Meet vlogger Zoe Sugg, the girl behind YouTube channel Zoella
SHE’S got millions of followers and now her new book has sold more copies in its first week than J.K Rowling. But not everyone is a fan of beauty vlogger Zoe Sugg.
IF YOU don’t know who Zoe Sugg is, the best way to explain her level of fame and influence is through numbers.
6,632,604 YouTube subscribers. 3.5 million Instagram followers. 2.59 million Twitter followers. 24 years old. 1 best-selling book. 1 boyfriend with perfect hair. 1 adorable puppy.
Zoella, as Sugg’s loyal teenage fans refer to her as, is a YouTube video blogger. She posts videos about fashion, beauty, boys, friends, body image and friendship.
More than three million people have watched Sugg’s video on how to style a messy bun. The same number tuned in to see her unveil the contents of her $975 Alexander Wang handbag.
Some of her most popular videos include ‘Autumn/Fall Makeup | Gold Eyes & Berry Lips’, ‘Q & A: Peeing with the door open’ and ‘Skincare Chat & Natural Makeup Look’.
She greets her fans at the beginning of each video with a sunny, smiley, “Hello everybody!” and updates them with the latest happenings in her life — such as moving in with her boyfriend and fellow YouTube celebrity Alfie Deyes (whose channel Pointless Blog has 3,362,223 subscribers) or the giant bag of drugstore makeup she purchased that week.
Sugg made headlines this week when her debut novel, Girl Online, sold 78,000 copies in its first week of publication in the UK, beating debut novels by J.K Rowling and Dan Brown.
“I’m legit blown away by this. I never in a million years thought that so many of you would pick up a copy of Girl Online. Almost wanna cry,” she tweeted.
Since starting her blog and YouTube channel in 2009, Sugg has released her own beauty line, Zoella Beauty, was crowned Cosmopolitan’s Best Beauty Vlogger in 2012 and won the 2014 Teen Choice Award for Choice Web Star: Fashion and Beauty. She’s frank about living with anxiety and has been appointed as an ambassador for UK-based mental health charity Mind.
Sugg’s sunny disposition and wholesome lifestyle — she doesn’t drink or do drugs — are an important part of her brand. She is chirpy, positive and upbeat in her videos. And she’s not afraid to share her most intimate moments with her followers.
6,340,964 people have watched a video called, ‘How Well Do We Know Each Other?’, where Sugg and her boyfriend quiz the other on personal facts about themselves. The punishment for getting an answer wrong? A plate of whipped cream in the face.
Another clip, titled ‘I MOVED HOUSE WITH ALFIE’ (2,340,431 views) Sugg and her boyfriend film themselves half naked in bed together, freshly woken, and discuss their excitement and moving in together.
Sugg’s young fans clearly can’t get enough of these intimate moments. It’s what make them feel close to her. “You two make me believe in real love :)” one fan commented on the video. “More Zalfie pweez!” wrote another. But others are critical of the way she uses her influence.
“Zoella, you have 6 million followers. why are you not using this “fame” To educate, and help people about more important issues?” The sentiment expressed in this YouTube comment is not uncommon to see on her channel. Not everyone is a fan.
In a piece titled, ‘Zoella isn’t the perfect role model girls think she is’, The Telegraph columnist Daisy Buchanan picked apart Sugg’s happy-go-lucky brand.
“When I look at Zoella, the contemporary patron saint of glossy hair and perfect relationships (she’s dating fellow YouTuber and millennial icon Alfie Deyes) I desperately want to hear her say something genuinely inspiring, something that will make the young women of today sit up and challenge every beauty myth and bit of gender conditioning they have ever been exposed to.
Then she comes out with the formula for the perfect smoky eye. She’s contributing to a beauty culture I’m uncomfortable with. She’s indisputably gorgeous and talented at what she does, and I can’t blame Zoella for capitalising on her skills in this field, but it frightens me that millions of young women in 2014 are still being told to prioritise pretty over clever, confident and smart.”
The Independent’s Chloe Hamilton wrote that Sugg’s “sickly sweet”, goodie-two shoes branding isn’t all its cracked up to be. Hamilton sees a disparity between Sugg’s insistence that “you don’t need to worry about like, image, appearance” when she makes a living telling young girls how to look good.
“It’s maddening that a girl who has made it her business to tell teenagers how to put make up on, or get their hair just right, now feels she’s in a position to admonish them for ‘fretting’ about their appearance,” Hamilton wrote.
Sugg’s rise to fame has been fast and intense. But it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, and Sugg doesn’t appear to want it to.
“I never expected any of this to happen so I’m just going to go with it and make the most of it,” she said.
News.com.au has contacted Zoe Sugg for comment.