Trying On for Size and All the Watching Eyes: Unpacking the Significance of YouTube Try-On Haul Videos
In my research, I explore through a fashion-focused lens the underlying messages about consumption, sustainability, gender, and race promoted by try-on hauls. More specifically, I ask: How do YouTube try-on hauls shape and encourage fashion habits in regard to the individual, the fashion industry, and institutionalized standards of body, gender, and race? The dressing room has become digitized. The try-on haul has unofficially grown into its own video genre, featuring numerous participants being filmed and counting millions of spectators watching through a screen. The name captures these videos’ two basic components: individuals repeating the process of putting on, evaluating, and providing commentary on newly purchased pieces of clothing with a large pile of merchandise or shopping bags positioned nearby. I hope this paper holds a mirror up to readers and prompts them to look critically at themselves and question participating in these types of productions.