Among the many niches of YouTube, the lifestyle and fashion communities saw a rise of content creators that began to curate a new style of aesthetics revolving around the Cooper Black font, colorful or earth toned palettes, and their seemingly imperfect and quirky qualities. Ashley, better known as bestdressed, is one popular Youtuber that flourished in this community. After graduating college in 2.5 years this June, she is now a full-time Youtuber with 2.35 million subscribers as of November 2019. Her channel description reads, “fashion, thrifting, and other misadventures of a 20-something college graduate clinging to her glory days when she won the best dressed senior superlative. all served with a spicy side of dry humor.” The videos on her channel are organized into different categories: thrifting, chatty (more personal videos usually in a Q&A format), thrift flip (altering clothes she thrifted), outfit 101 (provides outfit ideas), vlogs (shows her daily life), room tours and makeovers, and hauls. With her channel’s focus on fashion trends, styles, and tips for women, her content is mainly catered towards females around the ages of 14-25 (teenagers and young adults).
Along with YouTube, Ashley is also active as a social influencer on Instagram (@best.dressed), where she has almost one million followers. With her entire audience engagement online, it would be safe to describe Ashley as a micro-celebrity (Marwick, 2015). Marwick (2015) describes this emerging celebrity status as one that is only possible in a digital media society since the term specifically describes the process of using social media for audience development and outreach. Ashley’s Instagram account serves as an extension of her YouTube channel. Since YouTube’s main form of communication only allows creators to reply back to comments, it doesn’t allow for any sustained interactions. As well as replying to comments, on Instagram, Ashley is able to interact with her followers by broadcasting live video streams, directly reposting stories that fans have tagged her in, easily replying to messages, and showing more of her personal life through Instagram stories. This additional access to a creator’s life results in a perceived interconnectedness (Abidin, 2015). Through Instagram, fans feel as though they get a look into the backstage, a more intimate and exclusive perspective. In reality, no matter how much of their life is disclosed, it’s always a calculated disclosure of information (Abidin, 2015). Fans realize this (to an extent), but like audiences of reality T.V., that knowledge is suspended in order to consume a creator’s content. This way, creators are able to show a particular image of themselves while gaining more fans who seek a degree of authenticity.
To get a better understanding of Ashley as a creator, I will analyze one of the most popular videos on her channel, “50 OUTFITS for when you have nothing to wear,” with 8.1 million views. Although the video seems superficial, she emphasizes variation and the ability for women to wear whatever they please by providing an abundance of ideas and suggestions to make the most out of one’s wardrobe. The video starts with a ‘90s infomercial inspired introduction that sets an informal mood for the audience. She neatly splits up each section of the almost 13-minute video with cute handwritten and drawn title cards for each category of outfit. With her commentary and video introduction, it gives Ashley more agency to show her personality through the video in order to create a more genuine connection with viewers. Throughout the video and interspersed between her tips, Ashley inserts a few uncensored side comments that exemplify the dry humor she specified in her channel description. These little details allow her to express herself freely, so her videos appear less restrained.
Another detail to consider along with the video itself is the video description, which is packed with information that is organized according to the title cards. As a fashion Youtuber, Ashley acknowledges the audience by realizing the importance of linking items (or similar items) that were mentioned in the video. Since viewers may be curious and clicked the video for tips, it’s helpful to provide a direct guide for those interested in particular items. However, while clicking a few links myself, I noticed the words “affiliate.linkshare” within the web address. This could make the viewer more wary of the transparency of the review because of the “affiliate” (usually monetary) relationship the creator has to the product/company. With the rise of micro-celebrities nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see more and more advertorials—a combination of advertisements and editorials that feature personalized promotions of products for a fee (Abidin, 2015). Advertorials/sponsorships could be well received, but because they’re transactional, they tend to cause more issues of trust.
With the subconscious understanding of perceived interconnectedness and a barrage of affiliate links, why is Ashley still well perceived? While Youtubers are not seen as reality T.V. stars, Ouellette and Murray’s (2009) concept of “entertaining real” can still be used to understand Ashley’s popularity online. The concept’s emphasis on authenticity also incorporates Turner’s (2010) concept of the ordinary person and how we see a shift from the elite to the ordinary, everyday person as celebrities. Ashley’s laid-back and chill personality gives people a stronger sense of authenticity when evaluating her as a micro-celebrity. As a result, even with the skepticism of the validity of her statements due to the unavoidable aspect of monetary exchanges, her personality, the candidness of her way of speech, and attention to detail quell that sense of mistrust. The other videos on her channel support her strive for authenticity; she acknowledges her privileges and the privileges that follow with her unconventional YouTube career and openly shares personal details about her life while specifying a limit that reminds fans that celebrities are humans too. Instead of being seen as fake and manipulative, Ashley is perceived to be naturally relatable even with her growth in fame.
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