beauty vlogger promotes online as an entrepreneur, a public persona, and an influencer, is one which others aspire to attain, but it is important to remember the curated nature of the beauty vlogger’s online identity. In this dissertation, I render visible the beauty vlogger’s hidden labor that produces and mitigates her seemingly glamorous lifestyle.