Women Becoming Influencers Isn’t the Feminist Win We Think It Is.

Caroline Huckeba

6 hours ago

4 min read

When TikTok creator Levi Coralynn argued that hating influencers has become a socially acceptable way to hate women, the internet responded exactly as you'd expect. Some agreed immediately. Others insisted the criticism had nothing to do with gender. The debate quickly became polarised, as online debates often do.

The truth, I think, is less satisfying.

There is absolutely a gendered component to influencer criticism. But there is also something darker beneath it: a collective anxiety about what happens when attention becomes the economy itself.

Historically, women's visibility depended on gatekeepers. Editors decided who appeared in magazines. Television executives chose who made it on screen. Fashion houses selected which faces represented beauty. Women could become public figures, but they almost always did so through institutions largely controlled by men.

Social media disrupted that system.

A woman no longer had to wait for permission to become visible. She could build an audience herself, negotiate sponsorships herself, monetise her platform herself and own the relationship with the people watching her. In many ways, it represents one of the largest redistributions of media power in recent history.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that society is organised around different forms of capital. Money is only one of them. There is also social capital, the value of your relationships, and cultural capital, the value of your knowledge, reputation and taste.

Social media transformed all three.

Followers became social capital. A recognisable aesthetic became cultural capital. Attention itself became measurable, tradable and profitable. Views could become sponsorships. Personality could become income. Intimacy became an asset.

It is difficult to overstate how revolutionary that shift has been, particularly for women.

So, when influencer culture is dismissed as frivolous or unserious, it is worth asking whether the profession itself is being feminised in the public imagination. We tend to call women "influencers". We call men "creators". The distinction seems insignificant until you notice what each word implies.

An influencer suggests someone selling products. A creator suggests someone producing culture. Women receive affiliate links. Men build brands. Women are accused of oversharing. Men are praised for building communities. The work often looks remarkably similar, but the language surrounding it is not.

That doesn't mean every criticism of influencer culture is rooted in misogyny. Far from it.

I don't believe an affiliate link is inherently empowering simply because a woman posts it. Not every female content creator is dismantling patriarchal systems. Sometimes she's just selling us another moisturiser.

Karl Marx wrote about commodity fetishism, arguing that capitalism obscures the labour behind the products we consume. We buy a shirt without thinking about the workers who stitched it together.

Influencer culture almost reverses that equation. The labour itself becomes the product. Audiences aren't simply buying skincare or kitchen appliances. They're buying access to a carefully performed life where those products appear naturally integrated. The commodity is no longer just the blender.

The commodity is aspiration. The commodity is intimacy. The commodity is the feeling that this recommendation came from a friend rather than a salesperson. And maintaining that illusion requires extraordinary work.

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild described emotional labour as managing one's feelings to create a desirable emotional experience for others. She was writing about flight attendants, nurses and customer service workers.

Influencers have expanded emotional labour into nearly every corner of life.

They're expected to be beautiful but relatable. Successful but humble. Vulnerable without becoming messy. Politically aware but not too political. Funny without offending anyone. Authentic while simultaneously curating every frame.

Their personalities become businesses. Their relationships become content. Their grief becomes engagement. The performance never truly ends because there is no separation between employee and employer. The brand is the person. This deserves criticism.

But strangely, public outrage rarely focuses on this transformation of labour. Instead, it fixates on overconsumption. PR packages. Seventeen-step skincare routines. Weekly shopping hauls. Those critiques aren't wrong. Endless consumerism deserves scrutiny. Yet even here, gender quietly shapes the conversation. Women's consumption is moralised. Men's consumption is intellectualised.

A woman buying makeup is accused of vanity. A man buying expensive camera equipment is "investing in his craft". A beauty haul becomes evidence of everything wrong with capitalism. A desk setup video becomes productivity culture. The market hasn't changed. Only whose desires we consider worthy.

Still, I think reducing every critique of influencer culture to misogyny misses something important.

Because if my future child told me they didn't want to go to university because they wanted to become an influencer, I would be worried. Not because I hate women. Not because I think content creation isn't work. And certainly not because I believe women should have fewer economic opportunities online. I'd be worried because I want the next generation to believe there is still a world worth participating in beyond the internet.

I want children to dream about becoming teachers because they love ideas. Scientists because they're curious. Therapists because they want to understand people. Journalists because truth matters. Architects because they want to shape cities. Filmmakers because they have stories to tell.

Those ambitions create something outside themselves.

Influencer culture, at its worst, risks convincing young people that the highest form of achievement is becoming the product. The internet has quietly replaced the question, "What do you want to contribute?" with "How can you make yourself visible?"

That feels fundamentally different.

Our children are growing up in an economy where identity itself has become monetisable. Every hobby can become a side hustle. Every opinion can become content. Every friendship can become a collaboration. Every milestone can become engagement.

The pressure is no longer simply to succeed. It's to remain endlessly watchable.

Perhaps that is the real dystopian fear lurking beneath our discomfort with influencers. Not that women are finally earning money from their own audiences.

But that we've built an economy where everyone increasingly feels they must.

Levi Coralynn is right to point out that misogyny shapes who gets dismissed as an "influencer". We should interrogate why women's labour is so often trivialised while men's digital success is reframed as entrepreneurship or innovation.

But we should also be honest enough to admit that the unease surrounding influencer culture isn't entirely imagined.

It's possible to celebrate women's economic independence while questioning an attention economy that asks all of us to turn ourselves into brands. The problem was never women becoming visible.

The problem is that visibility has become the most valuable thing we know how to sell.