(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love

“[A] timely and important book” —Zoe Glatt, Convergence

“Duffy chronicles, with clarity and compassion, what she calls “aspirational labor”—an intoxicating desire to forego the realities of today’s soulless and uncertain labor market for the allure of a more soulful connection to meaningful work. Using today’s dizzying world of social media microcelebrity to make her case, Duffy accomplishes that rare thing: advances theory with elegance, challenging all easy reads of late capitalism, while helping readers see themselves in the book’s careful, detailed accounts of people’s lives.“—Mary L. Gray, Indiana University and Microsoft Research

“A necessary antidote. Duffy deftly reveals the sweat of young women content creators, offering a new perspective on gender and the digital economy.“—Leslie Regan Shade, University of Toronto

“A fascinating, meticulously researched study that shows how these creative women exemplify modern workers. Her lessons are essential for all those interested in fashion studies, gender studies, and the creative economy.”—Angela McRobbie, author of Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries

“Duffy is an excellent guide to the contemporary anxieties of aspirational labor, showing both the very calculated nature of investments these women are trying to make in their futures, while pointing to the larger social forces that shape and constrict their possibilities.”—Gina Neff, author of Venture Labor


“Duffy’s seminal work unearths once and for all what it’s truly like to work in the influencer economy of blogging and social media.”—Julia DiNardo, FashionPulseDaily.com

Brooke Erin Duffy is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. She is the author of Remake, Remodel: Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age and co-author of Platforms and Cultural Production.

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