Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet
Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging
Publisher: Duke University Press
First published: Nov 2015
In the first ever book devoted to a critical investigation of the personal style blogosphere, Minh-Ha T. Pham examines the phenomenal rise of elite Asian bloggers who have made a career of posting photographs of themselves wearing clothes on the Internet. Pham understands their online activities as “taste work” practices that generate myriad forms of capital for superbloggers and the brands they feature. A multifaceted and detailed analysis, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet addresses questions concerning the status and meaning of “Asian taste” in the early twenty-first century, the kinds of cultural and economic work Asian tastes do, and the fashion public and industry’s appetite for certain kinds of racialized eliteness. Situating blogging within the historical context of gendered and racialized fashion work while being attentive to the broader cultural, technological, and economic shifts in global consumer capitalism, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet has profound implications for understanding the changing and enduring dynamics of race, gender, and class in shaping some of the most popular work practices and spaces of the digital fashion media economy.
Praise
“[A] deeply engaging and sophisticated discussion of the race and gender dynamics that affect Asian fashion labor.”
“Street-style photos never cease to be a form of inspiration. Minh-Ha T. Pham takes a look at how exactly style superbloggers came to be, while celebrating Asian fashion and styling at the same time. She also takes a critical look at what mainstream media thinks of as ‘Asian style,’ making it both a must-read and a beautiful book.”
“Pham’s book is sharp, punchy and eminently readable. It is full of shrewd visual and textual analysis of the content of blogs and puts forward a muchneeded critique of the kinds of critiques that bloggers themselves tend to have launched at them. . . . I thoroughly enjoyed reading Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet, and I would recommend it to any scholar interested in blogging, social media, personal style, creative labour or race and gender politics in fashion today.”
