Women Entrepreneurs as Vloggers: Turkish Beauty YouTubers in the Context of Simulative Labor

Abstract

Vloggers and content producers have become famous by being active on platforms, such as YouTube and Instagram, which are essential components and mainstays of today’s internet usage practices. In this context, YouTubers and content producers have become the most striking figures of virtual media in recent years, while beauty phenomena reach many followers and influence large audiences. With these aspects, the phenomena become the subjects of women’s entrepreneurship activities and form a new type of virtual/digital entrepreneurship. On the other hand, the labor exerted by the phenomena while applying different practices to aestheticize the body in their videos can be conceptualized as “simulative labor.” Based on this argument, this research aims to analyze the way of constructing simulative labor in the activities of beauty vloggers as virtual female entrepreneurs. In the context of the study, the videos of Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic, two of the beauty phenomena with the highest number of followers in Turkey, were subjected to content analysis within the scope of the qualitative research method. The main finding of the research is that both entrepreneurial beauty phenomena have become icons by performing simulative labor. However, the female identities represented by the icons produce simulations that differ significantly from each other.

1. Introduction

Castells [1] states that today is a network society and argues that in this type of society, internet technologies shape life and are shaped by life, and create new communication styles. This fact leads to the formation of an Internet Galaxy, which he describes as “a new world of communication” [1]. While the dramatic effect of digitalization on the economy has led to the emergence of the “digital economy” concept [2] in this phenomenon of global capitalism, there is an abundance of digital information/digital meta, being an essential tool for analyzing social media [3]. The types of labor are also transforming, and new income-generating activities have the potential to provide high income to their performers. These activities, including YouTube and Instagram influencing, which have emerged with the rise in social media usage since the 2000s, are becoming increasingly popular. Moreover, YouTube vlogging has become an online autobiography where people build their identities. In this context, vloggers periodically share their daily lives with their followers [4]. Such practices based on individual commodification and representation intersect with the notion of “spectacle” focused on by Debord [5], who introduced the concept of “society of the spectacle.” This intersection creates new forms of work and categories of labor. In conjunction with these developments, academics began to question whether the practices mentioned are professions or have the nature of labor. Thus, social media has started to be studied by many different disciplines today [6].

Adapting the female body to patriarchal capitalist ideals, one of the essential components of the consumer society”s functioning, has increased the interest in vlogs organized around beauty. Thus, videos shared by many amateur women on virtual channels, based on practices that aestheticize the female body, have become gradually popular. As a result of this process, while some women turned into beauty phenomena and met with a large audience, the integrated structure of consumption and production shapes women vloggers’ activities. This research argues that income-generating activities, considered a form of labor and realized through social media, are described as “simulative labor” with a Baudrillardian [7] perspective, asserting that vloggers’ activities are based on simulation. In parallel with this, it aims to analyze how hierarchical relations between women are reproduced and how different women’s identities are constructed through simulative labor. The literature has limited discussions on the relationship between Baudrillard’s simulation theory and social media. However, his theory can provide a rich analytical framework for analyzing vloggers. In light of this argument, the research has the potential to be a pioneer as it makes a contribution to the literature on the conceptualization of entrepreneurial labor of beauty phenomena based on Baudrillard’s theory. Moreover, the research will question the allegation put forward by third and fourth-wave feminist researchers that consciousness and initiative in beauty practices have functionality in terms of women’s liberation.

The paper is organized as follows: First, the study will analyze labor and virtual culture in the simulation era. These discussions will implement a theoretical framework around visuality, visions, micro-celebrities, simulations, and simulative labor. In the field research part of the study, after introducing methodology, the research findings obtained by watching and subjecting to content analysis of the videos of Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic within the context of the qualitative research method will be presented. The following chapters will include findings on the relations between simulation and iconization, the dilemma of specialization and non-specialization, the death of sisterhood, and the enjoyment of iconization.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 The new virtual culture in the simulation age

The technological part of the internet draws the boundaries of human behavior and is shaped by the social aspect of the internet, based on human relations. Thus, the internet encompasses the technological and social subsystems that make up a techno-social system [8]. Visuality and spectacle are the essential elements that structure the internet culture and the global patriarchal capitalism of our age. In this sense, it is not a coincidence that Debord [5] identifies today’s world with the “society of the spectacle” and Han [9], with the concept of the “society of exhibition.” Hence, the virtual technology culture of global capitalism has the character of spreading, massifying, accelerating, and fluidizing the visual more and more. Social networking sites that create network-based communities where the development and evolution process continues [10] are intensified by visual forms supported by technology.

YouTube is a distinctive part of the visual internet culture. In partnership with Google, it is a popular social media application many users prefer [10]. It is increasingly adopting a television broadcast-like structure rather than social networks or group interaction [11]. YouTube and YouTubers’ popularity originated from the recent transformation in the internet economy that went through a crisis in 2000. Although finance capital management has increased the market value of many internet companies, it has yet to reach profitability. This situation has resulted in the bankruptcy of many internet companies. Discussions about Web 2.0 and social media being new and different were intended to persuade investors to invest in internet companies after this crisis. Therefore, Web 2.0 and social media emerged as ideological tools to overcome the crisis and ensure the internet economy’s capital accumulation [8]. The argument that Web 2.0 technologies will reinforce a participatory culture has also become popular. This concept often used to indicate the participation of users, viewers, consumers, and fans in creating culture and content can be exemplified by coediting an article on Wikipedia, uploading a video to YouTube, or sharing short messages on Twitter. The participatory culture model is the opposite of the broadcasting model, based on mass media, such as newspapers, radio, and television, where there is one sender and many receivers [8]. Based on the fact that users and viewers can actively produce the culture themselves, some scholars state that this process has made culture and society more democratic. However, according to Fuchs, this argument needs to be questioned. An internet environment dominated by companies that accumulate capital by exploiting and commodifying users is far from providing participatory democracy. The cultural meanings inherent in such an internet structure cannot express participation [8].

One of the concepts that started to be discussed as a result of these developments was platform capitalism. This concept is functional to analyze the “platform” defined by a combination of socio-technical and capitalist business practices. The platform is not just a manifestation of transformations in the relations and structures of contemporary capitalism. It should also be seen “as a discrete mode of socio-technical intermediary and capitalist business arrangement” [12]. In social media platforms, many strategies to turn leisure labor into income are followed, transforming cultural capital (taste) and social capital, including friends, admirers, followers, and members, into economic capital [13]. Thus, research on categories such as Instagram influencing, being a YouTuber, and blogging has revealed that creating social media content is a form of labor. The digital labor debate has also emerged within the scope of critical media and communication studies with the rise of social media. This discussion analyzes unpaid user labor required for capital accumulation [8]. “Especially used for social media activities on for-profit platforms” [8], digital labor “is labor that produces information through digital media” [2]. Some studies have found that this form of labor, although new, has similarities to the labor categories inherent in older forms of the media and culture industries [14].

In its early days, the amateur nature of the videos, rather than being daily, mundane, or newsworthy entertaining, was the principal and distinctive characteristic of YouTube [15]. Encouraging people to constantly make their broadcasts, present their representations and commodify themselves, YouTube accelerates the process of becoming famous on the internet [11]. In this process, the internet started to create celebrities as an alternative to mass media, such as television and cinema [8]. As it became popular, vloggers became famous, gaining many followers on other social media platforms, publishing books, and starring in television series [13]. Today, many YouTubers have YouTube pages and channels and release music albums, act in movies and commercials, make their movies, and participate in television programs and even award ceremonies [16].

Activities such as content production on the internet or being a YouTuber gradually have become so profitable that the economic boom created by the income generated by these activities is called “wanghong jingji” (internet celebrity economy) in Chinese [17]. It is even claimed that internet celebrities and influencers create a new class. This development in social media is nourished by platform logic and visibility labor [18]. The emergence of the concept of fame labor, defined as emotional labor for the pressure of conforming to the micro-celebrity culture [19] reveals the significance of micro-celebrities in the new capitalism. Being a social reality that emerges in such a context, micro-celebrity [8], defined as the mentality and practices focusing on the private life of the micro-celebrity [20], incorporates strategies in which privacy and originality are the main components [11]. Micro-celebrity is a perception of reality that expresses the narratives and privacy of micro-celebrities in an accessible way [20]. The fact that privacy is such a foundation for micro-celebrity coincides with the argument in Bauman and Lyon’s [21] analysis of social media that they emphasize the fluid character of today’s surveillance practices and that privacy is violated by consent. It is possible to consider the relationship between micro-celebrity and privacy within Han’s [9] conceptualization of the “exhibitionist society.” The characteristics of the exhibitionist society are that each subject is “its advertising object,” everything is measured by exhibition value, and everything is turned out, exposed, bared, stripped, and exposed [9]. On the other hand, in the context of fluid surveillance, where the characteristics of panopticism have disappeared, Bauman and Lyon assert that today’s prisoners, unlike the prisoners in the panopticon, violate their privacy voluntarily via social media [21]. In the case of a YouTuber, this “consent violation” gains an exchange value and turns into an income-generating activity. On the other hand, the concept of “subcultural micro-celebrity” is suggested to define the concept and practices of vloggers called “micro-celebrity” [11]. In this framework, YouTube, which is increasingly commercialized, creates a culture that affects the individual representation of vloggers [11]. Hence, the internet makes its subculture, and simulative labor composes an essential pillar in this formation.

Media and popular culture are essential in disseminating myths and discourses about the positive aspects of careers shaped online [22]. Turned into a luxury career option, being a YouTuber offers many people a space of freedom with advantages, such as the comfort of working at home, the absence of long working hours, or the opportunity to work without being tied to an employer [23]. Internet celebrities also spread several myths about their existence and careers by “constructing their work as a mixture of pleasure, authentic self-expression, and autonomy.” This situation allows them to hide the negative features of creative labor and create images with the quality of “model subject” [22]. Indeed, some scholars argue that YouTube creators are alienated from their jobs because of their exploitation by YouTube. For instance, tools, such as cameras, sound recorders, and computers, used by content creators are not provided by YouTube. Although creators can make videos voluntarily without coercion, there is no guarantee that many viewers will watch every video. Indeed, the fact that only a few viewers watch many YouTube channels causes content creators to be unable to invite advertisers and not earn income through their videos [2]. Some approaches also emphasize the gap between the idealization of the social media entrepreneurship career and the precarious labor in the digital economy [22]. For example, a study revealed that experiencing unpredictable working conditions, platformed creative workers follow strategies to increase their likes, views, favorites, and shares to eliminate the threat of being invisible [14]. Although contradicting the fact that YouTube facilitates collaboration between other creators, content creators are also alienated from other people. Since the spirit of capitalism is based on individual competition, cooperation between content producers is far from the intention of building class solidarity [2].

2.2 A new form of women entrepreneurship and labor: beauty vlogging

Women’s entrepreneurship has historically been considered a remedy for the increasing feminization of poverty and unemployment, with a gender-sensitive development perspective. Since the 1980s, women’s entrepreneurship has started to be promoted by organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union, as a primary means of combating women’s poverty and unemployment. In addition, women’s entrepreneurship has become the focus of attention around the world, as it has the potential to enable women to overcome patriarchal barriers and participate in economic life [24]. Instead of being in paid employment, women’s entrepreneurship activities are considered a more accessible goal in promoting gender equality [25]. In developing countries, there is a social structure, where society does not readily accept the role of women as family supporters due to the gender roles that are sometimes profoundly embraced even by women themselves. Although some women can become entrepreneurs by combating these factors that hinder their entrepreneurial activities, they are still expected to fulfill their household obligations, creating a severe work–family conflict [26]. Therefore, policies encouraging entrepreneurship are the most effective means of preventing women’s unemployment and poverty in developing countries [27].

Women’s entrepreneurship activities, shaped within the framework of today’s internet world through practices, such as being YouTubers or influencers, have differed considerably from the origin of women’s entrepreneurship. This new type of female entrepreneurship is based on the integration of women into virtual entrepreneurship, which provides the opportunity to get income. Like other internet celebrities, beauty vloggers have become part of virtual culture and entrepreneurs [17].

Women vloggers’ activities are highly embedded in the visual internet culture. In analyzing the role of visuality in capitalism and gender in virtual culture, it may be appropriate to focus on “seeing” and “being seen” as starting points. In this context, Han [9], who speaks of “the compulsion for display that hands everything over to visibility,” says that “value accrues only insofar as objects are seen.” By associating his analysis of being seen with capitalism and Marx’s theory of value, he constructs the concept of “exhibition value,” which he describes as peculiar to the most advanced level of capitalism. Han associates the role of social media in this framework with Facebook. Accordingly, the age of Facebook reduces the human face, characterized by its exhibition value, to a “face.” It is in question that the value of the exhibition requires beauty and vigor and is overly identified with them [9].

In the famous work of John Berger [28] entitled “Ways of Seeing,” the basic assumptions about “seeing” and “being seen” are shaped by their relation to women in the patriarchal system:

“A woman must continually watch herself. Her image of herself almost continually accompanies her. …From earliest childhood, she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. …She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life… Men act and women appear” [28].

Today, vlogging within the framework of the dynamics of entrepreneurship of the self is affirmed. This reality refers to all social media, encompassing YouTube [15]. One of the fields of activity of vloggers and YouTube phenomena is the female body and beauty culture, which are crucial elements of consumer society. Famous for their vlogs, which include many practical themes, such as makeup, fashion, healthy life, and sports, female beauty phenomena, have become icons of virtual popular culture by reaching many followers.¹ Many brands have started working with YouTube celebrities to reach a fragmented audience [30]. The lifestyle they represent, which includes entrepreneurship, recognition, and influencing, has a feature desired by the followers. Moreover, some researchers have found that the popularity of beauty bloggers increased the demand for the cosmetic products they use in their videos [10, 17, 31].

The attempts of content producers to aestheticize the female body on virtual platforms have been interpreted by some feminists in the context of reproducing the roles imposed on women by patriarchal capitalism. One of these arguments is that YouTube supports hegemonic femininity forms reproduced by beauty vloggers with social and cultural capital. According to this approach, the YouTube algorithm rewards old teenage magazine culture content, such as consumption, beauty, fashion, friendship, or boyfriends [32]. This critical view coincides with second-wave feminism’s analysis of the female body. However, discussions within feminism have risen, questioning the allegation that beauty phenomena contribute to reproducing patriarchal values. Third and fourth-wave feminism discusses that the capacity to make decisions about one’s body, sometimes including bodily beautification, could be functional regarding women’s liberation. In this context, arguments have risen that the videos of beauty vloggers incidentally combine feminism and beauty practices to create an alternative critical feminist language and that women can resist patriarchal pressures by using cosmetics [33].

Conceptualizing the labor processes based on the fact that beauty YouTubers’ activities create value is crucial for vlogger research from a labor perspective. In the videos of beauty vloggers, first of all, the existence of esthetic labor and, in some cases, emotional labor is noticed. In addition, scholars made contributions to the literature with concepts, such as “visibility labor,” “aspirational labor” [17], “hidden labor” [34, 35], and “creative labor” [14]. The activities of beauty vloggers should also be considered entrepreneurial labor [36]. Within the framework of this research, the concept of simulative labor, built on Baudrillard’s simulation concept, suggested making sense of the effort exerted by YouTube’s beauty phenomena. Simulation or hyperreal, defined by Baudrillard [7] as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality,” means “the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere” and now replaces reality. According to him, a simulation era has emerged with humanity’s disconnection from reality. At this age,

“Never again will the real have to be produced. …A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference” [7].

As seen, the most crucial function of simulation or hyperreal is to eliminate the difference between the real and the imaginary [7]. This claim is based on the simulative labor that structures YouTube videos of beauty phenomena. The simulative labor process predicates eliminating the meaning of reality by creating simulations.

The phenomenon of prosumption is also an essential component in the content produced by beauty vloggers. Putting firstly forward, Toffler [36] argued that in today’s capitalism, consumption and production merge, or the boundaries between the two become blurred. “Third wave civilization begins to heal the historic breach between producer and consumer, giving rise to the ‘prosumer economics’ of tomorrow” [36]. Ritzer and Rey [37], making a contemporary analysis of the relationship of prosumption with the internet, argue that it is not possible to separate production and consumption in the world of exchange relations intensified by the internet, and they state that the phenomenon of prosumption increasingly fits into today’s postmodern era. Indeed, many social media platforms, such as YouTube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, are based on user-generated prosumption activities [38]. There are assertions that multilayered identities created by prosumption activities encourage the formation of participatory culture in online communities. Prosumer capitalism reveals that sharing private life with others through prosumption activities in online communities has become prevalent [38]. The existence of a new virtual culture, in which prosumption, an essential activity of content producers, supports the consumption society, is in line with Castells’ [1] argument that the behavioral practices of internet users create an internet culture. Besides prosumption, social media is “in relation to the blurring of leisure and labor time (play labor)” [39]. The tendency for unpaid labor to become commodity producers in the field of cultural consumption has gained strength with the rise of the internet and social media. Thus, historically, the trend toward the erosion of dualities, such as play and labor, working time and leisure, production and consumption, and factory and home, has been strengthened [39]. The following chapters will analyze how prosumption builds a female identity in the simulation created by micro-celebrities, which are beauty phenomena in today’s internet culture.

3. Field research

3.1 Methodology

Within the scope of the research, a digital ethnographic perspective was adopted. Used in the research of digital tools and the new spaces created by them, it provides rich data in many disciplines [40]. Covering different types, such as “virtual ethnography, cyberspace ethnography, ethnography of new media, online ethnography, and social media/new media ethnography,” allows the analysis of social problems in the digital field [41]. Because they are among the beauty YouTubers with the highest number of subscribers in Turkey [42], the five most viewed YouTube videos in which Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic show makeup applications were selected as the research sample. The reason for choosing the most viewed videos is to analyze which themes the viewers are mainly influenced by. Videos of both phenomena include content about their daily lives, wedding preparations, travels, or answering questions about their private lives. However, these videos are about the micro-celebrity experiences of Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic, who emerged as beauty vloggers and turned into phenomena after their videos became very popular and are beyond the scope of our topic. Since the main problem of the research is the construction of the prosumer female identity through simulative labor, the videos of the mentioned vloggers’ makeup applications were included in the scope of the study. The research’s limitation is that the vloggers could not be interviewed.

In order to collect data within the framework of the qualitative research method, the following videos of the two phenomena were watched and subjected to content analysis: “We changed our makeup bags with Danla Bilic”² [43], “Instagram makeup | American style makeup”³ [44], “I try the cheapest products-makeup with recommended affordable products”⁴ [45], “I did makeup with techniques I hate—the thickest makeup I have ever done”⁵ [46], and “My daily makeup”⁶ [47] on Duygu Özaslan’s YouTube channel; “The makeup of the girl who became popular in a short time”⁷ [48], “The makeup themed ‘I did not collapse, but I am not surviving’”⁸ [49], “Yeditepe University⁹ 50% scholarship girl makeup”¹⁰ [50], “The makeup of a girl who becomes a DJ when she becomes a phenomenon”¹¹ [51], and “The makeup of the high school girl who says ‘I applied only mascara’ to her teacher”¹² [52] on Danla Bilic’s YouTube channel. YouTube’s videos of famous beauty celebrities feature themes, such as get ready with me, outfit of the day, monthly favorite products, nighttime beauty routines, and makeup tutorials [30]. As is seen, unlike Danla Bilic, Duygu Özaslan’s videos are more similar to these themes.

3.2 Findings and discussion

3.2.1 Simulative icons from “The lovebird in the Amazon Jungle” to the makeup of a girl who becomes a DJ when she becomes a phenomenon”

Although the main finding is that Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic created a prosumer female simulation by simulative labor in their videos, the research revealed that the hyperreality created by both phenomena had different aspects from each other. In this context, Duygu Özaslan exhibits a “beauty and makeup guru” attitude in her videos, at a level of hegemonizing with technical terms and even the old series of many brands. Thus, she forms a relationship between the choice of making up and female subjectivity. The statements, “makeup and makeup style is a completely personal preference; what you choose is very subjective” and “what you like or dislike is unique to you,” remind third- and fourth-wave feminism’s assumption that deciding on physical beauty is not independent of women’s liberation.

Danla Bilic, unlike Duygu Özaslan, defines the makeup styles she applies in her videos as designed specifically for female identities ranging from “female student of the fashion design department” to “sneaky girlfriend,” “club girl,” to “girl who becomes a DJ when she becomes a phenomenon.” She builds an identity of a woman who sets in ways, does not care, is free, sometimes even contentious, inclined to compete, has fun, and often laughs. Besides revealing her privacy, she does not hesitate to share the exciting and funny events she experiences daily with her followers. On the other hand, contrary to what was expected, she interestingly subordinates her makeup applications in her videos. What stands out in Bilic’s videos is the “girl simulation” she creates instead of being a master of makeup. Although the fact that she uses the word “girl” rather than “woman” may seem that she addresses young women more, what lies in the subtext of this discourse is Bilic’s lack of awareness of femininity. Thus, it is noticed that the word “girl” is often mentioned in the videos’ titles of the well-known phenomenon, as mentioned above.

The fact that Danla Bilic’s simulativity goes beyond makeup is also evident in choosing how to use her name. Bilic, originally Damla Neslihan Aktepe, chose the name she would use on YouTube as “Danla,” as she constantly wrote it wrong. Furthermore, she explained that her surname was based on Slaven Bilic, one of the former coaches of the Beşiktaş.¹³ In addition, the pop music singer Ece Seçkin, whom she hosted in one of her videos, called Danla Bilic “Daniella,” and Bilic’s expressions, “I was born in Kütahya¹⁴and being born in Kütahya as a Russian is hard. I was born knowing Russian and crying in Russian,” suggest that she creates “the desired ‘other’ woman simulation not belonging to this land.” The fact that the number of subscribers of Duygu Özaslan’s YouTube channel is 1.42 million, while Danla Bilic’s is 2.9 million, shows that these hyperrealities created by Bilic are attracted the attention of a wider audience.

The most outstanding common trait of both phenomena’s vlogs is the creation of hyper-realities about different images of women, in conjunction with YouTube’s feature of providing people with a way to build identities, as discussed in the theoretical framework. The first video on the YouTube channel that made Danla Bilic famous, titled “Yeditepe University 50% Scholarship Girl Makeup,” is one of the examples of this argument. The content produced in this video builds the “girl from the Yeditepe University” simulation explained by Bilic:

“She even goes to 9 a.m. class in heels, wears full makeup… She is the type of girl I envy but can never be. She is very well-groomed and beautiful. If a girl studies at Yeditepe, her hair must be platinum for at least 1–1.5 years during her education period. It is like a rule. I used platinum hair color for 1.5 years in 2013, in the same way as well.”

This simulation built in this content is not limited to makeup application. However, it is strengthened by Danla Bilic’s wearing a blond wig at the end of the video to embody her assertion: “Now, if you will excuse me, I want to change my hair color.”

While producing content focusing more on makeup techniques and applications, Duygu Özaslan also creates simulations that shape different woman’s identities. For example, in one of her videos, she makes herself look like “a love bird in the Amazon jungle” with her eye makeup in vivid and bright green tones. In another video, applying American-style/Instagram makeup, she gives the clues of the “American Instagram phenomenon woman” simulation she will create with the following expressions: “I was inspired by those accounts of the American vloggers we see on Instagram, love and watch a lot, while I was doing this makeup.” These words reveal a western-oriented approach to the notion of beauty, reflecting the internet culture’s hegemonic structure. Besides, while explaining how much the preferences of making up vary at the international level, Özaslan makes us think about how she feels alienated in the virtual web universe:

“(In this video), I tried something that did not fit my style, was very different for me, and I felt very alienated too. I could not use this makeup daily. This makeup is not something I can do, and I do not prefer it. My face and eyelids have incredible density because this makeup changes masks and shades too much.”

That is, the necessity of exhibiting, in addition to exploiting the visible, eliminates the faces of individuals [9].

3.2.2 The dilemma between specialization and non-specialization: “There is nothing wrong with this table! Everything is right when you sit here! You are the most perfect!”

One of the exciting findings of the research is that, contrary to expectations, the two beauty phenomena do not have a distinctive teaching style about makeup; at least, teaching or technique does not compose a common theme in the contents. In this sense, in Özaslan and Bilic’s videos, there is a tension between “specialization” and “non-specialization” regarding makeup. The level of tension changes in the videos of both phenomena. While Duygu Özaslan’s demeanor manifests traces of more intense knowledge of makeup techniques, in Danla Bilic’s videos, themes of self-focused small talk that reproduce her micro-famousness come to the fore. Therefore, it is possible to deduce that Özaslan’s contents are in some measure labor-intensive and Bilic’s are more “spectacular.”

However, both phenomena sometimes exhibit a “makeup guru” attitude. The argument of specialization in video contents is revealed in the example of Duygu Özaslan, who explains in detail which makeup product she applies and why and uses technical terms, such as “corrector,” “pigmentation,” “cold color,” “silicone base,” “sweeping powder,” and “baking.” In the case of Danla Bilic, although makeup applications lag a bit, she creates a “makeup artist” simulation in some of her statements: “I am a freestyle makeup artist. I say let us do some eye makeup. I am very good at this. I am pretty good.” Bilic’s statement that she is “pretty good” shows how hyperreality has replaced reality. In the video where Ece Seçkin is a guest, Bilic’s “wise” answer after Seçkin consults Bilic about what color eye makeup she should wear reinforces the “makeup guru” simulation: “Undertone, overtone, red, pink….”

Two videos subjected to content analysis are almost like a “prosumption challenge.” In the video titled “The makeup of the girl who became popular in a short time,” where Danla Bilic hosted the pop singer Ece Seçkin, the two women are implicitly triggered by their humorous quarrels while wearing makeup. Makeup materials, masterliness, or the quality of makeup products reproduce the competition between women. Similarly, in the video titled “We changed our makeup bags with Danla Bilic,” in which Bilic was a guest on Özaslan’s channel, two women changed their makeup bags. They used each other’s makeup products, manifesting the exchange of their identities and simulations. They challenge each other in this video over how they are unfamiliar with or how they can make up with a small number of cosmetics. Here, it is seen that the prosumer woman identity created by simulative labor has a character that reproduces the competition between women.

On the other hand, the two phenomena sometimes suggest that they are experts in the field of makeup by showing their creativity by changing the usage areas of makeup materials or by violating the rules on applying makeup. This allegation is seen in Bilic’s “Take that blush and please use it as an eyeshadow, okay?” expression. In another video, she figured that she has been using the foundation in a way since she bought it, which various makeup vloggers or cosmetics department employees advised her to “never use like that.”

In the case of Bilic, non-specialization almost reaches the level of being proud of self-confidence, ignorance, and lack of technical knowledge, as is seen in her following statement: “I love things that I have no idea about.” An example of the extra regular application of makeup techniques is ascended in Bilic’s expressions challenging the criticisms against her on social media. Narrating that a user on Twitter asked why she enlarged her lips up to her nose with a lip liner on Twitter, the phenomenon says,

“I do. I enlarge; I love it, I enlarge, it is that simple” and “My face is mine, the highlighter is mine, the contour is mine. I do whatever I want.”

Similarly, in the analyzed videos of Duygu Özaslan, the main conclusion is that she prefers “non-specialization” and challenges professional knowledge by lack of specialization or incompetence. Her expression, “I will try to do it like a makeup artist now,” in one of her videos means that she admits to not being a professional makeup artist. Moreover, Özaslan sometimes confesses her minor makeup mistakes in her videos. In parallel with these findings, according to research conducted in China, almost all of the beauty vloggers interviewed were amateur-originated, and the desire to “share beauty skills with sisters” was the main point that started their vlogging activities. However, these amateur vloggers have unexpectedly turned into viral figures on social media [17]. This reality coincides with the participatory aspect of integrating social actors in today’s consumer society, contrary to Weber’s charismatic authority conceptualized through characterizing an individual’s personality [53].

3.2.3 The death of the sisterhood: “I took an oath in my first video that I will be the end of them all”

Sisterhood has taken its place in feminist literature and the movement’s history as a critical concept that will unite all women and enable them to fight against patriarchy. Bell Hooks, in her work emphasizing the importance of sisterhood, deals with the fact that the meaning of sisterhood has lost its deserved place in the feminist movement over time and the threats and risks posed by this fact:

“The vision of sisterhood that had been the movement’s rallying cry seemed to many women to no longer matter. Political solidarity between women, which had been the force putting in place positive change, has been and is now consistently undermined and threatened. Consequently, we need a renewed commitment to political solidarity between women as we were when the contemporary feminist movement first began” [54].

One of the most critical elements that threaten sisterhood is the creation of competition among women, which is a patriarchal strategy. By sowing the seeds of hostility between women, competition deprives the victims of the patriarchal system of a common ground of struggle. This reality is noticed explicitly or implicitly in Danla Bilic’s videos. For example, in her video where she hosted Ece Seçkin, Bilic humorously and sarcastically states that she has more advanced color knowledge than Seçkin, while graciously saying that she will not withhold her mastery of colors from her. Thus, she reproduces the hierarchy between women and the subtle ways of prevailing in the competition with her followers. Similarly, in Bilic’s different videos, the scale between women is reproduced in a way that erodes sisterhood. In the video where she conveys her makeup tactics to high school girls at a level their teachers cannot notice, she has almost turned into a maternal or “big sister-style” authority figure:

“I brought this for my high school princesses with no skin problems. We apply this lipstick so that it should be a permanent lipstick and should never come off when your teacher tells you to take it off. I call out to high school girls: Never, ever stop yourself from dying your hair, applying your lipstick, and drawing your eyeliner.”

Similarly, a study on a famous beauty phenomenon named Zoe Sugg revealed that the vlogger adopted a kind of “big sister” attitude in her videos [55]. However, although Bilic’s video has an older sister style, this is based on the construction of hierarchic relations, rather than a feminist sisterhood manner. There are examples of the death of the sisterhood in Danla Bilic’s cynicism, which she adopted and almost turned into a style in her videos titled “Yeditepe University 50% scholarship girl makeup” and “The girl who became a DJ after becoming a phenomenon.” In the first video, she states that the female students at Yeditepe University hide their demand for a trendy and affordable cosmetics brand. Besides, she portrays the phenomenon-DJ type she criticizes in the second video with witty theatricality.

In Bilic’s videos, some discourses that abolish the sisterhood turn into hostility toward their fellows beyond the competition between women: “Some YouTubers used to put on this foundation and appear before the camera as if they were wearing no makeup. Danla Bilic does not fall for a trick. I have an oath in my first video that I will finish them all.” On the other hand, some of Bilic’s expressions that destroyed sisterhood goes beyond defense against negative criticism against her on Twitter and turn into a counter-attack: “They are trying to smear campaign against Danla Bilic. The funny thing is that the girls who do these are not even bloggers. They are ‘Kezos.’¹⁵Kezos, who think they are bloggers, are trying to defame me. You know what? I will eat them alive.”

The death of the sisterhood, which is one of the most important findings of the research, coincides with the creation of a hyperreality rather than the accurate means of struggle in the prosumption activities fictionalized on YouTube and the lack of conditions that will provide a basis for rational resistance practices and prevents women’s liberation. Indeed, according to Baudrillard [56], liberation is nothing but a simulation in the “post-orgy state” of our age. Under these conditions, women must be competent to have a say over their bodies and deal with beauty practices. However, for women’s freedom to be realized, it is essential to stop being enchanted by icons, perhaps to get rid of the enchantment in the “disenchanted world” that Ritzer [57] mentions, and turn into iconoclast sisters.

“Significantly, sisterhood could never have been possible across the boundaries of race and class if individual women had not been willing to divest of their power to dominate and exploit subordinated groups of women. As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized” [54].

3.2.4 Enjoying pleasure and iconization beyond commodities: “I have the quality, I have the beauty.”

In the videos analyzed, there is inevitably the fact of “commodity fetishism” based on the consumer products used during makeup applications, which Marx conceptualized with the claim that consumer products have a unique autonomous power in the capitalist system. Hence, makeup products’ brand information is conveyed to the audience by approaching them with the camera before they are used in the videos. At this point, the exaggeration of “signs,” one of the basic concepts of Baudrillard’s [58] consumption theory, and the reproduction of the “sign value comes into question.

Parallel to the reality of commodity fetishism, the videos provided findings consistent with Baudrillard’s analysis of societies of abundance and waste. For example, Bilic’s friend can, a guest in one of her videos, says that Bilic does her clothing shopping without trying on the products, and if the clothes she buys do not fit her body, they “rot away at home.” In another video, Bilic said she bought a costly cosmetic product on a foreign trip without checking the price: “Then I looked at my credit card. It cost 700 dollars!.” In the video titled “Yeditepe University 50% scholarship girl makeup,” she expressed: “Some people are angry with me. They say ‘you use costly products.’ But you will see soon, I will not use this (expensive product).” Although it can be thought that she criticizes the class inequalities embedded in the consumption of products, it is revealed in her video titled “The makeup of the high school girl who says ‘I applied only mascara’ to her teacher,” that this is a strategic move: “Maybe you will say, ‘Danla, that foundation is costly. We are still in high school.’ Then you will not eat or drink something (to save money to buy the foundation). Quality is never a coincidence.” Indeed, the “Yeditepe University 50% scholarship girl makeup” video is the first on Bilic’s YouTube channel, and it is possible that she aimed at increasing the number of subscribers of her channel (including the relatively low-income audience) with the promise of using affordable makeup products. Similarly, according to research conducted in Indonesia, beauty vloggers lead college students to waste, and watching beauty vlogs often increases the tendency to consume beauty products. Beauty vloggers establish hegemony on students with strategies, such as providing information about cosmetic products and their use, gaining confidence, increasing communication, and updating information about beauty products [59].

Similarly, it is possible to notice the wastage theme in Duygu Özaslan’s videos. In the video where Özaslan applies affordable makeup products, she proves her wasteful consumerism behavior by showing a long shopping slip of cheap makeup products she bought due to her lack of knowledge about the product’s quality. For instance, she shared her experience with a makeup product she did not like with the following expressions: “I gave them all to someone.” Furthermore, she advises her followers to use the products abundantly when applying makeup, saying, “you should not use your hands with cowardice.”

All these analyses coincide with Baudrillard’s [58] definition of the wastefulness inherent in today’s consumer society with “throwaway society” or “garbage-can sociology.” He exemplifies the intrinsic nature of wastefulness in a consumer society with the advertising slogan, “Smash up your car; the insurance will do the rest!” [58] parallels the videos’ discourses and the two vloggers’ behaviors. Content similar to these analyzes is produced in Duygu Özaslan’s video titled “My daily makeup,” in which she heralds that she will share the makeup products she uses most every month with her followers. In this video, her statement that she changes her blush every day is in line with Bauman’s comments on the fluid, uncertain, variable structure of today’s consumer society. The condition of being a good consumer is not to be tied to any consumer product [60]. Indeed, “consumer goods have memento mori written all over them, even if with an invisible ink” [60].

Despite these explanations, the most original finding of the research is that although commodity fetishism and wasteful consumerism are recommended in Danla Bilic’s videos, these elements do not reach the level of the leitmotif of the videos. For example, Bilic says that the foundation she recommends to high school girls is “one of the most amazing, water-like, most useless foundations in the world.” Besides, she shares the secrets of creating simulations with her audience through the following statements: “If you want to do an extremely natural makeup, if you want your teachers not to understand that you are wearing makeup, you can use this foundation.” As is seen, the opposition of commodity fetishism is produced, and both phenomena can even make harsh criticisms of several makeup products, such as “overgross.”

Based on the previous analyses, it is apparent that an “iconization” goes beyond commodities and prosumption activities, especially in Danla Bilic’s videos. In the content produced by her, followers are not taught to make up, and makeup is a side element; it can be argued that her viewers follow Bilic as an icon rather than a makeup practice. As exemplified by the phrase “I have the quality, I have the beauty, the honor, the dignity, it is all in me...,” the well-known phenomenon is positioned beyond the commodities by blessing herself. Indeed, through beauty vloggers’ videos, followers often witness the transformation of the physical self. The vloggers, appearing without makeup at the videos’ beginnings, transform into whom they want to be that day by making up during the video. As a result, although beauty vloggers have purposes such as teaching new makeup techniques and spreading up-to-date information about products through their videos, mainly vloggers’ privacy sharing and self-representation practices come to the fore [4]. Hence, Bilic creates a simulation over prosumption. It can be thought that it made her a phenomenon. She never tolerates discourses and comments that she thinks may undermine her iconography. This attitude, exemplified in the statement, “I will highlight more because somebody on Twitter said that I highlight much,” has a more striking dimension in the following expressions:

“Well, a crew has sprung up. Why is Danla Bilic famous? Who made her famous? It is none of your business. Whoever did it did it. Whoever loved me loved me. It is none of your business. They are so mad. Honestly, I like it. You know, I like to make people mad!”

Moreover, Bilic’s strong criticism and opposition to DJing offers show that she struggles with potential threats that would erode her iconicity, sometimes with discourses that include signs of aggression:

“Let us suppose that a sane venue manager will invite me to his/her place to entertain people and to be an appetizer for them. Think about it. A muckety muck will come. He will sit across from me, just for fun. He will make me open a bottle and send me some crappy drink. He will want me to play this. You know what? I will sit him on top of what is spinning in that DJ booth. I will spin him 70 laps on it. Never mind me again, but if you do not have 60 thousand 70 thousand Turkish liras—I have to share this detail—do not make an offer to be a DJ.”

As a result of all this, Bilic’s videos confirming her iconicity turn into a feast where she enjoys being a phenomenon, being an icon, and her show: “Yes, I am done with my makeup. I am ready for the night. I will do what suits me and make a very nice DJ closing. Now all I ask of you is to turn your headphones up and see how the DJ performs (with laughter).” Indeed, in many of her videos, even routine dialogs or narratives are surrounded by laughter. It is seen that a happiness simulation is created by laughing even at things that cannot be laughed at. The fact that happiness-oriented attitudes and behaviors are simulative is confirmed by Bilic’s having undergone many esthetic operations besides stomach reduction surgery [61]. Similarly, according to a study on social media content producers, content producers emphasize emotions, such as satisfaction and fun. The insistence on emphasizing a positive mood can indicate the emotional effort spent to increase the number of followers by transforming into a loved figure [22].

Although Duygu Özaslan’s icon status lags behind Bilic, it is possible to see traces of iconization in Özaslan’s videos. For instance, from her following expression in the video titled “My daily makeup,” it can be deduced that she considers it uneccentric to share her daily life:

“I am in my home clothes; I just got out of the shower, and my hair is terrible, but let us get started. The point of the video is to get ready and get beautiful. In the meantime, I am having breakfast. Let me tell you from the beginning; this video has no interesting makeup. I would leave the house; I would get ready anyway.”

In Özaslan’s video titled “I do makeup with techniques I hate—the thickest makeup I have ever done,” it is apparent that hate is also a simulation and that she enjoys her iconicity. This statement parallels Bauman and Lyon’s [21] argument about social media: “We submit our rights to privacy for slaughter of our own will. Or perhaps we just consent to the loss of privacy as a reasonable price for the wonders offered in exchange.”

4. Conclusion

The internet is one of the critical elements that make up the culture of YouTubers today and is organized around a unique structure and value judgments. This culture’s new work and labor categories are formed, while visibility and visuality become essential. Women take an active part in this process and turn into new virtual entrepreneurs, and beauty vloggers become prominent figures. On the other hand, in the new virtual world of capitalism, the internet is also an area where women contribute to the reproduction of beauty ideals set up in the patriarchal system. Women’s effort as beauty vloggers is based on creating simulations of the ideal female body. Therefore, the concept of simulative labor is proposed in the study. The activities of beauty vloggers should also be considered within the framework of prosumption, as they carry out a production process by wearing makeup while consuming the products. Some academic debates have interpreted the prevalence of female vloggers being occupied with the notion of beauty as women participating in the consumption culture by producing rather than being passive audiences and parties of the consumer society. According to this argument, women’s use of self-care and beauty practices through their body perception and reconciliation with their bodies can sometimes create a strategy of resistance against the patriarchal system.

In order to question the claims mentioned above, the videos of Duygu Özaslan and Danla Bilic, the most popular female beauty phenomena with the highest number of followers in Turkey, were subjected to content analysis within the scope of this research. It is aimed to analyze different women identities’ construction processes and how relations between women are formed and examine whether makeup videos can contribute to a liberation strategy for women in the context of simulative labor and prosumption relationality. The research findings reveal a tension between specialization and non-specialization regarding makeup techniques, where various simulations of women are created through makeup applications. The most striking finding is that there is a commitment to consumer products rather than a dependency; an implicit or explicit construction of an iconization goes beyond commodities, production, and consumption, sometimes accompanied by attitudes, such as contempt, criticism, and dislike. Although the effect of iconization is more substantial in Bilic’s videos, it is apparent that both phenomena enjoy being icons.

These findings make the place of commodity fetishism in the virtual world in today’s consumer society open to question. Are the phenomena of today’s virtual culture located in a place above prosumption? Do simulations exceed prosumption? Is the concept of a virtual icon rather than a micro-celebrity more helpful in explaining today’s YouTubers? These are questions that need to be answered by more extensive research. In addition, conducting research that will determine the followers of beauty vloggers and the comments of the viewers of their videos will make significant contributions to the literature. What is apparent; however, is that strategies based on acquiring competence for physical beauty cannot acquire a form of political struggle for women in a context where the capitalist consumer culture encompasses individuals’ ontology and where consumption is encouraged to alienate individuals.

Notes

This paper is the revised and extended version of the oral presentation titled “Simulative Labor and the Construction of the Prosumer Female Identity,” presented at the twenty-first Labor Economics and Industrial Relations Congress held at Eskişehir Anadolu University.