The Hatred of "Influencers" is Gendered.

We idealized "Mad Men" but women doing the same thing is "stupid."

For the record, being an influencer is stupid. But also, no less stupid than advertising has been for all time.

Sometimes, when people ask me what I do I’m not sure how to respond. For a long time, I’d just say “I’m an interior designer.” Which was true (and is true) but doesn’t currently represent what I spend most of my time doing. In the past five years, I’ve had a few different full time TV gigs, which meant I had to shut down everything else to be on set. While I was shooting, I’d sometimes say I worked in production or worked in TV. But those jobs were temporary, and when they were done I’d normally revert to saying I was an interior designer.

The past four years, however, have brought me more “content creation” and “sponsored content” gigs than in person design projects (which I’ve put on pause until further notice). So calling myself a designer feels a little hollow. I’ve definitely been in an exploratory mode the past few years as I’ve tried to stay stable in a roller coaster of a freelancer economy. Now I'm making money renting out my cabin, creating non-sponsored paid content like this newsletter, and continuing to do the type of brand work I’ve been doing for more than a decade.

Normally, this is how I’d respond to the “what do you do” question:

“I’m an interior designer, author, and TV host.”

I guess I don’t like that answer because it sounds kind of like I think I’m a big deal. Sure, I do all those things professionally, but my day to day isn’t what you’d imagine if you thought of an interior designer, author, and TV host. I’m not, like, standing in front of cameras on a daily basis. I’m not sitting with a quill pen writing the great American novel. And I’m not screaming at clients about fabrics all day long. Instead, what I do most days is frantically try and think of ways to make money. Write another essay for my newsletter. Think of videos I can make for Instagram that will attract more sponsorships. Finish the brand collaborations I have so I can publish the content. Make and sell art. Sell virtual design packages. Reach out to a brand about doing a collaboration. Get that paid hosting gig. Rinse and repeat.

If you look the past decade, I’ve made most of my money on brand partnerships. The easiest ways to summarize this work is this:

• A brand reaches out and asks me to create content (photographs, video, or both) about their product.

• I assess whether the product is something I like and would want in my own home.

• I negotiate a rate with the brand to create the desired photos or video.

• I come up with a content proposal, describing the videos and photos to be shot and made into a presentation for the client. There are often multiple rounds of edits.

• I produce a photo or video shoot. This often involves some sort of home makeover or minor renovation.

• I deliver content to the brand for their use on websites, social media, email blasts, ads, and so on.

• After more edits, the content is posted.

• I am paid 60 - 90 days after the last post is posted, regardless of whether I’ve had to hire help to produce the shoot or not.

It feels weird to say I’m an interior designer when in reality I make most of my money self producing commercials for brands. Sure, it’s an answer people will just respect and not question, but it doesn’t feel representative of what I actually spend my time doing. I feel like I’m lying if I say it.

Recently, I met a new person and I didn’t feel like doing the whole monologue explaining what I do so I just lazily said “Meh, I’m basically an influencer.” I responded that way because I didn’t really feel like explaining the complex web of jobs that together provide my income. And also, what I actually do is kind of in flux right now, I’ve completely changed focus time and time again in the past few years, so even I am a little flummoxed as to what I’m doing professionally. Finally, my confidence level isn’t high right now, so I tend to hate answering questions about my work.

Not surprisingly, he didn’t respond well. Instead, he responded in a way I’m much too familiar with, the reason I have called myself an “interior designer” for so many years.

“Ugh, I hate influencers!” He responded. “They’re so dumb!”

(Side Note: If you think influencers are dumb, you’re following the wrong people and that’s on you).

I have a lot of friends that could be categorized as “influencers” so I’m probably not going to respond well to people saying things like this, as much as I totally understand where they’re coming from.

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Assignment: Let’s do a visualization!

Now, before I go on. I want you to do something for me. Close your eyes and think about the word “influencer.” Visualize what the prototypical influencer looks like, what they are wearing, and what they spend their time doing?

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…Did you do it?

Let me guess. You pictured a blonde, white woman wearing a wide brim hat, taking a selfie, acting carefree, maybe drinking a coffee that’s too big. If you pictured something else, good on you! But I’m guessing most of you envisioned a female when you thought of the word “influencer.” Keep note of that, I will use that later (to drag you to filth!).

Before I get to the gender element, I do want to acknowledge that there are a ton of very legitimate critiques of influencers. I think more than anything, they bother people because there’s an aspect of the whole influencer economy that feels very high school. It’s basically “popular” people leading the pack telling everyone else what to do. And I’d venture to guess, those people are thin and white and attractive in a disproportionate way. There’s something that feels very random about who rises to the top of the influencer economy. It feels like it’s based more on luck and looks than anything else. And in a culture that prizes meritocracy, the idea of an influencer goes against the idea that hard work will lead to success (Side Note: it doesn’t).

Media used to be filled with voices that were vetted. Journalists were expected to have degrees, have a certain basic understanding of the world and history, and were thus provided a certain amount of reverence from readers. But with influencers, who build and manage their own audiences, there’s no logistical, professional vetting process. It could literally be any fool off the street saying whatever they want. And in an age with fake news and disinformation everywhere, I can see why people would bristle at the idea of random, not necessarily qualified people being the gatekeepers of “information.”

I believe in paying for journalism and news media. In order to have an understanding of what’s actually going on in the world, we need people who aren’t personally invested in stories to be reporting on reality. I’m in no way against the idea of professional, vetted, educated news. But people don’t want to pay for it. If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’re a fan of paid media and that you have at least a few paid subscriptions. But most people don’t. Most people expect everything to be free. And when you get free, you get influencers. Because free isn’t free. Free means ads.

I've told this story a few times here, but it’s worth repeating. I wanted to work for a magazine after college. But by the time I graduated twenty years ago, magazine jobs had already converted into vanity projects for kids with trust funds. None of the entry level jobs I could get paid a living wage. So people like me said “Fuck it, I’m just gonna start writing and sharing my ideas myself!” AND THUS WAS BORN THE INFLUENCER ECONOMY.

I’m sure a lot of people who work as influencers now would have been writers or editors at lifestyle magazines if it were fifty years ago. But paid media is dead and dying and those jobs a few and far between now.

I’ve tried to dissect my own hesitation with the world of influencers. And I still do have many critiques of the whole system. I’ve been on a decent number of “influencer retreats” (where a brand sends a group of influencers on a “vacation” in exchange for buzz and coverage) and let me tell you, some of these influencers are actually really annoying. Some of them are what you’d expect. The bitchy popular kids from high school grown up. People who have never worried about paying a bill. Just the least relatable people on earth who don’t seem to have ever struggled.

But for every influencer who is a terrible person, there’s the ones who I know and love. And there are a lot who do their best to uplift and inspire their audiences rather than just shove their perfect lives into everyone’s faces. I think influencers are at their best when they show vulnerability, talk about the specificity of their lives. That is what good art does - gives people a little glimpse of life that makes them feel less alone in the world.

There may be a legit reason why the image of influencers is so heavily female. If you think about it, who but a stay at home housewife is better equipped to put an aspirational life on display for the rest of the world? We live in a society where women still make less then men, where it’s still far more common to see a woman stay home to raise children. At most of the events, I’m one of one or two guys. Which is fine, I love hanging out with women, but also shows that, at least in the very visible home space, lifestyle influencers tend to skew female.

Which brings me to my whole theory about why influencers are so hated. It’s seen as “women’s work.” And we value female labor less than male labor. Literally.

I came to this conclusion two years ago while filming a commercial for a major brand in my kitchen, alone, with a tripod and light as my only helpers. I have a lot of innate shame about being an influencer, stemming from my own harsh judgements about it as well as the sneering derision I’ve heard thrown towards influencers for the better part of the last decade. So I was feeling pretty dumb, being a dumb influencer, talking to literally no one except my iPhone, while filming an ad by myself.

At that moment, I thought to myself “This used to take a room full of men on Madison Avenue weeks to do and yet here I am feeling stupid for doing it all alone on my phone.”

Why was “Mad Men” so popular? Why was the strategy, copy writing, art direction, photography, cinematography, and everything involved in old school advertising taken so seriously? Seen as a science? Meanwhile, a huge proportion of modern advertising, sponsored content, is seen as frivolous, illegitimate, and something anyone can do. We think of ad men as these infallible men in suits with a vast knowledge of psychology and culture. But for some reason influencers - who are for the record doing almost the exact same job/task as an advertising executive yet on a much smaller budget and tighter timeline - are seen as talentless hacks who just lucked into a career where their main task is to be professionally affluent?

I think it’s just that “Mad Men” were men. Advertising is viewed through the lens of shows like “Mad Men” and lives inside a reality in which executives are still more often male than female.

The term “influencer” much like the word “nurse” has a subconscious gender assigned to it. I have a lot of nurses in my family, male and female, so I’ve gotten used to correctly people for automatically misgendering anyone I refer to as a nurse as female. If men, rather than women, were the more successful set of influencers, I think we’d see it completely differently. We’d respect the work more because we wouldn’t see it as frivolous.

There’s a really great documentary (non-authorized) about Martha Stewart on CNN I found really inspiring. It goes through her whole career, the ups and downs (girl, same!) and is not always complimentary. But the main takeaway I got from it is that Martha Stewart really just sees herself as a teacher. She understands about herself that she is good at explaining how to do things beautifully. And while she’s been criticized for being out of touch and for fixating on details most people would find superfluous, I’ve met her and know people that know her and they all say one thing: She’s a worker. She doesn’t get tired. I think her teachings do come from a genuine place of wanting to help people live the most beautiful life possible.

Martha, the original influencer, until very recently was seen as a bit of a cookie-cutter, Susie homemaker ditz. But don’t forget, she worked and commuted from home to go to Barnard before becoming a successful stockbroker. But because the world she was presenting was so unapologetically domestic and female, it was written off as fluff. More recently, Martha has finally gotten recognition for being a successful business person and entrepreneur. And yet we’re still shitting on the entire world she vanguarded - the world of “lifestyle” sponsored content. Martha is undoubtedly one of the most important people in the advent of modern influencer culture (with Julia Child being someone who opened the door for her).

There are definitely legitimate problems with the current media landscape. And I think influencers can be blamed for some (but not most) of that. The fact that local papers are going away, that even major publications are folding, that it’s seeming harder and hard to get factual news rather than opinion based propaganda, all leads to a very depressing information sphere. Influencers are just a symptom of that. Not the cause.

So, looking back to our visualization exercise? Did you visualize a woman when I asked you to visualize an influencer? And does thinking about that make you think any differently about why people generally look down on influencers?

It’s because we’re all sexist dicks.

The end.