Abstract
In today’s digital world, Instagram platform plays a big role for women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field. It enables them to showcase their products and challenge to societal norm of what is called “real beauty”. This paper explores the how the features of Instagram such as Instagram reels, stories, posts, lives and hashtags enable women entrepreneur to show their real identity and challenges the conventional beauty standards. It will be explained through examples like Huda kattan of huda beauty, Rihanna of fenty beauty and many more. The paper will illustrate how these women entrepreneur use Instagram to show the real identities of their brands and how they break the norms and still achieve success. In all Instagram serves as an important tool for women entrepreneur in the cosmetic field to challenge the norms, show the real identities and yet achieve success.
Instagram is one of the most used platforms in today’s digital world (Leaver et al., 2020). A lot of women entrepreneurs use this social media platform to promote their products. This social media platform also enables women entrepreneurs to show their real self-identities (Heizmann & Liu 2022). There are now more women entrepreneurs who are exerting in the cosmetic field (Arshad et al., 2023). Moreover, while Instagram enables entrepreneurs to promote their businesses, some norms related to how ideal skin, haircut and body are (Manovich, 2016). This enables certain brands to become popular (Jinyoung Yoo et al., 2022) and a lot of brands fit into these norms and achieve success. Thus the question that arises is should women entrepreneurs modify their identities on Instagram to fit the norms of society to achieve their business success or can they challenge the norms of the “ideal beauty”? However, Instagram features such as reels, posts, stories lives and hashtags enable women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field to challenge the societal norms of ideal beauty, show their real self-identity and achieve success through their authenticity and amending the conventional beauty standards.
One of the features of Instagram is Instagram reels. Reels are short videos of a maximum of 60 seconds which are in vertical landscape to facilitate mobile users from viewing them on full screen. It has been created in 2020. A music background, texts and stickers can be included to support to enable a more comprehensible interaction between the seller and the buyer (Menon, 2022). It enables women entrepreneurs in cosmetics to show their brand for example how they self-brand their product how to use their product, the behind-the-scenes and how effectively their product works. They can then show how authentic their brand is which shows their real identity. For example, Huda Kattan who is the founder of Huda Beauty Cosmetics often makes reels of herself on her personal account showing how she uses her cosmetic brand. She shows herself how she is without makeup which breaks the norms of Instagram of being a women entrepreneur which is popular and without makeup (Huda, n.d). She also used plus-sized models which are not considered in the ideal beauty norms as the ideal beauty norm is being thin. It shows how authentic entrepreneurial self she is and shows her real identity her network self which is reflected in her brand. In addition, another example is Anastasia Soare, the founder of the cosmetic brand Anastasia Beverly Hills who shared her story about why she decided to start this brand. Her story was true which brings forward her identity and brings more authenticity to her brand as she is real. She also shares tips on how to use her products and shows proof that her product is a good one. Thus Instagram reels is one of the features of Instagram that enables it to defy the norms and enable the genuine of a brand.
Moreover, Instagram also enables Instagram posts. Ideal Instagram post sizes are in square form but it can also be in vertical rectangular form for videos. Both videos and photos can be posted. A caption can be added to the photo which is posted (Gilliard et al., 2023). This enables women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field to show their identity through their creativity and prove that despite the “ideal norms” that people have put, authenticity can still be found. They can challenge what has been considered as “ideal norms”. For example, Rihanna has promoted her brand which is named Fenty Beauty by Rihanna on Instagram by using black-skinned Rasta hair models which are considered as not in the norm of models (fentybeauty, n.d). This shows her real self-identity. She is not only promoting her foundation for white-skinned people but also highlighting the black-coloured skin people on the Instagram posts of her cosmetic brand which breaks the “ideal beauty norm” that models have white-coloured skin (Bryant, 2013). Another example is the makeup brand CoverGirl whose owner is Latifah uses a model that has vitiligo to promote their new release foundation in 2018 (Covergirl, n.d). They posted a little video on Instagram of her showing the new product. Using a vitiligo model is normally not in the “ideal norms” of cosmetic brands but this brand has used it which shows real identity (Sari et al., 2022). In addition, Selena Gomez the founder of Rare Beauty has self-branded herself. She is on the advertisings of rare beauty and posts on Instagram despite her disease which challenges the ideal body image of a brand and shows its authenticity. She shows a raw image of her curated self without makeup and her body and shows that despite of not having the “ideal body image” her brand can still succeed on Instagram (rarebeauty n.d).
In addition, Instagram has the feature of Instagram stories. Pictures or videos can be posted on Instagram stories which will be available for only 24 hours and then disappear. Posts of the cosmetic brand or other posts can also be shared on Instagram stories and when clicking on the picture, it brings you directly to the post. Instagram stories contain different elements such as polls, quizzes, question box, gifs or locations and a lot of other elements that can create engagement in the stories. (Belanche et al., 2019). For example, makeup brands such as Huda Beauty, Fenty Beauty, and Glossier make stories to share about one of their product that has recently been released. They do polls about which products that their customers prefer which enables them to engage and feel more near their customers. Huda Beauty uses plus-size models in both her stories and Instagram post which shows the authenticity of her brand (hudabeauty, n.d). Plus-size models are not considered as the ideal beauty despite of this she decided to use them to show her real identity (Hendrickse et al., 2020). In addition, on Instagram stories makeup brand are able to repost stories that influencers made on their brand. Some influencers show how they use the products they show their actual skin how it is and then apply the makeup on them. Hudabeauty is one of the cosmetic brand that shares these stories which again shows how genuine the brand is and shows its identity. Selena Gomez also is one of the artist that make stories of her brand where she has no makeup on herself and shows her real self-identity which is not considered as being in the societal norms.
Furthermore, Instagram has a live feature. Live on Instagram enable direct communication with customers. Live on Instagram can be scheduled and can be done with several people at one time. It has a comment section where people who are watching the live session to be able to comment on the live and the brand or women entrepreneur doing the live will receive the comment where she will be able to communicate with them. Lives are direct and cannot be edited, it is raw which shows the real self-identity of the brand or the women doing it. Brand or women entrepreneurs often do their lives to engage with their customers in real-time, and answer their queries about products (Zulli et al., 2021). For example, Emily Weiss who is the founder of the makeup brand Glossier does some lives on Instagram to show how she uses her products. She shows her real identity as there cannot be edits on lives it is all in direct and in real-time (Weiss n.d). Another example is Kylie Jenner who is the founder of Kylie Cosmetics often do live Instagram to show the new product that just came out, she tests it in front of the people who are watching the live, and she engages with them (Kylie n.d). They provide an instant response that shows that the entrepreneur despite being a popular artist, can still be accessible and is not submerged by the notoriety. It shows their authenticity and curated self identity and builds trust of consumers (Zulli et al., 2021). By showing their real raw life via lives, it is normally out of the norms of society which Instagram enable to challenge and make it acceptable.
Additionally, Instagram has a hashtag feature. Hashtags enable to form an identity. It is a mixture of letters followed by a symbol (Almeida et al., 2022). Hashtags on Instagram allow users to easily search for a post or search for information (Purba et al., 2021). Hashtags can be created by anyone. Hashtags can allow people to search for a specific theme for example if someone is searching for a cosmetic product he types #cosmetic and will easily find cosmetics. For women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field, hashtags enable them to show their brand identity to recognize them and see their posts more easily. A lot of makeup brand created their hashtag for example Charlotte Tilbury brand has its hashtag which is #CharlotteTilbury or Benefit Cosmetics which is #benefitcosmetics. Moreover, with hashtags, the authenticity of cosmetic brands can be shown. For example, using the makeup brand hashtag some testimony of influencers or normal people can be found. Their honest review is posted which proves the authenticity of the brand. People or influencers show there before makeup and after makeup. For example, there is a girl on Instagram named Pricilla Rendon who made a reel of the before and after using the corrector of Huda Beauty (Rendon, n.d). It shows her raw image which breaks the ideal beauty norm. With hashtags also brands that use models which are not considered to be in the beauty norm can be found thus increasing the popularity of this brand due to the challenging of beauty norms. Hashtags may reinforce the identity of some makeup brands. Therefore women entrepreneur in the cosmetic field uses hashtags to define their identity.
To conclude, Instagram features enable women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field to challenge the norms of the ideal beauty and show their identity. Through features of reels, stories, posts, lives and hashtags women entrepreneur can prove their brand identities by breaking the ideal beauty norms. It has enabled some popular cosmetic brands and women entrepreneurs like Huda Kattan founder of Huda Beauty, Rihanna founder of Fenty Beauty, Selena Gomez founder of Rare Beauty and Kylie Jenner founder of Kylie Cosmetics to show their behind-the-scenes through reels or how to use their products through live sessions. Some brands break the stereotype of real beauty standards through posts using a model who has vitiligo or plus-sized models to promote her product. Thus Instagram features empower women entrepreneurs in the cosmetic field to show their true identity, challenging societal norms. They show that by defying societal norms they can still achieve big success. They proved that there are no norms of what is called an “ideal beauty”. Everyone has their beauty and a lot of women entrepreneurs have shown it.
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