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• The article examines passing as labor in the transition vlogs of Gigi Gorgeous and Natalie Wynn.
• Passing is theorized to be the beautification practices, like cosmetic surgery, that trans women in the public eye invest in to attain social and economic capital.

Abstract

• In September 2018, Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) released "The Aesthetic," exploring the social pressure on trans women to pass.
• The analysis uses this video combined with Gigi Gorgeous's early transition vlogs detailing cosmetic surgery experiences.
• Gorgeous's vlogs employ transnormative discourses focusing on an internal struggle with gender dysphoria.
• Juxtaposing Gorgeous's vlogs with Wynn's vlog on facial feminization surgery reveals external pressures to conform to beauty norms.
• The desire to pass and be beautiful is shaped by status as visible trans women in cultural industries.
• Passing is theorized as labor, arguing beautification practices like cosmetic surgery are investments for trans women in the public eye to gain social and economic capital.

Introduction

• Natalie Wynn gained attention for pre-transition videos against alt-right ideologies.
• Since transitioning in 2017, Wynn's videos increasingly address transgender topics.
• Wynn's theatrical style incorporates recurring characters in dialogue.
• In "The Aesthetic," characters like Tabby and Dr. Abigail Cockbane debate trans politics.
• A segment parodies a real-life confrontation between journalist Zoey Tur and editor Ben Shapiro, where Tur threatened Shapiro for misgendering her.
• Tabby and Justine debate acceptable trans womanhood, hinging on Tabby's behavior and refusal to pass.
• The article uses discussion from “The Aesthetic” to study narratives of passing and beauty in Gigi Gorgeous's vlogs.
• Gorgeous began pre-transition YouTube videos before coming out in 2013, becoming a prominent trans beauty influencer.
• Analysis of Gorgeous's cosmetic surgery experiences explores how Gorgeous characterizes them as horrific and miraculous.
• Employs transnormative tropes, constructing passing as alleviating gender dysphoria by externalizing interior femininity.
• Trans female subjectivity is aesthetic: to be a woman is to pass as a woman, and to pass as a woman is to look like a respectable (cisgender, white, middle-class) woman.
• Comparison of Gorgeous's surgery vlogs with Wynn's "Beauty“ vlog shows that, while Wynn echoes sentiments about passing and beauty to alleviate gender dysphoria, she complicates it by drawing attention to pressures to conform to beauty norms as a visible trans woman. Wynn's psychic desire to be beautiful is inseparable from internal and external pressures.
• Problemization of both women's narratives through the lens of labor, focusing on how female social media influencers' conformity to beauty norms impacts career outcomes.

Aesthetic Labor, Surveillance and Social Media

• Passing for trans women influencers is not solely about a desire to look like a woman or about fitting into narrow ideals of beauty, but is also about their ability to succeed in an online attention economy.
• Transition-related cosmetic procedures are investments that trans women in the cultural industries make to amass both economic capital and social capital.
• "Aesthetic labor" refers to how workers are expected to look a certain way as a job requirement.
• Feminist interventions show how women are disproportionately expected to maintain their physical attractiveness.
• Neoliberal feminist context: "the 'beauty imperative' has gained ever more traction".
• The attainment of beauty becomes the ultimate indicator of success, beauty work allows women to gain social, not just economic, capital
• Neoliberal media cultures and digital technologies of surveillance further train women to discipline each other's bodies.
• Discourses of security and safety have scaffolded technologies that intimately surveil travelers' bodies, including Black, Brown, and trans bodies.
• The "gynaeopticon,” shows digital platforms encourage women to engage in lateral surveillance of one another.
• "Surveillant sisterhood", beauty apps use female friendship to simultaneously surveil women's appearance.
• YouTube videos demonstrate how young girls learn to associate self-worth with physical attractiveness
• Social media acts as a disciplining technology, allowing viewers to objectify these girls and criticize their appearance.
• Research on social media influencers explores collapsation of the distinction between workplace and personal life, social media influencers must share intimate details of their lives to maintain affective relationships with their followers.
• Female influencers are especially expected to engage in aesthetic and affective labor to attract viewers while perfectly maintaining their appearance.
• "Aspirational labor,” is a mode of uncompensated, independent work that is propelled by the ideal of getting paid to do what you love
• Social media entertainment and media influencers are emerging careers
• Structures have been established that simultaneously compensate influencers while maintaining the economic power of legacy media industries.
• Female influencers benefit from brand sponsorships, which rely on amassing large followings as well as greater legitimation in the cultural industries.
• Compensation models like Google AdSense, which relies heavily on the ability to attract and maintain a large viewership
• Beauty is a form of currency that women use to acquire capital. Social media reinforces these beauty ideals.
• Female influencers are incentivized to invest in beauty social and economic capital.

Passing and transnormativity in the media

• Passing for trans influencers, in particular, has a specific impact.
• Political debate about passing focuses on the morality of passing and its centrality in trans experience.
• “Liberal trans-sexual politics" prioritizes passing as it grants trans people the right to gender-confirming surgeries.
• “Transgender politics" eschews passing in favor of destabilizing the gender binary.
• Passing helps ensure physical safety and emotional wellbeing.
• Riley Snorton writes, “passing is not simply a question of how one is read".
• Passing acts as a psychic affirmation of one's identity in a hostile world.
• On the flip side of passing, describes the violence of being clocked, a threat to his psychic sense of self, but also a threat to his physical safety.
• The 2020 attack on influencers Eden the Doll, Jaslene Whiterose, and Joslyn Flawless demonstrates risks.
• "Transnormativity," social scripts structure trans experience, where passing becomes central.
• Trans people are expected to conform to a predetermined process of legitimation, diagnosis of gender dysphoria, hormone replacement therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries.
• Medical transnormativity is concerned with producing socially acceptable trans women.
• Passing relies on raced and classed constructions of respectable womanhood.
• Transnormativity as “a process shaped by adherence to respectability politics, heteronormative standards and class privilege”.
• That standard demands White, affluent, and traditionally beautiful people.
• Study of representations of trans women in the mid-century US press centers intersections of race, gender, and class.
• Trans women's acceptance in mainstream media hinged on how well they conformed to white, heteronormative, middle-class womanhood.
• The increasing popularity of FFS marks a prioritization of plainly visible aesthetic features, Dr. Douglas Ousterhout pioneered FFS.
• Standards were based a “distinctly northern European skull.”
• Asian double eyelid surgery “corrects" features deviate from white beauty standards.
• Not only are trans women pressured to have FFS to conform to white women.
• Producers complicates mainstream media homogenizing trans experiences
• Trans people produce their own self-image on YouTube.
• Trans vloggers can reproduce transnormative discourses by focusing on medical transition and centering gender dysphoria.
• Digital platforms let trans people build community and learn about trans experiences.

Methods

• Debates make clear the stakes of digital representation that fear videos reinforce stereotypes about a singular trans narrative.
• Focus on cosmetic surgery vlogs to interrogate how trans women self-produce narratives about the struggle with beauty.
• Study exemplifies the tension that emerges when trans vloggers try to present themselves as both normative and diverse.
• Contextualizing these vlogs within the social media entertainment industry.
• The study argues trans female influencers are incentivized to pass and conform to ideals of female beauty to make their careers.
• Striving to pass and to be beautiful is not just to alleviate dysphoria, but to attain economic and social capital.
• Gigi Gorgeous's public coming out as a trans woman in solidified status as a prominent influencer, a primary case study.
• Selected four 2014 videos, detailing a tracheal shave, FFS, and breast augmentation for analysis
• Recurring themes included references to pain caused by surgery, as well as of surgery as miraculous and spiritual.
• Found Gorgeous centered her internal struggles to justify her decisions to have cosmetic surgery.
• Videos from Wynn were chosen due to lengthy, dense, more complex language compared to Gorgeous's largely unscripted Vlogs.
• Of chosen selected videos, "Beauty” (Natalie Wynn 2019) spoke directly about with surgery, additional videos were focused on.
• Wynn brought attention to the external stimuli she felt due to beauty norms in comparison to the internal conflicts Gorgeous demonstrated.
• Respective narratives about cosmetic surgery uncover how internal feelings and pressures inform the public eye.

“It was an emotional and kind of spiritual transformation”: externalizing the internal

• In her cosmetic surgery vlogs, Gorgeous alternates between both violent and spiritual metaphors to describe her surgery.
• By centering her struggles Gorgeous also reinforces the “wrong body” narrative
• Discourses about “trans authenticity as dependent upon diagnosis and subsequent medical intervention”.
• Surgeon allows her to more fully embody identity as to what body she is supposed to be
• Throughout surgery vlogs, Gorgeous uses violent metaphors to describe her physical and emotional trauma endures both before and after
• FFS, she recalls: “All I remember is throbbing pain. [...] I was screaming, in agonizing pain, obviously.
• Warning viewers against her choices, Gorgeous continues procedures to present
• Gorgeous addresses her motives, centering gender dysphoria to compare to motives from cis women
• While cis women may have been bullied, gender is not questioned through the act
• Asserts that cis cosmetic procedures are considered “ a vanity thing” .
• She goes on to state surgery can change the spirit not just the body
• Transmuting physical body into one that connects to spiritual identity
• The year TIME addressed the transgender movement and acceptance she demonstrates
• She was active for over 5 years with positivity and negativity
• Normalizing trans identity during visibility of trans individuals
• Metaphors are uses to understand

“The vicious things they say about me in the tabloids”: internalizing the external

• Like Gorgeous, Natalie also transitioned publicly after gaining viewers
• Coming out as a trans individual, her videos discussed these choices with a more vlog format that uses “ Hey guys back”
• Makes multiple references to other influencers like Gorgeous
• Retreading gender with the expectations to continue with the same beliefs
• This discomfort should not have a say what she has to do say
• Hypothetically there should be a new normal Challenging with surgeries as well, internal beliefs do not matter.
• Being in social media and influencer herself, takes a toll on investing, labor.
• Has a lot of self doubt and to identify as well how to fix her flaws”. In other words she states she would continue to look and stare at herself.
• The hatred with others dissects her.
• She finds positive comments to prove the right point
• What she describes suggests she has internalized herself how external is more credible.
• Others dictate how the audience is seen while performing
• Demonstrates how to have the negative impact and sense of self while not harming the individual

Theorizing passing as labor

• Women both support the sense of self and to be beautiful.
• Narratives discuss trans normalities and must embody the beauty.
• Gorgeous has been very outspoken and questions the surgery.
• States she wishes she felt like she lived from poverty
• The makeover and trans metaphor brings the bodily transformation of the material
• Economic value and assets are used
• The role is mainly the body being on display for jobs
• Must be beautiful and show their presence.
• Facilitating career success, she should maintain and continue show that are known to be known.
• Her career in fashion.
• Her access to acceptance must show her to conform to the normal standard, so that if she does not. She loses everything.
• She got the chance to be with her husband, while also being able to work for his brother.
• Mainstream is shown with publications of how she has gone through celebrity culture, so that people know.
• Being styled with make up and conform to the normal style.
• How the body and how women must be to fit in with beauty, so that they can stand or spiral out of order.