(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work

321 Pages·2017·1.998 MB·English

by  Brooke Erin Duffy

(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love
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( N OT ) G E T T I N G PA I D
TO D O W H AT YO U LOV E
GENDER, SOCIAL MEDIA,
AND ASPIRATIONAL WORK
(cid:68)
B R O O K E E R I N D U F F Y
New Haven and London
Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2017 by Brooke Erin Duffy. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107
and108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publishers.
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Set in Adobe Garamond type by IDS Infotech, Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN978-0-300-21817-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961763
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10987654321
In Loving Memory of
My Dad
Daniel Lee Pilszak
(1949–2015)
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Contents
Preface ix
1 1
. Entrepreneurial Wishes and Career Dreams
2
. The Aspirational Ethos: Gender, Consumerism, and
12
Labor
3
. (Not) Just for the Fun of It: The Labor of Social
45
Media Production
4
. Branding the Authentic Self: The Commercial Appeal
98
of “Being Real”
5
. “And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor”: Attracting
136
Advertisers, Building Brands, Leveraging (Free) Labor
6
. The “Instagram Filter”: Dispelling the Myths of
185
Entrepreneurial Glamour
7 216
. Aspirational Labor’s (In)Visibility
230
Epilogue: The Aspirational Labor of an Academic
237
Appendix: Method and List of Interview Participants
243
Notes
261
Bibliography
293
Acknowledgments
298
Index
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Preface
Popular rhetoric suggests that social media platforms like Face-
book, Twitter, and YouTube have opened the sluice gates of creative
expression. The idea is seductive, and it helps to explain the appeal of
social media for the legions of young aspirants hoping to break into
the creative industries. As a scholar of cultural production, I was
intrigued by the promise of self- made careers fashioned online. I
had just fi nished a book on the women’s magazine industry, which
chronicled producers’ efforts to contain the impending threat of
fashion bloggers and other independent voices. Could these social
media creators really bypass the legacy companies or, alternatively,
harness the currency of their networked “audiences” to land coveted
positions in the industry’s ranks? I was curious about the experiences
of the (mostly) young women writing the blogs, uploading the videos,
and posting to Instagram. Rhetoric aside, I wanted to know how
they managed their enterprising ventures, behind the glossy fi lters
and curated life- sharing. To what extent were their passion projects
paying off ?
I decided to ask them. Over a span of three years, I interviewed
dozens of social media producers to make sense of their experiences
and aspirations. What I found is that the narrative of creative self-
expression—touted by the press and projected by the digital aspirants
themselves—conceals the unrelenting work (much of it unpaid) that
ix