Part 9 ~ Alexis Ren and the Coral Gardeners: Glamorising Environmentalism or Using Appearances to Communicate Meaning?
Figure 8. A screenshot of Alexis Ren’s Instagram page.
Figure 10. Screenshots of Alexis Ren in the main campaign video for Alexis Ren’s collaboration with Coral Gardeners.
Figure 11. A screenshot of @mariaaaxo01’s comment in the ‘comment section’ of Alexis’ main campaign video.
Figure 12. A screenshot of @leezus_deezus’s and @standtogethersafemales’s comments in the ‘comment section’ of Alexis’ main campaign video.
Figure 13. Screenshots of Alexis Ren in the video titled titled “Diaries | Alexis Ren X Coral Gardeners: Day 3”.
Figure 16. A screenshot of @moonbeamsaftermidnight’s and @martindriskill’s comments in the ‘comment section’ of “Diaries | Alexis Ren X Coral Gardeners: Day 3”.
Alexis Ren is an Instagram model and “influencer” with thirteen-and-a-half million followers. Her Instagram uploads predominantly consist of photographs of her conventionally attractive face and figure (as shown in Figure 8).
However, in November and December 2019 Ren posted a series of videos to her Instagram account in collaboration with Coral Gardeners, a “group of kids from a tiny island in the pacific ocean” who help to “fight [the] war”(Ren, 2019) against coral reef destruction by planting broken coral back on the reefs (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Screenshots of the main campaign video for Alexis Ren’s collaboration with Coral Gardeners.
The main campaign video (Figure 9) is emotionally stimulating. Slow and synthy music plays over a compilation of idyllic ocean scenery, including beautiful shots of colourful corals and thriving fish. This serenity is suddenly broken by a fact-paced compilation of burning forests, a man beating a seal, plastic-waste ridden shores and dead coral reefs. The contrast between the picturesque and the disastrous helps emphasise the urgency of the issue. These images of destruction are then interrupted by a drone shot of the Coral Gardeners flying across the ocean in a speed boat; they are on a mission to save the coral reefs. Throughout the video Ren speaks over the music, telling us about the urgent need to help “fight this war” against coral reef destruction. The video ends with Ren asking that we “share the video [to] help raise funds needed to expand the organisation all over the world”(Ren, 2019).
This video is not without several shots of Ren looking glamorous in her bikini, as shown in Figure 10. Although the majority of the comments left under the video are positive, praising Ren for “using [her] platform to educate people on these important issues” (Figure 11), many people criticised the influencer, with one user commenting “All this is doing is making her gain clout and woke tokens” (Figure 12). In other words, @leexus_deezus is accusing Ren of using the positive cause to appear environmentally conscious (“woke”) in order to increase her influence and prestige (“gain clout”), and therefore greenwash herself.
Figure 14. A screenshot of @moonbeamsaftermidnight’s comment in the ‘comment section’ of “Diaries | Alexis Ren X Coral Gardeners: Day 3”.
One of the other videos in the campaign, titled “Diaries | Alexis Ren X Coral Gardeners: Day 3”, is a two minute and forty-eight second compilation of video clips, almost all of Ren. It seems that the editor of the video has prioritised showing Ren, rather than showing the situations around her. Whether she is laughing with some local children, studying coral or talking with Coral Gardeners team members, Ren is in every shot. Just when Ren starts to go out of shot in one clip, the video cuts to a new clip which is focused on her again (Figure 13). In some cases this results in the ‘cutting off’ of the beginning or end of Coral Gardener team member’s sentences as they discuss their coral conservationism.
In response to this video, the user @moonbeamsatmidnight expressed that while “it’s obvious [Alexis] is trying to do something good”, “it still comes off that [she is] so concerned with [her] looks” and that Ren is “there to be a pretty thing so people look at it” (Figure 14).
However, this “focus on appearance” that @moonbeamsatmidnight refers to in their comment, is very evident in the thumbnail for this video (Figure 15). The thumbnail is a beautiful backlit photograph of Ren sitting at the edge of the ocean in a bikini. Other than the ocean imagery, this photograph seemingly has no relation to campaign with the Coral Gardeners, and could be interpreted as a distraction from the important message of the video.
Figure 15. The thumbnail for “Diaries | Alexis Ren X Coral Gardeners: Day 3”.
One article that reported on Ren’s Coral Gardeners collaboration was titled “Alexis Ren Shares Water-Drenched Pic To Help Save The Coral Reefs”. The article praises Ren’s appearance, calling her “smoking hot” and detailing her “voluptuous cleavage, strong abs and full booty”(Johnson, 2019). Meanwhile, the article explained little about the actual campaign. In this way, Ren’s “focus on appearance”(Figure 16) has, in some instances, undervalued the purpose of the campaign.
But does this thumbnail only serve to show-off Ren’s attractive figure? The Instagram user @martindriskill responded to @moonbeamsatmidnight (Figure 16) explaining that Ren probably “feels like she has to stay [being] this pretty thing because if she stopped she’d lose her influence” and “losing her influence would mean that she can’t tell as many people about the coral crisis”(Figure 16).
Ren’s Instagram brand is her voice, and that brand is built on her exhibiting her conventionally attractive face and body in her posts. @martindriskill makes the point that, if she did not show her face and body in these videos they may not have captured people’s attention as successfully, meaning that they perhaps would not have been viewed and shared as frequently as they have been.
In this way, Ren has used her own image as clickbait3, tricking people into learning about an important cause. Rather than trivialising something meaningful by turning it into appearances, Ren has used her appearances as a vehicle to communicate meaning under the guise of something trivial.
It seems that there is a tricky balancing act between being sensational enough to be noticed, while being factual enough to be true. Of course, being truthful is not mutually exclusive from being visually appealing. However, to focus purely on facts is to risk being boring, meaning that a message may not be heard and spread. Meanwhile, to be more sensational is to risk diverting from the truth and prioritising style over substance. Ren’s campaign with the Coral Gardeners is arguably too appearance based at times, to the point that the message may be lost on some. However, the provocative campaign certainly caught some people’s attention in the right way since almost $88,000 have been raised for the Coral Gardeners(Coral Gardeners, 2019).
