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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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