In the 60s, as people living in rural areas began to migrate to urban areas, the range of clothes from “modern” to “traditional” worn by women diversified in the cities (Gökarıksel & Secor, 2015). Thus, a modest style for Muslim women known in Turkey as “tesettür” [pious fashion] was pioneered in the late 1960s. This trend gained support from religious groups as it could encourage other women to aspire to perform piety and modernity.

Although the participants’ initial motivation to vlog their cooking was mostly economic and divorcees, in particular, admitted that they felt empowered by their independent income, most of the interviewees were hesitant to disclose their economic incentives, fearing they might be criticized for aiming to earn an income from their domestic activities. As social anthropologist Jenny White (1994) has elucidated, the meaning of “giving labor” is culturally constructed in Turkey as part of a housewife’s duty to do (unpaid) housework for family. As such, while explaining themselves, the participants regarded their labor and productivity as a contribution to their family. The main justification expressed for their online activities was to contribute to grocery shopping for their households.Digital platforms have the potential to provide marginalized women with the opportunity to earn an income in more secure, convenient, and functional ways (Lewis, 2015; Webster & Zhang, 2020).

Making use of prayer in various ways during cooking in their videos, the vloggers cultivate their piety. For example, Mualla believes praying before starting to prepare food renders the food more delicious. While she is leavening any food, she declares “This hand is not mine: it is Mother Fatima’s!” (in reference to the first daughter of the Prophet Mohammad). Because Fatima’s hands are believed to be blessed with healing and purifying properties (Durbilmez, 2013), Muslim women pray to replace their own hands with those of the daughter of Mohammed. Lale also opens her recordings by saying As-salamu alaykum (“Peace be upon you”) and recites Bismillah (“in the name of Allah”) with her rural accent before cooking in the belief that food will become abundant. When she first started vlogging, however, Lale says she hesitated to utter these blessings publicly and did so only quietly. She later tried reciting Bismillah aloud in her videos and continued to do so when she found that people liked it.

As such, social platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube have increasingly become not only sites for sharing but also sites of self-branding (Banet-Weiser, 2018, p. 29).“Self-branding” is approached here as “a strategy of success in which one thinks of oneself as a brand and uses social media to promote it, through creating, presenting, and maintaining a strictly edited self” (Marwick, 2013, p. 16). I