Bookstagrammers: Influencers & a new kind of book club

View this email in your browser.

March 10, 2021

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women are protesting in Mexico, an all-male board returns to the S&P 500, and bookstagrammers are putting a fresh spin on the book club model that Oprah made famous. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

– Model behavior. The so-called golden age of supermodels has long passed. But this current generation? They’re hosting a new kind of book club on Instagram.

The New York Times reports on the trend that’s blossomed in the pandemic. Model Kaia Gerber hosts a formal book club on Instagram TV, while Emily Ratajkowski and Kendall Jenner are among the social media influencers who share their literary picks on the platform. Singer-songwriter Amerie, former Teen Vogue editor Elaine Welteroth, and actress Emma Roberts (along with Belletrist book club partner Karah Preiss) also make reading recommendations to their enormous followings. And then there’s Reese Witherspoon’s well-established book club, which belongs in its own special category, having just launched a standalone app.

This “bookstagrammers” or “BookTokkers” movement is a fresh spin on the virtual book club model that Oprah Winfrey first brought to television in 1996. And the current phenomenon is more of a two-way street; just as fashion icons and actresses are sharing their literary tastes, authors and their books are making appearances in fashion campaigns. (Prada, for one, has enlisted poet Amanda Gorman since 2019.)

There is, of course, a downside to book clubs with thousands—if not millions—of members. Their huge followings mean a lot of people out there all reading the exact same thing.

But, as the NYT reports, influencers’ book recs have elevated the profiles of some lesser-known authors. Alisson Wood said she saw a huge bump in sales after Gerber and Ratajkowski featured her book, Being Lolita. And I was struck by Wood’s take on the influencer-author crossover; that it indicates society’s growing comfort with “beautiful women to also be smart, and for smart women to also be beautiful.”

Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman

The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Kristen Bellstrom.

A note from Fortune

The 8 tech stocks to buy for 2021

Subscribe to Fortune premium to learn which tech names can do well even after much of the world emerges from lockdown. Save 40% on a premium annual subscription. Subscribe now.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- A continuing crisis. Women in Mexico are protesting the country's shockingly high rates of femicide. (Some estimates put the number of women killed at more than 10 per day). Activists say President Obrador is ignoring the crisis. Meanwhile, the police have used violence on some of the women protesting outside his residence. Washington Post

- Return of the boys' club. A reshuffling of the S&P 500 has brought Monolithic Power Systems, a company with a six men and no women on its board, into the index (could the name be more perfect?). The move ends a 31-month run where no S&P company had an all-male board. Bloomberg

- Look out, techies. President Biden is reportedly nominating Lina Khan, an associate professor at Columbia Law School and a prominent advocate for re-examining the power of Big Tech, to the Federal Trade Commission. It's another indication that the administration is gearing up to take on the power the tech industry has amassed in recent years. Washington Post

-$10 billion for 1 million. Goldman Sachs is launching "One Million Black Women," a $10 billion investment in support of Black women over the next 10 years. Goldman's Margaret Anadu, Dina Powell McCormick, Gizelle George-Joseph, and others share details here. Essence

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Goldman Sachs is promoting Jodi Hochberger to head of Private Wealth Management for the Midwest region. 2U announced that Lorin Thomas-Tavel will be joining the company as managing director of Boot Camps. She was previously chief experience officer at Kaplan.

CONTENT FROM PWC

Holding ourselves accountable to progress

The first step to diversity and inclusion progress is accountability. And accountability requires transparency. It grounds everything, shines a light on where we can improve and makes tough challenges impossible to ignore. While it may be uncomfortable at first, vulnerability is a necessity to lead effectively on diversity. See why now is the time to embrace transparency and how we’re doing it.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

- Not a good look. Have you been following the drama around Alexi McCammond, the new editor of Teen Vogue? In the latest development, McCammond has apologized for anti-Asian tweets she posted in 2011, after a group of Teen Vogue staffers released a statement raising concerns about the hire and saying they "fully reject" the racist tweets. Washington Post

- Parsing pandemic unemployment. This interactive graphic looks at how employment among different demographics has waxed and waned during the pandemic. A year in, women of color are still feeling the harshest effects, with fewer Black and Latina women employed than any other group. New York Times

- Recipe for disaster? The Indian government is slowly reducing the cooking fuel subsidies it has been providing to citizens, a shift that threatens to upset female voters and expose more women to pollution as they burn cheaper—and dirtier—fuels instead. Bloomberg

ON MY RADAR

Women in sumo: These photos show the struggle of young girls who dream of going pro Buzzfeed

Canada takes steps to make 'feminist' budget addressing women's post-pandemic challenges Reuters

You won't see this word on beauty packaging anymore The Cut