Influencers and Gender Politics in Southeast Asia

Introduction to Influencers and Gender Politics in Southeast Asia Crystal Abidin, Annisa R. Beta, and Hao Zheng Forum - Unfolding Gender Politics: Influencers and Everyday Cultural Contestations in Southeast Asia Annisa R. Beta, Monika Winarnita, Aim Sinpeng, and George Radics Section 1: Aspiration 1. Addictive Glamorization: Dek Inter Influencers, Gender/Class Youth Aspirations, and Glam Cultures in Bangkok Akira Keene Teotrakool 2. Alternate Universe as Site of Struggle: How Thai Enthu Influencers negotiate and promote Thai Boys’ Love Text in Indonesia Dwi Masrina and Preciosa Alnashava Janitra 3. Affirming Diasporic Muslim Identity: A Case Study of Sabrina Azhar’s Influence Gwen Ng Zhe Qun 4. Agency and Discursive Positioning of Indonesian Muslim Women Influencers Annisa Laura Maretha, Alistair Welsh, and Yanying Lu Section 2: Authenticity 5. Flow Authenticity: Taiwanese Women Influencers’ Postfeminist Entrepreneurial Narratives in Southeast Asia Wei-Ping Chen 6. “No Flowers for Highland Girls”: Ethnic Minority Women as TikTok Influencers in Vietnam’s Highlands Huy Trần Phước Lâm, Nguyễn Song Nhi, Trần Hoài, and Myles L. Lynch 7. Fashion from the ‘Gang’: How @nedevins Reimagines Urban Kampung Spaces through Thrifting Practices on Instagram Witakania Sundasari Som and Aquarini Priyatna Section 3: Advocacy 8. Labels That Chafe: How #BodyPositive Content Creators in Singapore Navigate Activism and Feminism Cindy Ho and Shobha Avadhani 9. Militarised Femininities or Constrained Female Liberation in Accounts of Thai Military Women Influencers Chanapang Pongpiboonkiat 10. “Breaking The Triple Burden”: Influencer Activism and Balinese Young Women’s Resistance Putu Dinda Ayudia 11. #BASS Influences: Gendered Spectacle, Morality Politics, and the Digital Lives of Bella Astillah and Syed Saddiq in Malaysia Nur Kareelawati Abd Karim Forum - Feminist Futures Online: Reimagining Power in Pilipina/x Diasporic Platforms on Turtle Island/Canada Anabelle B. Ragsag, Jovie Galit, Sheilla Lynn Diamse, and Clarice Adriene P. General Conclusion - Influencers, Gender Politics, and Southeast Asia: Reflections, Provocations, Futures Hao Zheng, Annisa R. Beta, and Crystal Abidin

Biography

Crystal Abidin (PhD) is Director of the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab) and Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University. She is the author of TikTok and Youth Cultures (Emerald, 2025) and Child Influencers (Polity, 2025). Reach her at wishcrys.com. 

Annisa R. Beta (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication, the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Pious Girls (Routledge, 2024) and a co-founder of Anotasi and Jaringan Etnografi Terbuka.

Hao Zheng (PhD) is a Chinese queer female researcher and currently a Research Fellow in the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab). Her work focuses on gender and sexuality, transnational mobility, and digital cultures. Find Hao at haozheng.website.

Timely and essential intervention. Under the framework of aspiration, authenticity, and advocacy, this collection cuts through the noise to untangle the complex relationship between influencers and gender politics in one of the world's most wired regions. Bridging digital media and gender studies, it delivers insight that is both empirically rich and conceptually sound. Indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand identity, power, and resistance in the digital age.

Professor Merlyna Lim, Professor of Communication & Media Studies, Carleton University

 

Incisive, timely, and theoretically generative, this book shows why and how Southeast Asia is indispensable to understanding the global gendered politics of digital culture today. With richly grounded case studies and sharp conceptual interventions that unpack the intricate ways in which influencers reshape gender, aspiration, and public culture, this volume will be essential reading for scholars, students, and the general reader who are interested in digital media, global gender and sexual discourses, and contemporary Asia.

Assistant Professor Jamie J. Zhao, global queer media scholar and Assistant Prof. in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

 

Influencers and Gender Politics in Southeast Asia offers a sharp, nuanced, and intellectually ambitious account of how influencers negotiate, reinforce, and disrupt gender norms across one of the most diverse and dynamic regions in the world, a region whose cultures are inseparable from the layered legacies of colonial and postcolonial modernities. Bringing together a rich range of perspectives, the volume illuminates how influencer culture intersects with, and at times disrupts, the gendered structures of everyday life, from kinship and religion to state governance. In doing so, it boldly challenges received assumptions about gender and digital life in Southeast Asia, while offering frameworks and insights that will resonate far beyond the region. This is essential reading for scholars of digital media, gender studies, and Asian societies alike.
Assistant Professor Eva Cheuk Yin Li, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Screen Industries, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London

 

This excellent, pioneering anthology highlights the contradictory ways influencers can both endorse and challenge cultural constructions of gender, using the diverse context of the Southeast Asian region. From the Thai women in the military whose posts endorse a militarized femininity, to an Indonesian thrift fashion influencer whose photographs are taken in a narrow alleyway—a designated male space and thus quite a radical act, this important book introduces us to individuals who have succeeded in politicising the everyday in gender advocacy, demonstrating the many subtle and subliminal possibilities for participating in public discourses about gender issues.  Finally, it invites scholars to investigate how actors who may not consider themselves to be feminists or gender activists, initiate public performances that engage with hegemonic discourses in ways that have the potential to transform them.

Professor Mina Roces, Professor of History, School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales

 

This collection is a remarkable and important contribution to the discussion of gender, class, and race politics in the Southeast Asia's influencer landscape. It offers rich empirical research on an impressive range of contexts —from ethnic minority women TikTok creators in Vietnam’s highlands to young women activists in Bali. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand digital cultures and power in the region.

Associate Professor Ee Ling Quah, Western Sydney University

 

The book successfully and creatively shows how influencers can promote and reinforce dominant orientations in gender domains, as well as create possibilities for contestation.
Professor Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore