Coming under fire recently, or rather, intense scrutiny, YouTuber Zoella (Zoe Sugg) has raised the question of whether she's a good enough role model for the 6.2 million subscribers who look up to her for beauty, fashion and life advice via her two insanely popular YouTube series. But what about the guys? They have just as much influence, so why aren't they being held accountable in the same way?
While her channel Zoellais about beauty and fashion, MoreZoella focusses more on her everyday life as she vlogs about what she's been up to, with occasional appearances from her boyfriend Alfie Deyes (who has over 3 million subscribers) that cause the internet to explode.
It's her boyfriend, though, who has thrown the disparity between the girl YouTubers and the guy YouTubers into sharp relief - is Alfie getting any flack for his attempted thinkpiece on a 10 year-old girl who gave birth in Spain where he wonders how the parents 'could let the child do that to herself?' before cutting to a shot of him doing a silly dance and asking people what they think of the new iPhone? No. No, this remarkably heavy-handed, odd treatment of a child rape case has sort of been swept under the rug because, er, he's a guy. So it's just banter? Or something?
The video's very old, but it's still up, while at the same time Zoella has had to defend her right to be a role model because, at the recent Teen Choice awards, where she took the award for Choice Web Star: Fashion/Beauty, Zoella was asked by a reporter what advice she'd give to a young girl. She responded: 'When you’re younger you worry about so many things that you don’t need to worry about like image, appearance...' which received a fair bit of backlash from those who pointed out that her channel teaches girls how to look good or, as The Independent put it, 'do a flawless festival-ready topknot'.
Nobody's commenting on the fact she's devoted significant portions of her channel to tackling mental health issues and is now an ambassador for the charity Mind (She suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, sometimes being unable to go to meetings because of it). In the last week, numerous comment pieces have been published dealing with whether she's an appropriate role model, whereas nobody seems to have noticed that male Youtuber Nash Grier got on Time's most influential 30 under 30 despite the fact he has posted racist and homophobic vines in the past. *
With nearly four million subscribers, 16-year-old Nash's videos haven't been held up to nearly the same amount of scrutiny as his female counterparts, and neither has Zoella's boyfriend Alfie (who is only 500k or so subscribers behind Nash, heading towards the four millions mark at breakneck speed). Their audience are equally female and yes, they're just one or two mistakes in a sea of internet screwups, but they're just not being held up to the same standard. A young woman speaking to young women should be the perfect role model. A young man speaking to young women doesn't need to do the same. It's a double standard that will surely be doing more harm than good;
Can you imagine if Zoella attempted to tackle a world issue and made a mistake? It would cause an international incident. Instead, she's doing what most teenage girls are doing anyway - talking about beauty, reflecting life rather than creating it. Keeping it beige. You can't blame her for the fact that young girls want to get flawless festival-ready topknots. You can't blame her for supplying what her audience clearly demand, you just need to look at the viewing figures to see that she's giving us exactly what we want. And now she's an ambassador for Mind, she's getting criticised for not doing more - well give her a chance, yeah?
It's simply not like this for the guys of YouTube, who are able to make mistakes and grow up online without fear of getting downvoted to oblivion. Yes, Alfie Deyes filmed the controversial video four years ago, but he never had to defend himself in countless interviews against broadsheet comment articles accusing him of trivialising major issues. Yeah he gets accused of being inane, along with the rest of them (because, er, it IS inane. That appears to be the point), but not the same media viciousness.
Why are we tearing Zoella down for an offhand remark, and ignoring any of the (more serious) mistakes made by her male counterparts? And why is the onus on young women to be positive role models, when we put none of these same expectations on young men?
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Follow Stevie on Twitter: @5tevieM
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.