YouTube & Gender

Just from the title I bet a lot of you will have dismissed this post to be just some other rant about feminism. But please keep reading- this is going to be different. 

 One of the special things about YouTube is the fact that content is user generated. This means that no matter who you are, where you’re from, what religion, gender or race you are, as long as you have internet access you can be a content creator. It’s a completely equal platform; no-one gets an automatic head start because of their social situation.

 So why is then that men are more successful than women on YouTube? Don’t judge, hear me out. I’m not saying this in a disapproving or angry way, more just in a ‘this is a thing’ way. Men do better. I’m not saying that there aren’t any successful women on YouTube, look at JennaMarbles, DailyGrace and Hannah from My Drunk Kitchen, but there are just more men.

 My main theory as to why this happens is because most of the people who subscribe and watch videos are young girls and they’re more likely to subscribe to guys- I, myself, am probably subscribed to more men than women. But I don’t have a problem with that, I love all the people I’m subscribed to. I just think this topic is really interesting and I’m not having a go at anybody.

 But this here is what makes me angry. My friend Bing’s recent Future Bing video showed him and all his YouTube friends all hanging out together. And that’s awesome, I love it when YouTubers all get together! They kept saying in the video that ‘the whole of YouTube’ was in Bing’s house and I couldn’t help notice that they were all male. So then this happened: 

Seriously, Bing?! Harsh. What exactly is ‘that person’ anyway?

 A thing that I find quite frustrating is when a woman makes a comment along the lines of gender and a man takes this as a personal attack. We don’t hate you! In fact, Bing, I fucking love you, I think you’re amazing. And the same goes to everyone else in that video: Jack, Tom, Khyan, Tim, Jamie, Matt – seriously, you’re all awesome. I have no problem with you all being successful YouTubers, you’re talented and you all deserve it. So Bing, please know that I wasn’t attacking you so don’t get all defensive. I was actually hoping for it to spark an interesting discussion and I know you’re good at them, but not when you dismiss what I said with a rude comment like that.

 So, I’d really like to just have an open discussion. Why do you think men are more successful on YouTube? Or do you think that it’s actually pretty equal? And what do you think about how men and women react to comments made about gender?

Let’s not be mean and attack each other, let’s have an interesting open debate.

Hannah

Body Image

The UK newspaper, The Guardian, often holds 'comment is free' competitions where they pick a controversial issue and ask readers to write 250 words about it and then the best ones are published.

Back in January the topic was 'body image' and I felt compelled to write something about this because I have quite a strong opinion on this issue and it affects so many people. I know my writing style isn't very professional or journalistic so I wasn't surprised when my entry wasn't picked. However, I still think it's an important message to spread so I'm going to share it with you here.

[Disclaimer: I talk about female body image here, this does not mean I'm saying that men don't face similar problems, because they do.]


Girl body image is complex, frustrating and baffling. Everybody worries about the way they look, and if you disagree and say that you’re completely happy with your appearance then I’ll tell you that you are lying. To make ourselves feel better we’re told to be comfortable in our own skin and that appearance doesn’t matter and it’s what’s on the inside that counts. However, that’s not true is it? At least not for women. Society places an unhealthy amount of importance on aesthetic and no matter how much you dye your hair, do your make-up or dress differently at the bottom of it all a person cannot change how they look. So why do we measure a person’s worth by something we are born with and can’t alter?

 It’s no wonder that women, at all ages, feel pressurised to look a certain way. I feel like I’m lucky in a sense being a petite size 8 with large boobs, however, there are other parts of me that are ‘wrong’, which to me says that if I want to be a T.V presenter or in the public eye in any way shape or form I’d need to be a lot taller, in fact I’d actually need smaller boobs and skinnier legs would definitely boost my chances of success. 

 Naomi Wolf’s ‘Beauty Myth’ still exists and makes women critique themselves so harshly because they believe they don’t fit the mould that society has deemed ‘beautiful’. There needs to be ways to help women who punish themselves for not looking how they believe they should. One way would be to represent more ‘real’ women in the media. However, we can say with a lot of confidence that it’s very unlikely. How successful do you think The X Factor would be with two short, size 14 women with un-plucked eyebrows sitting on the judges’ panel?

I'd love to get a discussion going so please let me know what you think in the comments. Is the media distorting our perception of 'beauty'? And let's not just keep the debate focused on women, we should open it up to the effects of the media on men's body image too.

Hannah