Judith Butler's ideas on gender performativity are reflected heavily on Zoella's blog. It commonly reinforces traditional representations of gender throughout despite on the surface level seeming much more progressive in its gender representations.
Most of the traditional gender representations the website reinforces are surrounding femininity and the ideas of the roles of females. A key traditional representation of femininity reinforced on the blog is that on women caring about appearance or them being sexualised. This representation is the foundation of the Zoella persona, which begun by mainly focusing on beauty and fashion tips and tutorials. This has only increased as Zoella's popularity and following has blew up, with increased opportunities and brand deals allowing her to focus even more on these representations of materialism. However, this completely reinforces the status quo that has been constructed by society. As Judith Butler's theory says; there is no gender identity behind these expressions. Women being encouraged to care about their appearance and the clothes they are wearing is only a construction of society and the media only adds to that like Zoella does here. This is also not a 'one off' representation, it is used frequently at many points on the website. For example; the style section first establishes these ideas by recommending fashion and clothing to the audience while they appear in the shop section for the audience to actually purchase. In terms of Butler's ideas, this makes this purchasing of clothes a 'ritual', a thing that must commonly be done that reinforces these representations and ideas surrounding appearance and femininity.
Another key gender representation reinforced on Zoella's blog is that of women as being focused on domesticity or occupying domestic roles. On the website, there are entire sections dedicated to lifestyle tips and even a recipe section, both things that encourage these ideas on domestic life. Once again, these ideas have been constructed by the media and don't have any depth behind these expressions. However, another way to look at this consistent reinforcement of traditional roles is that it is almost impossible for Zoella to move away from what is expected of her as it will remove any relatability she has. Zoella is a young, female, self-made millionaire and that is not seen very often. It is something beyond the traditional representations and expectations of femininity and negates any simplistic and constructed representations she may reinforce.
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