What do you do for work?
I need to preface by acknowledging my privilege; I am a white woman living in Australia with a loving family, supportive friends and secure employment. I haven’t got much to feasibly complain about. Onwards.
Whether it’s an inquisitive stranger at a party, an aunty or uncle asking at family lunch or the date sitting across from me, getting questioned about whether I make TikToks all day and scroll on my phone for a job is getting old.
I love my role in social media; it allows me to be creative, express my ideas, and it’s the perfect place to show off how tapped into the current cultural digital landscape I am. Yet the stigma that comes with roles within social media is beginning to have less of a leg to stand on. Influencers get a bad rap online; social media girlies get a bad rap in offices and online too, yet marketing men with knowledge to share on how to market yourself online and build an audience are heralded as all-knowing, gifted with the touch of marketing magic.
The term “social media girlie” is likened to women either creating content online (whether they make money or not), women who create content online for a job (therefore being a sole trader or contractor) and women within office and workplace environments who are employed to create content for the company’s social media channels (although men hold all of these roles too, I am speaking on my experience for the sake of this article).
While being a “social media girlie” is how I am referred to and sometimes refer to myself, it is starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I am, in fact, a 25-year-old woman, working to make a living and provide for the company that has employed me, to do the best I can do for the company, just like any of my friends who enter their workplaces wanting to do the same. I look at my friends who are teachers or working in the health system and understand the stakes of their job will always be incomparable to those of mine, but I don’t know if it is fair to base the validity or seriousness of someone’s job on the stakes.
Content producers roam events, red carpets, workplaces and public spaces for their job, doing what many people can’t: public speaking. Approaching strangers, immediately trying to make them feel comfortable by building some kind of rapport before meekly bringing the camera up and hitting record and hoping your boss or the client is happy with what comes out in the edit.
Maybe I am projecting my insecurities about being perceived a certain way, and no one will care as much about this topic as I do. That’s probably the bottom line. But I also know that in another decade or so, there will be a whole new wave of technological advancements and the way society moves through the world that will demand that new roles in companies be created. Maybe social media girlies will either be concrete departments in the workplace or redundant altogether. Until then, I’ll be scrolling and editing until I can’t anymore.
