The recent news of British influencer Zoella being removed from a GCSE media studies syllabus, following complaints from parents, has incensed sex educators, influencers and teenagers alike. The news was first reported by Business Insider and described how parents had objected to Zoella being used as a case study for 16 year olds in a Media Studies course, as her website, like many other blogs aimed at young women, features articles about ‘the best sex toys’.
As a sex positive influencer myself, I couldn’t quite believe that this non-issue had become such a huge debacle, but of course, the decision to remove mention of Zoella from the syllabus makes reference to far more pressing and long-toothed conversations being had about teenage sexual agency and education. This isn’t just a story about sex education, it’s a story about media censorship, teenage sexuality and moral panic, so of course, there’s an influencer at the centre of it.
Zoella merely follows in the footsteps of many influencers promoting healthy conversations about sexual agency in the media over the last few decades but now, as ever, there’s resistance to this. What’s ironic is how the media landscape has changed, bolstering channels on which teenagers can learn about sex, consent, self pleasure and healthy relationships. If your school or parent shut your source of influence down in the ‘70s, it would have been very difficult to access it again. Now, information is infinitely accessible to teenagers, and this fact is no doubt reflected in GCSE media studies classes in which influencer culture is being studied.
Censoring Influencers Who Challenge Dominant Cultures Is Nothing New
Censoring a media studies syllabus that connects students to the idea of healthy sexual agency via an influencer’s content is dangerous but it also makes a mockery of the very idea of studying media. Students will have been following their favourite influencers on Instagram for years, they’ll have grown up with the likes of Zoella, looking to her as a source of knowledge and inspiration, reading her blogs, consuming her contact. They’ll watch influencers on YouTube and interact with media via traditional outlets, like newspapers, which frequently criticise changes to hegemonic culture and decry the influence of media on ‘the youth’.
I began working with sexual wellbeing companies when it was still somewhat taboo for lifestyle bloggers to be doing so, and I think it’s exemplary that huge influencers like Zoella have followed suit in normalising female sexuality. Zoella is an influencer who has grown up in the public eye. She began by discussing her anxiety and her favourite make up in her bedroom and now runs an empire that employs a team of female content creators with a unique understanding of young women and their interests.
I loved Zoella’s intelligent and measured response to her content being removed from the GCSE syllabus following complaints about ‘adult content’. She of course made reference to the myriad problems with censoring sex education, especially that which focuses on the agency and experiences of teenage girls. But the thing that stood out to me most was her sense of calm. She didn’t seem angry, she didn’t come across as a necessary activist. In fact, she wasn’t even aware that she’d be used as a case study. Zoella also made it clear that her team creates more ‘grown up’ content these days to reflect her own growth – Zoella isn’t a child, she’s a woman of thirty.
But the widespread coverage of this story has been mixed and has elicited a great deal of pearl clutching nonetheless. Journalist and influencer expert Chris Stokel-Walker, who originally broke the story for Business Insider says, “The story is one that has been a pretty fundamental query for digital creators: what do they do when they age out of the brand they established, that first got them to fame, or when they themselves change – as all humans do. AQA seems to have thought that internet creators are struck in amber, doomed to be the same people they always were, without considering that they adapt and change just like all of us. It’s a misconception that many media outlets following up my reporting have repeated.”
Teens Face The Erasure Of Their Heroes For The Wrong Reasons
Zoella isn’t a 16-year old advising other 16-year olds, she’s an adult content creator with a vested interest in sex-positive education and female health and wellbeing. And of course, I relate to this. But let’s be honest, what 16-year old doing their GCSE’s doesn’t know what a vibrator is, know exactly who Zoella is and what she stands for and isn’t experiencing the pangs of puberty? Labelling her a ‘bad influence’ and erasing her content, when far more insidious threats abound seems misguided, and this of course, reveals the real issue at the heart of this story – that influencers are easy targets, make wonderful scapegoats for conservative anxiety and that our society has a deeply unhealthy relationship with sex.
I’m an LGBTQ+ cis woman and I struggled to express myself sexually as a teenager. I was othered and maligned by my peers and by teachers and other adults for trying to come out, and I was frequently shamed for taking an interest in sex. My own experiences have made me the advocate for sex positive education that I am today. And I’m still shamed for that, usually by women of my parents’ age. Personally, I would argue that neither myself or Zoella represent any form of ill-willed deviant, and that we both aim to speak to women who felt or feel ashamed by entirely natural and healthy subjects, like masturbation, self confidence and sexual identity.
I maintain, like many other influencers with a following that ranges from teens to women in their early forties, that if 16-year olds’ parents aren’t willing to normalise and teach them about healthy routes to pleasure and sexual agency, these same parents have no business perpetuating shame culture by blocking and demonising those who can and will.
The irony of censoring a media studies curriculum when the only reference any of us have ever had for sex and sexuality is music, influencers and TV, is in no way lost on me. Surely someone as wholesome as Zoella can’t be the worst influence by any parents’ standards. She’s just an easy target on which to pin an issue that’s far bigger and more damaging and that affects teenagers and their heroes everywhere.
