Janice Akufo Prompt #5

If you are a black makeup fanatic and have no idea who Aunty Jackie is.... what are you doing?

The beauty guru community on YouTube and the makeup industry has been forever impacted by the presence of black beauty influencer Jackie Aina. She’s down to earth, insanely hilarious, drop dead gorgeous, has flawless makeup application, and has no fear when it comes to calling out the exclusivity and injustice the beauty industry imposes on women of color--especially dark skin women. Her platform centered around representation of women of color (WOC) in all things beauty, holding brands and influencers accountable for their racial/cultural insensitivity, calling out colorism in the industry, and disclosing her favorite products and makeup tips for viewers of darker skin complexion has brought her channel millions of views (approximately 180k+) and a whopping 3.2+ million subscribers --most of whom are young brown and black beauty enthusiasts.

Aina has indeed championed the use of intimacy to reel in and retain her viewers and media followers by incorporating the micro-celebrity practice. As Marwick (2015) outlines, the “authentic” attribute of micro-celebrities like Jackie Aina is what differentiates them from traditional celebrities; through her carefully constructed persona on YouTube, she has been able to perform “insider authenticity” that makes her fans want to continue engaging with her content. (Marwick, 2015, p. 12). This authenticity has been upheld throughout the running of Aina’s YouTube channel, through intimate, emotional narratives shared about her beginnings as a black makeup artist, the rejection she faced, her unfinished education, her past failed marriage, and her growth in skill and success in the beauty industry. According to Abidin (2015), one of the key features in the success of influencers like Jackie Aina is the documentation of the “trivial and mundane” details of their everyday life (Abidin, 2015). Occasionally on YouTube and often on Instagram, Aina will upload “daily vlogs” featuring anything from regular GRWM (get-ready-with-me) short videos where she goes through her morning/midday routine of makeup application (also featuring “advertorials” that endorse branded makeup products in return for a fee (Abidin, 2015)), to outings with her husband, special events she’s attending, tasty meals at her house, new clothes she purchased, as well as get-unready-with-me videos where she removes her makeup and goes through her skincare routine before bed. 

The balance in sharing her glamorous lifestyle as a wealthy, black influencer while simultaneously running “behind the scenes” commentary disclosing “insider information” that makes her life appear more regular and relatable garners praise and admiration from her WOC audience, celebrating her “making it” as a black woman in the beauty and business world, which is rare to see because of the lack of representation. Despite her wealth and prosperous distinction from her viewers, her having a shared black identity and private life with her audience makes them feel a sense of “commonality” and raw intimacy with Aina-- this sustains their loyalty as followers and has been key to her success as an influencer (Abidin, 2015). 

As a fan of Jackie myself, there’s never been one video that hasn’t made me feel connected with her. Along with her influencer tactics mentioned above, her unique personality, hilarious video edits and genuine passion for what she does shines through every video that I’ve watched. Her channel’s theme of WOC visibility and her spontaneous authentic personality is all portrayed in one of her videos, “Trying New Makeup, Spilling Tea, Chatting About Life!”. This video follows the usual content and format of her videos: Aina converses with her viewers sitting right in front of the camera while going through a typical makeup tutorial, or GRWM, as if she is in the same room as her audience. She begins the video with her intro song-- “Jackie Jackie Jackie Jackie!” -- for a good 10 seconds before jumping into her makeup tutorial. Aina begins with skincare followed by her makeup application routine featuring new makeup brands, some of which are her follower’s products and from black-owned brands. Some products used (Chai foundation and Coconut Skin Serum) are from Too Faced, a cosmetics brand she did a collaboration with in June 2018 to expand their shades to deeper skin tones. In between different steps of her tutorial, she spends a couple minutes talking about her personal life concerning character changes, how the public’s perception of her has changed, how she is coping with her newfound successes, negativity and how it has impacted her mental and emotional health. A couple of minutes are also spent disclosing “tea”, a pop culture term for gossip/controversy, surrounding white rap artists Iggy Azalea and Bhad Bhabie and their intrusion into black spaces (like hip hop) that are not meant for them. She then concludes the video talking about her hair bundles and encouraging viewers to subscribe to her channel.

These dialogues are all happening simultaneously; Jackie does a good job blending topics of makeup, pop culture and her personal life to maintain the constant attention of her viewers. She talks in first and second person throughout the video, avoiding the monotony that can happen when filming a makeup tutorial by varying her volume, facial expressions, body language, all to keep the audience engaged. Like all her videos, she makes natural breaks in her speech more realistic in the video by cutting the frames into pieces, rather than keeping one long, continuous frame. She incorporates a lot of meme references and clips, such as Ricky Thompson’s viral meme “You make me SICK!!!!”. Aina’s use of AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) throughout her video, using colloquial lack terms such as “sis”, “wigatry” “period” “chasing the bag” and the famous term “hot girl summer” aligns with the intimacy and commonality discussed earlier-- Aina knows her viewers are black women, and uses this language to connect with them. Jackie Aina is known for telling it like it is, candidly expressing her opinions and being confident in what she says; she shamelessly discusses the “beef” she had with Iggy Azalea without embarrassment, tells the audience the truth behind what happened, and makes her points about black spaces being meant for black people loud and clear. With makeup application, she swatches the products, showing viewers what it looks like in real life--specifically on dark skin--then pointing out where and why she applies it the way she does. This gives her audience the impression that she wants to share her secrets, that she wants them to be just as beautiful and successful. 

Even though Aina spends only a handful of minutes talking about her life and the drama going on, she flawlessly transitions between those topics and her makeup tutorial so that viewers will want to stick around and hear what she has to say. This proves to be effective in keeping her fans engaged with her and her personality, and attentive to her advertorial makeup and hair products. There is no particularly intended message in this video; her uninhibited display of her genuine self, her makeup skills and her opinions subtly encourage her viewers to be their authentic selves, explore new things (i.e. makeup products), support black brands, and work towards being their best self. With each new video Jackie Aina makes, she is successfully branding herself as an advocate for black women and a ‘genius” beauty expert. But, this “strategic intimacy” (Marwick, 2015, p. 1) she fosters with her viewers has also been vital to her ultimate branding as a commodified personality in pop culture; she is used by herself and beauty companies to both promote their products and sell her unique character, as portrayed on YouTube. 

References:

Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative <3 intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness.
Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology8. Retrieved from: http://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidi/ (Links to an external site.)

Marwick, A. (2015). You may know me from YouTube: (Micro)-celebrity in social media. Pp. 333-350 in A Companion to Celebrity, edited by P. David Marshall and Sean Redmond. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

(2019, July 23). Retrieved November 13, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akp-
RR0pJk4&feature=youtu.be.