Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging

Description

In the first ever book devoted to a critical investigation of the personal style blogosphere, Minh-Ha T. Pham examines the phenomenal rise of elite Asian bloggers who have made a career of posting photographs of themselves wearing clothes on the Internet. Pham understands their online activities as “taste work” practices that generate myriad forms of capital for superbloggers and the brands they feature. A multifaceted and detailed analysis, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet addresses questions concerning the status and meaning of “Asian taste” in the early twenty-first century, the kinds of cultural and economic work Asian tastes do, and the fashion public and industry’s appetite for certain kinds of racialized eliteness. Situating blogging within the historical context of gendered and racialized fashion work while being attentive to the broader cultural, technological, and economic shifts in global consumer capitalism, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet has profound implications for understanding the changing and enduring dynamics of race, gender, and class in shaping some of the most popular work practices and spaces of the digital fashion media economy. Acknowledgments vii Introduction. Asian Personal Style Superbloggers and the Material Conditions and Contexts of Asian Fashion Work 1 1. The Taste and Aftertaste for Asian Superbloggers 41 2. Style Stories, Written Tastes, and the Work of Self-Composure 81 3. "So Many and All the Same" (but Not Quite): Outfit Photos and the Codes of Asian Eliteness 105 4. The Racial and Gendered Job Performances of Fashion Blogger Poses 129 5. Invisible Labor and Racial Visibilities in Outfit Posts 167 Coda. All in the Eyes 193 Notes 201 Bibliography 219 Index 247