Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
Speaker 1: and I'm Kristen, and I have tried to follow fashion
Speaker 1: blogs in my time at tried and failed. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of silly to like say that you've
Speaker 1: tried to follow a blog, but it is exhausting for
Speaker 1: me to like be going to a blog every day
Speaker 1: or in this case, in this day and age Instagram
Speaker 1: account and look at all of these beautiful clothes and
Speaker 1: just be like, I don't even know how do these
Speaker 1: people even put an outfit together? Yeah, it makes me
Speaker 1: feel behind. Scrolling through Instagram, I'm like, oh, man, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: and I looked down right now? Can I tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm wearing? Should we describe what we're wearing to
Speaker 1: let listeners know where we're coming from. I'm wearing a
Speaker 1: striped sweatshirt a massive like lime green tank top underneath
Speaker 1: it to cover up the fact that I'm wearing exercise
Speaker 1: pants under that. You could call it athlete harker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cutting edge atha. Yeah, I'm wearing sneakers, and yes I
Speaker 1: did um accessorise with a bracelet and a necklace. But seriously,
Speaker 1: this is called I didn't want to put off take
Speaker 1: off all of my pajamas, so you're half your half pajama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I basically put on a sweatshirt and came to work.
Speaker 1: I think that's totally fine. I used to literally go
Speaker 1: to work in my pajamas when I worked at the
Speaker 1: newspaper and I was hungover on Sundays because I worked
Speaker 1: from Friday to Tuesday or Friday to yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: Friday to Tuesday, and so I'd go in on Sundays
Speaker 1: just like, unapologetically disgusting. But you're looking more put together
Speaker 1: than I am today, Oh thank you. I am wearing
Speaker 1: a Canadian tuxedo. I'm wearing some dark dinnam pants in
Speaker 1: a a shambre shirt yes oh yes, and a and
Speaker 1: a chunky knit sweater over it because it's cold in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Finally it's chili here. But yeah, I mean I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't keep up with with fashion blogs because it
Speaker 1: just makes me feel like I need to immediately go shopping.
Speaker 1: So what I do is when I get the urge
Speaker 1: to go shopping, which is pretty spotty for me. I'm
Speaker 1: one of those like I really do believe the science
Speaker 1: that it is tied to ovulation. So it's like once
Speaker 1: a month, I'll be suddenly like I need a new
Speaker 1: something or other, and then I'll go online and you'll
Speaker 1: google something or other. I'll google something or other and
Speaker 1: what the Internet tells me is appropriate for ladies to
Speaker 1: be wearing, then I might go get it. I'm so impressed.
Speaker 1: But so you do like fashion research a list? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll usually have like an instinct of like what I
Speaker 1: want to be wearing. See, I just walk blind into
Speaker 1: the store, which is why I end up with things
Speaker 1: that don't go together. I'm not I'm not a browser.
Speaker 1: I can't browse well, I don't see. I'm I'm more
Speaker 1: of an efficient I'm more efficient than just browsing. I
Speaker 1: don't want to go in into shop, but I'll walk
Speaker 1: in and be like this, this, this, this and this,
Speaker 1: try it on. Nothing fits. The one time and made well,
Speaker 1: I got stuck in a silk shirt because my boobs
Speaker 1: were too big for it. Uh, that was the longest
Speaker 1: I've ever spent in a maid. Well, I do shop.
Speaker 1: There's I like it. It's just you gotta watch out
Speaker 1: for the silk shirts that don't have zippers, you know,
Speaker 1: when you've got when you've got boobs on your chest.
Speaker 1: Never been a problem for this, just it's a thing. Well,
Speaker 1: but the thing about doing like fashion research, whether you
Speaker 1: are intending to go shopping or whether you are just
Speaker 1: passing the time on the internet, is that these fashion
Speaker 1: bloggers can make everything look so perfect and effortless that
Speaker 1: it does tend to make me feel like there is
Speaker 1: no way I can achieve that. Like the way that
Speaker 1: this woman or whoever is like putting together these outfits
Speaker 1: and these successories. How did she even think of that?
Speaker 1: My head is too big for that hat. I could
Speaker 1: never pull it off. My face is too round. What's happening?
Speaker 1: Where am I helped me? I'm trapped in blog world?
Speaker 1: But I end up almost like resenting these strangers on
Speaker 1: the internet for how amazing and put together they look.
Speaker 1: I started following uh Chiara Farini, who's the blonde salad.
Speaker 1: She's like a bajillion followers on social media. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I like three days later I un followed her. Oh
Speaker 1: it's too much, it's too much, And and I was
Speaker 1: just like, I don't need to see like strangers in
Speaker 1: designer dresses, like looking effortless with their glass of champagne,
Speaker 1: because you know what, I am a effortless with my
Speaker 1: glass of champagne on my couch on Sunday in my pajamas.
Speaker 1: Leandrew Medine of Man Repeller is a rare fashion blogger
Speaker 1: that I do follow, mostly because I'm drawn to her
Speaker 1: business and branding savvy. But she's also one of those
Speaker 1: where her outfits would look clownish on me because she can.
Speaker 1: I mean, half of it is, you know, they're wearing
Speaker 1: designer clothes. We're wearing made well sale, so there's going
Speaker 1: to be a difference in how it's gonna at best
Speaker 1: kinda look. Yeah, paid well sell the best. But there
Speaker 1: have been so many times when she's like, now I've
Speaker 1: got my highways cropped billowing trousers and my crop top
Speaker 1: switchbacks ready to go. What did you even just say?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think a crop top switchback
Speaker 1: is actually a thing. It sounds like a dance or
Speaker 1: like a cheerleading move. It was like an old home
Speaker 1: sculpture leading term from back in my youth. Well I
Speaker 1: don't know where I got it, but that's just what
Speaker 1: I think of. But what I'm what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say is I relate in not understanding how outfits are
Speaker 1: pulled off, and I think Man Repeller obviously is one
Speaker 1: of those top names in fashion blogging and fashion social media.
Speaker 1: She definitely kind of at the top of the heap.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to see sort of the evolution
Speaker 1: of fashion blogging, how it got started, what role the
Speaker 1: recession played in it, the fact that it's almost basically
Speaker 1: been distilled down except for maybe those people who are
Speaker 1: at the top of the heap. It's been pretty much
Speaker 1: distilled down to just like Instagram accounts nowadays, especially with
Speaker 1: this flood of fashion bloggers into the market. But we
Speaker 1: wanted to look at today the reality of what it
Speaker 1: means to be a fashion blogger, whether you are the
Speaker 1: Man Repeller at the top of the heap, or whether
Speaker 1: you are you know, the mom in Albuquerque who just
Speaker 1: really likes fashion and wants to blog about it or
Speaker 1: Target halls. Yeah, Target, But it has changed so much,
Speaker 1: even just as a complete fashion outsider that I am
Speaker 1: from not so long ago, when I still remember a
Speaker 1: friend of mine asking me, have you read Style Rookie before?
Speaker 1: It's this amazing fashion blog that you have to read.
Speaker 1: Her writing is so good and surprised. She's like like
Speaker 1: thirteen years old. Oh my god. And she's talking about,
Speaker 1: of course, um, Tobby Givinson, now of Rookie Magazine and
Speaker 1: just all around amazing nous. And back then fashion blogging
Speaker 1: was so much more, yes, curating outfits and photo shoots,
Speaker 1: but it was her writing too that um really legitimized
Speaker 1: the whole thing, whereas now it is so much just
Speaker 1: insta followers, monetized, monetized, monetized. Do you know what I
Speaker 1: was wearing? A twelve years old crop top switchback? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was underneath my sleeveless button up denim shirt and
Speaker 1: which was tucked into my pleaded Bermuda shorts and belted.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to suggest in any way that
Speaker 1: this was a positive look at all. Do you know
Speaker 1: what pleaded shorts due to me? No? I don't. It's
Speaker 1: not pretty ladies and gentlemen. But yeah, so I'm quite
Speaker 1: impressed by by Tavvy. That was more doing my soccker phase.
Speaker 1: It was lots of umbros and T shirts I thought
Speaker 1: were cool, and by cool I mean duckhead T shirts.
Speaker 1: No umbros were my twelve year old Caroline athletes. Sure
Speaker 1: I would wear umbros for no reason really other than
Speaker 1: to just be like, oh, I've got a breeze going
Speaker 1: on now. Whereas twelve year olds today can go to
Speaker 1: thrift stores, go vintage shopping, they can curate all these outfits,
Speaker 1: they can create their own lifestyle brands and become fashion
Speaker 1: brands of their own. Yea, So it's no wonder that
Speaker 1: being a fashion blogger would attract so many people, whether
Speaker 1: it's a passion for fashion or whether it's just people
Speaker 1: who are like, I need to make money, and some
Speaker 1: of those people end up making the jillions of dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harper's bizarre estimates that brands not like these cottage brands,
Speaker 1: but big name brands, are spending more than a billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year unsponsored Instagram posts. Yeah, so if you
Speaker 1: are a top flight uh fashion blogger or fashion Instagram
Speaker 1: or someone might come knocking and want to pay you
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. And of course how much you
Speaker 1: make depends on factors, mainly including audience size. But Harper's
Speaker 1: was writing about how if you have hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of followers, you can make anywhere from five hundred to
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars per post, whereas if you have in
Speaker 1: the millions. Your fee to some of these companies who
Speaker 1: want you to wear their stuff can range from twenty
Speaker 1: grand to a hundred grand per shot and I am dead,
Speaker 1: I have died. I'm dead now, which shock well. The
Speaker 1: thing about it is, though getting all that cash that
Speaker 1: is that is literally killing you is fewer and farther
Speaker 1: between these days. Because while this whole fashion blogging um
Speaker 1: entrepreneurialism has grown with people like Rachel Parcel of Pink
Speaker 1: Peonies and Amy Song of song Style like making all
Speaker 1: this money and branding all of this stuff and having
Speaker 1: these fabulous lives that we're all seeing and following and
Speaker 1: making us want to get into the game. Because the
Speaker 1: pool of bloggers is growing, brands are getting stingier with
Speaker 1: their money and their sponsorships as well. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously brands are getting hip to what is going on
Speaker 1: on the internet, knowing that they can get away with
Speaker 1: either not paying anyone anything or paying people a lot less,
Speaker 1: like you should just be happy that we sent you
Speaker 1: a purse, so like take pictures of yourself wearing it. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a New York Times article in January and
Speaker 1: they were talking to pr folks who admitted that the
Speaker 1: quote digital girls. So in other words, fashion blogging women,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, are sparking higher conversions. And that's
Speaker 1: marketing speak for, uh, converting those web visits into direct
Speaker 1: sales than celebrity placement. So Jennifer Aniston hawking like a
Speaker 1: vino or what's the other one, living proof hair stuff,
Speaker 1: it's not going to pay off necessarily as much as
Speaker 1: if you're having these big faces in fashion blogging wearing
Speaker 1: your stuff, because they are authentic, they're relatable, their effortless,
Speaker 1: they're beautiful, they're just like you. Well, and you'll see
Speaker 1: too in their Instagram posts. They will you know, you
Speaker 1: can shop the post and like Bloomingdale's and other kinds
Speaker 1: of stories like that, have set up systems where you know,
Speaker 1: you get a cut of whatever sales that you you
Speaker 1: make driving your followers to that store. Yeah, and technically
Speaker 1: we should mention that according to the Federal Trade Commission,
Speaker 1: these fashion instagrammers are supposed to disclose the gifts and
Speaker 1: payments they received from companies, but the enforcements really uneven.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like the wild West for fashion
Speaker 1: bloggers in terms of the compensation you receive and whether
Speaker 1: you are going to be reporting any on your taxes.
Speaker 1: But the thing that we don't see that we did
Speaker 1: talk about a lot in our hashtag Blessed podcast a
Speaker 1: little while back, is all of the invisible work that
Speaker 1: goes into even crafting just a single Instagram post, much
Speaker 1: less managing an entire lifestyle brand, especially if you aren't
Speaker 1: someone likely Andrew Medine, who now has a whole staff.
Speaker 1: If it's just you, your life is your lifestyle brand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so today and just a little bit, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking with Brooke Aaron Duffy, who's a professor at
Speaker 1: Temple University School of Media and Communication, and Emily Hunt,
Speaker 1: who's a pH d student at the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: and in Burg School for Communication. Communication students were upsentum
Speaker 1: because these ladies just published a study about the hidden
Speaker 1: lives of fashion bloggers. It's called Having it All on
Speaker 1: Social Media, Entrepreneurial femininity and self Branding among fashion bloggers,
Speaker 1: And the whole point of their research was talking to
Speaker 1: a bunch of these women about what they do, how
Speaker 1: they make their blogs, how they go about living their lives,
Speaker 1: and they ended up finding a lot of drudgery behind
Speaker 1: that whole, easy, breezy chic veneer such as eighty to
Speaker 1: one hundred hour work weeks and Caroline, you, you and
Speaker 1: I put in a lot of a lot of time
Speaker 1: and stuff. I've never told you every week, not to
Speaker 1: humble Brad, but eighty two hundred hours a week, it
Speaker 1: is not no And I mean you can argue um
Speaker 1: that this is a passion job. These women love fashion,
Speaker 1: they love what they do. They're going to be taking
Speaker 1: pictures anyway, so they should be making a little money
Speaker 1: for it. But that's crazy town. A hundred hours a
Speaker 1: week of anything is aside from sleep or maybe like milkshakes.
Speaker 1: That's like crazy to be just posting about fashion all
Speaker 1: the time and taking pictures of yourself all the time.
Speaker 1: Hundred hours a week of drinking milkshakes. Okay, so bloated,
Speaker 1: true real talk. I am lactics. Lactos does not agree
Speaker 1: with me, and I missed milkshakes so much. That's me projecting.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Well, there's also not guaranteed financial stability with this,
Speaker 1: no surprise, because it's a different kind of freelance work.
Speaker 1: You're really going from maybe sponsorship to sponsorship or freelance
Speaker 1: post to post, so until you are at that higher level.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not necessarily going to be making the
Speaker 1: kind of money to support the kind of lifestyle that
Speaker 1: you will need to be projecting. Although yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of projecting, so Emily researcher. Emily wrote an email
Speaker 1: that fashion bloggers look like they have it all, fulfilling careers,
Speaker 1: financial success, flexible schedules, and fun lives. I mean that
Speaker 1: sounds great, right, but unlike the having it all icons
Speaker 1: of the analog era. She cites people like Helen Gurley
Speaker 1: Brown or Ali mcbeel. She says, these creative mavens are
Speaker 1: as sensibly women just like us. As such, their digital
Speaker 1: images make it seem as though having it all is
Speaker 1: accessible to all, just a whole lot of pass and
Speaker 1: and a few social media accounts away, which, yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds like totally easy, right. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of really great, fascinating information to talk about with Emily
Speaker 1: and Brooke when it comes to the hidden lives of
Speaker 1: fashion bloggers, so many different aspects of what shapes a
Speaker 1: career as a fashion blogger. It's definitely much more than
Speaker 1: a hobby for the women they spoke with, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that really shaped a lot of these
Speaker 1: women's experiences was the oh, I don't know, entire recession
Speaker 1: because when the economy became so unstable, it shook up
Speaker 1: things that a lot of those legacy fashion magazines, but
Speaker 1: it also meant that the rest of the economy was unstable.
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of people going into starting
Speaker 1: their own personal fashion brands, uh, not only as a
Speaker 1: passion job, but also to make money. And so then
Speaker 1: you have the issue of once you get into this
Speaker 1: type of line of work, you have to make money somehow.
Speaker 1: So part of the work that goes into it is
Speaker 1: having to negotiate sponsored posts for however much money. There
Speaker 1: was one article that we were looking at that talked
Speaker 1: to a whole bunch of different fashion bloggers about how
Speaker 1: much they made, which a lot of fashion bloggers are
Speaker 1: a little reticent to talk about that. But Antoinette coolest Ak,
Speaker 1: a Sydney fashion blogger, said, clients say, I'll pay you
Speaker 1: to wear that dress, I'll pay you to wear those shoes,
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, they sponsor me. I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but if you think of me like a
Speaker 1: giant billboard, people are paying for that space. Not everybody
Speaker 1: is so open with that financial wheeling and dealing that
Speaker 1: goes into what looks like just an effortless spontaneous image
Speaker 1: and Caroline, in case you were wondering, a sweatshirt company
Speaker 1: didn't pay me to wear the sweashot you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, I look like a billboard in my in
Speaker 1: my sweats today, you look like a vision. It's just me.
Speaker 1: I'm sponsoring myself today. And in addition to the business
Speaker 1: side of it, there's a whole community management side of
Speaker 1: it that we know person really via working on the
Speaker 1: internet as well. That you have your fans and advertisers
Speaker 1: to answer to, but you also have to deal with
Speaker 1: people who are not going to be so happy about
Speaker 1: seeing you in a pretty dress or what you're cooking
Speaker 1: for dinner, what you're doing with your kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: online abuse definitely happens for these women as well, UM,
Speaker 1: and it can be exhausting, especially when you are trying
Speaker 1: to merge not just branding yourself but also branding your
Speaker 1: entire family. And that's something that Heather Armstrong, who is
Speaker 1: much more of a quote unquote mommy blogger than fashion
Speaker 1: blogger UM, has experienced to the point that she ak
Speaker 1: a deuce recently announced that she's essentially retiring from the
Speaker 1: whole mommy blogger thing because her life had just becomes
Speaker 1: so sponsored and it was in fearing with her kids lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said that she found that brands that wanted to
Speaker 1: be featured we're basically trying to exert more and more
Speaker 1: control over not only what was featured, but the tone, uh,
Speaker 1: the image itself. And She's like, listen, at some point,
Speaker 1: I'm just a copywriter for you, like, and I'm not
Speaker 1: earning benefits. I'm not earning like paid time off or
Speaker 1: leave or anything that an employee might. I'm just some
Speaker 1: lady on the internet and you're trying to exploit my
Speaker 1: children for your benefit. Um. And one really important point
Speaker 1: of the conversation with Brooke and Emily centered around this
Speaker 1: idea of emotional labor and women's work. They argued that
Speaker 1: fashion blogging is emotional labor, and what emotional labor refers
Speaker 1: to is essentially managing your public facing persona and bodily
Speaker 1: display in order to, i don't know, like kind of
Speaker 1: sell a good. You're sort of selling your the experience
Speaker 1: of being around you. Customer service, for instance, is a
Speaker 1: form of emotional labor. It's going above and be on
Speaker 1: so customer service might be answering the phone, uh to
Speaker 1: make sure your customer has what she needs. But then
Speaker 1: the emotional labor part of it comes in when it's
Speaker 1: like you gotta make sure to smile, you gotta make
Speaker 1: sure to look pretty, you gotta make sure to be pleasant.
Speaker 1: Stuff that's not really easily quantifiable, but that could make
Speaker 1: or break how successful you are at your job. And
Speaker 1: so obviously this ties into a lot of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today in terms of emotional labor tending to
Speaker 1: be gendered. It tends to be a term that is
Speaker 1: used to describe a lot of the lower wage work
Speaker 1: done by women in the service sector. And so in
Speaker 1: this regard, fashion blogging is absolutely about going above and
Speaker 1: beyond just taking a picture, writing a blog post, writing
Speaker 1: an Instagram caption. It's absolutely taking time out of your life,
Speaker 1: portraying yourself is so deliriously happy with this glass of
Speaker 1: wine you're sipping and your you know, your new boots
Speaker 1: or whatever. There is a degree of just having it
Speaker 1: bleed into the rest of your life. And we actually
Speaker 1: have two special guests on the podcast to talk more
Speaker 1: about that concept. To A and we're going to hear
Speaker 1: from them right after a quick break. Well, why don't
Speaker 1: we get to our conversation with Brooke and Emily so
Speaker 1: they can tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: hidden lives of fashion bloggers. I am Brooke Aaron Duffy.
Speaker 1: I am an assistant professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: I have a PhD in Communication from the University of
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania where we're at right now. UM and over the
Speaker 1: past few years, I've been studying gender, social media, and
Speaker 1: creative production and that's what led me into the topic
Speaker 1: of fashion bloggers in the labor that gets performed there. UM.
Speaker 1: I am Emily Hunt. I'm a PhD student at the
Speaker 1: Annamburg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, also
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, UM, and I do research on social media,
Speaker 1: consumer culture, UM and creative work. And I'm particularly interested
Speaker 1: in the fashion industry and fashion media. So I am
Speaker 1: interested in touching a little bit on how exactly you
Speaker 1: guys did get interested in fashion, What specifically led you
Speaker 1: to that? UM? Sure, Well, for me, uh, fashion has
Speaker 1: always been like an important part of my life. Actually,
Speaker 1: I grew up UM making and designing clothes for myself
Speaker 1: and I but I always thought of myself as a writer,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to work at magazines UM. And so
Speaker 1: after I graduated from college, I worked UM in magazines
Speaker 1: for a few years, some fashion magazines and some health
Speaker 1: related publications, and I was working at a really interesting
Speaker 1: time for the industry, probably the worst time for the
Speaker 1: industry and its history. It was during the recession, sort
Speaker 1: of like the instability of these legacy publications, and then
Speaker 1: UM the fashion bloggers that were really starting UM to
Speaker 1: explode at at the time, and UM seeing these young
Speaker 1: women basically making careers for themselves, UM I'm blogging really
Speaker 1: just became like the buzzword UM at that time. And
Speaker 1: I kind of thought to myself, like, I don't think
Speaker 1: this is UM necessarily for me to do personally, but
Speaker 1: I'm but what's going on is really uh interesting and
Speaker 1: UM wild. And so I decided to go back to
Speaker 1: school and kind of study these institutions UM and the
Speaker 1: culture UM on a broader scale. So while Emily was
Speaker 1: studying it from the inside, I was kind of looking
Speaker 1: at it from a holistic perspective on the outside. I
Speaker 1: was doing my dissertation work around the same time, and
Speaker 1: I was really interested in how the women's magazine industry
Speaker 1: was shifting in this moment where we're moving to digital
Speaker 1: and increasingly social media platforms. And so I was doing
Speaker 1: interviews with magazine producers, executives, and so forth, and the
Speaker 1: topic of fashion blogging kept coming up. And you know,
Speaker 1: the time, we were kind of seeing the end of
Speaker 1: the debate fashion bloggers versus editors and so forth. But
Speaker 1: but it was really reconfiguring the industry industry, the ways
Speaker 1: in which magazine professionals were thinking about their role in
Speaker 1: the larger fashion sector and how this is changing and
Speaker 1: adapting in response to these new entrants. And so that
Speaker 1: for me was you know, kind of sparked an interest
Speaker 1: in understanding what these new social media platforms meant, both
Speaker 1: for people inside the industry as well as those hoping
Speaker 1: to make a living through it. Now, before we get
Speaker 1: into the demographics of your study, that the broader group
Speaker 1: of people that you looked at for your research, I'm
Speaker 1: curious if there were any fashion bloggers in particular kind
Speaker 1: of during this time that sort of casually piqued both
Speaker 1: of your interests that you were especially drawn to or
Speaker 1: compelled by. M hmm. That's a good question. I think
Speaker 1: UM the man repeller for me was UM, a blog
Speaker 1: that I started reading really early on UM, right right
Speaker 1: soon after she launched, because she was a blogger who
Speaker 1: was able to get publicity extremely quickly. And I kind
Speaker 1: of started reading that blog and I and I have
Speaker 1: really followed it pretty closely over the last few years,
Speaker 1: just because I think UM that blog is an excellent
Speaker 1: case study UM for the changes that UM fashion blogging
Speaker 1: more broadly speaking, has experienced over the last few years.
Speaker 1: And UM that's probably the most interesting blog to me
Speaker 1: and has been for a while. And it's also interesting
Speaker 1: to think about kind of waves. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: about fashion blogging is this singular entity, but it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to think about in terms of the generations
Speaker 1: we've gone through. UM. So, the first generation, like CIRCU
Speaker 1: two thousand six or so, we saw kind of this
Speaker 1: rise of grassroots indie voices. We we saw the Brian
Speaker 1: Boys and and the Amy Songs and and Tabby and
Speaker 1: everyone was talking about this little, you know, twelve year
Speaker 1: old girl who's sitting next to Anna Wintour and UM.
Speaker 1: I think since then, it's it's just exploded so much
Speaker 1: that we've seen the rise of various niches and fashion blogs,
Speaker 1: but also we see a lot more similarity just because
Speaker 1: of the oversaturation in the marketplace. So, for the purposes
Speaker 1: and of your study, can you just tell our audience
Speaker 1: a little bit about who you looked at? Who who
Speaker 1: are your study participants? Sure? So we UM decided to
Speaker 1: look at the fashion blogs who are UM top ranked
Speaker 1: by the industry, and that basically means they tend to
Speaker 1: be ranked by their engagement, by the level of engagement
Speaker 1: that their audience has. So that basically means that UM,
Speaker 1: the audience is clicking on what they post UM and
Speaker 1: there's this sort of like measurable UM a way to
Speaker 1: measure their success basically. And so that we pulled the
Speaker 1: top thirty eight fashion blogs and it was going to
Speaker 1: be forty, but it ended up being thirty eight because
Speaker 1: we wanted to keep it to UM. The blogs that
Speaker 1: remained independent and two of the blogs that were in
Speaker 1: that top ranking had since spent purchased by UM like
Speaker 1: corporate blog networks UM, and so we removed them for
Speaker 1: from our sample. And so that's how we ended up
Speaker 1: with UM these top thirty eight blogs, and that was
Speaker 1: the you know, we we conducted a visual analysis of that.
Speaker 1: So we were going on Instagram, we were going on
Speaker 1: the blogs themselves to get a sense of how they
Speaker 1: present themselves on these different media um. And what was
Speaker 1: I think important for us was to understand both what
Speaker 1: bloggers were doing in terms of what they were posting,
Speaker 1: but also what they were saying in a sense of
Speaker 1: what was going on behind the scenes. UM. So this
Speaker 1: study itself was based on I think eight interviews, but
Speaker 1: over the past few years, Emily and I have together
Speaker 1: done more than fifty interviews with bloggers at various stages
Speaker 1: of their careers and and so forth. Well, so what
Speaker 1: was the overall driving purpose behind this study? What were
Speaker 1: you guys really hoping to learn and convey to readers. Well,
Speaker 1: I think what first piqued our interest, um was we
Speaker 1: were interested in what kind of messages these bloggers were
Speaker 1: constructing via their social media presences and um on the
Speaker 1: blogs themselves. Messages about what it means to do the
Speaker 1: kind of work that they do, UM, About what it
Speaker 1: means to be and and related to that is what
Speaker 1: it means to be like an entrepreneur, a female creative um.
Speaker 1: All these kinds of messages. And so we had some
Speaker 1: UM like hunches about what we might find UM, and
Speaker 1: so then we decided to just do UM, you know,
Speaker 1: a deep systematic analysis of the narratives that they were
Speaker 1: UM that they were constructing. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that really jumped out to me in your study was
Speaker 1: talking about how this relates to what you describe as
Speaker 1: the long history of gendered emotional labor. And I had
Speaker 1: just never thought about fashion blogging and even beauty vlogging
Speaker 1: and d I y and crafting in that way before,
Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what that means and how it relates
Speaker 1: to fashion blogging. Sure. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 1: that was so interesting and compelling about this project was
Speaker 1: the disparity between this kind of image of artful perfection
Speaker 1: that we see on the Instagram images, and I think
Speaker 1: so many of us compare us to the disparity between
Speaker 1: that and the work, the labor that goes into this.
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of discussions lately about the
Speaker 1: labor that people do online and the labor that goes
Speaker 1: into self presentation, but I think it's important to contextualize this.
Speaker 1: And in the early eighties, Arlely Hawkschild, who is a sociologist,
Speaker 1: did some more. She was studying flight attendants and other
Speaker 1: service workers and drew attention to the concealed labor they perform,
Speaker 1: you know, the the way we present ourselves and the
Speaker 1: work that gets involved in the the gendered notions of this.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's really interesting to see similar things
Speaker 1: among our serve among the people we were talking to
Speaker 1: during interviews, that there's so much that gets obscured in
Speaker 1: these images, the work of staging, the photos, of getting
Speaker 1: ready and and I think most importantly the act of
Speaker 1: promoting oneself, reaching out to one's networks, tweeting, Facebook, you know,
Speaker 1: actually responding to comments and so forth. And I don't
Speaker 1: think there's been given enough attention to the extent to
Speaker 1: which these various codes, you know, drive the production and
Speaker 1: drive the labor of the Instagram posting and blogging a general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think another thing about emotional labor as um.
Speaker 1: Arley hawks Child to Finance, and she's a she's an
Speaker 1: amazing sociologist and people might know her UM more like
Speaker 1: from her work about the second shift. She's also the
Speaker 1: sociologist who gave us that idea that UM women go
Speaker 1: to work, and then there's a second shift at home
Speaker 1: doing that kind of care work. But I think an
Speaker 1: important part about the emotional labor um that she theorizes
Speaker 1: is the also the imperative to create a certain emotional
Speaker 1: reaction in the people that you are facing. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a server at a restaurant has to manage UM because
Speaker 1: or her own emotions, but they also have to try
Speaker 1: to create an emotional feeling in the people that they're facing,
Speaker 1: like you know, feeling comfortable, having fun, whatever that might be.
Speaker 1: And we saw a lot of similarities with UM what
Speaker 1: the bloggers were doing, UM having to sort of interact
Speaker 1: with their audiences and UM cultivate UM an emotional feeling
Speaker 1: of fun or inclusiveness or community or stylishness or whatever
Speaker 1: that may be UM with their with our audiences. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the big elements of your study and things
Speaker 1: that we've already been talking about is this whole idea
Speaker 1: of the work being obscured. And I mean that's such
Speaker 1: a big point because I know when I look at
Speaker 1: some fashion blogs, your lifestyle blogs, you're just looking at
Speaker 1: these pictures like, oh my god, these people are so beautiful,
Speaker 1: their homes and their clothes are also gorgeous. You're not
Speaker 1: really thinking about, well, wait, how many times did they
Speaker 1: have to take that picture? What went into it? Did
Speaker 1: they even get to enjoy their vacation with their families?
Speaker 1: And so I would really love for you to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how much of that work actually
Speaker 1: does go into this whole looking natural thing, and like
Speaker 1: these women and these bloggers have it all, like how
Speaker 1: much is actually going on behind the scenes and what
Speaker 1: toll is it taking. So that's again where you know,
Speaker 1: we we found it so important to interview these women because,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, you know, we we look at these
Speaker 1: images on Instagram and you know, it's like the whole
Speaker 1: fear of missing out culture. It just looks like such
Speaker 1: a glitz and glamorous life and you know, hob nobbing
Speaker 1: with celebrities and traveling all around the world. And when
Speaker 1: we spoke with a lot of these women, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were grateful for their opportunities, but they also wanted
Speaker 1: to call attention to the fact that these are their
Speaker 1: full time jobs. Their full time jobs is presenting a
Speaker 1: certain image and so much of it is bound up
Speaker 1: with their their personal brand. And so it was it
Speaker 1: was really compelling to hear how much the idea of
Speaker 1: maintaining the brand, crafting and maintaining the brand in all
Speaker 1: capacities guided so much of their lives. And you know,
Speaker 1: we we have this sense of their professional and personal
Speaker 1: lives blending together. I think in in in such a
Speaker 1: interesting and an all inclusive way that you know, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we one woman is saying, you know, she's
Speaker 1: on her honeymoon and she feels like she has to
Speaker 1: take images to put these ups that they can be
Speaker 1: on Instagram. And another woman was saying, you know, like
Speaker 1: the rest of us, if I have my regular Cereo breakfast,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to go in aware. But if I
Speaker 1: have my eggs Benedict and my Mimosa, then I'm going
Speaker 1: to post this. And so so much about thinking how
Speaker 1: we want to craft this persona in order to post
Speaker 1: it online rather than you know, what we're actually enjoying
Speaker 1: in this particular moment. Yeah, and as far as how
Speaker 1: much work it takes, I it's pretty much all encompassing,
Speaker 1: is the answer that we got pretty much across the board. Um,
Speaker 1: but there is there is no real break and UM,
Speaker 1: and you know, even when you're on vacation or you're
Speaker 1: getting ready for bed or you know, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: these times that for many other people would be considered
Speaker 1: a private time. Um, you're never really off. I think
Speaker 1: constantly being on is the is the main imperative of
Speaker 1: the job. And this idea of always being on means
Speaker 1: that aspects of not just your personal life but those
Speaker 1: around you need to have a continual presence on your
Speaker 1: various social media channels. And so that means you know,
Speaker 1: showing showing our families and and you know, showing our
Speaker 1: pets and our homes and all these different spaces, and
Speaker 1: so it's really this kind of compulsion to maintain visibility
Speaker 1: and all senses of the word. Well, you guys talk
Speaker 1: about the idea also of having it all, and that
Speaker 1: maybe they're presenting sort of a new idea of the
Speaker 1: woman who has it all. Did you get a sense
Speaker 1: from these women that they were trying to convey that
Speaker 1: but like, oh, look, I can have it all or
Speaker 1: was that just sort of a side effect of like
Speaker 1: trying to capture every moment of their lives. I think
Speaker 1: there's a sense of having it all, but in kind
Speaker 1: of a different way than we're used him. We were
Speaker 1: thinking of the eighties and nineties, this more post feminist
Speaker 1: mode of having it all where it was really conflating
Speaker 1: the family and the workspace. And so we're looking at
Speaker 1: kind of a difference that we weren't looking at mommy bloggers.
Speaker 1: But the having it all was was having this career
Speaker 1: where we're doing what we love and it's okay that
Speaker 1: our person and professional lives fleed together. Um. But what
Speaker 1: makes it kind of interesting was this image of perfection
Speaker 1: also had these moments of seeming candor so presenting oneself
Speaker 1: is real or authentic or relatable with something that that
Speaker 1: kept coming up, But that too is constructed in a
Speaker 1: way that has an image. It's always constructed against something.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, having a sense of presenting what
Speaker 1: self is authentic in a way that it becomes bound
Speaker 1: up in the image itself. Do you think that audiences
Speaker 1: are becoming wise to that level of artifice? I mean,
Speaker 1: as I'm listening to you talking, it's making me think
Speaker 1: of the Instagram account, Soclity, Barbie Viral, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us know that there is
Speaker 1: a level of artifice presented in a lot of these
Speaker 1: fashion blogs and instagrams that we're seeing, But but do
Speaker 1: we really embrace that? I don't know, I'm wondering, like,
Speaker 1: what effect is this having on us? It's just the
Speaker 1: average average Christians in Caroline. UM. I guess that's kind
Speaker 1: of a hard question to answer because we didn't um
Speaker 1: study the audience in in this research. But that's definitely
Speaker 1: something that would be a great project going forward. I
Speaker 1: think that I don't know. My my sense is that,
Speaker 1: like you said, uh, people are more aware of and
Speaker 1: they uh maybe once we're I thought there is a
Speaker 1: lot of work and artifice and posing and things like
Speaker 1: that that go on behind the singings. And also I
Speaker 1: get the sense that people are more aware of the
Speaker 1: of the money required to be successful in fashion blogging.
Speaker 1: But that being said, because of this rhetoric um that
Speaker 1: persists that bloggers are just like us, they're regular women,
Speaker 1: and um, that kind of thing, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think that still um kind of blurs blurs the
Speaker 1: boundaries a little bit, and it doesn't make it clear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it faminely said, you know that this whole notion
Speaker 1: of presenting themselves as real or relatable. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's part of the image too. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things was kind of interesting was how these bloggers
Speaker 1: sought to kind of conceal markers of class or privilege.
Speaker 1: And so one of I don't know if this was
Speaker 1: in the study or just our separate project, um, but
Speaker 1: one of the women we interviewed said, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of more expensive things. You know, I
Speaker 1: have my Tory Birch brand, but I like to combine
Speaker 1: this with something from Old Navy because my audience will
Speaker 1: find this real or relatable. And so there was really
Speaker 1: the sense of against staying within one's crafted persona, which
Speaker 1: meant including these moments of candor and realness, but also
Speaker 1: being very very careful to make sure the audience doesn't
Speaker 1: call one out. So, you know that the sense of
Speaker 1: thinking about your audience much the same way that you know,
Speaker 1: media professionals have always thought about their audience. We see
Speaker 1: this same kind of attention to the readers, to the viewers,
Speaker 1: and of course to metrics that we've seen from mainstream
Speaker 1: media for for decades. Were the people you talk to
Speaker 1: very tired because I'm listening to your talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: having to make sure they pair the designer bag with
Speaker 1: the Old Navy shirt. Maybe UM and and keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on metrics. But when you're trying to not only
Speaker 1: present yourself as creative and spontaneous but also genuinely be
Speaker 1: creative and spontaneous, but also just constantly be worried about
Speaker 1: numbers and things like that, were these people just very,
Speaker 1: very tired. What kind of sense did you get from
Speaker 1: the women you talked to of sort of the cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis of this kind of work? M H Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's a range, and we can probably both
Speaker 1: speak to the different kinds of women that we interviewed. UM.
Speaker 1: I I've pretty much exclusively so far interviewed UM women
Speaker 1: who were doing this professionally. So they this was their blogging,
Speaker 1: was their source of income, They didn't have other jobs. UM,
Speaker 1: they were already kind of established in this in this field.
Speaker 1: And for them, I think they, I don't know if
Speaker 1: tired is the word. I think I think they work constantly,
Speaker 1: but they at the same time, they felt, UM, sort
Speaker 1: of exhilarated by the opportunity of the many opportunities that
Speaker 1: they've been able to have, and they constantly said that
Speaker 1: they were so they felt very grateful and lucky UM
Speaker 1: that they were able to do this kind of work,
Speaker 1: which that can be indicative of a whole other kind
Speaker 1: of um, emotional, uh labor, I guess. But um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think the constant work is just a
Speaker 1: fact of of life for them. Yeah. Absolutely, um, And
Speaker 1: Assembly said, you know, I've studied professional bloggers, but I've
Speaker 1: also been working on a project where I'm studying blogging aspirants,
Speaker 1: creative aspirants, and those who are hoping to turn this
Speaker 1: into a profession. And I got the sense that, you know,
Speaker 1: the professionals, like Emily said, did have a lot of gratitude.
Speaker 1: But I mean it was incredible the nature and extent
Speaker 1: of work. I mean this, this is kind of all
Speaker 1: encompassing these various aspects of one's lives. And I think
Speaker 1: we as readers of these blogs have a sense that,
Speaker 1: you know, this myth of overnight success. And the ones
Speaker 1: who had gone pro that I spoke with had been
Speaker 1: working full time and doing this part time for four
Speaker 1: and five years until they had enough income that they
Speaker 1: were actually able to do this as a living. And
Speaker 1: so for me, it really helped to draw attention to
Speaker 1: the time, the commitment, the labor that goes into this.
Speaker 1: Before you know, someone can quote unquote do what they
Speaker 1: love and get paid. Now, this wasn't something directly addressed
Speaker 1: in the study, but as I was reading it and
Speaker 1: listening to you all talk right now, UM, I'm really
Speaker 1: curious to get your sense of whether there is some
Speaker 1: kind of male digital creative analog to this whole fashion
Speaker 1: blogging space, because when I hear about this unpaid labor
Speaker 1: that's going on, the blending of professional and personal, the gratitude,
Speaker 1: the sense of feeling so lucky to have the job
Speaker 1: that you do, that we that we do read about
Speaker 1: very often when we think about, you know, women and work,
Speaker 1: And I'm just wondering if there's a space where guys
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of this too, in the digital
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial space. So um, you know, I think one of
Speaker 1: the obvious comparisons that I've heard is is sports blogs
Speaker 1: and my colleagues TC core again and Kathleen Coon have
Speaker 1: done some really interesting work on the hope labor of
Speaker 1: sports blogs and drawing attention to the the unpaid labor
Speaker 1: that these individuals do, and I think there are definitely
Speaker 1: some overlaps. But what I think it's so interesting about
Speaker 1: the fashion blogger set is the feminized nature the fact
Speaker 1: that this does drawn kind of this gendered history of
Speaker 1: emotional labor, and you know, you think about what fashion
Speaker 1: and beauty bloggers are doing, it's very much about the body,
Speaker 1: it's about the physique, it's it's about these very gendered
Speaker 1: components about you know, how to be a female. And so,
Speaker 1: in one sense, um, that's kind of what compelled us
Speaker 1: to do this because when we think of when we
Speaker 1: think of entrepreneurialism or I mean, I guess discourse is
Speaker 1: about entrepreneurialism really much focused on this kind of masculine set.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a very very difficult culture for
Speaker 1: women to break into because of kind of the institutional
Speaker 1: sexism that's pretty rampant in the text scene. Um, so
Speaker 1: we have this masculine notion of entrepreneurialism, and then we
Speaker 1: have these women who are succeeding in careers that capitalize
Speaker 1: on these notions of femininity, whether it's beauty, there it's motherhood,
Speaker 1: whether it's domesticity. And so what's interesting about the women
Speaker 1: that we were focusing on is they kind of combine
Speaker 1: these these two realms and some really interesting ways that
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of ways it is it
Speaker 1: remains still very gendered, and I think what we see
Speaker 1: with fashion bloggers may kind of presage larger trends in
Speaker 1: this whole social media environment. So I think there's definitely
Speaker 1: comparisons between something masculine like sports blogging, but I don't
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see the same enactments of emotional labor
Speaker 1: and so forth. Well, you guys mentioned diversity. What role
Speaker 1: does fashion blogger diversity or lack thereof, I guess play
Speaker 1: in those broader conversations and trends around fashion and beauty.
Speaker 1: Would you say, well, it's interesting because fashion blogging, UM,
Speaker 1: it has always sort of been UM held up as
Speaker 1: like this example of democratic participation in the fashion industry UM.
Speaker 1: And and you know, any one, it's open to all
Speaker 1: that anyone with any Internet connection can participate that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And I wouldn't go so far as to
Speaker 1: say that is totally false, because there are in some
Speaker 1: ways fashion blogging has opened up the fashion industry UM.
Speaker 1: But it's no secret that the fashion industry UM has
Speaker 1: uh major issues with UM with diversity and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in runway shows and magazine covers and these major
Speaker 1: advertising campaigns and blogging. When we you know, when we
Speaker 1: looked at the top most influential bloggers, they really weren't
Speaker 1: any different. And that was something that um, I think
Speaker 1: surprises us a little bit. Um that you know, out
Speaker 1: of our thirty eight women and our sample, I think
Speaker 1: only three of them were non white. And there were
Speaker 1: also a lot of markers of cultural and economic you know,
Speaker 1: pre existing cultural and especially economic capital that that these
Speaker 1: women had prior to blogging. So the people who are
Speaker 1: at the top um aren't as diverse as um as
Speaker 1: you might think, judging from the rhetoric that surrounds fashion blogging. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of you know, the top versus the bottom, what
Speaker 1: does what does that income look like? I see you've
Speaker 1: got your top fashion bloggers and people on Instagram. How
Speaker 1: much can they typically expect to bring in and over
Speaker 1: the course of a year versus somebody who's maybe more
Speaker 1: of a grassroots level blogger. M hm um. So I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was about a year ago of a
Speaker 1: woman from Italy. Her name is Carre Rainy and she
Speaker 1: is the blonde salad um and it came out I
Speaker 1: think Harvard Business School did a case study with her
Speaker 1: and found that she's making a staggering eight million dollars
Speaker 1: this year, and within a day I had a bunch
Speaker 1: of people sending me emails and sharing the story because
Speaker 1: you know, look at this, this shi Vug kind of
Speaker 1: rose to the top and it's making eight million. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's so important to stress that
Speaker 1: that is that it's an exception. It's such an exception,
Speaker 1: because I mean, this is a woman, she's she's strikingly beautiful,
Speaker 1: she has background in fashion, she went to an Italian
Speaker 1: fashion school, she's been doing it for years, and so
Speaker 1: you know, you see someone like that versus the annual
Speaker 1: salaries of the women were we spoke with, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to get a sense of how much people
Speaker 1: are making. It was it was not something that that
Speaker 1: people want to share. But like I said, a lot
Speaker 1: of people said they hadn't been doing this for four
Speaker 1: or five years before they were actually able to make
Speaker 1: the jump to full time. And so I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, um, you know, one woman said
Speaker 1: I'm making next to nothing from her affiliate links and
Speaker 1: so forth, So it's it's such a huge disparity. Um.
Speaker 1: Side note, I wish you two could have seen the
Speaker 1: look on Caroline Space when you said eight million dollar.
Speaker 1: I can imagine, I said, I mentioned that in class
Speaker 1: yesterday and had the same response, UM, yeah, and that
Speaker 1: it's interesting because I've interviewed, Like Brooks said, bloggers are
Speaker 1: really reluctant to give, you know, exact numbers, so it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to get an exact sense. But um,
Speaker 1: from the talking around the issue that we've done, UM,
Speaker 1: there are people, there are bloggers out there who maybe
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even expect would be making huge sums of
Speaker 1: money and they're actually bringing in, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars every year. UM. So it's really arranged,
Speaker 1: and it's really wholly dependent on the audience that you're
Speaker 1: able to cultivate for yourself. Are you able to get
Speaker 1: your numbers up? Um, both in numbers of followers and
Speaker 1: in those engagement metrics, which are pretty much the lifeblood
Speaker 1: of the industry. It's pretty much that's how you get
Speaker 1: your branding deals and um, you know, that's how you
Speaker 1: make money from affiliate links and all of that. You know,
Speaker 1: And so we're thinking, how much does the blogger can
Speaker 1: I give it this this story of someone making eight
Speaker 1: million But but what's also really important to point out
Speaker 1: is blogging is only a portion and sometimes a small
Speaker 1: portion of their actual income. And one young woman I interviewed,
Speaker 1: the name was Jesse, and she was telling me that,
Speaker 1: you know, blogger as a title is a bit of
Speaker 1: a misnomer. She said, I'm more like a full time
Speaker 1: freelancer because she does speaking events, she goes on TV
Speaker 1: for various promotions, she's doing different initiatives. She still does
Speaker 1: freelancing for mainstream publications that she had a connection with
Speaker 1: UM and her earlier career. So even when we say, okay,
Speaker 1: well these people are making you know, whatever salary it
Speaker 1: is from their blogging career, I mean that's that's a
Speaker 1: small portion of this really kind of complicated career field
Speaker 1: where they are holding several jobs. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of indicative of I guess what it was
Speaker 1: called a few years ago, the slash economy where everyone
Speaker 1: has you know, two or more positions where they're kind
Speaker 1: of doing fun and everyone has a side hustle hustle exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that. Yeah, the title of entrepreneur is really
Speaker 1: something that a lot of the boggers that we interviewed
Speaker 1: hold onto UM. They don't necessarily and they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think of themselves. UM, not everybody, but many of them
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think of themselves as bloggers. They think of
Speaker 1: themselves as entrepreneurs. They have they have a blog, and
Speaker 1: then they also do a bunch of other things related
Speaker 1: to that blog. So how is that particular type of
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship shaped by what you refer to as sort of
Speaker 1: oversaturation earlier in the episode, um, in terms of more
Speaker 1: and more people getting into the game. So, I think
Speaker 1: we're at a point where it's really really hard to
Speaker 1: break into this. I mean, it's it's been difficult for
Speaker 1: some time, and I think because of the shift from
Speaker 1: kind of the first wave to the second wave or
Speaker 1: the third wave or wherever we want to say we're
Speaker 1: at in the in the blog sphere, there are so
Speaker 1: many people who are kind of following this pipe dream
Speaker 1: of making a living doing what I love and what
Speaker 1: it means is not just as a difficult to break in,
Speaker 1: but it's even harder for people who have been doing
Speaker 1: this for years and years to generate the same kind
Speaker 1: of income they once did. Um. One young woman I
Speaker 1: spoke with so that she had been doing this for
Speaker 1: I think about six or seven years, and she said
Speaker 1: December was a really hard month for her, and you know,
Speaker 1: I asked what was going on, and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it is because there are
Speaker 1: so many bloggers out there who are willing to work
Speaker 1: for free. And she said, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: get a sense that they already have existing income so
Speaker 1: they can purchase their own clothes rather than have them
Speaker 1: gifted to them, and so forth, and and so we
Speaker 1: see that this oversaturated market is not just making it
Speaker 1: difficult for new entrants, but it's it's really crowding out
Speaker 1: of a lot of people, especially when we have those
Speaker 1: that can actually afford to work for free. I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't your everyday person who can who can sustain
Speaker 1: this lifestyle without some kind of existing form of capital
Speaker 1: or something to someone someone to bankroll them. So, knowing
Speaker 1: what you know, now, what would you say would be
Speaker 1: the best case version of fashion blogging an empire with
Speaker 1: a staff, just doing it on the side and being
Speaker 1: a legitimate passion project that you do when you have time.
Speaker 1: I think for me, I mean this is something that
Speaker 1: I talk about with some of my undergraduates as well.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's both important but difficult to make
Speaker 1: sure they are fairly compensated. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I find so problematic is because the
Speaker 1: market is so oversaturated, brands essentially expect people to work
Speaker 1: for free. And I've had so many women say, you know,
Speaker 1: brands will send me things for for free and say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, just do us a solid and do free promotion.
Speaker 1: But to draw attention to the fact that what they're
Speaker 1: doing does involve an incredible amount of work and it
Speaker 1: should be compensated like like any other form of work.
Speaker 1: And so I think realizing that and finding places to
Speaker 1: UM join networks and affiliate themselves with more institutional forms
Speaker 1: of support to ensure there is a way to get
Speaker 1: fairly compensated and not just be doing the same, you know,
Speaker 1: buying into this work for exposure narrative that seems to
Speaker 1: sustain so much of the contemporary work economy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say that blogging UM seems to be it's kind
Speaker 1: of starting to be thought of as you know, the
Speaker 1: new way into the industry where you know, the fashion
Speaker 1: industry and UM, the magazine industry and things like that.
Speaker 1: They've kind of they've trafficked in unpaid internships for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and UM and unpaid internships have gotten
Speaker 1: a lot more attention over the last few years about
Speaker 1: how they can be unfair, they can be expletive all
Speaker 1: these things. UM and blogging has the potential to also
Speaker 1: go down that route, and so I think, yeah, like
Speaker 1: Brooks said, the important thing is to ensure that you're
Speaker 1: being fairly compensated for the work that you do. And
Speaker 1: that's tough. That's hard for you know, people, especially women
Speaker 1: who are maybe late teens, early twenties, mid twenties, they're
Speaker 1: trying to get um, you know, build their career as
Speaker 1: it can be hard to kind of stand up and
Speaker 1: say no, I deserve to be paid. But that would
Speaker 1: that would be the ideal. Well, what other types of
Speaker 1: advice do you have for for young women or girls,
Speaker 1: or or even more established women who are interested in
Speaker 1: getting into this line of work Now that we're past
Speaker 1: the recession and we're into a point where it's there's
Speaker 1: questions about over saturation, do you have any other advice
Speaker 1: for people like this? I think just important to kind
Speaker 1: of dispel the myth that this is this very easy
Speaker 1: career and also to dispel the myth that this is
Speaker 1: this job that that can you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an overnight success. I think that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that's that's that I've discovered by speaking with these women
Speaker 1: is it's an incredible amount of work. Is we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: you know, for the past half hour or so, um,
Speaker 1: but it's not just the work we see on the screen,
Speaker 1: it's the work we see behind the screens, and kind
Speaker 1: of how that takes a toll in terms of this
Speaker 1: this blurring of personal and professional lives, which I think
Speaker 1: can be difficult for for women in general. And so
Speaker 1: I think to kind of be aware of what this
Speaker 1: career field involved, because I mean that's that's something that
Speaker 1: Emily and I have talked about more broadly, is you know,
Speaker 1: the creative industries, whether it's fashion, whether it's art, whether
Speaker 1: it's magazine journalism, and of course fashion blogging are kind
Speaker 1: of idealizes these wonderful careers because of the flexibility and
Speaker 1: freedom and so forth. But there's a lot of downsides
Speaker 1: to this careers, um, you know, beyond just the labor involved,
Speaker 1: but independent work essentially means you don't have the institutional structure,
Speaker 1: so you don't have the benefits. You don't have the
Speaker 1: pay training, and so it's a huge train off, a
Speaker 1: huge trade off to to pursue these kind of individualized
Speaker 1: things because the so called freedom you're getting is is
Speaker 1: really giving up any sense of long term stability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and then no, it's the the fact that you said, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're passed a recession that kind of like
Speaker 1: ring struck a chord with me, I guess because while
Speaker 1: we aren't in the depths of it um anymore, of course,
Speaker 1: the after effects are still still very much exists. And um,
Speaker 1: I think that is important for UM, young people who
Speaker 1: are looking to enter the industry to know which is
Speaker 1: UM that those um, you know, institutionalized support systems that
Speaker 1: Brooke mentioned are UM disappearing have disappeared to a large
Speaker 1: extent UM and UM yeah that having that sort of
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial um mentality is is a requirement, I think, UM yeah,
Speaker 1: So just just knowing that as important. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much to Brook, Aaron Deffie, and Emily Hunt for
Speaker 1: speaking with us today about this kind of unexpectedly deep
Speaker 1: and super academic topic that is fashion blogging. I had
Speaker 1: no idea until really diving into their study and diving
Speaker 1: into this conversation with them, all of the different aspects
Speaker 1: about this very specific type of online labor basically, and
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing evolves
Speaker 1: in real time as we're interacting with our Instagram feeds
Speaker 1: that we may or may not hate follow um because
Speaker 1: you do have outlets like Refinery twenty nine that are
Speaker 1: already reporting on the death of the Golden age of
Speaker 1: fashion blogging UM. And it'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 1: as those brands continue to be more selective about how
Speaker 1: much you're going to give influence, answers and the kind
Speaker 1: of relationships they're willing to forge because you have so
Speaker 1: many up and comers who might be willing to do
Speaker 1: more for less, Like what's going to happen to these
Speaker 1: man Repellor esque empires which I'm sure Leandra is going
Speaker 1: to be fined, same with Blonde Salad, etcetera. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see too how many of maybe
Speaker 1: the middle tier or lower tier fashion blogs just essentially
Speaker 1: become advertisements purely advertisements. I mean, yes, obviously the top
Speaker 1: tier people are wearing designer goods, wearing labels that you
Speaker 1: know and that you would go out and buy if
Speaker 1: you had, you know, a million dollars for a person
Speaker 1: a pair of shoes. But they aren't the ones who
Speaker 1: are doing things like featuring co Tex products or whatever
Speaker 1: other name brand uh drug store items in their posts.
Speaker 1: So I do wonder if those sort of bottom of
Speaker 1: the heap fashion bloggers are just going to become nothing
Speaker 1: but the new advertising. Well, now, we've really love to
Speaker 1: hear from you listeners about all your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: whole fashion blogging world. Perhaps you are a fashion or
Speaker 1: lifestyle blogger, or photographer, or simply enjoy following all of
Speaker 1: these aspirational instagrams. Let us know all of your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
Speaker 1: email address. You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of messages to share with you. And we come right
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Speaker 1: and now back to the show. Well, I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Courtney. She says, I'm a relatively recent
Speaker 1: college grad from a video production program. I specialized in
Speaker 1: post production, specifically editing in VFX. Your last episode had
Speaker 1: me getting all sorts of emotional on my drive home
Speaker 1: from work. I realized VFX might seem like an odd
Speaker 1: thing to get emotional over, but it was so reassuring
Speaker 1: to hear that all the things I felt while studying
Speaker 1: in my program weren't ridiculous, considering I only had one
Speaker 1: other girl in most of my classes with me and
Speaker 1: we didn't really talk much. In my program as a whole,
Speaker 1: there were maybe four women, and in most of my
Speaker 1: three D animation, compositing, et cetera classes, there was really
Speaker 1: only the previously mentioned one other girl. I feel like
Speaker 1: I was lucky because one of my primary male professors
Speaker 1: was incredibly encouraging to us ladies and very much wanted
Speaker 1: me to move on into the industry, but I knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to happen. Around the start of my
Speaker 1: third year, most of the professors made it very clear
Speaker 1: that unless we, as professionals in the film industry were
Speaker 1: willing to dedicate insane amounts of time to our careers,
Speaker 1: we would absolutely not make it. And he wasn't being dramatic,
Speaker 1: It's true. I felt like the least I could do
Speaker 1: by the time I was having doubts was to complete
Speaker 1: my program, and I graduated summa cum laude in my class.
Speaker 1: I then proceeded to drop my dreams of getting into
Speaker 1: film and VFX professionally and get a steady job in
Speaker 1: a completely unrelated field that paid my bills and crazy
Speaker 1: amounts of student debt. I knew that one day I
Speaker 1: wanted to start a family, and that it just wasn't
Speaker 1: going to happen considering mine and my fiancy's financial status.
Speaker 1: It's a huge bummer because honestly, most of the guys
Speaker 1: I went to school with were pretty cool, but there
Speaker 1: was just this constant feeling of not belonging, like I'd
Speaker 1: barged into a frat party and the guys they were
Speaker 1: totally digging the female company, but not in a professional way.
Speaker 1: That feeling for four plus years, plus the doubts that
Speaker 1: I could juggle a family life and insane amounts of
Speaker 1: time at work just made me drop it. After graduating,
Speaker 1: I've always felt badly about this, like I just gave
Speaker 1: up because no doubt I could have made a career
Speaker 1: out of it. I guess mental health and a want
Speaker 1: for a family trumps those dreams, which is a really
Speaker 1: crummy situation for a lady to be put in. That's
Speaker 1: definitely the case for women in many fields of work. Anyway,
Speaker 1: thank you for shining some light on an issue a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't really think much of and also
Speaker 1: for tuting the SFX VFX horn. So many people don't
Speaker 1: realize the crazy amounts of work and skill would go
Speaker 1: into it and how widely used it is in most
Speaker 1: visual media. You guys rock and your podcast gives me
Speaker 1: life on my super dull, super long commute to and
Speaker 1: from work. Well, thank you, Courtney. Well, I've got a
Speaker 1: letter here from Tricia, and she writes, I listened to
Speaker 1: your episode on the visual effects gender gap and was
Speaker 1: so pleased you covered it. I'm in a different field, however,
Speaker 1: I could relate strongly with many of the points made.
Speaker 1: I work as a designer in the advertising industry and
Speaker 1: I'm going to school for my m f A and
Speaker 1: game development. Both are fields that are mainly male centric.
Speaker 1: In fact, in regard to my video game classes, it's
Speaker 1: not unusual if I'm one of the few or only girl.
Speaker 1: There are sometimes gaps between straight males and everyone else.
Speaker 1: Seems to be predominant in every creative field. Men are
Speaker 1: creative because they possess some sort of other worldly inspiration
Speaker 1: and intelligence. Meanwhile, women are creative because their emotional and
Speaker 1: touchy feeling. The gap of how society views creativity among genders.
Speaker 1: Probably goes back to the age of fine art, where
Speaker 1: male artists take the center stage because it was viewed
Speaker 1: as a trade craft and women, for the most part,
Speaker 1: couldn't work in those times. I think it's always important
Speaker 1: to talk about inequality struggles among creative fields because we
Speaker 1: play a much more direct role in the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: and have a responsibility at changing the messages we put
Speaker 1: out into the masses. Anyway, I enjoy listening to the
Speaker 1: both of you and look forward to the next one.
Speaker 1: So thanks Tricia, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
Speaker 1: email address and for links to all of our social
Speaker 1: media as well as all of our videos, blogs and podcasts,
Speaker 1: including this one. With links. To learn more about Brooke
Speaker 1: and Emily's research, head on over to stuff Mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You dot com for moral thiss and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.