Beauty, Baby and Backlash? Anti-feminist Influencers on TikTok

Grounded in empirical data, this qualitative study analyses how female anti-feminist influencers engage in metapolitics and how anti-feminist practices of metapolitics unfold within visual social media content. Employing multimodal content analysis and netnography this study adds to the research on metapolitics and political influencers. Applying network media logic as an analytical lens this paper is focusing on three female anti-feminist influencers and their metapolitical practices on TikTok. Results show that female anti-feminist influencers use different practices to metapolitize their (supposed) private life and hide their political agenda while introducing their audience to anti-feminist ideas and other anti-feminist actors. Further, they use TikTok to commodify their anti-feminist worldview. By establishing links to the so-called manosphere and concealing their metapolitical aim female anti-feminist influencers pose a distinct threat to a liberal and pluralistic society.