“It’s All About the Look”: Making Sense of Appearance,Attractiveness,and Authenticity Online

Abstract

Existing research on Instagram suggests that the mobile application is dominated by a cast of hegemonically attractive influencers. But calls for greater diversity and inclusion are on the rise, raising important questions about how social media influencers and the industry personnel who support them understand diversity and negotiate appearance ideals. Drawing on 40 interviews with influencers and industry personnel as well as a year of online observation, I find that hegemonic ideals surrounding appearance and attractiveness continue to shape who is (and isn’t) perceived as worthy of visibility online. Industry personnel and influencers alike share that these ideals play an important role in cultivating a following on social media but remain convinced that change is underway. Emphasizing the importance of influencers’ relatability and perceived authenticity, influencers, agents, and brand representatives shift focus away from broader issues surrounding the platform including the role that industry personnel play in moderating and constraining opportunities for diversity online.

Introduction

Web-based and mobile platforms such as Instagram have given rise to a cast of new stars who possess significant market reach. Among them, fashion influencers—or widely followed digital content creators—stand out for their striking appearance and sartorial savvy. Acting as intermediaries, fashion influencers position products for social media users and help to shape their sale and promotion on behalf of brand partners online. Influencers’ market reach and public presentation are shrouded in broader debates surrounding social media and its inclusive potential (Cunningham & Craig, 2019; Duffy, 2015; Marwick, 2013; Pham, 2015; Turner, 2004, 2006; Vraga, 2019). These debates draw our attention to a homogeneous set of largely White and well-followed influencers who are known to posture themselves in nearly identical ways across Instagram’s explore page (Caldeira et al., 2020; Morency, 2020). ¹ As Jia Tolentino (2019) of The New Yorker observed, the “aesthetic language” that influencers traffic is one of “sameness,” with a host of “professionally beautiful” and hegemonically attractive users routinely mirroring one another’s look and appearance.

In recent years, however, calls for greater inclusion and diversity online have grown louder (Bakhtiari, 2022). Members of the press have, for example, lambasted Instagram and her brand partners for routinely favoring “thin, white, able-bodied, 20-something influencers” (Graham, 2019). Beyond the press, everyday users of social media are also requesting greater diversity in the images they see, with comments and criticisms levied against Instagram and some of its most widely followed stars (Foster & Pettinicchio, 2021). Amid these criticisms and calls for greater diversity, how do industry personnel and Instagram influencers understand the significance of appearance and attractiveness online? How do they make sense of and manage matters of appearance?

With these questions in mind, this article begins with a review of the extant literature surrounding Instagram and her influencers. This review traces contemporary debates surrounding hegemonic beauty norms and the production of cultural content online. I revisit these debates at a moment in which diversity is thought to be on the rise (Dahir, 2019; Safronova, 2017) and at a time when the fashion industry is “facing a reckoning” for its prejudices (Lee, 2020). What follows from this literature is a detailed account of the data and methods employed in this article. Briefly, I draw on a year of netnographic observation and 40 interviews with established and aspiring fashion influencers as well as the industry personnel they partner with. Industry personnel include influencer marketers, brand representatives, and talent agents. Talent agents help to support influencers’ work, guiding the production of their content and brokering brand deals on influencers’ behalf. Marketers and brand representatives meanwhile, supply visual and written directives as well as opportunities for short- and long-term sponsorship.

Combining my insights from among influencers and the industry personnel they work with, I show that influencers’ fashion images and the aesthetic labor that underpins them map onto existing hierarchies in our social landscape, reproducing hegemonic ideals surrounding attractiveness and appearance online. Industry personnel and influencers alike share that while these ideals play an important role on Instagram, diversity is already on the rise. While calls for greater inclusion grow louder, they appeal toward influencers’ perceived authenticity and relatability to make sense of existing distributions of power and privilege. These appeals toward authenticity, I argue, eclipse broader issues surrounding Instagram’s economy and the centrality of attractiveness within it, including the role that industry personnel play in moderating and constraining opportunities for diversity.

Literature Review

Hegemonic Attractiveness in the Digital Era

Mainstream media content, including advertisements and editorial images of fashion, tends to reinforce a narrow set of ideals surrounding beauty and appearance (Baumann, 2008; Hunter, 2005; Mears, 2010, 2011; Wolf, 1991). A slender or fit physique, a pore-less facial complexion, and Whiteness or light skin are often privileged in press pages and across campaign images reinforcing the importance of these features as markers of beauty (Baumann, 2008; Hunter, 2005; Laan & Kuipers, 2016; McMillan Cottom, 2019; Mears, 2010). All the while, women of color, women who are fuller-figured, and older women are rendered invisible (Baumann & de Laat, 2012; Craig, 2002; Hamilton et al., 2019). Images and advertisements featuring men and their appearances likewise draw attention to a muscular or fit physique and emphasize hegemonically “attractive” or culturally lauded bodies while omitting or else vilifying marginalized men including and especially men of color (Lawrence, 2016; Waling et al., 2017).

By now, it is well understood that these images and the bodies they celebrate or exclude translate into a host of social privileges, especially among women and young girls (Anderson et al., 2010; Bishop et al., 2018; Mears, 2014; Milkie, 1999; Press, 2011; Wolf, 1991). This is no less true online, where conventionally beautiful and hegemonically attractive users are rewarded with visible metrics of popularity and public praise including likes and comments (Banet-Weiser, 2015; Butkowski et al., 2019; Caldeira, 2020; Chen & Kanai, 2021; Dobson, 2015). For Instagram’s fashion influencers who center their figures and faces in view, likes might be read as indicators of attractiveness, returning social and economic capital in the form of brand deals and lucrative product endorsements (Butkowski et al., 2019, p. 5). Indeed, highly stylized images or “glamor shots” emphasizing influencers’ beauty and femininity tend to collect a significant number of likes and comments online (Baker & Walsh, 2018, p. 4562). Shots of the body and shots emphasizing women’s fitness are also known to generate a great deal of engagement among Instagram users (Baker & Walsh, 2018; Stevens, 2021).

That traditionally gendered photographs and photographs featuring women’s fitness tend to garner interest online is not altogether surprising. Indeed, women’s social and symbolic visibility have long been tied to their appearance and attractiveness (Wolf, 1991). But attention to men’s physical appearance and attractiveness is also on the rise, with mainstream media featuring men in increasingly “idealized and eroticized fashions, coded in ways that give permission for them to be looked at and desired” (Gill et al., 2005, p. 38; Foster & Baker, 2022). On social media applications like Instagram and TikTok too, men are made increasingly visible through static images and videos that comment on their appearance and good looks (Foster & Baker, 2022).

Regardless of gender, the popularity of an influencer and the brand work that follows raises questions about who is (and isn’t) poised to succeed in Instagram’s mediascape. These questions arise as Instagram’s own technical apparatus narrows users’ attention to a select number of social media influencers. Specifically, attention is circumscribed through algorithms known to favor hegemonically attractive, White, and cisgendered men and women (Glatt, 2020; Mears, 2020). As such, users of social media tend to “experience visibility in staggeringly uneven ways” (Duffy & Hund, 2019, p. 4983). News media reporting related to visibility on Instagram suggests that the most diverse social media influencers are among the least likely to benefit from Instagram’s algorithm(s) (see, for example, Dodgson [2020]). Researchers, too, observe a “highly uneven distribution of power and privilege” online, with viewers disproportionately engaging with “fashion’s traditional social hierarchies” or social media’s most conventionally beautiful, White, and upper-class users (Pham, 2015; see also Duffy, 2017). In recent years, however, pressure for greater diversity and inclusion has mounted against the notoriously exclusive fashion industry and its influencers, with media pundits and everyday social media users calling for a wider range of figures and faces in the images and advertisements we see on Instagram (see, for instance, Safronova, 2017; Foster & Pettinicchio, 2021). How then do influencers and the industry personnel they work with understand and make sense of calls for diversity? And how are beauty norms and hegemonic appearances negotiated amid these calls?

Capturing, Communicating, and Commodifying Authenticity Online

On Instagram, influencers strive to produce and present a look that will distinguish themselves from others while maximizing their appeal among followers online (Baker & Walsh, 2018; Cotter, 2019; Marwick & boyd, 2011). The production of influencers’ look takes place in collaboration with a cast of industry personnel including talent agents and brand representatives, and within a larger economy that privileges aesthetic qualities and hegemonic appearances (Banet-Weiser, 2015, p. 55; Cotter, 2019; Dobson, 2015). Performing well within this economy requires significant labor on the part of social media influencers, including and especially aesthetic labor or labor related to the presentation and performance of appearance (Duffy & Hund, 2015; Hearn & Banet-Weiser, 2020; Holla, 2016; Mears, 2014; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018; Wissinger, 2015). Influencers must, for example, compose and edit highly stylized photographs, engage with audiences, and often, on more than one social media platform (Leaver et al., 2020). Composing and editing a photograph is itself an onerous project, requiring significant time as well as technical and communicative skills to capture, caption, and post (Pham, 2015).

Influencers’ look, then, is “fundamentally a cultural product; it is the outcome of an organized production process” (Mears, 2010, p. 24). On Instagram, this process is largely hidden from view, as social media users shroud their labor in images, stories, and static posts that appear effortless (Duffy & Hund, 2015; Pham, 2015). This is not altogether different from the production of mainstream fashion images and the teams of personnel their production employ. Photographers, stylists, and bookers, for example, all have a hand in the “making of a look” (Mears, 2010, 2011) and in the distribution and sale of beauty more broadly. In the music industry and within the art world too (Becker, 1982), a large number of creatives—unknown or invisible to the average consumer—operate together to produce content and maximize commercial sales (Dowd, 2004; Varriale, 2015).

Acting as gatekeepers and cultural entrepreneurs (Erigha, 2019; Foster et al., 2011; Mears, 2011), industry personnel like talent agents and brand representatives assist influencers in refining their look. This is the case when talent agents or brand representatives supply visual directives, provide coaching, or else make comments about influencers’ look. But this is not all that they do. Industry personnel also play an important part in brokering deals on behalf of influencers and in acquiring paid-for-contracts with brands and business partners. Yet, little attention has been given to how industry personnel such as brand representatives and talent agents operate together with influencers to shape the production of social media content or how these figures channel opportunities for work and visibility. Instead, significant—and important—attention has been paid solely to influencers themselves and to the mechanisms through which they endear themselves to audiences online.

Emerging out of this work is an emphasis on influencers’ ability to communicate authenticity, or their ability to provide a look into their “true” or “inner” self while navigating visibility and fame online (Maares et al., 2021; Marwick, 2013, p. 120). In their work on Twitter, for instance, Marwick and boyd (2010) observe that the management and performance of authenticity produces a sense of closeness between users and their followers including and especially among celebrities and micro-celebrities online. Unlike traditional celebrities, influencers share an especially close relationship with their audiences, managing their “self-presentation practices to strategically attract followers” and mobilize their brand (Hurley, 2019, p. 3; Marwick, 2015; Marwick & boyd, 2011). And while some of these management strategies and the interactions they necessitate might be described as parasocial in nature—producing an imagined, often one-sided, sense of intimacy between influencers and their audiences—they are nevertheless useful for achieving connectedness and building an audience online (Marwick & boyd, 2011; Stein et al., 2022; Wellman, 2021). Public comments and replies, for example, foster perceptions of relatability and encourage a form of access not common among traditional celebrities and their audiences (Marwick, 2013; Marwick & boyd, 2010; Reade, 2020; Turner, 2004, p. 12) and observe a similar logic in her work among Instagram’s influencers or micro-celebrities who emphasize the importance of posting “raw” images and photographs of the “everyday” to “achieve perceptions of authenticity” and produce feelings of relatability among followers online.

This creates a condition that is ripe with commercial opportunity as marketers and public relations personnel seek to cash in on authenticity’s cultural cathect (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Peterson, 1999) and the influencers who best communicate it (Abidin, 2016, 2017; Khamis et al., 2017; Maares et al., 2021; Marwick & boyd, 2011). Sometimes called “branded authenticity,” influencers are called upon to “re-work” their performance and public presentation online to maximize appeal and generate greater revenue both for themselves and for the commercial figures they partner with (Long & Wilhoit, 2018, p. 317).

While this focus on authenticity and relatability among influencers online is hugely important, such a focus often side-steps the industry personnel influencers operate alongside and the corresponding constraints these personnel manage and impose. With this oversight in mind, I extend the extant literature on social media influencers and appearance ideals to account for the dynamic and co-constitutive relationships that connect influencers with others in the industry. In doing so, I shed much-needed light on the various strategies influencers and industry personnel deploy to make sense of appearance and attractiveness amid calls for inclusion online. And, on the obstacles and industry strategies that limit and constrain opportunities for diversity online.

Methods

This project draws on semi-structured interviews and online observations to shed light on how Instagram influencers and the industry personnel who support them make sense of hegemonic beauty norms and attractiveness ideals amid calls for greater diversity and inclusion online. Interviews provide a revealing vehicle through which to access these ideals and their social meanings (Lamont & Swidler, 2014; Pugh, 2013). Observations, meanwhile, help to ground interview data against the practices and unique dynamics that characterize Instagram’s landscape and influencers’ labor across it (Boellstorff et al., 2012).

Prospective interviewees were identified through elements of observational and immersive “netnography” on Instagram (Costello et al., 2017; Kozinets, 2010) and pursued with the help of industry contacts in fashion and public relations. In practice, this meant communicating with industry personnel both via email and on Instagram’s mobile application while also reaching out to and observing influencers and their work online. Specifically, I followed influencers’ content production and weekly posts as well as their sponsored activities and Instagram stories. Consistent with Reade’s (2020, p. 6) work among Instagram users, I engaged with, “liked,” and commented on influencers’ content to maintain a “position of openness, kindness and mutuality.”

Between September 2020 and August 2021, I conducted 40 interviews with established (n = 19) and aspiring (n = 4) social media influencers and the industry personnel they work with including influencer marketers (n = 7), public relations representatives (n = 2), and talent agents (n = 8). Of these interviewees, 19 were women and 21 were men (see Table 1). Interviews took place over the phone and via video call. They typically lasted between 30 min and 1 hr. To ensure confidentiality, all interviewees were assigned a pseudonym.

Table 1.

Influencers and Industry Personnel.

	Total: 40	Influencers				Industry personnel
		Aspiring/Nano	Micro	Macro	Celebrity	Talent Agents	Influencer Marketers	Brand Representatives
		4	14	4	1	8	7	2
Male		1	11	2		2	3	2
Female		3	3	2	1	6	4
White		2	11	2	1	6	7	2
East Asian		1	1			1
South Asian				2
Black		1	2			1

Of the interviewees I spoke with, 19 were established influencers meaning that they had 5 or more years of experience on Instagram and thousands or tens of thousands of followers online. Others were aspiring influencers with relatively smaller followings on Instagram (e.g., 1,000–5,000 followers). Seventeen of the interviewees are industry personnel who work to support influencers and the production of their content or else, who reach out to and work with influencers regularly. These personnel included talent agents, brand representatives, and influencer marketers who reported years of work experience cutting across industry sectors and product categories in the realm of lifestyles and fashion. Industry personnel were sourced through talent agencies, their public contacts, and brand connections both in Canada and in the United States.

For the purpose of this project, interviews were developed to capture the context and conditions within which influencers produce and perform their labor and to better understand how characteristics like race, class, body size, and appearance shape influencers’ fame online. Drawing on established literature related to social media influencers (e.g., Abidin, 2016; Pham, 2015; Reade, 2020), interview questions were sensitized to address what criteria industry personnel employed to locate or source talent, what kinds of payment(s) are awarded to Instagram’s influencers, and in exchange for what content. Industry personnel were asked, for example, how they would define an influencer and for what reasons they might work with them. Influencers were likewise asked to comment on why industry personnel or brand representatives might be reaching out, and what deliverables were asked of them (e.g., story post, static image, Instagram reel). Additional questions related to appearance ideals and their importance were also asked of influencers and industry personnel. For instance, interviewees were asked whether and to what extent attractiveness shapes’ influencers fame online and in what ways, if any, race or class affect influencers’ visibility. ²

After preliminary conversations with influencers and the industry personnel they work with, some themes and concepts emerged as highly significant to influencers’ work online. Authenticity, for example, was often cited by influencers and industry personnel as among the most important qualities determining influencers’ fame and following online. Alongside these claims, influencers themselves identified several pressures related to the performance and production of appearance including a complex, sometimes contradictory, set of pressures and emotions related to capturing images that mirror widely recognized beauty ideals and hegemonic appearance norms. With these emergent themes in mind, interview questions were refined to better capture the subtleties of influencers’ work, the practices this work involves, and the emotions they engender (Pugh, 2013).

Interviews were transcribed verbatim using an audio-to-text transcription service and coded using MAXQDA. The coding procedure progressed in an open and iterative fashion (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), capturing themes and patterns as they emerged across interview transcripts (Deterding & Waters, 2021). Similarities and differences between influencers’ own reporting and claims made by the industry personnel they worked with were mapped to produce a better understanding of the dynamics that connect these figures to one another, the pressures that shape their work, and the industry mechanisms that enable and constrain opportunities for diversity and inclusion online. These patterns are discussed in detail below.

Findings

Understanding the Maintenance and Production of Instagram’s Look

My findings unfold in three steps. First, I explore how influencers and the industry personnel who surround them make sense of and understand the significance of beauty online, and the appearance pressures and anxieties Instagram can engender. I do so at a moment in time in which calls for diversity are on the rise and brands and advertisers are increasingly pressed to widen the range of influencers they partner with. Second, I trace the ways in which influencers and industry personnel understand diversity and the strategies and appeals they draw on to balance representation aside Instagram’s appearance norms. Third and finally, I shed a light on the limits of diversity online. Namely, on the obstacles and industry challenges that surround influencers who embody diversity including and especially influencers of color. Throughout, influencers and industry personnel alike insist that diversity is already on the rise, deflecting attention away from ongoing issues across the platform, and from their own role in constraining opportunities for work and visibility online.

Beauty Is a Business Metric

We recognize that appearance and attractiveness are important for influencers’ visibility online (Hearn & Banet-Weiser, 2020; Pham, 2015). The degree to which attractiveness matters, for whom, and why, however, varied across my sample of interviewees. Whereas talent agents often skirted around issues related to appearance and attractiveness, brand representatives and influencers agreed that physical attractiveness was necessarily key to producing fame and for attracting online partnerships. As Bradley, an influencer marketer, told me, “beauty is a business metric,” meaning that beauty or the embodied markers of physical attractiveness can return revenue to brands and marketers who seek to capitalize on its representation aside influencers and the products they promote. The beauty metric is, as Bradley explained, especially important for brands whose market focus lies within fashion or cosmetics. “It comes down to brand alignment,” he elaborated, and “looks . . . at the end of the day, they do sell.”

Bradley’s remarks echo those of the influencers, marketers, and brand representatives I spoke with and, are consistent with existing work surrounding the importance of appearance in cultural and creative industries (Friedman & O’Brien, 2017; Mears, 2010; Simon, 2019). That is, online as elsewhere in our cultural economy, beauty plays a role in structuring opportunity, returning significant social and material rewards to those who are thought to possess it (Anderson et al., 2010). On Instagram, these rewards include followers, likes, and lucrative endorsements and promotions from beauty and fashion brands.

For their part, influencers revealed that beauty or the aesthetic qualities of appearance accounted for differences among social media users, determining who becomes widely followed and who is forgotten. As Kris, an aspiring Toronto-based influencer put it, Instagram is “all about the look.” Amanda, an established influencer with more than 100,000 followers lamented that, “if I looked like a model, I would have a million followers,” insisting that it was beauty and attractiveness that made the biggest difference to influencers’ visibility online.

Other influencers reported on the significance of beauty and attractiveness online alongside a set of pressures and appearance-based anxieties. Sam, an established influencer with 21,000 followers based out of Houston, Texas, could not help but compare himself to the industry’s most widely followed and attractive influencers. “It’s hard not to,” he said. Vicky, an aspiring influencer, had high hopes for her platform but felt intense pressure to keep up with Instagram’s most widely followed stars. These users were, as Vicky observed, “never outfit-repeating,” which compelled her to constantly purchase new clothing and photograph her wardrobe. Like Sam and Amanda, the centrality of appearance and attractiveness on Instagram spurred a certain amount of anxiety for Vicky who felt increasingly self-conscious next to the idealized images and polished snapshots of others, particularly those creators who were far better established. This was also the case for Gordon, a micro-influencer who reported several appearance pressures and anxieties of his own. While photographing content for Instagram, Gordon felt he had to “clench every muscle” and hold his breath just to “make everything work.” These appearance pressures and the aesthetic concerns underpinning influencers’ labor more broadly were often hidden from view.

While influencers and industry personnel both share that beauty and attractiveness play a part in shaping visibility online, industry personnel seemed especially sure that these are not the only qualities determining influencers’ reach on Instagram. Andrea, an influencer marketer, focused on influencers whose content felt more “relatable” and “authentic” and whose self-presentation spoke to a more diverse audience of highly engaged consumers. Explaining her thinking, Andrea told me: “people are looking for something a bit different” and, for brands and marketers, it is important that you tap into influencers who can provide an “intimate,” and “behind the scenes” look into their everyday lives. Put differently, “someone who feels authentic.” Ideally, she continued, these influencers should also reflect the diversity of Instagram users. That is, they should embody physical markers of difference related to their race, body size, and appearance because consumers are “looking to see someone who looks more like them.” Andrea was not the only interviewee who stressed the importance of authenticity and relatability when discussing diversity online. As I will show, this was a common refrain among industry personnel.

Making Sense of Diversity and Inclusion Online

When asked about issues related to diversity specifically, interviewees often spoke about the marginalization of people of color online as well as cited the importance of body diversity on Instagram. These issues, interviewees agreed, represented an important and often neglected point for discussion on the social media platform. Still, many of the influencers and industry personnel I spoke with insisted that Instagram is becoming more diverse. As if to offer evidence, influencers, and industry personnel shifted focus toward authenticity and relatability, decentering matters of appearance when making sense of ongoing obstacles related to inclusion online. Some interviewees, for instance, insisted that while Instagram’s hegemonic beauty norms were important, they were not determinative of influencers’ visibility on the platform. This was an especially common refrain among talent agents. As Samantha, the president of a Canadian talent agency explained to me, “physical attractiveness does draw audiences in, but as you may have noticed, online audiences need more than just a pretty face. They want someone who is engaging, relatable, sometimes funny, or unique” and above all, “someone who’s content feels authentic.”

Others too suggested that whereas beauty was once an important metric through which influencers might harness followers, authenticity is, today, more relevant for audiences and brands. Kevin, a PR representative for a popular accessory label shared, for example, that while “the look” matters for visibility, his brand did not base their collaborations on appearances alone. Rather, Kevin’s brand was interested in “genuine people” who were relatable and authentic. Tanya, an influencer marketer put it like this: “if you are a beautiful person, you will attract individuals to follow your account.” But, she continued, “there’s been a big switch” and now, “you’re seeing all different types of individuals, shapes, sizes, everything.” For agents and brand representatives like Kevin and Tanya, the demand for greater diversity and inclusion had been met, with industry personnel making steps toward a more diverse, authentic, and relatable roster of talent.

When I asked Joyce, the founder of a Canadian talent agency, whether and to what extent influencers’ appearance and physical attractiveness shaped their fame online, she had this to say:

If you had asked me this last year, I’d have a different answer than I do today . . . I’m going to sound like a complete bitch, but I think that if you . . . I almost feel like people that are good-looking are, in a way, disadvantaged at this point, because I think it’s becoming very popular to be quote unquote unpopular.

In Joyce’s view, audiences and agents within the industry were no longer interested in influencers who were hegemonically beautiful, but rather, in those who were and are perceived as relatable and authentic, even if their appearance deemed them otherwise “unpopular” online. Continuing in this vein, Joyce emphasized the importance of authenticity over beauty. Whereas a “natural beauty,” she said, might be perceived as “fake,” influencers who could signal their authenticity were sure to be liked.

Some influencers also stressed the importance of authenticity and relatability when making sense of appearance norms online. Ash, a Toronto-based influencer, for example, shared that while “a lot of us [influencers] do tweak our appearance” it’s becoming more common to “embrace your own body and, I think it’s a little bit more authentic.” Josh, an influencer working out of Vancouver, shared a similar set of remarks when reflecting on the importance of appearance and attractiveness amid calls for diversity online. To borrow his own words, “It’s not so much physical attractiveness that matters anymore . . . I think it’s the content the people like, and authentic content is especially important.” Like industry personnel then, Ash and Josh appeal toward the importance of authenticity when making sense of Instagram’s hegemonic appearance norms and issues related to diversity and inclusion more broadly.

While authenticity and relatability are, no doubt, important for influencers’ presentation and visibility online, authenticity and relatability should not be mistaken for—or used in place of—diversity. Indeed, authenticity and relatability can still be signaled through hegemonically beautiful young people who are similar in their look and appearance, raising questions about whether these qualities are really at odds with influencers’ attractiveness. What is more, authenticity and relatability are performative (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Marwick & boyd, 2011), and perceptions thereof are largely subjective. Still, both the industry personnel I spoke with and the influencers themselves stressed that these qualities—authenticity and influencers’ relatability—were among the most important for connecting with audiences and for attracting new followers online.

Understanding the Limits of Diversity and Inclusion Online

Amid appeals toward authenticity and its importance online, an important question remains. Is authenticity race-neutral? The “diverse,” “relatable,” and “authentic” influencers my interviewees pointed me to were still conventionally beautiful, often White, and cisgendered. These influencers—like @thebirdspapaya—made disclosures about their struggle with self-esteem and their frustrations around small degrees of body diversity like stretch marks, wrinkles, and fat. Interviewees rarely pointed me to any widely followed influencers of color suggesting perhaps that beauty and relatability are first and foremost White (McMillan Cottom, 2019).

Where race is concerned, influencers and industry personnel alike agreed that sponsorships for men and women of color were limited. Influencers, however, were far more solicitous of the ways in which race informed opportunities for work online. For example, Daniel, an East-Asian fashion influencer with some 31,000 followers (and counting), insisted that “pretty” and “Caucasian” influencers tend to receive the greatest number of sponsorships. They are, he explained, a favorite of brands and seem to attract audiences with less effort. Sarah agreed, sharing that “brands have a tendency to focus more on white influencers,” altogether neglecting men and women of color. As a woman of color herself, Sarah felt that she had to “work harder” to capture the attention of brands and followers online. This was true also for Alexa, a Columbian influencer based out of Montreal. Pointing to recent changes she observed online, Alexa said that “brands are seeing a shift” in consumers’ interests and are growing more conscientious about the fact that they have or are “only working with white influencers.” Michael, a Black man working part-time as an influencer agreed; change was underway, led by consumers. But this change has been slow and, for Michael, discouraging. As he put it, influencers who are most popular and attractive are “not people of color” and they are seldom helped by Instagram’s algorithm.

Industry personnel expressed similar concerns related to matters of race and inclusivity but couched these concerns within a broad conversation on market reach and the potential for revenue. Reporting on issues related to inclusivity and representation more broadly, Kyla, an influencer marketer, said that “diversity is super important” especially for brands hoping to connect with (and sell to) a wide audience of followers online. Accordingly, Kyla and her team were careful to “put forth influencer lists” that showcased diversity when making recommendations to brands or brokering connections between brands and influencers. Andrea, an influencer marketer cited above, also highlighted the importance of diversity in her work with brands. Recognizing that the industry was already saturated by “skinny blonde, white, fake, tanned fashion influencers,” Andrea connected brands to more diverse influencers to ensure that they too were seen and heard. And this, she reported, made good business sense. To borrow Andrea’s words, “you need to make sure that you’re hitting your audience,” and that audience is diverse.

Jennifer, an agent who worked with talent both in Toronto and Los Angeles, pushed back on brands that did not make efforts toward diversity and inclusion. In her own words,

if a brand comes back and they’re saying that, you know, let’s say that they picked three out of the 10 talent that we’ve put forward. And this is like, you know, women who all look the same . . . we’ve got to push harder.

Jennifer’s comments here suggest that industry personnel such as talent agents or marketers like Kyla and Andrea play an important role in promoting diversity online. Acting as intermediaries, agents, and marketers can challenge brand teams to invest in diverse talent and produce more consistent changes in their advertising work—an investment, they agreed, that could return significant revenue to brands and businesses (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Lawson, 2020).

It is not clear, however, that agents’ entrepreneurial efforts toward diversity pay off or protect marginalized influencers from precarity. Consider, for example, Kyle, a Dominican-born influencer working in New York. To cut costs, Kyle was dropped by one of the city’s largest agencies along with several other influencers “who were mostly POC.” As he explained, “there was a lot of issues with the agency in terms of like financial issues, corporate culture [and] racial issues that nobody even cared to discuss.”

My interviews with talent agents as well as my observations online lend support to Kyle’s remarks. Indeed, a look toward agencies’ talent rosters suggests that the influencers agents forwarded as “diverse” were few and far between. Despite repeated assurances that talent agents could help to polish influencers’ content, grow their following, and secure steady contracts they seldom reached out to the lower cadres of influencers—many of whom embody markers of difference and routinely face obstacles to visibility as a result. Instead, talent agents opted for “safe bets” or what Erigha (2019) has elsewhere called, “bankable” talent. Accordingly, agents required that influencers accrue between 15,000 and 20, 000 followers before partnering together, and asked that their prospective talent exchange engagement metrics and a detailed list of existing brand deals to demonstrate their readiness for work. Demonstrating a history of endorsements can be a far more difficult task for influencers of color who are routinely passed over by brands online—a fact conveniently forgotten by talent agents who insist on seeing established evidence of this work.

For all their interest in diversity, talent agents hold only so much power in the business of fame. Brands ultimately control the budget through which influencers and agents generate their income, and these brands have only recently begun to shift their focus toward Instagram’s most diverse men and women. As John, the co-founder of an influencer talent agency in the United States observed, “the pendulum has swung,” and brands are now trying to compensate for “the lack of inclusion that they previously had.” Others, however, reported on these changes with more caution. For example, Astrid, an East-Asian talent manager shared “that brands are more aware of the fact they need to include diversity but,” she continued, “I’m not seeing it [diversity] being asked as often as I would like it to be.” Add to this, she explained, “there’s just a smaller pool in terms of the number of influencers who are diverse compared to the white influencer category,” an already established and materially powerful class of Instagram users.

Discussion

Amid growing calls for diversity, how do influencers and industry personnel understand the importance of appearance and attractiveness online? How do they manage these matters? My interviews with Instagram fashion influencers and the industry personnel who surround them suggest that hegemonic appearances, namely, beauty and fitness, remain important online. This affords some influencers intense visibility and assures that lucrative brand contracts will follow in tow. Others, however, remain hidden from view. Influencers of color, plus-size influencers, and influencers who are perceived as less conventionally attractive continue to face obstacles related to visibility online and are less likely to secure brand endorsements in exchange for their labor. This means that the “look” of Instagram remains relatively homogeneous and static. Still, influencers and industry personnel insist that this is changing and that diversity is already on the rise. Throughout, they appeal toward the importance of influencers’ perceived authenticity and relatability to make sense of ongoing issues related to representation and inclusion online.

Appeals toward the importance of influencers’ authenticity and relatability, however well-meaning, can do insidious work. That is, they function as an important device through which figures like talent agents and marketers de-center the importance of appearance online, veiling influencers’ visibility in more democratic and inclusive qualities. To borrow from Duffy (2015, p. 54), appeals toward authenticity “obscure important variations in professional experience and economic capital that characterize the fashion blogosphere.” These appeals, moreover, tend to conflate matters of authenticity with issues related to diversity and inclusion, shifting attention away from whatever responsibility industry personnel might shoulder for the maintenance and reproduction of beauty’s narrow standards; they do little to address the structural and algorithmic inequalities that marginalized people continue to face online.

Like agents and other personnel in such industries as fashion (Mears, 2010, 2011) book publishing (Childress & Nault, 2019) or Hollywood cinema (Erigha, 2019, 2020; Simon, 2019), the industry figures I interviewed understood and valued diversity in limited ways. When diversity was discussed, it was often couched within broader conversations related to brand revenue and market reach, suggesting that inclusion is useful insofar as it can be commodified. This is consistent with broader marketing trends toward quite “narrow” visions of diversity that are made visible so that they might be sold for profit (Banet-Weiser, 2012, p. 31; see also Foster & Pettinicchio, 2021) and suggests that diversity is a commercially viable path for exploitation. When pressed further about diversity and inclusion, industry personnel conveyed the best of intentions; they drew my attention to their strong desire to foster change among brand partners and collaborators and expressed an interest in championing diversity online. It was brands who were, in their opinion, to blame for the industry’s many issues and the application’s narrow focus on hegemonically attractive influencers. Industry personnel said somewhat less, however, about the ways in which their own work might contribute to these issues or about the ways in which Instagram’s algorithms operate against (and undermine) whatever efforts they make toward a more democratic vision of social media.

Influencers were themselves significantly more solicitous of the ways in which characteristics related to diversity including race and body size shaped opportunities for work and fame online and of the ways in which these characteristics intersect with hegemonic ideals surrounding beauty and attractiveness. But influencers too played a part in producing and re-producing extant ideals. Detailing the pressure they felt to keep up with other widely followed social media figures, influencers spent significant time shooting and editing their content and refining its qualities to appeal to the largest number of followers.

Among the most interesting findings reported here is the insistence—both on behalf of influencers and industry personnel—that Instagram’s landscape was and is changing. That is, my interviewees tell me that the mobile application is becoming more inclusive, welcoming new voices and extending market opportunities to men and women who have long been neglected. Put differently, they insist that diversity is already on the rise. As evidence, interviewees pointed me to several “diverse” influencers who are fuller-figured and body positive; still, few could call to mind any widely followed influencers of color. To be sure, Instagram is home to some diverse users and to a range of influencers who are known for their empowering and inclusive content. But many of the influencers that interviewees pointed me to were still attractive and cisgendered men and women. Between them, only one had a following large enough to warrant the title of “celebrity influencer,” suggesting that what diversity exists on Instagram might be concentrated among the least followed. My interviewees’ conviction that change is underway, although true in some respects, may blind influencers, agents, and other industry personnel to ongoing issues surrounding diversity and inclusion online, and eclipse opportunities for a more serious discussion on the industry’s role in constraining opportunities for work and visibility on Instagram.

So, while social media might afford some opportunity for diversity and inclusion, it seems, as Turner (2006, p. 157) has elsewhere explained, that visibility “remains a systematically hierarchical and exclusive category, no matter how much it proliferates.” Instagram’s most followed influencers are no different including and perhaps most especially its fashion influencers. These influencers, their images and content, mirror existing hierarchies in our cultural and economic landscape, rewarding those who “embody existing social privileges” (Mears, 2014, p. 1337) with “likes” and follows online. Their popularity and embodied privilege both reflect and reinforce widely shared ideals along the lines of race and class, rendering some users subordinate to others in a status hierarchy that rewards beauty and its visibility above all else.

Conclusion

Social media applications like Instagram tend to privilege a cast of hegemonically attractive influencers online. This remains true despite repeated calls for greater diversity and inclusion. Industry personnel including brand representatives and talent agents as well as influencers themselves are not unaware of these calls and, as I have shown, stress the importance of diversity for the success of brands and businesses online. In response, industry personnel and, to a lesser extent, influencers too, insist that change is underway. That is, the industry has already become more diverse. Throughout, industry personnel and influencers alike appeal to the importance of authenticity and perceived relatability, shifting focus away from the many obstacles that stand in the way of lesser known, often more diverse, influencers and their visibility online. Future work should evaluate these obstacles more closely including and especially the algorithmic obstacles that prevent some influencers from rising to fame and continue to explore what role industry personnel play in constraining opportunities for diversity and inclusion online. This work should sample from among a larger and more varied cast of influencers, including and especially influencers of color who, my interviewees agree, continue to face challenges related to visibility online.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051221138762 – Supplemental material for “It’s All About the Look”: Making Sense of Appearance, Attractiveness, and Authenticity Online

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051221138762 for “It’s All About the Look”: Making Sense of Appearance, Attractiveness, and Authenticity Online by Jordan Foster in Social Media + Society