Making up Art, Videos and Fame: The Creation of Social Order in the Informal Realm of YouTube Beauty Gurus

MSC IN DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY DISSERTATION MAKING UP ART, VIDEOS AND FAME The Creation of Social Order in the Informal Realm of YouTube Beauty Gurus JULIANO SPYER Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Digital Anthropology (UCL) of the University of London in 2011. WORD COUNT: 18,000 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LONDON DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 1

Abstract This research focused in an informal group called “YouTube beauty gurus”. They invest time and resources attracting attention to (and thus gaining publicity from) videos they produce mainly about how to perform makeup routines. I used the ethnographic material the research generated to analyse the production of social order in a virtual space where everyone has the same infrastructure to act. I drew from Munn’s (1986) theory of value to analyse a digital artefact called “Tag” used for bridging together smaller networks of users through the spatiotemporal expansion of those who trade it. Gell’s (1998) theory of art provided the larger framing to examine video makeup tutorials, a sophisticated construct that entraps its audience by creating the impression of affinity of the guru with her viewers. The final chapter applied Munn’s phenomenological approach to map debates around performance, professionalization, friendship and beauty, which are central to this group’s. In all cases, the research confirmed that conceptualizing action as the origin of value creation represented a rich alternative to examine how this group engineers its social organization. Also, this work discusses methodological possibilities to conduct ethnographic research on YouTube. Key words: YouTube, makeup, fame, theory of value, agency 2

List of Contents Title page ....................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 2 List of contents .............................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 6 Structure of the Dissertation .................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 1: Introducing YouTube and Beauty Gurus ...................................................... 11 YouTube’s Beauty Gurus ....................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 2: History of the Project, Method and Ethics ................................................... 22 Preparation for the Research ................................................................................................ 23 Methods for Gathering Data ................................................................................................. 25 Definition of Informants ....................................................................................................... 28 Ethical Choices ...................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 3: Value Production and Spatiotemporal Expansion through Tag videos ......... 30 General Aspects of Comparison between Kula and YouTube ................................................ 30 Tag Videos as Virtual Objects of Exchange ............................................................................ 32 Value Production and Intersubjective Spatiotemporal Expansion ......................................... 34 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 35 Chapter 4: YouTube Makeup Tutorials as Traps ............................................................ 37 Agency, Trap and ‘Distributed’ Mind .................................................................................... 38 The Artificiality of Makeup Tutorials ..................................................................................... 38 ‘Context Collapse’ and the Trap of Context Recreation ......................................................... 40 ‘Privately Public’ and the Trap of Controlling the Release of Information ............................. 42 ‘Videos of Affinity’ and the Simulation of Closeness ............................................................. 43 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 45 Chapter 5: Fake or Real: the Production of Value among Gurus .................................... 46 The Dialectical Creation of Self-‐Other ................................................................................... 46 Authenticity vs. Performance ............................................................................................... 48 Amateur vs. Professional ...................................................................................................... 49 Friends vs. Fans .................................................................................................................... 50 Interior Beauty vs. Exterior Beauty ....................................................................................... 53 Haters and the Subversion of Positive Value ......................................................................... 55 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 56 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 58 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 63 3

Acknoledgements I must thank first the academic team of our programme: Danny Miller, Lane De Nicola and Stefana Broadbent, for the intellectual insights provided through the year as much as for the availability to help and to give meaningful academic guidance. I especially thank Danny, who supervised the development of this dissertation, for offering rich feedback to improve the work. Christopher Tilley and Ludovic Coupaye from the Material Culture programme also offered valuable attention and guidance. I am grateful to the office staff of our department, more directly to Diana Goforth and James Emmanuel, for the professionalism and interest they demonstrated throughout the year. I must also acknowledge a small but helpful grant from UCL, which allowed me to buy two books and pay for a basic makeup course. My colleagues at the postgraduate level at the Anthropology Department were a constant source of support and intellectual motivation. I would like to mention the names of Andrew Merril, Cosimo Lupo, Hannah Rose Van Wely, Hussah Al Tamimi, Jennifer Robinson, Jewel Thomas, João Matta, Laurence Byrne, Lida Papamathaiaki, Luiz Vieira, Matilda Marshall, Mika Pasanen, Nick Gadsby, Peter Westman and Susanna Inzoli. I am also in debt with researchers Jane Cameron from the London College of Fashion and Sarah Winkler Reid from Brunel University for the opportunity of discussing and receiving feedback about the research. During the initial stage of my fieldwork, I interviewed six women about their experiences with cosmetics. This material was not directly used on this dissertation, but it was nonetheless a very helpful introduction to the subject. They are Alex Guado, Chloe Cook, Dafne Louzioti, Helen Saunders, Kathleen Sattore and Phoebe Frangoul. (Thanks also to Jude Saunders for putting me in contact with Helen). I was also fortunate to have 4

received a practical training in basic makeup from Astra Wren, an excellent teacher and makeup artist from the Rouge London Makeup School. I own the YouTube “gurus” that guided me through their world for a significant portion of the enthusiasm that fuelled this project. This dissertation is dedicated to José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. His loves of knowledge and of writing and his belief in the importance of addressing public themes are a source of inspiration. And also to my wife Thais, who teaches me about the important things of life and said I should study anthropology. 5

Introduction The process of producing this dissertation began with a period immersion in the daily lives of a group of people that gather spontaneously on YouTube to discuss makeup. They call themselves “gurus” and their routines centre on attracting attention to (and thus gaining publicity from) videos they produce using portable cameras and normal computers. For this reason, part of the contribution this work intends to offer relates to the use of experimental methodological approaches to conduct ethnographic research on YouTube. Since teenagers compose a significant portion of the group, the choices I made also respond to the ethical challenge of researching subjects who are underage. These gurus invest substantial quantities of time and resources to crafting videos with the objective of gaining recognition. Some have risen from their channels to achieve the status of celebrities in different media outlets, arrived at distinguished career opportunities or launched lines of cosmetic products with their names. Many are not quite as notorious but have built an audience with tens of thousands subscribers who regularly watch their videos. At the same time, it was clear from the early stages of my fieldwork that acquiring visibility inside this group did not result from the simple knowledge one had about makeup; fame resulted from an intense process of engaging in conversations and building relationships. I chose Munn’s (1986) theory of value as the broad conceptual framework to analyze the ethnography of these “beauty gurus”. Originally developed from a research conducted on the distant island of Gawa in Papua New Guinea, it offers a model to study an informal realm1 similar to the one I found on YouTube, where users have the same 1 Winkler Reid (2010: 13) conceptualizes the notion of “informal realm” in the contexts of schools, where it represents “a network of pupil action creating and sustaining intersubjective relations, and producing value outside that recognized by formal schooling [but also] shaped by it.” Similarly to what I 6

power and limitations to upload videos and interact with others. Although companies are gradually becoming aware of this “tribe”, material reward does not represent the main incentive for its existence. In this setting, users build relationships through actions such as watching, evaluating, commenting, subscribing and uploading videos. Social order results from the evaluation of these actions and provides individuals and groups with different levels of status (Winkler Reid, 2010: 10-‐11). I also draw from Gell’s (1998) anthropological theory of art to examine the “technology of enchantment” used to produce these videos. (One could call it “the art of self-‐representing the act of self-‐decoration”.) I chose Gell’s more general framework and not those offered by anthropological studies of self-‐decoration (see, for example, Strathern, 1979; O’Hanlon, 1989; Gell, 1993; and Ewart and O’Hanlon, 2007) because his work was conceived as a corpus of theory disembodied from indigenous ethnography to be applied to different manifestations of art. By understanding the art object as an actor that mediates social relations, it is possible to consider that these objects “mediate a technology to achieve certain ends, notably to enmesh patients in relation and intentionalities sought or prescribed by agents” (Thomas, 2001: 5). (As makeup enthusiasts, many beauty gurus see the use of cosmetics as an unrecognized form of art that, as such, has agency and creates different opportunities for empowerment. Michelle Phan’s video entitled Catch My Heart (2011) could be a starting point for a discussion about makeup and agency just by considering that it is a video about makeup, directed and enacted by the same person, exploring new grounds regarding the narrative of makeup tutorials and has attracted over 1.4 million views in observed among beauty gurus, “the most successful pupils in the informal realm are those who are best able to negotiate their investiment in order to create the most value . . . through their acts and practices.” 7

less than two weeks. Phan’s welcome message for her YouTube channel says: “I was born an artist, a self-‐taught painter for 10 years and went through an additional 3 years at Ringling College of Art and Design. Makeup is another medium to me.” One of my informants, a guru of 17 years old and one thousand subscribers, echoes this idea in her channel: “. . . when I was introduced to makeup I looked at it as an art and it helped me gain confidence in myself.”) As a telescope uses different formats of lenses and mirrors to process luminous information, I sought conceptual tools that could attach to the more robust framing of Munn and Gell and allow the examination of social relations mediated by digital networks. I initially drew from Miller’s (2001) application of the notion of “art as a trap” to examine websites in Trinidad, demonstrating the possibilities of applying this framing to virtual artifacts. I also looked for analytic tools developed for previous research conducted on YouTube. Those less familiar with YouTube are usually indifferent to the ways people appropriate it as a device for decentralized group communication. Conversations evolve from a distinct set of conditions. For instance: exchanges are not synchronous and may be directed to an unpredictable range of spectators. If the experience of virtuality throws humanity “off-‐balance”, as Boellstorff (2008) suggests, it also changes the way people perceive the world. In this context, notions such as “privacy” seem insufficient to describe a type of shared content that displays intimacy but limits information about identity. I draw on studies conducted on YouTube by Lange (2007 and 2009) and Wesch (2008) to bridge the wider analytic framing with the specificity of the topic. In order to address categories of socially-‐interconnected users like YouTube gurus, one is tempted to use the term “community”, which is largely adopted for that purpose 8

by journalists and also by academics. I have also applied it, for convenience and lack of better alternatives, as a synonym for “large and informal social group”. I do so being aware of Postill’s (2008) discussion of this topic, which considers the term problematic due to its vagueness and emotionally charged character. As he summarized, “community merits attention as a polymorphous folk notion widely used both online and offline, but as an analytical concept with an identifiable empirical referent it is of little use.” I should also clarify that I use “she” and “her” in all cases except when the person referred is masculine. Structure of the dissertation This first chapter introduces the general ground where the research takes place. I explain the service YouTube offers to Internet users, give a general idea of how it works and present “makeup gurus”, which are the subject of this dissertation. The following chapter, which focus on research methodology, exposes different aspects that I found relevant about the process of engaging ethnographically with YouTube and with this particular group of users. It gives the reader the roadmap I followed which includes indications of dead-‐ends, but also of promising paths that other researchers might want to experiment with. It is there I describe a technique also used by Tarlo (2010) to indirectly participate in conversations through various channels of interaction used by the subjects of the research. In chapter 3 I apply Munn’s (1986) model for explaining value creation through acts of exchange to conceptualize the emergence of a particular category of videos that circulate mostly inside the beauty community of YouTube, called “Tags”. Chapter 4 draws from Gell’s (1998) theory of art to discuss the video tutorials created by gurus as virtual 9

artifacts forged through techniques to captivate the minds of viewers, particularly by making them appear to be produced spontaneously as the result of an amateur and personal labour of love. I develop this argument using the notions of “context collapse” (Wesch, 2008), “privately public” (Lange, 2007) and “video of affinity” (Lange, 2009). The last chapter draws mostly from Munn’s (1986) phenomenological approach to attempt to map key aspects that derive from the polarity between the notions of “fake” and “real”. This chapter also focuses more on ethnographic material, as I reflect of the central polarity of debates around the topics of performance, professionalization, friendship and physical beauty. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of digital anthropology as it explores the possibilities of applying Munn’s theory of value to study the creation of social organization and hierarchy in decentralized environments on the Internet. It also proposes an alternative theoretical path to the study of self-‐decoration through digital technology, as most of the production on the topic remains focused on tribal or formally tribal groups. My work is also intended to bring a contribution to the anthropology of YouTube as it deploys an analytic toolkit of combined notions to examine the agency of a particular type of video and how it mediates relations to produce particular effects. 10

Introducing YouTube and Beauty Gurus In this section of the dissertation, I will briefly introduce the website YouTube, explain the service it offers to Internet users and give a general idea of how it works. By presenting the various ways users participate in YouTube, I will arrive at the informal community of “gurus” and, particularly, the subcategory of “makeup gurus”, with whom I conducted fieldwork. In the following sub-‐section, I will address the types of contents they produce, the various motivations for participating in the community, and how these gurus measure success. This introduction is necessary to the understanding of the ethnography presented and discussed in the dissertation. YouTube is a social networking site2 based on the distribution of audio-‐visual content published by its participants. It is available in 34 languages and it is the third most visited site on the Internet after Google and Facebook3. Participation is free but users must register to be able to upload content and perform other actions like rating or commenting on videos; unregistered users may only watch the videos. There are various ways of accessing a given content. Users can: search the website’s database; select one of the options suggested by the content editors; or receive (from an acquaintance) a direct link to open a video. Once content is made available, any Internet user can watch it at any time. 2 YouTube is normally described as a “video-‐sharing site”, which stresses the audio-‐visual sharing aspect that makes it different from other social networking sites and also represents the element that makes the site valuable to the majority of users who only access it to watch – and not to upload – content. As noted by Lange (2007), this definition eludes the social motivation behind the website’s success. The service it provides matches the description of social networking site offered by boyd and Ellison (2008): “We define social network sites as web-‐based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-‐public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” 3 Data collected by Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/) in September of 2011. 11

Founded in February 2005, YouTube radically simplified the process of sharing audio-‐visual documents (Wesch, 2008). The problem users faced before the arrival of this kind of web publishing was that video files were typically very large, and the ability to share videos was limited to those who had access to broadband connections. Due to its success, Google bought the company in 2006. In 2008, users were uploading 200,000 new videos to YouTube per day4 (Wesch, 2008). The same study showed that 88% of this content was new or original and was made for audiences of 100 or less. Most of these “amateur” uploads consisted either of users displaying a certain expertise (i.e. playing the piano), or personal recordings of everyday life. Out of the total daily amount, 10,000 videos were directed to the YouTube community itself, adding to on-‐going debates of users on topics of common interest (Wesch, 2008). Users interested in publishing content on YouTube must first create their own channels, but there is no limit to the number of channels a user can have. Participants are not obliged to use their real names; only a valid email address is required, as is the norm among similar websites like Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter. The channel they create will then be the repository of the user’s uploaded content and it is through this channel that the subscription system works. If a registered user likes a given channel, she can subscribe to it and be notified when new content is published. Not all users are interested in measuring the attention their videos generate, but those who are do so by comparing numbers of views a video has, and subscribers a channel has. The most successful accumulate a greater number of views, a measure of the attention they gathered up the present and/or a greater number of subscribers, which represent the channel’s potential, given that it shows how many people want to watch the channel’s 4 At that rate, in a period of six months the website gathered more content than all the material broadcasted by the three major TV networks of the United States combined (Wesch, 2008). 12

future videos. This success might be converted in to money or material benefits, either by becoming a YouTube partner and receiving part of the channel’s advertising revenue, or by making deals with other companies to promote their products or services. The different motivations users have for sharing their content on YouTube will be discussed at a different part of this dissertation. For the moment, it is enough to mention that there are many levels of involvement with the website and its community as well many different types of content published. This varies according to variables such as experience in using virtual social environments and access to and knowledge of video-‐processing software and equipment. YouTube organises categories of information based on types of content and types of accounts. The category of content – similar to that of types of magazines – is defined at the moment the video is published. Before uploading the document, the author has the option to choose from the following possibilities in order to best describe their content: Autos & Vehicles; Comedy; Education; Entertainment; Film & Animation; Gaming; Howto & Style; Music; News & Politics; Nonprofits & Activism; People & Blogs; Pets & Animals; Science & Technology; Sports; and Travel & Events. The easiest way one arrives at these categorist is by accessing the homepage of YouTube and clicking on the option “browse”, located at the top of the page, to the right of the search button. Type of account is a category chosen at the time the user creates or edits the information on her channel. The options provided follow a different rationale to that of traditional media outlets and represent major topics of interest mapped by the website’s team. Those topics are: Comedians (humour content); Directors (fictional content); Gurus (instructional content); Musicians (musical content); Non-‐Profit (social responsibility-‐like 13

content); Partners (institutional content); Reporters (editorial content); and Sponsors (advertising content). These categories are not easily accessible, but allow registered users to access channel rankings. The list of account types can be found at this address: http://www.youtube.com/channels, on the left hand-‐side menu which integrates content types and account types. By choosing an account type, the website will offer two options of rankings: by number of views or by number of subscriptions. These alternatives can be changed according to parameters of location and time span – i.e. a certain guru might be the 7th most subscribed this month in Brazil or a certain comedian maybe the 31st most viewed this week worldwide. A person that chooses to describe herself as “gurus” tells us that specific the content of her channel will primarily display videos with instructions on how to perform certain tasks. There are many subcategories that exist within the broader category of gurus. For example, there are channels dedicated to teaching fitness routines, showcasing the effects of different types of weapons, showing the positions of the Kama Sutra, giving lessons on how to programme in various computer languages, discussing topics related to academic centres of interest (linguistics, astronomy, etc.), giving lessons to students of various levels and basically anything that can be imagined to mobilise the attention of groups of people. YouTube’s Beauty Gurus The group studied for this dissertation identify themselves as “beauty gurus” or “makeup gurus” for the obvious reason that the types of instructions they create surround the themes of cosmetics, beauty and fashion in general. The usage statistics of 14

YouTube shows the importance they have in attracting and mobilising attention. According to YouTube’s ranking of gurus in May 2011, half of the top 24 channels produced beauty related content and none of the other gurus (non-‐beauty gurus) belong to a single category. Michelle Phan, a 24 year-‐old Vietnamese-‐American, is the most popular beauty guru active today (Von Pfetten, 2010). She has nearly 1.5 million users subscribing to her content and in 2010 became the most subscribed woman on YouTube. In order to evaluate the relevance of these numbers, it might be useful to mention that the BBC’s YouTube channel has close to 268,000 subscribers. Newcastle’s Lauren Luke, the most famous beauty guru from the United Kingdom, has 465,000 subscribers. Based on my broader observation of English speaking participants, most gurus are either teenagers or in their 20s, don’t have regular jobs and record their videos after arriving home from school or university. (These characteristics seem to differ from country to country. In the few cases of Brazilian beauty gurus I observed, a number of them related their activities on YouTube to earning money by selling the products they use to create “looks”.) There are also some gurus who are makeup artists that adopted the “amateurish” aesthetic of beauty gurus as a strategy to gain popularity and consequently open up new career opportunities. These gurus tend to make videos only about makeup, whereas the others mingle instructions and personal accounts of their lives and view cosmetics as means for women to gain self-‐esteem by improving their appearances. I call them an “informal group” because it is a group without controlled boundaries. Nobody owns it (apart from YouTube) or limits who gets in or out. All one needs to do to become a guru is to sign up for a YouTube account and post videos related to the subject. In this sense, being a beauty guru has more to do with being seen as such, 15

being identified as one by other members of the “sorority”5, and one’s acceptance implies the adoption of a certain aesthetic for producing videos. As one browses through the production of different gurus, it is noticeable how the videos are aesthetically homogeneous, independent of linguistic or geographical differences. Makeup gurus primarily produce videos using a format of video-‐narrative called “tutorial”. An “online tutorial” or an “internet video-‐tutorial” is a step-‐by-‐step instruction on different topics. As I observed during the fieldwork for this project, beauty gurus worldwide share a set of body communication techniques to create makeup tutorials. Below I present images that display some of the most recurrent types of Figure 1 I n ever saw a video from a guru that was not recorded in their rooms or at another personal environment (i.e. the body-‐action6. bathroom or the dresser room). Figure 2 The camera and the monitor takes the place of the mirror. The guru moves her face closer or further from the camera according to the instruction she is giving. 5 Although there are male gurus – mostly gay men and/or professional makeup artists – the overwhelming majority of gurus devoted to beauty related topics are female. 6 All the images of gurus portrayed here are of adults. The only image that shows a full frontal face is the first and it is from a celebrity guru with over 100 thousand followers. I do not inform their usernames for safety reasons that will be discussed opportunely. 16

Figure 3 When a new product is used, before applying it, the guru brings it near the camera to show the label with the products specifications. Figure 4 When displaying colour is important, they show the product -‐ i.e. a lipstick -‐ against the palm of their h ands to produce a clearer visualization. Figure 5 A common variation of this gesture is to apply the product to the back of the hand to show its effect on skin. 17

Together with acquiring the common visual language presented above, a beauty guru is recognized also for being active in creating specific kinds of content. The tutorial is the most frequent and it includes instructions about makeup, hair and nails. Product reviews are also popular and there is a subcategory of reviews called “haul” where the guru showcases various items she has recently purchased. “Outfit of the day” or OOTD is a brief description of the composition of clothes and accessories the guru is wearing at the moment of making the video. “Vlogs” are a type of content similar to a diary entry; popular subcategories of vlogging are “A day in the life” and “Follow me around”. In all the cases I observed, the makeup guru was responsible for performing all the tasks related to the production of the video, including defining the particular theme of each video. These are either themes of their own repertoire – i.e. a certain makeup routine to go to school – or represent more complex objectives like reproducing a certain “look” used by a celebrity or a character in a TV show or film – i.e. the “look” of Kate Middleton for the Royal wedding. To record the tutorial, they select the necessary makeup equipment and products, turn on the recording software and perform the sequence of tasks in order to arrive at the proposed objective. After this stage, they normally use editing programmes to cut unnecessary parts and add the desired visual or audio effects– like textual instructions on the top of the image. Beginners find it easier to film the makeup process and later add the audio with the instructions, but it is a sign of seniority or technical superiority to be able to perform the makeup and simultaneously explain each act. The routine of YouTube gurus involves both making videos and participating in the conversations proposed by others inside their community. This conversation happens 18

through YouTube by means of videos and text comments, but also exceeds this domain to include several other online destinations like Twitter and Facebook. Part of these conversations represent attempts to build relationships which are helpful to promote one’s channel and give it visibility. The easiest way a user can increase the number of subscribers is by proposing an exchange: she subscribes to the channel of another guru and leaves a message asking the other for to do the same. This practice is especially common among those who are just beginning to build an audience, but it is criticised by more experienced users. There are other practices that equally offer the possibility of developing an audience, and are more widely accepted, namely the creation of, or participation in, “collabs”, or the engagement in a practice called “tags”. I will discuss these in greater detail in the following sections of this dissertation, but will introduce them briefly here. “Collab” is the casual name given to “collaborative channels”, which are channels produced collectively and that ultimately serve the purpose of promoting the work of their participants. A collab is usually started by a higher ranking guru because she needs to have a sufficient reputation in order to promote this new channel and attract others to participate in it. There is a selection process conducted to choose the other participants and this happens through auditioning. Those interested submit video-‐responses to the original video posted announcing the new collab. Usually a collab has seven participants and each becomes responsible for posting a new video on a certain day of the week. Every week one of the participants comes up with a theme that all the others will use to produce their videos; this gives consistency to the content of the channel. Higher ranking gurus display their influence by creating collabs while lower ranking users gain visibility 19

and experience by having to produce more videos and also by promoting their individual channels to the audience of the collab. If collabs produce visibility through structured social organization, “tags” generate visibility through the engagement in a collective but informal activity. The term tag refers to two ideas: a theme for a video and the naming (“tagging”) of other users. The themes are usually about one’s personality and only indirectly about makeup7; for instance, in the theme “My perfect imperfections” the users are challenged to make a video talking about three things that they like and three that they dislike about themselves8. At the end of the video, they may “tag” other gurus from their social circle, which means that they are publically inviting them to produce a video with the same theme. The advantage of engaging in this kind of activity is that by producing videos using the same or similar titles, gurus expand the possibilities of these videos being watched by a wider audience since YouTube binds similar content together. A person that watches a video called “My perfect imperfections” will automatically see other videos about that same theme, displayed for them to select. Many gurus expect to gain recognition and one of the ways this happens is by being approached by cosmetic companies. It is a sign of maturity for a guru to be chosen to review products and many include contact information for commercial inquires on their channel. The highest ranking gurus with hundreds of thousands of subscribers sign deals with makeup companies and can become “online ambassadors” of a certain brand or eventually launch their own makeup products. This contact with the commercial world 7 I haven’t verified if tags (and also collabs) exist in other communities on YouTube. These activities may result from the high number of beauty gurus and from the fact makeup is a collective activity among groups of women interested in that practice. 8 Since beauty gurus normally talk about beauty related issues, videos produced following this theme refer to part of their bodies that they find more or less attractive, which then links to the use of cosmetics or other means as an attempt to improve their looks. 20

is sometimes accompanied by tension as the guru becomes vulnerable to criticism by competitors for giving up editorial independence and producing disguised advertising. 21

Methodology My original project was to study informal learning online. I wanted to observe and attempt to understand the process in which Internet users gain certain skills through the development of social relations in informal settings. I chose to conduct this research on YouTube beauty gurus mainly because they represent an informal group that gathers spontaneously through the Web and share the purpose of exchanging knowledge and experiences related to fashion, beauty and particularly about cosmetics and makeup with each other. At the early stage of the project, while I was still considering how to approach this community and conduct the research, I received two recommendations from my supervisor, one of which I could not adopt. Firstly, I was asked to research not gurus but the audience of gurus. Instead of looking at the guru’s individual histories to explain the popularity they have, I should study those who choose to watch videos of gurus and see the motivations behind that interest. I attempted to follow this path, but had to reconsider because after a month of looking for people who matched this profile, I was only able to locate and interview one person. I faced the following difficulties: 1) considering as an “audience” those who do not participate in the conversation, I could not look for them through YouTube since their presence watching the videos does not leave traces. I tried to find these people through recommendations of friends but this strategy is not efficient for a research project that has to start and end in four months. 2) What is the definition of “audience” in the context of the Internet? Prior to the Internet, the audience were those who mostly consumed media content: readers of newspapers and magazines, for instance. After the Internet, being the audience became a choice for those who were online. From this perspective, 22

when does a person move from the position of being in an audience to that of active participant in the public sphere? Are users that don’t publish videos but comment on them an audience? YouTube users with less visibility might influence more people while others with a greater number of views might be communicating only within a circle of friends. I resolved this problem by choosing to observe a group of gurus that had average audiences, as I will explain later at this section. In the end, it was important to accept that being a guru is a social experience and that it is part of being a guru to be both audience and producer. The suggestion I could incorporate was to go in to the field without a specific set of questions; instead, I should immerse myself in the world of these gurus to find out, among other things: what it is that makes somebody want to become part of this group? What do they talk about besides makeup? Do they have specific forms of organization? How does one moves inside this group? I should allow my curiosity to look for interesting things happening and, at the end of this process, produce a theory explaining what is like to be a guru. That is how I conducted this work. Preparation for the research Prior to conducting participant observation, first with gurus in general and later with the specific network of actors that resulted in the ethnography used for this dissertation, I learned about cosmetics and its use in Britain by conducting six interviews with women who are active users or even enthusiasts of makeup. The questions I asked in these interviews were: 1) at what moment in life they first acquired an interest in cosmetics? How did it start and with whose support? And 2) what do you normally keep in your box of cosmetic accessories and why? I considered these questions 23

straightforward enough to produce direct answers and also general enough to allow the interviewees to formulate the answers without constrains or moral judgments. Alongside the interviews, I participated in a daylong intensive makeup course for amateurs and had the opportunity to get to know the different properties of products and apply the products on my own face. Being the only man among eight other participants including the teacher and her assistant, I had the chance to experience the awkwardness that results from crossing this clearly gender-‐related border and also feel the difficulties related to the execution of different routines. I did not know that makeup required such complex procedures, involved so many utensils and followed so many patterns to add different layers of products. I was also confronted with the understanding that makeup is as much about showing as it is about concealing. This is something I will explore later on. Figure 6 Figure 6 Photograph taken at the end of the makeup course at the Rouge London Makeup School, 2011. 24

Methods for gathering data I spent over a month “living” among beauty gurus before choosing my informants and then I dedicated myself to observing these informants full time during two weeks. All the data gathered for this research was collected online and through this process of immersion in, and observation of, their past and present activities. Observation here means watching their videos and following their online public communication through comment exchange and also through the dialogues developed through the website Formspring, a service through which many gurus receive and respond to questions posted either openly or anonymously. Formspring’s value derives from the fact other popular social websites like YouTube and Facebook do not allow this feature of anonymously publishing questions. Since gurus are interested in being known and expanding they range of relationships, Formspring gives the possibility of receiving from friends and fans the kind of personal questions they would not dare to ask openly. Formspring is widely adopted, especially among younger beauty gurus; all but one of the six actors selected had an account with this service. Aside from one public exchange of online comments with one of the adult informants, I did not attempt to communicate with the actors. I decided not to talk directly to them because four out of six of my informants were less than 18 years of age and I didn’t want to conduct interviews with some of them and not others. This solution proved useful for two reasons: it offered an opportunity of conducting research in a safe manner with actors that are minors, and it also created an environment that allowed actors to speak and share opinions that seemed more welcoming than, for instance, that of an academic interview. Tarlo (2010: 146) arrived at the same conclusions while conducting research on Muslims and fashion in Britain. She wrote: “What makes Internet 25

discussion forums and threads so interesting from the ethnographic point of view is that they represent unmediated conversations between people who voice their opinions far more freely than they would if interviewed by a researcher.” The richness of the data that emerges from this online research practice – that presupposes an active form of being present – might justify the act of naming it “observant participation”, to indicate it has evolved from the anthropological tradition of research. A possible criticism this approach may generate results from the fact the researcher does not meet the subject in “real life”, which raises questions of authenticity. How do we know if the subject is who she says she is? This is a complex issue that invites further debate and should be considered in light of the particularity of each case. For instance, on the YouTube beauty guru community, users follow an unwritten rule that says one should avoid mentioning places or other information that could lead to the physical localization of the informant9. They also prefer not to use surnames. In the same way this situation might make it easier for a person to lie about herself, it also makes it safer for her to discuss topics and share opinions that she might not feel comfortable doing under different conditions. Regarding this matter, I agree with Boellstorff (2008: 4, 60-‐86), who conducted a three-‐year research about Second Life entirely inside the virtual world. He argues that the users that choose to establish relations through these mediums agree to do so knowing that most likely they will never meet face to face the people they met online. The anthropologist should not question if these relationships exist but study them “in their own terms”. That is why he considers it crucial to develop research methods that keep up with the “realities of technical change”. 9 Lange (2007) discusses the practice of making videos that are promoted beyond one’s social circles but where the author conceals her identity. She labels these videos as “privately public”. 26

The YouTube project conducted as part of the Digital Ethnography program (Wesch, 2008) used a method that also occurs exclusively online but incorporates the social experience of inhabiting the world of the actors being researched. Each participant of the team of researchers created individual channels on YouTube, and the group produced a video which was posted on the website explaining the project and inviting the YouTube community to engage in conversations related to the different topics of the study. Choosing this path made the interaction with the community more transparent and honest, which motivated some users to participate and reflect on their experiences, not exactly as if they were being interviewed but as if they were having a conversation about the subject. The video that resulted did not belong to the researchers, but existed alongside other videos as part of each participant’s channels. In other words, the reflections remained in the community together with the videos the researchers made as part of the dynamics of embodying the activities of the natives and experiencing the world from that perspective. Even the result of the project was not a book or an academic paper, but a lecture using audio-‐visual documents collected during the research and published on YouTube. By making this choice, the team gave back to the original community the result of the research while offering those interested on learning about the study to do so by accessing the same channel of communication studied and having the opportunity to move further from there to explore the website. I attempted to do something similar creating a YouTube channel10 to introduce myself and the research to the beauty guru community, while establishing conversations with different actors. I abandoned this alternative because of the time constraints of the research and also because it would limit the contact to adult gurus. 10 http://www.youtube.com/youtubanthropologist 27

Definition of informants According to preliminary observation, the community of gurus dedicated to creating beauty related tutorials appears to be one of the larger, if not the largest, on YouTube. I did not have access to quantitative data, therefore I base this speculation on the fact no other guru community has as many representatives in the top of the rankings of subscriptions worldwide. Out of 24 gurus listed among the most popular, half produced beauty tutorials. This means I could have selected many different groups of subjects for this research. The first criterion used to select participants was to find those who had a strong drive to improve their skills in making tutorials. Aside from that, I looked for informants that were close to each other online (and online only) and experienced the beauty guru community from different perspectives. The list I arrived at results from these choices. All are English speakers: five are Americans (one currently living in Israel) and one is Scottish. The number of subscriptions each has starts at 60 and goes up to 10,000, and their ages varied from 13 to 26 years old. The higher-‐ranking gurus were YTGuru26 and YTGuru14, which had respectively close to 10,000 and 3,000 subscriptions, and had created their own collab channels. Two of the remaining girls auditioned and were accepted to these collabs: YTGuru20 had around 600 subscribers and was part of YTGuru26’s collab. YTGuru13a had close to 1000 subscribers and belonged to YTGuru14’s collab. The two remaining girls auditioned but were rejected for both collabs. Guru Subscribers Collab YTGuru26 10,000 Collab 1 (owner) YTGuru14 2,500 Collab 2 (owner) YTGuru17 1,000 -‐ YTGuru13a 1,000 Collab 2 (subord.) YTGuru20 600 Collab 1 (subord.) YTGuru13b 60 -‐ 28

Ethical choices Out of my six informants, two were 13, one was 14 and one was 17 years old. Their parents are aware that their daughters have channels on YouTube11 and although some parents did not appreciate the time spent on the site, all accepted the existence of these YouTube channels and also had the option of following the content published there12. All accounts on both YouTube and Formspring are public; anybody can access the videos and other exchanges I had access to without having to subscribe to either of the websites. For this reason, I considered the possibility of using their YouTube usernames to allow other researchers and readers in general to be able to access the same data and also follow the development of these gurus further. Following Snee (2008: 3), I decided not to expose them because “some interviewees felt that putting information online should not imply consent for the use of this material.” Their participation was involuntary on this research, they did not have the chance to opt out so I chose to conceal their usernames. Instead of the actual usernames, each will be addressed by the prefix “YTGuru” combined with a number that corresponds to their respective ages. In the only case of coinciding ages, I added the letters A or B to distinguish between the two. Finally, and also on the topic of privacy concerns, I altered the fragments of texts I use as quotes so that others cannot locate their original sources using search engines. 11 It is not uncommon that parents or other family members occasionally appear on these videos, particularly during the recording of vlog posts like “A day in the life”. The gurus, particular the younger ones, also discuss among themselves and with their audience whether their parents know about the channel, if they watch the videos and what opinions they have about it. 12 I don’t know whether the same happens with Formspring, which is a service mostly popular among younger internet users. 29

Value Production and Spatiotemporal Expansion Nancy Munn’s The Fame of Gawa has become an influential contribution to anthropology since its publication in 1986, but its “fame” did not spread much beyond English-‐speaking scholars13. Yet it is remarkable how the complexity of Munn’s construct for explaining the creation of value contrasts with how simple and tempting it is to analyse phenomena in radically different contexts through her model. For instance, two of its early reviewers compared books to Kula-‐like valuables exchanged through academic networks. To Kahn (1988), “In writing The Fame of Gawa, Munn might be said to have created a form of value that will circulate in the anthropological world and, ultimately, return to bring fame back to its author.” Less optimistic, Young (1989) writes that “Munn has taken a considerable risk in that her reader may simply refuse to learn how to read her – thereby fulfilling the role of the Gawan witch in constricting the book’s space-‐time.” In this chapter, I will suggest her model for explaining value creation through acts of exchange is useful in understanding the motivations for producing and exchanging a particular category of videos called Tags that circulate mostly inside the beauty community of YouTube. To do so, I will briefly recapitulate Munn’s interpretation of Kula ceremonial exchanges for the people of Gawa, discuss the social aspects involving the production and exchange of Tag videos and then examine Tags through key notions of Munn’s theory of value. General Aspects of Comparison between Kula and YouTube Gawa is one of the islands in the Massim archipelago, and its inhabitants engage in acts of ceremonial valuable exchanges called Kula. Many gawans devote a significant 13 The Fame of Gawa hasn’t been translated to languages such as French, German or Spanish and its page on online retailer Amazon still invites reader to “be the first to review this item.” 30

part of their adult lives travelling long distances in canoes to participate in Kula activities. The objective of these enterprises is to achieve personal renown as a trader. There are two main items that travel with islanders during those trips: arm shells and necklaces. In all the expeditions that have been studied, arm shells always travel clockwise while necklaces go the opposite way. Also, exchanges may only happen between items of different types: necklaces for arm shells and vice-‐versa. Each islander can only conduct exchanges with previously defined partners from a limited number of islands14. A man’s fame results from his capacity to convince partners to trade valuable shells with him. Becoming a respected trader abroad reflects on the influence that a man has in Gawa, making him a person of distinction in a traditionally egalitarian society. Makeup gurus also exist in an online environment without social distinctions15. Access to YouTube is free and registration to the service provides each person with the same conditions to participate. The hierarchical differences that emerge are usually the consequence of each guru’s qualities and dedication to learning about producing value through specific actions. It is a world that revolves around a similar dynamic of circulating valuables and accumulating fame. Similar to the Kula ring in the context of the Massim archipelago, not everyone in the community that produces makeup tutorials engages in the practice of exchanging Tags and even among those that do, some devote much more time to this activity than others. Like valuable shells, Tags have a symbolic value that exists in a collective setting and among those who are interested in the trade. Tags loose a significant portion of their meaning if one watches it by itself without being able to see the responses from the community or by watching it from outside of the beauty guru world. 14 For more information on rules for Kula, see: Campbell, 2002; Leach, 1983; Munn, 1986 and 2001; Sillitoe, 1998. 15 There are cases in which gurus can achieve fame artificially by offering product giveaways in exchange for subscriptions. This practice is questioned among gurus who argue that subscriptions should reflect the amount of time and effort each one puts in to developing the channel. 31

Tag Videos as Virtual Objects of Exchange In Munn’s ethnographic account of Gawa, the value of armbands and necklaces is symbolic and depends on the stories each of these objects accumulates through transactions. As a valuable item changes hands, it carries with it the names and becomes associated with the stories of its previous guardians, and so fame is transferred from object to person and vice-‐versa. Collecting a valuable object adds to the reputation of the trader and also makes the shell more desirable (Leach, 1983; Munn, 2001; Campbell, 2002). In the case of YouTube, the “ceremonial” item that circulates connecting people around the website is called “Tag16” or “video Tag”. I argue that Tags should be conceptualized as “ceremonial” to mark a difference between these types of videos and the more common type of audio-‐visual instruction that might be said to hold a commodity-‐like function or value of transmitting a particular knowledge. As discussed in the introduction, Tag is the name given to themes that are created and openly shared among participants of the YouTube beauty community with the purpose of generating responses. A Tag may have a questionnaire associated with it, as is the case of the “Back in the Day Tag” shown below, or be as simple as the “Room Tour”, which I will discuss shortly. Tags offer opportunities for gurus to get to know each other beyond their circle of offline relationships. The objective of Tags is to invite the user to engage in a conversation by displaying opinions and preferences. The user creates a Tag by defining one or a few things belonging to a broader theme that she considers pertinent. Below is an example of a Tag whose theme provides an opportunity for gurus 16 I will refer to it using capitalized “T” to signal a distinction between its specific meaning in the context of beauty gurus and the common use of “tag” as a label applied to index content uploaded to the Internet. 32

to share personal accounts and reflect on generational differences. In this case, the questions the guru has to answer to participate are: -‐ What was your favourite gaming system? I.e. game boy, 8 ball, game boy advance -‐ What was your favourite TV Show? -‐ What was your favourite movie? -‐ What was your favourite food or drink or meal? I.e. chicken fingers, grape juice, pizza -‐ What was one of your most important objects? I.e. stuffed animal, pillow, blanket -‐ What was your career aspiration? I.e. superstar, astronaut -‐ What was your favourite computer game or website? -‐ What was your favourite song, artist, or band? -‐ Show a picture that could describe you as a child. -‐ What was your favourite book? -‐ What was your favourite store? The “Room Tour” is arguably the most successful Tag that exists among beauty gurus. It has achieved a level of recognition inside the community that puts it in a distinct position, not being referred as a Tag but simply by its name. It is interesting to draw a parallel between this Tag and the most successful Kula valuables that, after circulating among many famous traders, received a name and acquired the status of an individual piece (Sillitoe, 1998). Room Tours are a common item on most gurus’ channel’s video list. It consists of precisely what the title suggests: an introduction to the person’s room including explanations about the meaning of certain objects of decoration and about how different kinds of products like makeup items or DVDs are organized and stored. This kind of video resembles, and may have a similar function to that of showing the interior of the house to guests visiting for the first time. As Tags are an informal mechanism to promote relationships, part of the process of participating is to record the video answering the questions, and part is “tagging” users from one’s circle of contacts. This second meaning of “tagging” happens as gurus name other users during their videos and by doing so, formally invites them to answer that 33

same “Tag”. Anyone can propose a Tag and invite others to participate. Gurus with more subscribers have an advantage in the creation of successful Tags as their ideas will reach more people. Equally, a Tag can spread from small circles of little known gurus and occasionally arrive at a successful “trader” who might promote it further. The important aspect of this exchange is that creating or recommending a Tag to one’s audience represents an opportunity to be credited by those who follow the lead. Value Production and Intersubjective Spatiotemporal Expansion In Munn’s model, the element that entails the process of value creation is action. Graeber writes (2002) that this innovative approach “breaks the gift/commodity dichotomy open”. His argument develops from the understanding that anthropology was caught in a circular debate about the origins of value between Formalists and Substantialists (and later by Structuralists), never arriving at a satisfactory result. Munn proposes an original solution by identifying action as a common denominator to justify the deployment of human energy, intelligence, time and concern (Graeber, 2002: 45). A crucial notion presented by Munn is that of “intersubjective spacetime”, which she defines as “a space of self-‐other relationship formed in and through acts and practices” (1986: 9). This translates roughly to fame or renown, as these represent the consequence of a relationship between self and other, activated through hospitality and cultivated by constant practice of exchange. Spacetime is taken in this context as a parameter of value. The value of an act is defined through its capacity to expand or contract a person’s renown further in space and/or time, which means that it has either positive or negative value transformation (1986: 9). It is useful to note the particular equivalence of this aspect of the model of value creation applied to the context of YouTube and the 34

exchange of Tags. The representation of spacetime for gurus is the number of subscribers each channel accumulates. This means that the acts that expand the spacetime of a guru become effectively a link (or a relationship connection) between them. Two types of situations cause the attainment of fame in Gawa, one at the level of the individual and the other at the level of the society. The first cause of fame happens in the context of the ceremonial transfer of food for hospitality. If a man eats all his food instead of saving part to feed occasional guests, his chances of leaving the island decreases and as a consequence the opportunities the island will have to expand its renown also become compromised. In the context of Tag exchanges, a guru must establish herself as a trader, which translates to developing partnerships with other gurus by watching their videos and interacting with their content. Conclusion In this chapter I attempted to compare the exchange of ceremonial shells in the contexts of the Kula ring in the Massim archipelago and of a special type of video called Tags inside the beauty community of YouTube. I analysed general correspondences of how value is created and transformed as these objects are produced and shared among participants. I first introduced the basic aspects about the Kula ring and Tags videos, indicating how their circulation beings renown to traders. I suggested that Tag videos share a particular similarity with Kula valuables: both have ceremonial rather than practical use. While common videos about how to create certain looks have the practical function of transferring certain knowledge, Tag videos are meant to produce conversation through the exchange of biographical information and opinion about topics of interest inside the beauty community. In other words, Tags are instruments to 35

promote relationships that are materialized through subscriptions to channels. An interesting Tag theme is more likely to spread among beauty gurus and interesting answers to the questions of particular Tags also cause the name of the guru travel beyond her direct circle of contacts. In order to support this analysis, I drew on Munn (1986) and on Graeber’s (2001) discussion of Munn’s theory of value to present key notions such as action, intersubjective spacetime and value transformation. I suggested that Munn’s model can be successfully applied to explain the motivation YouTube beauty gurus have for spending time and resources creating videos that do not display their knowledge about makeup. By participating on activities of Tag production and exchange, gurus have the opportunity to differentiate themselves among the many other participants of the community. This differentiation occurs as the guru offers to the community a kind of valuable that goes beyond the craft and allows participants to discuss why they exist as a community, why they are interested in beauty products and are engaged in producing video tutorials. I also point out the particular correspondence between Munn’s Gawa and the YouTube beauty community regarding how action based on ritual exchange results in the formation of intersubjective relationships. If the Kula trader seeks fame by transacting valuable shells, this fame is translated to the number of people from his inter-‐island world that know his name and his stories. Likewise, participating in the ceremonial exchange of video Tags increases the possibility that the content of her channel will have more subscribers. 36

YouTube Makeup Tutorials as Traps In this chapter, I will draw from Gell’s anthropological theory of art to discuss makeup video tutorials as products of what he called “technology of enchantment” (1999), a process of barely comprehensible virtuosity that impresses the mind of the observer through complex and convoluted patterns (Thomas, 2001; Miller, 2001). Gell develops his theory from the notion of action as the original form of value creation (1998: 221-‐30). He posits that these especially crafted objects can carry the intention of their creators to become extensions of the artists’ bodies that travel in spacetime. Their agency appears in the power they have to attract and trap the minds of others. I will explore this framing to discuss makeup video tutorials on YouTube as virtual artefacts forged through key techniques that captivate the minds of particular viewers. In Coming of Age in Second Life (2008) Boellstorff argues that “our humanity is thrown off balance … through transformed possibilities for place-‐making, subjectivity, and community” that arrive from the effect of virtuality brought about by the Internet. I would like to further this idea by arguing that the Internet as a platform for decentralized group communication destabilizes how reality is understood, allowing for the creation of value through new kinds of artefacts. I will argue, following this path, that the mastering of skills to create different ‘looks’ through cosmetics is only part of the set of abilities that makes a successful beauty guru. I will draw from frameworks developed by Wesch (2008) and Lange (2007 and 2009) to discuss video tutorials as traps evolving from the rearrangement of notions such as social context, public space and amateur production. The understanding of these notions is equally important to achieving social distinction as a beauty guru, but, as with other traps, those are not exposed publicly and must be learned through practice. 37

Agency, Trap and ‘Distributed’ Mind The idea of art as a trap (Gell, 1996; Gell, 1998) has already been applied to the context of virtual environments. Miller (2001) conducted a study through the observation of three distinct types of websites in Trinidad and discusses the apparent paradox of websites created with limited resources by teenagers being more successful in attracting viewers than those of companies produced with the help of paid professionals. Using Gell’s model introduced in the previous paragraphs, Miller analyses who were the intended “preys ” targeted in each of these cases, concluding that as the different sites were directed toward specific recipients, being unattractive made sense as a particular strategy as much as being exuberant worked for another purpose. Miller (2001) complements the framing of this study following Gell by drawing on Strathern’s notion of the ‘distributed’ person (Gell, 1998: 222). The similar concept of a ‘distributed’ mind is useful to demonstrate the social unity of the different groups he analysed. He explains that their websites “are not mere idiosyncratic or individual extensions, since even after a very short time they take on genred and conventional forms as a collective oeuvre of artworks that enable us to recognize and respond to what is presented, and contain the individual or company into the techniques and strategies of the web.” (2001: 22) Similarly, I will argue that YouTube beauty gurus produce videos that are destined to act inside a definite communication setting and, thus, must not be analysed individually. The Artificiality of Makeup Tutorials Beauty gurus record their videos from their rooms. The equipment and the products are placed on the table near the camera. They normally wear casual clothes and 38

behind the guru, the audience often see part of the bed, dresses and also objects for decoration. At the start of these videos the gurus greet viewers, say their YouTube names and explain what that video will be about. The recording develops in a conversational mode and she thanks her subscribers for watching, both at the beginning and the end of the video. It is not uncommon to hear expressions like “I love you guys”, “this means the world to me” and “I will be here if you need me” during recordings or for them to exhibit or mention elements of their symbolic world17. The piece that gets uploaded normally lasts between five and ten minutes and brings a continuous flow of information, occasionally interrupted by the rough extraction of unwanted portions of the recording. Playing these videos may cause the partial impression that these are girls who love makeup and decided to share their passion with others by turning on their webcam and performing their favourite routines. One may also think that the popularity they acquire is only the unexpected but deserved result of offering something valuable to the world. In the following paragraphs I will argue instead that the videos of YouTube beauty gurus can also be understood as products of a makeup routine that intends to artificially engineer the appearance of something genuine and spontaneous. I will initially defend this argument using Wesch’s (2008) notion of “context collapse”, which was coined to explain the effect people normally have when recording their first video-‐blogs18 (or “vlogs”). 17 To English speaking teenage gurus from the United States this world usually includes things like iPods, apps downloaded from iTunes, Converse All Stars tennis shoes, teenage celebrities Justin Biener and Selena Gomez, episodes from the TV series Pretty Little Liars and playing The Sims3 online. 18 Video blogging, normally shortened to vlogging, is a form of blogging for which the medium is video (Garfield and Tames, 2006). 39

“Context Collapse” and the Trap of Context Recreation Making a vlog often consists in recording, processing and uploading audio-‐visual content in which the person speaks for a few minutes about one or more subjects, but it is not a simple craft to master. Wesch (2008) points to a particular difficulty for beginners, which he calls “audience dilemma”. Being alone and looking at the camera, the person attempts to anticipate the context she will be speaking too, but this context in uncertain and can be composed of the imaginary presence of any one of the half a billion Internet users that watch videos on YouTube every month19. This wide spectrum of audiences includes herself in the present and in the future, people from different social circles she inhabits including work or school colleagues, family members and friends. It also includes potential stalkers and an undefined range of people that may arrive at the video and choose to respond to it either by posting a comment or even remixing its content. It is this experience of trying to measure or identify a known context that has not yet been mapped and understood that produces what Wesch (2008) called “context collapse”. The result of this experience is a commonly frustrating process of self-‐consciousness and attempts of anticipating scenarios that leads to many unsuccessful recordings. Wesch (2008) explains that to overcome “context collapse”, the person creates a new mask to use for similar situations, which may include defining a way of speaking and body posture, and also defining the particular appearance of places where the recordings are made. This event is critical and I will use ethnographic material to illustrate how it happens. 19 "YouTube Attracts 490 Million Unique Visitors Per Month." PR Newswire. 12 Feb. 2011. 40

The transition from the position of audience to producer of content – during which the guru composes her virtual context – happens gradually. Many say that their participation on YouTube evolved over time and included experiences with more than one channel. YTGuru17 mentioned she “debuted” on YouTube at 12 or 13 years old trying to make comic videos imitating a popular user at the time. Later she created another channel to publish music videos20 and it was only after these previous steps that she became interested in makeup and created a new channel to upload that type of content. This next case reveals elements of gurus’ acts. YTGuru20 made a video paying tribute to her “favourite youtubers” through which it is possible to observe key aspects of performances she internalized and that are recurrent among beauty gurus: the spontaneous flow of speech (iJustine21), the use of humour and self-‐mocking as a preventive strategy against haters’ attacks, (communitychannel) and the release of personal information to satisfy fans (onisionspeaks). These cases expose a process of learning related to becoming a knowledgeable YouTube beauty guru. Lave and Wenger (1991) conceptualized a process of informally acquiring knowledge in a situated context. Their notion of legitimate peripheral participation, originally developed from the study of apprenticeship, describes learning as part of participating in a number of practices as part of a broader social setting. The actor starts her practice from the periphery of the group and evolves gradually to mastering activities she is exposed to. In the beauty community, though, gurus manipulate the 20 These clips represent a genre common among younger English speaking teens that consists of collectively producing a music clip for a popular song 21 I reveal the real usernames she lists because it will give the reader of this dissertation a notion of the elements YTGuru20 refers to. The users that I mention are adults and internet celebrities (with not less than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube alone) and by consequence publicly known personalities. The search for their names does not produce unequivocal connections with YTGuru20 so the display of these references, while being one of the few opportunities to offering an example of the topic discussed, does not represent a threat to the actor’s anonymity. 41

display of this evolution by making private or erasing the videos that do not correspond to their actual position of development. In other words, it is a common practice among gurus, during the course of their learning and growth inside the community, to eliminate from the public view the material that displays earlier and less sophisticated versions of themselves on video. “Privately Public” and the Trap of Controlling the Release of Information Videos produced by gurus do not mention information that may lead to their localization or identification, but that is an unspoken rule that one learns by experiencing and participating in the community. I will argue that this topic is avoided to maintain the impression of complicity that is present in the offline environment where women talk and exchange makeup tips. I will use the notion of “privately public” created by Lange (2007) to analyse virtual contexts like these created through YouTube videos that carry characteristics of both public and private space. I will elaborate on this analysis based on my observation of “Room Tours”, a very popular type of video Tag I described in detail earlier. Watching some Room Tours caused in me a feeling of awkwardness that, borrowing from Wesch (2008) may have resulted from projected “context collapse”. A Room Tour exposes (what we might have called before) one’s privacy by displaying the interior of a person’s bedroom to a potentially large number of anonymous viewers. Lange’s research (2007) suggests, though, that this kind of exposure is calculated as the producer chooses to attract attention by offering content of relevance (something others would be interested in watching) while withholding identity (i.e. surname and information that could lead to physical localization). She calls this virtual space “privately 42

public”22 as it is directed towards a larger audience than that of friends and family, while providing lower risks of social embarrassment, loss of credibility or exposure to stalkers23. While those are reasonable concerns, my interest lies in the performative act of exposing intimacy while intentionally hiding identity related data, because it is this practice that is collectively deployed by gurus. “Videos of affinity” and the Simulation of Closeness The notion of “video of affinity” (Lange, 2009) was created to help analyse types of hybrid content that did not fit the definition of amateur or professional productions. As Lange explains, “many so-‐called amateur video creators can use characteristics found in videos of affinity to gain support and viewership for work that they will happily commercialize.” This is the case of most – if not all – the gurus I followed during fieldwork. It is considered normal to include near the channel’s description an email contact “for business enquires”. After YTGuru13a reached one thousand subscribers, she received her first package of free products sent from a company in return for a review, and this occasion was performatively celebrated on the review she uploaded. I suspect that this type of contact with the professional world has a symbolic meaning and can be displayed as a sign of prestige. Following these previous considerations, I will use Lange’s notion of “video of affinity” to analyse portions of ethnographic material and, and I will 22 Together with this notion, she also offers that of “publicly private” to describe the opposite situation where personal content is uploaded openly to facilitate access inside a trusted circle of people. In this case, the user also calculates that the low technical quality of the production associated with the lack of relevance will limit the video’s circulation. 23 Security is the main justification gurus give to hiding identity and localization, but many consider YouTube as a separate part of their lives and for that reason some reported embarrassment when, for instance, some actual friends found out about their channel dedicated to makeup and beauty. Lange (2007) adds that some users avoid saying their identities to avoid losing credibility with employers or clients. 43

also argue that the strategy of simulating closeness contributes to the amount of attention makeup tutorials and their creators receive. “Affinity” as an element of communication was initially used to describe exchanges through instant messaging services that lacked a practical function. Nardi (2006 in Lange, 2009) researched users that sent messages to acquaintances without the intention of initiating a conversation and without anything important to say. Developing from this study, she explained that the experience of affinity “is achieved through activities of social bonding in which people come to feel connected with one another, readying them for further communication.” This notion is useful because it helps explain the popularity of broadcast ephemera that is commonly criticized for its low quality or relevance, while critics fail to see the “social, cultural and material circumstances that influence how individuals use video to communicate.” (Lange, 2009: 84) Two elements of makeup gurus can be presented to demonstrate that such videos trap their audiences by portraying an image of amateur production. One is the appropriation of the room as scenery that inculcates values such as intimacy and closeness. This choice of an “informal” setting is maintained even by gurus that evolve to become celebrities outside the Internet, as is the case of Lauren Luke. The idea of the practicality of making the video may cover the intention of giving viewers “a feeling of being connected not to a video but to a person who shares mutual beliefs of interests.” (Lange, 2009: 83) In addition to being virtually present in the guru’s room, the audience is constantly and also enthusiastically reminded of their importance and of their singularity in the life of that guru. Even those having hundreds of thousands of subscriptions recur to this type of paternalistic act by saying that they will always be available to anybody who 44

needs attention. These acts, Lange adds, “can exhibit varying degrees of sincerity, personalization and realistic expectations of interactivity.” (2009: 83) Conclusion Based on the arguments presented, I suggested that an essential aspect of the trap beauty video tutorials use to attract their viewership is to create the impression that the conversation is happening not as it is – asynchronous and directed to anyone watching – but as if it was a synchronous conversation among friends or at least people with certain familiarity with each other. The perception of the audience is that she just turned on the camera and from the beginning acted with the same spontaneity. I drew from Gell’s notion that described artefacts as having agency and this agency being the capacity of attracting a certain type of viewer. I used Wesch’s concept of “context collapse” and Lange’s concepts of “privately public” and “video of affinity” to analyse the practice and techniques used to create tutorials. I showed how these lenses exposed the intentional manipulation of what is displayed. For instance, many gurus erase or make private older videos where they appear less confortable and secure than they do in the latest productions. Similarly they expose intimacy, control identity and perform “affinity” to create the impression of closeness. 45

Fake or Real: the Production of Value among Gurus In this final chapter, I will draw from another portion of Munn’s (1986) work to analyse the process through which meaning is created among beauty gurus on YouTube. Initially, I will present the framework used to identify the polarities from which Gawans draw ideas and concepts about themselves and the world. A key element here is Munn’s phenomenological approach that understands social reality as resulting from a self-‐other relation. I will also draw from Winkler Reid (2010) to adjust this conceptual lens to function in an environment less culturally homogenous than that of Gawa. The text that follows attempts to organize the material collected during fieldwork in order to present the “web of meanings” surrounding the world of YouTube beauty gurus (as I experienced it in 2011 following mostly the interaction of English speaking participants). By doing that I am subscribing to Munn’s position (1986: 6) that “theoretical arguments dealing with sociocultural phenomena must be based on culture-‐specific meanings.” This translates to the choice to focus on the description and analysis of a portion of the symbolic reality of this group rather than discussing previously defined elements like speech acts or dyadic relations. This is the chapter that includes more ethnographic material. The different cases that will be exposed and analysed exist as a whole connected by the conceptual frame applied, but are also separate pieces that will occasionally echo arguments from other parts of the dissertation. The Dialectical Creation of Self-‐Other The symbolic world of Gawa, according to Munn (1986), results from the dialectical tension of two founding values: on one hand, the island conceives its wellness, 46

its internal viability, based on how the island is viewed from the perspective of the inter-‐island world; on the other hand, Gawan society understands that its lack of social hierarchy is fundamental. This polarity simultaneously attracts Gawans to the outside world (where they seek distinction through fame, which will reflect on the perception others have of Gawa) while it also justifies the negation of the cases of individual fame in the intra-‐island world (where one must not maintain a position of hierarchical distinction). The dialectical construct suggested by Munn is based on conflicting values; but instead of producing a destructive outcome, this tension is culturally active in its process of expanding the symbolic world through its self-‐expansion. In other words, the conflict provides a framework from which Gawans are able to think about themselves in the world and, by doing so, generate themselves and their world. It is central to Munn’s argument the notion that sociocultural phenomena don’t happen in space, rather space is created through the dialectical symbolic process of generating and resolving cultural dilemmas (1986: 22). The individual is not subordinated to society and society is not conceived and developed through external forces. Individuals change themselves while attempting to transform their world; and by doing so, individuals become subjected to new challenges. Society does not so much exist in the world but exists with the world as a dynamic part of the creation of the world. Prior to starting the analysis, it is necessary to make an adjustment in the analytic tool-‐kit to make it work in a setting that is more culturally dynamic than Gawa. I will draw from Winkler Reid (2010: 40-‐41), whose study also focused on a contemporary Western setting, to suggest that Munn does not pay enough attention “to the contemporary relations of spacetime … and possibilities of historical transformations in value-‐production …” Winkler Reid’s solution was to recognize that the sub-‐groups she studies 47

were involved in different modes of value production and often didn’t agree on what constituted positive value. A central polarity in the world of makeup gurus is formed around what is “fake” and what is “real”. Makeup doesn’t have the specific purpose of concealing; it also magnifies qualities that exist by giving them visual distinction. On the other hand, makeup may be responsible for disguising “natural” features and adding artificial ones. It is from this original tension that several conflicting aspects of the lives of gurus play out in their virtual arena of debate. Finally, I will discuss “haters”, a social phenomenon spreading on YouTube that is the negative manifestation of fame. I will argue that haters on YouTube represent, particularly in the beauty guru world, the same destructive power witches have on Gawa. Motivated by jealousy, both witches and haters have the function of radically subverting one’s spacetime. Authenticity vs. performance Personal history is a strong enhancer of one’s fame on YouTube guru world. YTGuru14 was frequently asked if her father had indeed died and what was the cause of his death. This information was always in the mind of her fans so if a woman’s voice appeared on one of her videos saying the word “husband”, YTGuru14 was questioned and had to explain this was her neighbour speaking. Later when a men’s voice was heard, she had to explain it was her stepdad and then disclosed to the eventually convinced but still curious fans that her father had died of cancer. Some gurus constantly include videos about their lives outside of YouTube, possibly for a number of reasons but also to show “how” real they are. In the summer of 2010, YTGuru26 went with her mother and 6 year-‐old son to Disneyland. On returning 48

from this trip, she uploaded a music clip-‐like video that showed in detail the apartment and the condominium they had stayed in. In a different piece, she shows five of the six tattoos she has and recounted the history behind each of them: how old she was, what was happening in her life, what made her decide to get the tattoo and why she chose that specific image. She explains that many people had asked her to make that video and before ending she discusses her decision of having the tattoos done in places on her body that could be covered, to avoid discrimination when applying for jobs. YTGuru26’s son participates in some of her videos, sometimes as a “guest commentator”, at other times as cameramen (in the cases she needed to film outside of their house). Other recent guests on her videos were her boyfriend and her mother. Both were brought to participate on Tags, the “Boyfriend Tag” and the “Mom tag”. Another example of these is the “Best Friend Tag”. The main purpose of these activities is to offer more and more evidence of the gurus “real” life and ‘proof’ of her personality. Amateur vs. professional As an experienced guru, YTGuru26 often makes videos giving advice about how to become a renowned guru. The most important thing, according to her, is to know the reason one has for becoming a guru. If all people want is to get free products and make money through partnerships, they are “greedy” and “money hungry” and should give up. According to her, one must have passion for makeup, beauty and fashion and making videos about makeup should be a result of that. Making money must not be expected, she says, as she tells she never considered making a living from her passion. The material reward will come, though, if one has both patience and disposition to work. 49

YTGuru17 occasionally discusses how money affects the world of gurus. In one of her videos, she complains about the use of contests to give out products as a way of artificially building an audience. At the time she had 700 subscribers and said it took her a year and a half of intense work to arrive at that figure. She then pointed to a case where an audience of 400 subscribers was formed after three weeks. The success was credited to another guru with a large following who proposed a contest, one of the conditions of entry being to subscribe to that guru’s channel. This was unfair, she concluded. The community does not regard all movements toward professionalism as problematic, however. Some are seen differently or communicated in a way as to transform the negative into positive expectation. One example is that of YTGuru14. Early in 2011 she produced and published a video where she celebrates with her mother the arrival of a message from YouTube informing her that she had been accepted as partner. Partnership is a symbol of prestige because it implies an understanding that the user attracts a significant number of viewers to the website so she should be rewarded with receiving a portion of what YouTube makes in advertisement from that user’s channels. Friends vs. fans Beyond the technical aspect of relationships on YouTube related to who subscribes and who is subscribed, the words “friend” and “fan” have several connotations and may even be interchangeable in some cases. A user may also use the word “friend” to describe a general positive feeling for her followership. YTGuru26 talks in one of her videos about the importance of YouTube in her life saying she feels better when, after a bad day, she gets home and reads the positive comments posted on her channel. To her, and also to YTGuru17, much of the reason for 50

becoming a guru is attributed to the people one gets to know and becomes friends with, as seen in the following exchange through Formspring between YTGuru17 and an anonymous guest: -‐ How do you have so many subscribers? -‐ I actually don’t consider it so much, but I put a lot of effort into my videos, and I value each of my subscribers as people and not just a number, i also love making friends... I have fun with it. Relations exclusively mediated by computer communication may develop into what is traditionally defined as friendship and include long term stable virtual presence. YTGuru14 and YTGuru13a have achieved this status. They met online when they were around 10 years old and in four years all of the contact they had was mediated by a screen. Broadband internet and video-‐conferencing technology offered the infrastructure for continuous communication that in the recent past the telephone offered especially for young women (Winker Reid, personal communication). Different services that include channels for group communication like Tinychat.com are used to throwing parties where both virtual friends and fans mingled with actual friends. Compared to other gurus of their age group, YTGuru13a and YTGuru14 are both well-‐known and frequently talk about their audience as “fans”. Message exchanges like the following frequently occur between them and their followers: -‐ I keep refreshing your youtubee! if you can’t tell, I’m like a hard-‐core fan. I’ve watched every single one of your vids :) -‐ Awh, thanks! That means so much <3 There are different modes of communication that mark statuses between gurus. Higher ranking gurus make themselves available to chat with their followership but they 51

display this connection publically less frequently. A “public display of connection” signs to the others as a manifestation of preference. This is also a recurrent centre of tensions among gurus as some struggle to demonstrate their affinity with higher ranking users while these higher ranking gurus are selective about acknowledging these actions. I followed a case of internal dispute that aimed to clarify the nature of a relationship. The users involved were YTGuru17, YTGuru14 and YTGuru13a, and this situation must be contemplated bearing in mind that YTGuru17 is the oldest but has the same number of subscribers as YTGuru13a – around 1,000 at the time. YTGuru14 was the highest ranking from the three having 2,500 subscribers and was only openly friends with YTGuru13a. Out of all the videos I watched from these gurus, only YTGuru17 talked about the other two publically. She constantly made the point of including YTGuru14 and YTGuru13a among her “best friends” and often expressed “loving them to death”. Here she is replying to a Formspring anonymous participant requesting names of gurus to “check out”. The content on brackets is mine. -‐ YTGuru14, YTGuru13a, [others] LOL repeating answers... i don’t watch makeup gurus much anymore (no time) i basically watch my friends videos and some bigger gurus As time passed, the lack of reciprocation made YTGuru17 be more specific about how she was using the word “friend”, as in this Formspring dialog where an anonymous person asked her who her best friends on YouTube were. Here is the answer: -‐ This question is complex because I don’t want to leave anyone out and i don’t want to say that someone is my best friend unless I know its mutual... and i can’t guess that someone would think of me as a friend unless they say so ... but 52

anyways, some of the girls that i love are: YTGuru13a, YTGuru14, [goes on listing others] The debate goes further as another anonymous participant asks YTGuru17 if she doesn’t think some of the people she calls “friends” on YouTube are “kind of fake” and also have more subscribers than they deserve for the quality of video they make. Her answer is: -‐ The people I am actually friends with are not fake. These people include: [another name], [another name] and YTGuru13a... Also, I have acquaintances. I guess you could call it that, people that I have no problem talking to on YouTube, that I do think are fake, but chances are if I have referred to them as my friend they aren’t... I used these cases to show the central topic of debate related to authenticity unfolding into this specific domain. The meaning of the terms “friend” and “friendship” varies if the relationship is private or public and acknowledging a friendship often seems to represent a political display of support and mutual respect. Interior beauty vs. exterior beauty In no other topic previously discussed does the universe of Gawa appear to be so well connected with that of YouTube beauty gurus. If for Gawan men, not eating more than the necessary is an act displayed through a healthy body, for gurus this act is signified in attractiveness and social acceptance. Authenticity in this case can be acknowledging that low weight is the consequence of sacrifice, which is the opposite of what a person really wants to do. Conversely, authentic beauty is also attributed to personal values that are morally more important than “physical-‐correctness” and can become physical beauty through makeup. Makeup is what produces value-‐ 53

transformation similar to a Gawan spell, enabling what is inside emerge from the body. Many beauty gurus talk about makeup and cosmetics in general as tools to extracting the inter-‐beauty of women and consequently making them more at ease with not having all the physical attributes associated with exterior beauty. This polarity between pleasure and sacrifice surfaces in a Tag created by YTGuru26, where gurus were invited to tell the things they would change in their ideal world. Everything she lists as “imperfect” is a side effect of complying with standards of beauty. To begin, she says in her ideal world, weight would be controlled the same way a thermostat controls temperature. Pimples, she says, would last only a week. The sun wouldn’t harm the skin and nail polisher wouldn’t have such a strong smell. One of the Tags that most clearly opens the debate about inter-‐beauty versus external beauty is called “My perfect imperfections” and it challenges the guru to talk about three things she likes about her body and three things she doesn’t like. At the beginning of her video-‐response, YTGuru26 explained she did not like the theme at first but decided to make a video as that Tag became popular and everyone was responding to it. In her introductory speech she says both she doesn’t care about discussing her “imperfections” (as she has the love of her family and friends and doesn’t need the approval of others) and that she managed to accept almost everything about her body that she didn’t like. These things included having a “big nose”, a “big butt”, and not having white teeth. She added having accepted the fact she will never go back to the weight she had before getting pregnant. The only part of her body she feels she will never learn to accept is her hair, because, she explained, it is neither straight nor curly, it is not defined, so it has to be artificially straightened. Before ending the recording, she criticises 54

other gurus who talk about being unhappy with “small boobs” and adds she has better things to spend her money than on plastic surgery. The tension between inner and outer beauty is recurrently discussed by YTGuru17. On a video published in 2011, she narrated how bullying affected her life and how her lack of self-‐love made her eat. Lack of self-‐esteem becomes the signifier of contraction of spacetime, as she gains weight proportionally to distancing herself from others and having no social life. Haters and the Subversion of Positive Value “Haters”, like fans, follow people that acquire social visibility, but instead of showing admiration, their intention is to find flaws and contradictions with the purpose of exposing that guru as a fraud. In her video giving advice to new gurus, YTGuru26 encourages users to be themselves, because if you hide or pretend to be someone else, the “haters will find out”. This subversive capacity of bringing the desired authenticity to the guru environment does not convince her to defend this category of attitude. In the same video she describes haters as people that are either jealous of other’s talents or accomplishments or have psychological problems and release their anger on others. The problem, she concludes, doesn’t have a solution as haters will always exist and one has to develop thick skin to survive their attacks. Here is an example of the content of a message from a hater published on YTGuru17’s Formspring page: -‐ You need to stop kidding yourself. Your videos suck! You will NEVER be big on YouTube. You are just a wanna-‐be. Stop trying. 55

As I read this anonymous attack, I speculated about the possibility of this person being also a guru who participates on the same online social circles as YTGuru17. Here is the answer YTGuru17 left to the author of the message: -‐ I make videos because I enjoy doing it. While being more popular on YouTube would be a plus, it is not “make or break” for me. If my videos suck, you don’t have to watch them. At least I don’t spend my spare time crushing peoples hopes... Haters, like Gawan witches, usually don’t have names. A hater is more an entity or a category of behaviour than a person. I never witnessed a guru accusing another of being a hater – mostly because haters do not normally reveal their identities. They either post anonymously through sites like Formspring or have different usernames to manifest their criticism. From my observations among makeup gurus, haters represent the complementary part of hierarchical relations. They are accused of spending time to destroy other’s positive investments but also are respected for their capacity to expose fraud and keep gurus from manipulating their followership. Conclusion In this chapter, I suggested the YouTube beauty guru community shapes itself through relationships generated by debating variations of the polarity “real” vs. “fake”. Gurus construct their selves as gurus by engaging in practices and debates inside the community. The perception each of them has results from the feedback they constantly receive. This information comes in terms of the number of views each video has, the number of comments it receives, the number of video-‐responses it generates and, more importantly, the number of subscribers a given piece traps to the channel. 56

Drawing from phenomenology, Munn argues that Gawans construct their individual and collective meanings based on the tension between the importance of fame and the importance of social equality. It is through this tension that Gawans organise their world and conceptualise solutions to the problems they face. The community of YouTube participants in general represent a valid environment in which to apply this framework because the actions that initiate intersubjective relationships are materialized in statistics, links, comments and other forms of interaction. Makeup, in the context of gurus, offers a powerful metaphor for debates surrounding the topic of authenticity. I suggested this core theme allows gurus to share their views, history and feelings on issues that reflect this original concern and form bonds with other gurus who share similar world-‐views. I presented four centres of debate that represent spin-‐offs from discussions about authenticity: authenticity vs. performance online; amateurism vs. professionalism; friendship vs. relationships of different status; and finally interior vs. exterior beauty. The presentation of each topic attempted to portray the symbolic contradictory (or dialectical) nature of the debates and not a perspective that one side was better than the other. 57

Conclusion I arrived in the world of YouTube beauty gurus without a specific set of questions. I was surprised that, although I have been employed by Internet companies for almost 15 years, I had never heard that such a large and active group existed. Some of its most important participants have risen to fame beyond the borders of the Internet, but the social environment where these people came from remains under the radar of society. Like the private spaces where people put on their makeup, this portion of YouTube seems to be known only by those interested in cosmetics. I was intrigued by the number of women from many parts of the world that engaged actively and for long periods of time in creating a channel with makeup tutorials. I was particularly enchanted with the performances of children as young as 11, able to captivate an audience by displaying their skills and knowledge of the subject. The notion of “informal realm”, used by Winkler Reid (2010), and based on Munn’s (1986) theory of value offered the main analytic framework for this dissertation. Gurus exist in a decentralized environment where all arrive with the same tools and limitations. Action is at the centre of this process of creating meaning among gurus. It is through action that they engage in conversations, such as through video Tags; this “ceremonial” form of video that serves to bridge previously disconnected clusters of gurus by proposing dialogs around topics of common interest. Before being ready to propose a theme for a Tag, the new guru must establish partnerships through cooperation with others in similar situations. Like Kula shells, the participation in the exchange of videos is a social act that demands the acquisition of particular sets of knowledge about video production, YouTube and how to form relationships there. Munn’s model is relevant for this context because it places the participants of the group 58

not as mechanical pieces that reproduce social patterns, but as active producers of their own symbolic world. The three chapters that focus on the analysis of ethnographic data bring loosely connected aspects of similar themes. They represent a progression of attempts to examine aspects of the ethnographic material using different configurations of concepts. What unified these three experiments is the interest in understanding what creates and transforms the motivations for people to spontaneously form social ties by talking about makeup, using mainly video as platform for interaction. These have been preliminary attempts that resulted in more uncertainties and questions about anthropology and the conduction of anthropological research than conclusive answers. Conversely, in all three cases Munn’s and the auxiliary framings proved relevant to examine the social organization of an informal realm like YouTube is for beauty gurus. The research also points to methodological alternatives to conduct ethnographic research on digital settings. Traditional anthropological research is normally conducted through long periods of direct engagement with the culture one intends to study. What should be done, then, if the people in question have chosen to function using the computer as a platform for interaction? Should the researcher examine the “real” person behind the monitor or look at the world in question from the same perspective as those who choose to live in it? My choice for this research, for various reasons, was to experience life as a “YouTuber”. It gave me a privileged perspective to follow the evolution of six women, at different stages of their lives, investing time and energy to become renown beauty gurus. I experimented an alternative of conducting research within the virtual places where actors meet; Tarlo 59

(2010) used this solution as an important resource of material that would be much more difficult to find offline but that exists in abundance online. The remaining part of the dissertation has looked at particular aspects of the life of gurus and the processes through which they gained social distinction. The first, in chapter 3, explored the possibilities of conceptualizing a specific kind of video called Tag as a ceremonial device used to create and expand intersubjective spacetime. These virtual objects bear a fundamental resemblance to Kula shells; they don’t have a “practical” use except that of acquiring fame through participation. Also, both “Tags” and shells develop during their journeys, are formed and receive social validation through exchange and occasionally, as they embed the history of their previous traders, become unique entities like in the case of the “Room Tour”. Chapter 4 presented a framework with multiple layers of concepts that intended to analyse video tutorials as traps. I suggested that an essential aspect of the trap these videos use to attract their viewership is to create the impression that the conversation is happening not as it is – asynchronous and directed to anyone watching – but as if it was a synchronous conversation among friends. The perception of the audience is that the guru turned on the camera without rehearsing and shared tips, motivated by passion. The reality is different: gurus evolve their knowledge about video production while erasing the traces of their evolution. One of the key elements used in the crafting of popular videos is the capacity to recreate the context of an offline conversation while speaking to a camera and to an unknown audience. The deconstruction of videos to explore their invisible constitution was primarily possible thanks to Gell’s concept of the artefact that possesses agency, but the analysis would not have been effective without the addition of 60

notions developed from Lange (2007 and 2009) and Wesch (2008) through previous studies conducted on YouTube. In chapter 5, I suggested the YouTube beauty guru community shapes itself through relationships generated by debating variations of the polarity “real” vs. “fake”. The framing I used to analyse the ethnography also came from Munn’s (1986) study of the Gawans. There she suggested that the web of meanings that composed the symbolic world of these islanders was constantly being developed out of an original tension or polarity between the collective desire for social equality and the individual aspiration of social distinction. Similarly, gurus invent themselves as participants of this collectivity by engaging in practices and debates inside the community. Makeup, in this context, is a subject of interest because it offers a powerful metaphor for debates surrounding the topic of authenticity. I suggested that this core theme enables gurus to share their views, history and feeling on issues that reflect this original concern and form bonds with other gurus who hold similar world-‐views. I consider these valid starting points for engaging further with this community or eventually others on YouTube. For those interested in engaging with the YouTube beauty group, I recommend looking at two aspects to expand the scope of investigation. Firstly, it would be interesting to look more precisely at the cases of young teenagers starting their careers as beauty gurus. Makeup seems to be one of the subjects that best represents the transition to adult life for women, and its manipulation in social settings is related to the process of forming one’s identity. Many of these girls are expanding their experimentations with identity to include engagement with the production of video tutorials. Secondly, on the other side of this world there is an almost invisible subject. As 61

far as I could perceive from my brief investigation, these are adult women that for different reasons avoided learning about makeup while growing up and now seem to feel excluded or recriminated in some circles for not knowing how to use cosmetics. To these women, YouTube tutorials represent an opportunity to achieve a minimal level of proficiency in the use of makeup without having to submit themselves to the criticism or humiliation of asking for help from their peers. Focusing more attention on these two groups might provide valuable resources to several fields of enquiry, especially identity and gender studies. 62

Works Cited Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: an Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print. Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship." Journal of Computer-‐Mediated Communication 13.1 (2008): 210-‐30. Print. Campbell, Shirley F. The Art of Kula. Oxford: Berg, 2002. Print. Catch My Heart. Dir. Michelle Phan. YouTube -‐ Broadcast Yourself. 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 05 Sept. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzi4nDZldNk>. Ewart, Elizabeth, and Michael OHanlon, eds. Body Arts and Modernity. Wantage: Sean Kingston, 2007. Print. Garfield, Steve, and David Tames. "Media Revolution: Podcasting Part 2." NewEnglandFilm.com. 1 Feb. 2006. Web. 14 Sept. 2011. <http://newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/2006/02/podcasting.htm>. Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Print. Gell, Alfred. "The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology." The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. Ed. Eric Hirsch. London: Athlone, 1999. 159-‐86. Print. Gell, Alfred. "Vogels Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps." Journal of Material Culture 1.1 (1996): 15-‐38. Print. Gell, Alfred. Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Print. Graeber, David. Toward an Anthropological theory of value: the False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Print. Kahn, Miriam. ": The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society . Nancy D. Munn." American Anthropologist 90.2 (1988): 470-‐71. Print. Lange, Patricia G. "Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube." Journal of Computer-‐Mediated Communication 13.1 (2007). Indiana University School of Library & Information Science and School of Informatics. Web. 7 Sept. 2011. <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/lange.html>. Article 18. Lange, Patricia G. "Videos of Affinity on YouTube." The YouTube Reader. Ed. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009. 70-‐88. Print. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print. Leach, Jerry W., and Edmund Ronald. Leach. Introduction. The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1983. 1-‐28. Print. Miller, Daniel. "The Fame of Trinis: Websites as Traps." Ed. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas. Beyond Aesthetics. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 137-‐56. Print. 63

Munn, Nancy D. "Kula Ring, Anthropology of." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001. 8176-‐179. Print. Munn, Nancy D. The Fame of Gawa: a Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. Print. OHanlon, Michael. Reading the Skin: Adornment, Display, and Society among the Wahgi. London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1989. Print. Postill, J. "Localizing the Internet beyond Communities and Networks." New Media & Society 10.3 (2008): 413-‐31. Print. Sillitoe, Paul. "The Exchange Cycles in the Massim Archipelago." An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia: Culture and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 69-‐ 83. Print. Snee, Helen. "Web 2.) as a Social Science Research Tool." Social Sciences. British Library, Nov. 2008. Web. 6 Sept. 2011. <http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/socsci/socint/web2/web2.pdf>. Strathern, Marilyn. "The Self in Self-‐Decoration." Oceania 49.4 (Jun., 1979): 241-‐57. Print. Tarlo, Emma. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. Oxford: Berg, 2010. Print. Thomas, Nicholas. Introduction. Beyond Aesthetics. Ed. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 1-‐12. Print. Von Pfetten, Verena. "Michelle Phan -‐ 1 Million YouTube Subscribers | Styleite." Styleite | News & Opinion | Fashion: Runway, Retail, Beauty, Media, Ranking. 4 Nov. 2010. Web. 29 Aug. 2011. <http://www.styleite.com/media/michelle-‐phan-‐youtube-‐subscribers/>. Wesch, Michael. "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube -‐ YouTube." YouTube -‐ Broadcast Yourself. Library of Congress, USA, 26 June 2008. Web. 07 Sept. 2011. <http://youtu.be/TPAO-‐lZ4_hU>. Winkler Reid, Sarah. "Valuing the Informal Realm: Peer Relations and the Negotiation of Difference in a North London Comprehensive School." Thesis. Brunel University, 2010. Print. Young, Michael W. Oceania 59.4 (June, 1989): 317-‐19. Print. 64

Making up Art, Videos and Fame: The Creation of Social Order in the Informal Realm of YouTube Beauty Gurus

by juliano spyer on Aug 16, 2012

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics