Surveillance and self-care: Performing beauty labor in online video content

• Published in: European journal of cultural studies Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 680 - 698
• Main Authors: Pieters, Sanne, Opree, Suzanna J, Rozendaal, Esther
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2025; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Audiences; Beauty; Critical theory; Discourse analysis; Labor; Neoliberalism; Qualitative research; Responsibility; Surveillance; Women; Beauty labor; multimodal critical discourse analysis; neoliberalism; (self)surveillance; beauty videos; YouTube
• ISSN: 1367-5494; 1460-3551
• DOI: 10.1177/13675494241264982

Beauty labor, practices that are aimed at attaining, optimizing or shaping physical appearances, has been a part of ‘doing girl’ for decades. But new technologies and neoliberal sensibilities are changing the ways in which beauty is presented to girls and women. This qualitative research examines the discourse of 22 YouTube beauty videos. Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis, this project concerns the mechanisms through which influencers construct themselves as neoliberal subjects and convey this identity to their audiences, subsequently selling the idea of aesthetic entrepreneurialism through the object of the self. It is found that beauty videos contain new and intensified two-way surveilling gazes under which women perform their beauty labor. These gazes influence both the audience and the audienced, as both are subject to possible constant evaluation. YouTubers criticized or praised the looks, behavior or beauty practices of other women, but also adjusted their own behavior and beauty practices based on audience’s critiques. Ideas of beauty labor as a personal responsibility and as a tool for self-optimizing are also found within data. Videos contain notions of neoliberal sensibilities, with YouTubers emphasizing the malleability of their face, the efficiency of their practices, the pricelessness of their labor and the fun of their beauty practices.