Advances in Social Behavior Research
Vol. 2, 01 March 2023
Open
Access | Article
Boys and Beauty: Male Makeup Influencers in Tik Tok – A U.S. and China Comparison
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Tik Tok, also known as Dou Yin in its Chinese version, has had a growing reputation in the social networking world since its launching in September 2016. While there are numerous content categories on Tik Tok that attract the many views and likes, beauty and skincare are within the top ten most popular content attracting billions of views. In what used-to-be female influencers dominated field, we witnessed the substantial growth of male makeup influencers with a proportion of them successfully integrated into the worldwide beauty market with high reputation and fame. The objective of this study is to analyze the differences between American and Chinese male makeup influencers as a means to reflect how they differ in aesthetic preference and social factors when creating beauty-related contents. This study employed a mixed-method with both content analyses of the Tik Tok posts as well as a structured scoring system for the appearance of the influencers. The results of the scoring are 7.1 for U.S. influencers and 7.2 for Chinese influencers. Both countries have a very similar feminine appearance with Chinese influencers resulting a slight higher scoring than U.S. influencers. The conclusion of this study rests on the fact that both American and Chinese influencers are emerging in this arena with their own definition of beauty using makeup and other beauty-related products; though they exemplified certain differences in aesthetics preference of appearance, they demonstrated a beauty revolution that is unseen before – through social media which aim to challenge how the society perceive beauty and gender presentation.
Keywords
Dou Yin, China U.S. comparison, male makeup influencers, Beauty, Tik Tok, social media.
References
1. Connell, A. (February 14, 2022). 32 Latest TikTok Statistics, Facts, And Trends For 2022. Blogging Wizard. Retrieved from: https:bloggingwizard.com/tiktok-statistics/
2. Statista. (February 2021). Number of TikTok influencers worldwide from 2018 to 2020. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1257689/number-tiktok-influencers/
3. Dou Yin. (2020). 2020 Dou Yin Data Report. Retrieved from htpp://ww.360doc.com/content/21/0114/10/57935769_956798706.shtml
4. Geyser, W. (February 15, 2022). Tik Tok Statistics – Revenue, Users & Engagement Stats (2022). Influencer Marketing Hub. Retrieved from https://influencermarketinghub.com/tiktok-stats/
5. Chen, S. X., & Kanai, A. (2021). Authenticity, uniqueness and talent: Gay male beauty influencers in post-queer, postfeminist Instagram beauty culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(1), 97-116. doi:10.1177/136754921988966
6. Jalba, R. (2018). If and how are Instagram’s top male makeup influencers shifting the beauty norms & beauty representations in a female oriented industry (Master Thesis), Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University, Malmö Sweden
7. Oliver, D. (February 18, 2022). Men are trying out makeup – and it’s no surprise, experts say. USA Today. Retrieved from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2022/02/18/men-straight-lgbtq-makeup-tiktok/6788662001/
8. Gui, C. L. (September 7,2018). What is “masculinity” today? Chinese People’s Daily [Weibo post]. Retrieved from https://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404281529374237719
9. Montell, A. (December 9, 2020). From 4000 BCE to Today: The Fascinating History of Men and Makeup. Byrdie. Retrieved from: https://byrdie.com/history-makeup-gender
10. Flügel, J. C. (1930). The Psychology of Clothes. London: Hogarth Press.
11. Fury, A. (September 14, 2014). A Men’s Wear Revolution. The New York Times Style Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/t-magazine/a-mens-wear-revolution.html
12. Rosen, D. (December 4, 2021). Culture Wars: “The Great Male Renunciation”. Counterpunch. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/04/culture-wars-the-great-male-renunciation/
13. Lipovetsky, G. (2002). The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.
14. Groundwater, C. (June 25, 2021). Not Just a TikTok Fad: Men Have Been Wearing Makeup Since the Dawn of Civilization. GQ. Retrieved from: https://www.gq.com/story/the-long-history-of-men-and-makeup
15. Kimmel, M. (1996). Manhood in America: a cultural history, New York: Free Press.
16. Simpson, M. (August 13, 2008). Metrosexuality: in your face. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/beauty.gender
17. Hall, M., Gough, B., & Seymour-Smith, S. (2012). “I am METRO, NOT Gay!”: Discursive Analysis of Men’s Accounts of Makeup Use on YouTube. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 20(3), 209-226. doi:10.3129/jms.2003.209
18. Shen, B., & Bissell, K. (2013). Social Media, Social Me: A Content Analysis of Beauty Companies’ Use of Facebook in Marketing and Branding. Journal of Promotion Management, 19(5), 629-651. doi:10.1080/10496491.2013.829160
19. Carrotte, P. I., & Lim, M. S. C. (2017). “Fitspiration” on Social Media: A Content Analysis of Gendered Images. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(3), e95-e95. doi:10.2196/jmir.6368
20. Su, Y., Kunkel, T., & Ye, N. (2021). When abs do not sell: The impact of male influencers conspicuously displaying a muscular body on female followers. Psychology & Marketing, 38(2), 286-297. doi:10.1002/mar.21322
21. Meng, Q. (2020). What are the differences between European and American makeup and Japanese and Korean makeup? Zhihu. Retrieved from https://www.zhihu.com/question/28143172
22. Song, G. (2004). The fragile scholar: power and masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong University Press.
23. Liang, J. C. (2020). The Communication Analysis of “Internet Celebrity Economy” – Taking beauty blogger Li JiaQi as an example. Retrieved from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2020&filename=CXBI202002054&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=-xdPGydN64jU0N3ZK0CV8Qik-aV1o5zscAgmR8LViQgLs27JF2n6fiWegwr1j84Q
24. Li, L. J. (2021). A Study on the Motivation of Male Images and Female Consumers in Beauty Videos in the Self-Media Era: Based on Lacan’s Subjective Identity and Gaze Theory. Adolescent Years, 2021(03), 16-17. Retrieved from: https://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-QCSY202103008.htm
25. Liu, X. Y. (2020). Gender Performance and Discourse Negotiation (Master Thesis). NanJing University, NanJing. doi:10.27235/d.cnki.gnjiu.2020.001872.
26. HxWang. (2020, July 26). Gender perception of male beauty bloggers - take Li Jia Qi as an example. Retrieved from: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/TT3K72Djl5VAQZygMPdpWA
27. Berkowitz, D., & Belgrave, L. L. (2010). “She Works Hard for the Money”: Drag Queens and the Management of Their Contradictory Status of Celebrity and Marginality. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 39(2), 159-186. doi:10.1177/0891241609342193.
Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).
- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2022), Part I
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-07-2
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-08-9
- Published Date
- 01 March 2023
- Series
- Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7048
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7056
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7048/2/2022476
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited