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Extract A
The Zoella Apartment 0:00 to 2:19
Extract B
Getting Organised for Christmas Day 1:40 to 3:12
Watch the films and answer the questions.
1. What sort of representations of masculinity and femininity are suggested by extract A? Think carefully about:
The way that Zoella reinforces conventional beauty ideals through makeup, hair and costume decisions
The performance style of Zoella and the impact of this in terms of the gender representation constructed
The way that traditional gender binaries are reinforced through the presentation of Zoella’s relationship with Alfie.
Zoella’s use of heavy makeup reinforces conventional beauty ideals, suggesting that femininity is achieved through a specific aesthetic look. The contrast with Alfie’s gym fresh cameo further reinforces traditional notions of gender - men are promoted as active, whilst Zoella’s passive presentation style and her anxiety about leaving the house helps to reinforce her domestic role. Zoella and Alfie, in this sense, represent a conventional gender binary - a carefully controlled expression of a traditional male/female relationship.
2. Analyse the audience comments that accompany the upload (link) - how does audience commentary reinforce or challenge the representations created?
The commentary surrounding the upload is wholly supportive. One fan states, ‘Who else is super excited for a Zoella Lifestyle?? I know I am’. Such comments present evidence that Zoe and Alfie’s relationship represents a heteronormative ideal that Zoella’s audience aspire to emulate.
3. What representations of femininity are suggested by extract B? Think carefully about:
The role that Zoella assumes for herself in preparation for Christmas
The reasons that she wants to assume that role
The way that the upload associates femininity with domesticity.
Extract B clearly positions Zoella in a domestic role. She refers to the needs of her Christmas party preparations as something that both her and Alfie need to be engaged in, but continuously repositions this earlier appeal by suggesting that she will be the one who executes those preparations. Her desire to emulate Alfie’s mum Amanda also reinforces a version of femininity that ideologically positions women as homemakers.
4. Investigate Zoella’s blog using this link - watch three or four of her uploads with other collaborators and identify the ethnicities and sexual identities that dominate. Write four sentences about:
The potential impact on audiences of any absent representations
The way that Zoella might be subconsciously associating beauty ideals with specific ethnic groups for her audience
How those absences might reinforce ‘otherness’ and any other potential links that can be made to the theoretical thinking of Paul Gilroy.
Gilroy is not a named theorist that you need to study in relation to Zoella, but his ideas may be helpful to your analysis of the representations here. Stuart Hall’s ideas about inequalities of power and ‘otherness’ would also be useful here.
One could argue that the Zoella channel unwittingly reinforces cultural binaries through its almost total exclusion of non-white participants. The channel’s marginalisation of non-white ethnicities suggests a segregated view of UK society, constructing a sense of ‘otherness’ through the absence of those ethnic groups. Moreover, the channel’s construction of an aspirational, ideal lifestyle coupled with its reinforcement of beauty ideals might lead an audience to perceive that these are states that can’t be achieved by a non-white audience.
Hint: For an overview and reminder of Paul Gilroy’s thinking visit this link.
