this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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For me, the imagery of hyper masculine leather daddies was a eureka moment (what a fucking sentence). I don’t think they’re doing it to be ‘marketable’ to women or men (on an immediately, trying to attract someone that day basis), it seems much more obviously just a style thing.
Plus, she’s right that she’d make more money with smaller breasts- a C-cup on her frame would probably appeal to more men, while looking natural enough that people like you might be interested in sharing her videos with others. I can’t imagine that’s new information for her (YouTube comments sections are not the most tactful places), so she probably would have tailored her look to appeal to more men over time, if that was her goal.
I don’t think that’s likely at all, but I do believe her brain whispers that to her until she stops treating herself well. Mainly because truth is stranger than fiction- a 160 cm tall person (even in the most southern part of china, men’s average height is 168-170 cm) who has very long hair, shallowly set eyes, narrow shoulders, a high pitched voice and zero facial hair is not plausibly going to be mistaken for a man on a regular basis. That would be such a 4 year old lie to make up. Maybe she’s betting on that and it’s a ruse, but that’s a risky move if anyone who knows anything about Thai queer culture can out your lie.
The point is, while they might dress up like that when going to a club, or while getting intimate with partners, they don't tend to do that at their day jobs. And, if they did and their day job was presenting YouTube science / maker videos, I wouldn't want to share their videos either.
She's obviously free to do whatever she wants. Well... let me rephrase that. This article is about how she's in China and has disappeared, so she's obviously not free to do whatever she wants. But, as long as she's within the margins of what's acceptable on YouTube, she's allowed to dress how she wants in her videos. Having said that, apparently she's had videos demonetized for sexual content before. My point is just that as a potential consumer of her videos, I'd be more likely to watch and share them if what she wore wouldn't result in HR violations in even the most freewheeling of tech startups.
It really doesn't matter what her reasons for doing it are. Maybe it's because she's incredibly insecure about being seen as a boy. Maybe it's because she's a lesbian and part of a subculture that emphasizes a ridiculous take on the feminine form. Maybe she's doing it because it attracts horny male viewers. It's probably a mix of all those things, even if she doesn't admit it. I wouldn't want her kicked off YouTube, and don't even think it's reasonable to demonetize her content. But, personally, I'll be watching and sharing other channels.
You definitely don’t have to watch her! I liked that video a lot, but don’t care about tech, so I won’t watch her channel either.
It just feels disrespectful to contradict someone we don’t know about the reason she acts the way she does, especially because she gives a logical chain for her beliefs.
I don’t know if it’s a healthy way to deal with her trauma, but as she said, she’s just glitchy, as are we all. I can’t look down while going down stairs that I can see through, because my brain tells me they’re less safe than opaque stairs. Is that real? No. Does my understanding that it’s not real make my heart rate slower or my palms less sweaty? No, it’s a glitch. Mine’s more common and probably easier to empathize with, but if I only hung out with rock climbers, they might not understand at all. If they said I was playing a damsel for male attention, it would be infuriating.
Sure, if you have no other information, but we have other information. We know how much YouTubers obsess about their videos, and the ones that don't are the ones who aren't getting viral videos. We know how they pay attention to every aspect of their videos, from the titles to the thumbnails, to everything else. We also know that YouTube provides all kinds of tools to allow creators to see what part of their videos are most watched, etc. They also provide all kinds of information about who your audience is, including age and gender.
In Naomi Wu's case, even without that analytics information, we know that one of her most popular videos is "See My Boob😜", and if you open a typical video and look for the most replayed segments, it's often a part of the video where she's showing off the underside of her boobs for a second, or something.
So, it's reasonable to assume that she's aware of what her overwhelmingly male audience pays attention to in her videos. And it's reasonable to assume that it plays a significant role in the decisions she makes. But, it seems to me that her explanation video tries to pretend that appealing to horny male viewers isn't part of her goal at all. I believe her when she says that she's into girls, and that her clothing choices are based on appearing feminine, and appealing to girls. But, I don't believe that appealing to a male YouTube audience isn't also part of the calculation.