Going against the grain? Appraising the aesthetic labour of male beauty influencers on Instagram

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of scholarly studies on social media in recent years, not many have focused on male social media influencers in the beauty industry, which is often viewed as a feminine preserve with the vast majority of ‘beauty influencers’ being female. This study focuses on the discursive practices of two male beauty influencers to examine how their visual self-portrayal contributes to their popularity and influence. A total of 752 photographs collected from their Instagram accounts were examined using a visual appraisal framework adapted from Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory described in The Language of Evaluation, focusing on normality, capacity and authenticity. The authors’ findings show that both influencers, who are openly gay, portray themselves as gender norm transgressors whose performance of capacity and authenticity as social media celebrities is a highly contested and conflictual aspect of their identity construction as beauty influencers. These findings not only shed light on the visual discursive processes and practices through which beauty influencers perform their aesthetic labour to enhance their popularity and influence but they also contribute to our understanding of how they perpetuate mediatized and marketized stereotypes of beauty and being as part of the broader sociocultural phenomenon of the celebrification of social media influencers in contemporary society.