dissertation blurb
Video sharing media (such as YouTube and Vimeo) are undeniably social. Additionally, it is important to consider how the sites affect user identity and subjectivity. However, there is a decided lack of critical scholarly engagement in gender-centric identities and social influence of video media. Specifically, there is almost no scholarship that places focus on how young women are using video media. While young women do provoke, entertain, and educate as YouTubers, I argue that they often focus on different kinds of video sharing work. To do this, I focus on two specific kinds of work: activist work and community-building work.
The activist work done by young women through video sharing sites includes individuals or groups of women who create, produce, and upload these videos in an effort to enact action in their audiences. Video sharing services serve as an effective means for activist video producers to reach an audience they can call to action, to foster female subjectivity, to take ownership and pride in their bodies, and to call awareness to cultural oppression of women.
Following the activists, I focus on the work done by the young women on YouTube called Beauty Gurus. The Beauty Gurus do makeup application tutorials and what are called "haul videos," wherein they show their recent beauty purchases and offer reviews of the products. The Beauty Gurus are an excellent example of Mark Andrejevic’s concept of the work of being watched. This is defined as interactivity that “functions increasingly as a form of productive surveillance allowing for the commodification of the products generated” (Andrejevic, 2004, p. 2). The Beauty Gurus allow viewers to come into their home – often the traditionally private space of the bedroom – in order to glean from the Guru makeup application tips or to be sold a product (often sent to her for free) via the Guru’s rave review.
However, I also want to place due focus on the communities that are built up around the Gurus. I am interested in how the Beauty Gurus act as nodes in a network of users around the globe who come together based on their shared love for consumer beauty products. The community-building that occurs around the Gurus indicates the ability of sites like YouTube to enable women to become part of an interactive and supportive group. These communities encourage participation, communication, and subjective experience all stemming from makeup and beauty products, things commonly disregarded as socially extraneous.
By focusing on female activist videos and the Beauty Gurus, I hope to shed light on the practices that young women engage in on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, situated within cultural studies and feminist theory. I believe the work these young women are doing is culturally relevant yet suffers from a lack of academic research. By drawing from the activists and the Gurus I will take steps toward filling this gap in the body of research concerning video sharing media and identity construction in new media. My focus on subjective, empowered identities and community building through beauty work will help to refine and situate these two driving topics.