Bodies, beauty, brands: Professional, personal and everyday life online

Abstract

This article focuses on two successful Italian web personalities who work in the beauty industry and embody the overlapping between business and public identity. Clio MakeUp (Clio Zammatteo, @cliomakeup) and Estetista Cinica (Cristina Fogazzi, @estetistacinica) are two professionals whose success and personal histories are similar and different at the same time. Coming from low-to-middle-class backgrounds, they are both ‘self-made-women’ who managed to build two beauty enterprises (a make-up brand of the same name, the former; a skincare and beauty brand, VeraLab, the latter) tightly intertwined to their public personas. In both cases their business’ success is strictly connected to two loyal online communities: Clio Zammatteo built her whole career around her online presence, starting in 2008 as the first successful Italian make-up YouTuber, reaching a large community way before she entered the beauty business with her make-up brand; Cristina Fogazzi worked her way from beautician to businesswoman, and successfully used Instagram to communicate her brand and personal philosophy, conquering a large and engaged community of followers and customers. This article will address Zammatteo’s and Fogazzi’s interconnected personal and professional identities from different perspectives. First, I will explore how they put themselves and their own non-conforming bodies at the centre of a communication strategy that defies conventional beauty standards and constantly connects their social media presence to their brands’ body-positive and non-judgemental approach. Second, I will focus on the habit of sharing their everyday life to reinforce their public personas and their brands. Third, I will analyse how their fashion choices intersect their media presence and the conversation about normative appearance, and how they resonate with their respective communities. Finally, building on the recurring presence of their domestic space on social media, I will investigate how both Zammatteo and Fogazzi negotiated their presence, bodies and personal spaces online during the pandemic.