#FILIPINA: Constructing filipina beauty in the age of beauty vlogging

• Main Author: Gabriel-Ibarrientos, Angela Ann V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Vloggers; Video blogs; Beauty, Personal; Social media; Film and Media Studies
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_comm/1; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=etdm_comm
• Institution: De La Salle University

Our everyday communications and interactions are what helped us define many things that we see around every day. It has shaped how we understand objects, concepts, and all other ideas that a human being absorbs in every second and every minute of their lives. Through this, the idea of Beauty is believed to have been socially constructed. Studies show that Beauty plays a significant role in the development of people’s social networks (O’Connor & Gladstone, 2017) and physical appearance has played an essential role in the shaping of one’s self-worth (Harter, 1987). Various scholars have defined what is Beautiful or what is the standard to be aesthetically pleasing. And with the onset of traditional media, the images that we see have influenced how we view the concept of Beauty. With the rise of New Media, the idea of Beauty have become fluid. Adapting to the different standards of Beauty as shown in many New Media platforms such as Social Media. Aesthetic Labour has become an activity within these New Media platforms, as performed by women who subject themselves within the task of presenting their own concepts of Beauty. These women who pertains to themselves as the new wave of influencers have idealized their own Beauty advocacies that is eventually absorbed by their followers.With that said, this study aims to explore the content-creation process of select Filipina Beauty vloggers and how they maximize New Media platforms to show their own concepts of Beauty. Through the lens of Symbolic Interactionism, it is found out that New Media was able to contribute to the perspectives of these Filipina Beauty vloggers on their concept of Beauty by penetrating all the dimensions of the Symbolic Interactionism process. Interestingly there is an underlying contrast between the Beauty vloggers’ concept of Beauty and their Aesthetic activities as an influencer. That despite all the Beauty advocacies that they have come up with due to exposure to different Beauty ideals, they still have to maintain their own Beauty in order to satisfy their role as a Beauty Vlogger.