Self-Branding on YouTube

Sarah Banet-Weiser examined the branding of “post-feminist” on YouTube by looking at amateur videos of young girls dancing, singing, or vlogging. YouTube videos with that element “support and perpetuate a commercial post-feminist discourse” in which female are empowered through public performance and user-generated content (Banet-Weiser 2). YouTube’s main function to “Broadcast yourself” is a one for user to brand themselves by communicating “personal values, ideas, and beliefs using strategies and logic from commercial brand culture,” (Banet-Weiser 2).

Banet-Weiser explained YouTube videos by women to be a connection between gender empowerment and consumer activity. YouTube is an ideal space for self branding because of its capability for “public performances and viewers’ comments and feedback,” (Banet-Weiser 3). It is explained the identity is a “project of the self” in which individuals have to “create biographical narratives that will explain themselves to themselves,” in the context of media and culture (Banet-Weiser 7).

YouTube provides space for girls to develop their gender and sexual identities. Such idea of branded post-feminism became popular in the online era since consumers are more in control of their own productions. Online self-branding uses “labor of consumers in re-imagining a product as the self” (Banet-Weiser 14). Besides the video production, number of views and comments are also important because it provides validation and a “conscious recognition of the fact that other users are buying,” even if the comments are negative (Banet-Weiser 18).

This article is really interesting since it reminded me of many amateur videos I have seen on YouTube by girls and young women. I never thought of YouTube videos as self-branding prompted by gender empowerment and consumer activity. I saw the video by JennaMarbles recently, called “What Disney Movies Taught Me”. In the video she went through all the Disney princesses and the false images Disney taught her, in a comedic way. Apply the video to Sarah Banet-Weiser’s idea on the branding of post feminist on YouTube, Jenna Marbles can be understood as a woman engaging in self-branding and exploring the gender identity by comparing reality to Disney princesses. It would be interesting to see Sarah Banet-Weiser to also examine more vlogs like the ones by JennaMarbles, and other YouTube Stars like Rebecca Black. 

@jayckah