How Butler's ideas link to Zoella
Zoella only presents stereotypical feminine traits to her audience. She vlogs and participates in shopping and baking, conforming to the ideals that women should always look presentable. She could be seen to be policing the idea that women should act a certain way. Zoella's uploads openly engage in performance in order to actualise gender. Her makeup tutorials allow for the construction of femininity and offers Zoella's audience mechanisms through which they can feel naturally female. Butler argues that hegemonic heterosexuality requires 'a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealization.' Zoella's beauty 'hauls' are in this sense a ritualistic act, a repeated performance that allows both her and her audience to realise their gender - to realise an idealised state that no one actually inhibits. Butler's assertion that gender isn't 'a given', but id forged through performative expression is clearly evidenced through Zoella. Moreover, her critique of heteronormativity as a natural state prefigures much of the wider inclusion of non-traditional sexualities that are beginning to be included within the contemporary media.
content reinforces gender stereotypes. Butler would say she performs femininity in a conventional way. Example- She films herself without makeup but then ‘performs’ femininity by putting on makeup
Comments