Authenticity, personal brand and sexual agency: lesbic post-feminism on youtube

Abstract

Youtube, the post-television medium par excellence, modifies young people’s codes of representation and communication on issues such as identity and sexual orientation. The vídeo platform has become the ultimate weapon of LGTBQ activism (Polo, 2016) where gays, lesbians, bisexuals and queers take their stances. This occurs at a moment where post-feminism in mainstream media appears to be the only possible female representation: as a symbolic backlash against historical feminism —used on many occasions by icons of popular culture— it claims liberated, assertive, and authentic women, but at the same time obviates the injustices of patriarchy still firmly in place (Tasker and Black, 2005; Gill, 2007). The patterns of post-feminist representations are linked with authenticity, success, freedom of choice and female empowerment on the one hand, and with sexual agency and women’s use of their bodies in order to achieve privileges on the other.

This study investigates how young lesbian youtubers in Spain reproduce and/or resist this mainstream postfeminism. To this end we have selected a sample of five Spanish lesbian youtubers with a large number of subscribers (YellowMellow, Dulceida, Xuri Fenton, Gominuke, Koala Rabioso). Results show how these girls manage their bodies and appearance outside the logic of the male gaze, thus generating new (lesbic) imaginary. This grants lesbian youtubers a sexual agency that is not framed in post-feminism, but develops its own language. On the other hand, one of the most important features of these youtubers is authenticity. An authenticity that is not only framed in the logic of Youtube itself, but is also more reflexive (Giddens, 1994) and more politically engaging than post-feminist representations, generally void of ideology. Although each of these girls creates a successful personal brand —whether or not linked to commercial brands— they claim authenticity as their main value and manage to maintain their credibility by managing their failures in a humorous way.