Racialized beauty, visibility, and empowerment: Asian American women influencers on YouTube

Asian American women's beauty practices have been doubly pathologized – not only being stereotyped as passive, dull, unattractive, and foreign, but also stigmatized as non-normative, uneducated, self-harming, and complicit to White beauty ideals. This study examines how this unique positionality of Asian American women is entangled with influencer practices conceptualized as a place of postfeminist subject-making. I conducted a qualitative textual analysis of YouTube videos (n = 45) from a sample of Asian American YouTubers, along with a semantic network analysis and qualitative analysis of the video comments (n = 1708). Drawing upon this data, this study argues that influencer practices and postfeminist strategies for 'branding the self' have fostered a space to create alternative beauty practices and connect to viewers who have been through similar body insecurities. Considering that Asian American women have been historically marginalized by US mainstream media and have consistently been objectified, I found the beauty videos and associated community building of Asian American women YouTubers have the potential to be counter-hegemonic.