The duality of makeup: empowering or concealing? A qualitative study of discourses on makeup and empowerment through makeup on YouTube constructed by young female American beauty bloggers

In modern Western societies, feminist and post-feminist movements have facilitated a prominent discourse on the ideas of female empowerment. However,, advertisers took feminist and post-feminist values out of their original political context and repurposed them into for-profit commercial strategies by assuring women that they can achieve empowerment through consumption of beauty products. Existing literature extensively discusses the concepts of feminism, empowerment, makeup and social media, however, a study that would look into the representation of makeup and makeup empowerment on social media using a feminist perspective seems missing. This thesis aimed to fill the gap related to the construction of empowerment through makeup on social media and tried to answer the following research question: How do young female American beauty bloggers construct discourses on empowerment through makeup in their makeup tutorials on YouTube? A subquestion that will complement the main question is: How do young female American beauty bloggers construct discourses on makeup in their makeup tutorials on YouTube? Moreover, this thesis also intended to determine whether there were differences in the discussions on makeup empowerment in two distinct types of makeup tutorials with the help of the following sub-question: Do the empowerment discourses differ between natural and ‘full glam’ makeup tutorials? This thesis aimed to provide the answer to the research questions by studying contemporary discourses on makeup constructed by seven young female American beauty bloggers. Seven natural makeup tutorials and seven ‘full glam’ makeup tutorials have been examined using critical discourse analysis. All videos were transcribed verbatim and the transcriptions were examined using critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA revealed the unequivocal positive representation of makeup in the tutorials, along with three distinct types of empowerment discourses: ‘transformation’, ‘explicit’ and ‘creativity & skills’ discourses, within which empowerment is linked to makeup for various reasons. It has been concluded that among the selected tutorials, using makeup is associated with a positive way to engage in self-care, express creativity, embrace the transformation and take pride in one’s altered appearance.