Back in September of last year, beauty guru Tanya Burr uploaded a video to her YouTube channel introducing her involvement with the United Nationsâ project, âGlobal Goalsâ. The seventeen goals look to tackle and rid the world of poverty, inequality and injustice, and global warming. At the end of the video she asked us, her fellow subscribers, to get involved using the hashtag #TBGlobalGoals and express which goal in particular we felt most passionately about.
Tanya expressed her own emotional investment in goal number five â gender equality.
By March the UNâs campaign had reached over three billion people worldwide and our girl Tanya made a blog post discussing her plans to continue waving the girl power flag with her own campaign âTime For Girlsâ.
ââTime for Girlsâ is about everyone â irrespective of gender identity â coming together to make our world more equal, more inclusive and, as a result, better in every way. I wanted to create a place on the internet where we could raise awareness and take action for a variety of issues related to Gender Equality.â
However, although Tanya very much confirmed that her understanding was still growing and that she would be learning along with us about the injustices made against women individually, the YouTube star has still received huge onsets of crippling criticism.
Itâs not as if itâs the first time YouTubers have come under fire for branching out beyond the confines of that video frame. For every kind and devoted fan *ahem* there are about ten absolute meanies that like to drag our faves down. Sometimes the internet can be a scary place.
But, here at MP! Towers, we thought this brought up a pretty interesting question.
Books, feature length films and products are one thing â world issues are kind of on another, hell of a lot higher, level. So should Tanya Burr be an ambassador for the âGlobal Goalsâ?
The thing is, no one can get it absolutely right, especially when theyâre navigating something as difficult as feminism. Even Emma Watson â who, to be honest, we think pretty much embodies the definition of girl boss â has received backlash for missing integral points of view in her own âHe For Sheâ campaign.
Itâs a complex issue and there will always be someone out there to point out your mistakes. But isnât that the wonderful thing about educating ourselves, as Tanya Burr has expressed she herself is still doing? There is no limit to the knowledge our brains can hold. Although we wouldnât dare tell someone that around exam season â under those circumstances, there definitely feels like there are limits to our brainâs capacity.
Fair enough Tanya Burr is a YouTuber whose main content is fashion and beauty, but we shouldnât discredit her or the hard work she is clearly putting into making inequality for girls history. Not only that, but her clear, genuine emotion. If anything, we feel empowered by her own attempts to better our world. It makes us want to get off our backsides and do something about it. Hell to the yeah!
Plus, no one can deny the widespread influence YouTubers have over us. The girl has nearly 3.5 million subscribers, for goodness sake.
Sure, sometimes Tanya will influence us to buy another lipstick when our collection is already pretty bloody humungous. But, as she is demonstrating with âTime For Girlsâ, there are also ways in which YouTubers can now make us stand to attention and unite on something hugely important â like kicking patriarchy butt.
We think what Tanya is doing is pretty incredible. Sheâs inspiring girls of all ages to see the real problems in the world and perhaps making important steps to finally turn gender equality into being a fully fledged thing!
But what do you think? Should YouTubers like Tanya Burr be ambassadors for world issues? Give us a tweet @maximumpop and join the debate.