The "perfect life" of the ACE family

More than 17 million people are interested in the YouTube life of the ACE family - A family that lives in Los Angeles in the United States of America and vlogs about their daily life on YouTube. The ACE family comes from the first letters of Austin, Catherine, and Elle; the father, mother and eldest daughter of the family. After they started their YouTube channel, they have had another daughter: Alaïa. 

Social Media are all about being specific about who you are. But most people know that electronic apps affect people’s self-presentation. You can be whoever you want to be online, in a world of filters and editing software. Here, we will look closely at the self-presentation of the ACE family – a family from the USA who shares their whole life online. Why are they trying to be so perfect showing almost every aspect of their lives? 

Grotesque attention seeking by the ACE Family

The ACE family vlog channel is one of the most popular channels among family vloggers. They are not the only ones, Family vloggers on YouTube/Instagramhave the potential to become real influencers. Their appeal is simple: young children are adorable and say cute things and together with perfect handsome parents you have potential influencers right there. The Ace Family posts family-friendly daily content, including challenges, behind-the-scenes of events, and vlogs of their daily adventures. Besides that, they havInstagram accounts for every member of the family with millions of followers. 

So even though they are not doing anything special, they are influencers. Based on what they like, other people might like it too. This does not have anything to do with their intrinsic qualities. They themselves do not have anything special or out of the ordinary that might make them this famous; but yet they are. The ACE Family is ubuesque in the way described by Foucault (2003): they have a kind of authority that their intrinsic qualities should disqualify them from having. This is exactly what the ACE Family seems to like; attention and influence. They create perfect content, including high-quality pictures, with a high cuteness factor. The family has millions of fans who can perceive them as perfect because that is what the family’s content tells them.

Rules of behavior

When you enter the YouTube channel of the ACE family, the banner immediately attracts your attention. It screams one thing: this channel is all about the life of the ACE family – no other topics matter here.

Firstly, they linked the names of Austin’s and Catherine’s Instagram very huge so you cannot miss them, just as the ACE name. The name is in the center, which means that the focus should be on that. Next to it you see a drawn picture of the family, portrayed cool and focused and looking in the direction of the ACE letters. They are special, but also the parents of a family. The audience may feel more connected to them because it makes people think things like “besides being extraordinary and famous, they are just like me”.

If we connect this analysis to the earlier part of being ubuesque, there is an important connection to be made. Earlier, we established they have a kind of authority because of them being influencers. “… authority generally includes much more, such as systems of social status, implicit and explicit rules of behavior, and the entire set of ideas and institutions that guide social interaction.” (Suk-Young Chwe, 2001). Thus, their system of social status has been established; they are important because they are influencers. 

they are living a bigger life than many people

Living in designer onesies

An Important aspect of the influencers life is the way they dress. They never wear an outfit twice, but in the vlogs, you can see them wearing the same outfit almost the whole day. When they are at home, you see them wearing onesies, and when they go out, they dress up occasionally. They mchange their appearance and how they show themselves for the outside world. Th is enhanced by the wearing of expensive brands, like for example Louis Vuitton or Gucci. This only strengthens our arguments made before, because the wearing of simple clothing like a onesie makes people relate to them, while they are also displaying being at the top society by wearing designer brands.

The readability of the body enables us to learn something from the morphing bodies of the ACE family: the way we show our bodies to people is always a moral way. Everyone has a different sense of morality. For the ACE family wearing expensive designer, onesies are something completely normal, they don't worry about it being too much or braggy - although many people think about it that way. As you can see below, these are different moments in the life of Austin. He is constantly changing his outfits, from comfortable, as you can see on the left, where he wears his designer tracksuits and on the right, where he wears blouses for important occasions such as a photoshoot and his second proposal to Catherine.

You recognize very fast that the ACE family shows every aspect of their lives on YouTube: the first day of school of their child, trips like Coachella, daily routines and their proposal. People can follow their entire life. Before the start of every video, they insert an introduction where they show a short clip of every family member with their names on them, with added music which is emotional. The audience feels like they are going to watch a video of people they know and may even feel an emotional connection to their videos.

Another aspect that stands out in the overview of their content on YouTube is the titles: they are all in capital letters, they stand out and include such information that people might click on it because they are interested in what is going to happen in that video. In the end, it's all about how many people watch a video, so the titles are extremely important. 

In short, the ACE Family gives two messages to viewers: we are special, but you can relate to us. Even though we are so famous and rich, you can recognize parts of your life in ours. This is very important to attract an audience. Imagine the viewers and subscribers are the general public in this case, judging the content and trying to identify with it. This is an example of The "demotic turn"  a term coined by Graeme Turner,  to describe the increasing visibility of the "ordinary person" in the media today. 

 a pregnancy test is pretty 'normal' when you are trying to have a baby, but filming how you take a pregnancy test and put it on YouTube where 8.5 million people watch this, is not something every person who does a pregnancy test does. Raising their kids in a big mansion with an infinity pool, a gym, different living areas, a basketball field is not a relatable living situation for everybody, but having a nighttime routine for their children is. The are in a way, identifiable for the subscribers, making them interested.  living the "American dream", with their big house, cute children, extreme cars, they are living a life, some people only can dream about. They are at the top, they are influencers but still trying to fit in by showing daily practices, people can relate to.  This connection between being at the top or special and fitting in with the normal is a practice that is portrayed in all their content. And as Foucault (2003) put it:“… [a] constant examination of a field of regularity within which each individual is constantly assessed …”.

You see how they live their special life in their luxurious villa, their life full of expensive activities and extraordinary things. But simultaneous you see familiar aspects and activities in their life. Their special and expensive life is combined with an ordinary life. You can see this for example in videos such as their night routine – it is an ordinary thing to have a night routine within your family, but the normal parental activities happen in their luxurious apartment. This shows again how besides being extraordinary and famous, they are just 'people' like the audience, which is supposed to make them more likable and relatable. You can see here, that the care of the self applies in every aspect of people’s self-presentation on social media.

Balancing between perfection and enoughness

The identity of the ACE Family is clearly a matter of enoughness: “identities are constructed out of a particular portion ("enough") of emblematic identity features.” (Blommaert & Varis, 2011). The ACE Family is a perfect example of this: they communicate one’s authentic self to others, which is a delicate balance between content that might be ‘too much’ and ‘too little’.  Figure 3 is what some followers in the comments labeled as too much; while too little information might also be what could label them as different or . 

In figure 3, you see their daughter Elle. The parents have created an Instagram account for their two-year-old child. They do not seem concerned about how this might affect their child in the future. It is all about their seemingly perfect identity: a cute, good looking daughter that comes out well in photographs. 

Is it a matter of normativity?

The difficult balance in finding ‘enoughness’ is something the ACE Family often does not find; their whole content shows a luxurious and over the top lifestyle.  In the vlogs they show their perfect life: they are fit, healthy, have a big house, expensive cars, beautiful children, they laugh together and there seems to be not one thing wrong. They do not only want to portray enoughness; they want to seem perfect.

They only show the perfect things

Although they mention in their documentary The truth about the ACE family that they are not perfect and they do fight with each other, they do not seem to show that in their daily vlogs. They only show the perfect things. Psychologists explain how "usually we strive toward being perfect to compensate for a sense of inadequacy. … So, they decided that only by being perfect would they be beyond reproach." (Schwartz, 2008). , their authority and position as influencers  their struggle between enoughness and being too much.

References

Blommaert, J. & Varis, I. (2011). Enough is Enough: The Heuristics of Authenticity in Superdiversity. Tilburg, Tilburg University.

Foucault, M. (2003). Abnormal; lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975. London, UK: Verso.

Paiz, C & McBroom, A. [The ACE Family] (2019, February 23). THE REAL LIFE OF THE ACE FAMILY – “WELCOME TO OUR LIFE” [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMsSd7AUNFs.

Schwartz, M. (2008, November 30). The Problem with Perfection. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shift-mind/200811/the-problem….

Suk-Young Chwe, M. (2001). Relational Ritual Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge. Princeton University Press, Princeton.