Schulich Professor Receives Grant to Study Female Empowerment Online
Ela Veresiu, Schulich Assistant Professor of Marketing, has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant to study online female empowerment. This award and research is in collaboration with a Marketing Area PhD graduate, Marie-Agnès Parmentier, Associate Professor of Marketing at HEC Montréal.
Is 80 the new 20? The research project focuses on a group of women over 50 known as the Glamorous Grandmas of Instagram, Accidental Icons, or Ageless/Advanced Style Influencers, who are taking the ageist North American social media, fashion, and beauty industries by storm. These women from the so-called Advanced Style Movement have become Instagram influencers – ordinary users who have an established credibility and audience, and therefore can monetize their following through brand collaborations, appearances, and advertisements.
The scholars’ principal research objectives are to 1) examine how Advanced Style Instagram influencers operate on and offline, 2) investigate how they influence the North American multibillion-dollar fashion and beauty industries, 3) offer practical implications for social media marketing professionals, and 4) assess their impact on broader social and cultural understandings of gender, aging, beauty, and style.
“Through our work, we will offer an updated answer to the important question of how does social media influence female shoppers’ relationship to aging, beauty, and style?” said Dr. Parmentier.
“Ultimately, we hope that our research will help actively promote a healthier understanding of aging. Unfortunately, we continue to live in a youth-obsessed culture that not only privileges youthful beauty ideals, but also transforms getting older into a disease. Our research actively fights this ageist tendency, especially in the social media, beauty, and fashion industries,” remarked Dr.Veresiu.