Travel style on Pinterest: Celebrity bodies as sites of labour and inspiration

Abstract

This study contributes to the body of work on media tourism by shifting attention from destinations to how we get there. In doing so, I am responding to Pritchard and Morgan’s (2005: 299) call for “explorations of the intimate relationships between travel, fashion, dress, the body and sociocultural constructions of place”. Specifically, I am interested in examining transmedia celebrity discourse as a cultural resource for the imagining and planning of tourism. Focusing on Pinterest images of celebrities in airports, I analyse how the labour of travelling is concealed through images of celebrity bodies that are beautiful, glamorous, wealthy, calm and comfortable, rather than sweaty, tired, rushed or bored. My discussion draws on Wilson and Yochim (2015) to reflect on how the pinned images offer a “promise of happiness” (Ahmed 2010) within a feminised digital space that addresses users as creative consumer-researchers who search for and catalogue inspiration. Here, happiness is not just promised by the tourist destination, but by the possibility of making the journey itself pleasurable. The photographed celebrity bodies become sites of identification and inspiration, demonstrating that this goal can be achieved through careful planning, consumption and self-discipline. I approach the analysis of this networked practice by drawing together literature from a diverse range of fields, including the study of tourism, transport, consumption, celebrities, digital cultures and affect theory.