Gender performativity and Zoe Sugg

Judith Butler and gender performativity

Click the title above for an in-depth exploration of gender from the theorist themself!

• Performance is a repetitious and ritualistic act that constructs identity
• There is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
• Our identity only comes as a result of this performative act
• Gender performativity is the ways in which our performance of gender affects the world around us

Getting Out In The Garden, Morning Routine & Children's Book Recommendations

Sugg's wholesome relationship with her daughter is constructed through MES, an unobtrusive editing style and post production colour grading that all encode 'authenticity'. The combination of codes constructs a hyperreal representation of motherhood. 

• Morning routine, makeup demonstrations and ‘day in the life’ montages are all highly conventional paradigms of the vlog as a genre. Zoella in many ways codified these features, which are now widely used by her competitors. However, more importantly, by presenting a voyeuristic montage of her daily life, Sugg demonstrates her ritualistic gender performance, which in turn performatively influences and constructs her devoted audience. 
• Sugg makes her daughter's beds, reinforcing the ideological perspective that Sugg is fulfilling her duties as a mother. This notion of mum’s even having duties is deeply sexist and patriarchal
• We see her skincare and makeup ritual, which reinforces an ideological perspective that to become hegemonically attractive to to be ready for the day
• She takes the dog out in to the garden, a bland and boring aspect of her routine that reinforces that the function of women in society is to be nurturing and caring
• Through these performances of gender, Sugg performatively encourages her target audience to copy her, thus reinforcing and cultivating an ideological perspective of a perfect and hyperreal mother. This clearly has repercussions for her target audience.