‘Is every YouTuber going to make a coming out video eventually?’: YouTube celebrity video bloggers and lesbian and gay identity

A significant number of YouTube celebrity video bloggers (vloggers) have used the platform to come out publicly as lesbian or gay. This article interrogates the cultural work of YouTube celebrity coming outs, through the case studies of two of the most prominent gay vloggers: Ingrid Nilsen and Connor Franta. This article explores how the coming out moments of these vloggers, as articulated in their coming out vlogs and the wider media discourses surrounding these, make legible a normative gay youth subject position which is shaped by the specific tropes, conventions and commercial rationale of YouTube fame itself. I define this subject position as 'proto-homonormative.' It positions a "successful" gay adulthood, defined through the neoliberal ideals of authenticity, self-branding and individual enterprise bound to the phenomenon of YouTube celebrity, as contingent upon a particular personal relationship with one's non-normative sexuality. I interrogate how the emotional contours of Nilsen and Franta’s coming out narratives, their represented abilities to channel their non-normative sexualities into lucrative celebrity brands, and their construction as gay and lesbian ‘role models’ by the mainstream media, delineates a journey into "acceptance" and "pride" in one's gay sexuality as the expected narrative of contemporary gay life. This narrative, I argue, cements the default normativity of heterosexuality in mainstream culture, and produces a narrow framework of “acceptable” gay youth subjectivity which is aligned with the ideals of neoliberalism embodied in the figure of the YouTube celebrity vlogger

Selling Streetness as Experience. The Role of Street Art Tours in Branding the Creative City

This article looks at the street art tours industry in London, and its function in constructing the geographic, economic and symbolic value of street art. The street art world of the capital has reached a substantial level of institutional endorsement as a proper urban creative practice, through backing such as by local councils and private developers, art galleries and book publishers. This article examines the role of walking tours in holding up street art as a cultural product of the creative city. It argues that London’s street art scene is constructed and legitimated by these tours through the strategic deployment of an authoritative discourse. Street art tours’ routes and locations are then integrated into a longer lineage of endorsements for the cultural field of street art, and interpreted as branding strategies for the creative city. In the conclusion, the role of walking tours in gentrification and urban change is discussed, with a focus on how street art works and murals contribute to performing Shoreditch as a hub of vibrancy and urban creativity

‘I just think it’s dirty and lazy’: Fat surveillance and erotic capital

Contextualised within the UK mediascape, this article discusses how fat signifies the classed failures of neoliberalism. Because class aspiration, entrepreneurialism and the myth of the competitive individual are pivotal to the political economy of neoliberalism, fat is increasingly and vehemently vilified as abject across media platforms. Fat-surveillance media, which are marketed specifically to women by their visuals, gendered community, language, and structures of feeling, participate in a ‘gynaeopticon’ where the controlling gaze is female, and the many women regulate the many women. Rather than being a top-down form of governance and discipline such as in the panopticon, control is affectively devolved among systems or networks of the policing gaze. As well as monitoring women along the lines of class, I argue that these media circumscribe the de-individualising possibilities and passions of the libido

The confidence cult(ure)

In this paper we explore how confidence has become a technology of self that invites girls and women to work on themselves. The discussion demonstrates the extensiveness of what we call the ‘cult(ure) of confidence’ across different areas of social life, and examines the continuities in the way that exponents of the confidence cult(ure) name, diagnose and propose solutions to archetypal feminist questions about labour, value and the body. Our analysis focuses on two broad areas of social life in which the notion of confidence has taken hold powerfully in the last few years: popular discussions about gender and work, and consumer body culture. Examining the incitements to self-confidence in these realms, we show how an emergent technology of confidence, systematically re-signifies feminist accounts, by turning away from structural inequalities and collectivist critiques of male domination into heightened modes of self-work and self-regulation, and by repudiating the injuries inflicted by the structures of inequality. We conclude by situating the ‘confidence cult(ure)’ in relation to wider debates about feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism

Preaching to the choir: patterns of non/diversity in youth citizenship movements

Within many youth-focused or youth-led civic and political action groups in the UK, a common discursive refrain is the importance of promoting equality and diversity in politics in order to empower the participation of marginalised young people and communities. This chapter explores the dynamics of diversity in two youth-led UK political groups, in order to understand rhetorical positions and material outcomes of organisational commitments to prioritising diversity. Reflecting on the implications of the contrasting ‘diversity’ repertoires of both organisations (Momentum and My Life My Say), this chapter explores how economic, social and historical contexts inflect youth citizenship spaces and suggests how strategies for effective diversification of youth citizenship movements can begin to expand possibilities for meaningful inclusion practices in youth politics