Kadınlar Arası Bir Güçlenme Alanı Olarak Güzellik: Youtube Güzellik Kanalları Örneği

Abstract

Through this study into the beauty channels of YouTube with the girl-culture approach within the third-wave feminism, the possibilities of analysing the beauty as an “empowerment” in the building of female subjectivity are examined. The conceptual framework of the study is drawn on two main lines. In the first, a brief summary of the feminist debates in literature within the context of “body politics” is presented in order to reveal how body and image differ from the previous feminist approaches. Thus, differences are portrayed between the other feminist debates that consider beauty ideology as a tool of power that restricts the female body and subjectivity and the understanding of girl-culture approach that considers the beauty ideal as means of gaining power. On the other hand, culturally and historically different functions and ways of phrasing the practice of make-up as one of the most economical and common ways of attaining beauty are revealed and the fact that make-up could as well be regarded as a means of expression and gaining control over body. In this way, it is suggested that the interest in body and image may have different outputs besides beautification. In the second stage of the conceptual framework, the focus is given on the close relationship between technology and third-wave feminism, especially girl culture approach, and some space is devoted to literature that emphasizes the role of technology in the empowerment of women. In this sense, mention is made of the conceptualizations that put forward that women’s effective use of the new communication technologies offers possibilities to destroy, deconstruct, transform and rebuild the dominating cultural and ideological patterns. With YouTube beauty channels as its research area, this study makes an analysis of 50 videos through the method of online ethnography. It is observed in the study that the contents which are thought at first sight to be produced by women to become beautiful are the cases accompanying and reinforcing the processes whereby they produce words on their subjectivation and bodies. Also, it is discovered and reported that women’s practice of broadcasting on YouTube, an activity that they launch as a hobby and entertainment, turns into a field of employment, solidarity and activism in the course of time.