Women Supporting Women: Lifestyle Influencers and Branded Femininity

Influencer is a term used to refer to a digital content creator who has successfully monetized their social media brand. These individuals are self-branders who see social and economic returns in exchange for their supposedly authentic self-presentations (Abidin 2015; Duffy 2017; Hearn 2008). These self-presentations often rely on hegemonic logics in order to gain popular attention, reproducing existing discourses about gendered social life. This thesis problematizes the branded femininity of beauty and lifestyle influencer, Estée Lalonde. With over 1.1 million YouTube subscribers and 700,000 followers on Instagram, Lalonde uses the postfeminist credibility she established through performing hegemonic femininity to position herself as an authority on the subject of everyday life (Abidin 2015). Through feminist textual discursive analysis, I argue that Lalonde uses the popular social media sites Instagram and YouTube, as well as her podcast and a non-fiction book, to perform hegemonic white femininity emblematic of a post-feminist media culture (Gill 2016). Further, this project explores how Lalonde engages with neoliberal feminism to solidify her self-brand centred around female empowerment, contributing to the ongoing scholarly discussion of feminist visibility in our current media moment (Keller and Ryan 2018).

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication and Media Studies

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Arts

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Paulsen Mulvey, Alora Elizabeth

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Keller, Jessalynn

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Shepherd, Tamara
• Rudd, Annie

• postfeminism
• feminist media studies
• feminist cultural studies
• social media influencers
• content creators
• lifestyle influencers

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/36542

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/110373