Photo taken from a February shoot and look spread on ArtInOurBlood.com
Though bloggers’ lives seem to take place on the Internet, at the end of the day they do exist in real, non-digital space. Sometimes, real life happens. Since moving to New York to attend Parson’s, Jennifer Wang’s blog has definitely changed. “There was a time when my follower counts were rising very rapidly,” she said, “and this went hand-in-hand with the high frequency of my posts.” During her senior year of high school and the summer before her freshman year of college, Wang was posting to her blog, and subsequently to all of her other accounts, at least once a week.
Now that Wang is a full-time student in one of the most rigorous fashion design programs in the world, her focus has changed from her blog-life to her real-life. “Growth slowed down and I started to lose followers when I began to post more infrequently,” Wang said. “Because I was so busy with school, I was posting once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week.” Her followers immediately responded to this slower trickle of content in a negative way—denizens of cyberspace have never been known for their attention spans.
Not only did the frequency of Wang’s posts change, but the types of posts she was making also reflected her lifestyle/location upheaval. “I used to dress in a way that was very romantic,” Wang explained. “I used to wear flower crowns all the time. My style was definitely elaborate, and sometimes a bit impractical.” Her style posts mainly consisted of flowing dresses, light colors, chiffon, and thin, almost see-through cottony garments juxtaposed with killer leather, gold, and floral accessories. These playful, imaginative outfits are what earned her a high following—she was a California dream girl. “In California, I could wear whatever I wanted and not worry about the weather. Now that I live in New York, I can’t wear whatever I want: I have to pay attention to the weather,” Wang further explained. I don’t have a car, and traveling to and from home, school, and the studio I have to carry everything that I need for the day on me.” Any urban student, worker, or commuter will be familiar with this way living.
Thus, Wang’s content was transformed from one of romance and imagination to function and utility. Because of this shift, Wang’s audience also began to shift. “For me, utility now takes precedence over aesthetic, and this is something which has really affected by follower base. When I first moved, I was getting used to being stylish and practical at the same time,” Wang said. And this is a hard shift to make for a born-and-raised Cali girl who has never lived in an environment of snow. As a Bay Area resident myself, I can attest to the fact that the weather is never really of concern there. Wang continued, “In that interim time while I was adjusting, my followership suffered. I changed my style, and my audience was very aware of that.”
Microcelebrities must be constantly aware of their content, how they change their content as their lifestyles/artistic aesthetics change, and how their audience responds to all of the different kinds of content that they are posting. In the end, it all goes back to impression management (Goffman 1959).
So, now, how does Wang manage what kind of content she posts on various social media channels? “When I’m just going to class on a normal day, I don’t like to dress edgily at all because it’s really uncomfortable,” Wang admitted. “The clothes that I like are awesome for Californian weather but aren’t really appropriate for hard New York winters like the one that we just experienced.” In true New York City art student tradition, Wang will often now dress in all-black—a marked change from her original, light, colorful outfits. “These simple, monochrome outfits wouldn’t necessarily be very interesting to post day-in and day-out on my style blog,” she explained. “When I have the chance to be photographed, that’s when I really wear more edgy pieces. I want to save those elaborate, romantic outfits for when I can document them, save them, and share them.”
As I have written, microcelebrity is all about persona, and sometimes the line between what is real and what is not blurs. This can be incredibly confusing for the blogger, and this is something that Wang definitely struggled with: “In going through the transition from West to East in the fall and making the necessary changes to my style that came along with that, and I had a bit of an identity crisis,” Wang said. “In high school, everything I was posting felt true to myself. It didn’t feel fake. Here [New York], I still wanted to dress in the same way that I did in California but I couldn’t because I was either freezing or in physical pain. If it rained, I would get soaked through and spend hours trying to dry my fancy dry-clean-only clothes when I got home.” Wang’s online style blogging life began to have a powerful, detrimental impact on her non-digital life. “I felt fake, like I was trying to be something that I just couldn’t anymore. It was a bit of a waste of time, and it took awhile for me to realize that I didn’t want to do it anymore,” she admitted.
As Wang rediscovered herself and assimilated to the New York City lifestyle, her outlook, and thus her content, began to change and improve. “Once my clothes fit the circumstances I was living in, what I was posting didn’t feel affected anymore,” she said. “My style on and off-line was congruent and authentic. My style has changed a lot, and I feel a lot more true to myself. When I go out and take pictures for my blog I don’t feel like I’m putting on a costume anymore.” For Wang, authenticity as a blogger is everything: “If I can’t be authentic and true to myself, I’d rather not have a blog at all.”
As part of Wang’s style shift, her blog has begun to feature different kinds of photoshoots on her blog, one’s that reflect her street savvy and new way of living. “I’ve been incorporating a lot more street wear,” Wang explained. Any citizen of New York City will be accustomed to these more casual “action” shoots, which incorporate looks based on every day outfits instead of more conceptual, avant garde styles.
Though Wang’s photoshoots are fewer and farther between due to her school commitments, when she does shoot she utilizes one of the most important microcelebrity skills: networking. “Instead of getting dressed up and doing a shoot,” Wang explained, “I’ll have my friends snap pictures of me in whatever I happen to be wearing to class that day.”
When Wang says “friends,” what she means is other fashion students, generally photography majors, who are also trying to break into the business. One of Wang’s closest collaborators, Zhi Wei, is also a regular photographic contributor at Nylon Magazine—which, if you’re unfamiliar with, is one of the biggest, trendiest, young women’s fashion magazines around the world. It is this connection which led her latest style shoot to be featured on Nylon’s Instagram account. Beyond their friendship, on a professional level, this collaboration is mutually very beneficial. Wei gets the opportunity for exposure to more members of the fashion community via Wang’s blog (his personal work is linked on her blog as well as on all of the shoots that he photographed), and Wang gets exposure within the photographic and publishing communities. This expands both of their networks, which ultimately expands both of their niche audiences.