A little over a year ago, Sahana Sarvesh, a dance choreographer and content creator with 241k followers, posted photographs from her wedding on Instagram. What followed was a storm of likes, a cascade of heart emojis, and “congratulations” echoing through her notifications. But that was not all. At first, the numbers didn’t quite add up. Then she saw it clearly: her follower count was not holding steady and was falling almost deliberately.
“I lost a whole chunk of followers, about 15-20k within a month after I got married. From 260k, I dropped down to 240k in a month which is crazy. That was the time I was posting about my wedding and my spouse,” Sahana opens up, adding that she has documented this on her page too.
Zoom out and you’ll notice how influencing is often seen as easy, almost effortless. Many people are drawn to it as a career or a side hustle, assuming it only requires a bit of brainstorming, finding a niche, and posting regularly. This perception continues even after someone gains followers, as if maintaining relevance and engagement will simply follow. But this surface-level ease does not account for reality.
Beneath the numbers and visibility lies a more complicated truth which is shaped by audience expectations and the way creators are perceived. This becomes especially evident when conversations turn to who has it “easier” in the influencing world.
A common argument we hear is that influencing is easier for women and it stems from the idea that attractiveness alone can draw followers. But this view ignores the deeper dynamics at play. The same attention that fuels visibility often results in parasocial relationships — an emotional one-sided attachment that a follower can form although the public figure doesn’t know them at all. This makes the followers feel a sense of ownership or entitlement. While this might be brushed off as “common” in case of celebrities, it carries more weight for influencers, whose growth and opportunities depend directly on follower engagement and at times, even on simply retaining the number of followers as a measure of their brand value. So, what appears as an advantage becomes a constraint, shaping how women are expected to present themselves, thereby limiting their freedom to express or evolve.
Women in the influencing space admit to constantly navigating these unspoken rules, especially when it comes to posting about their romantic lives. Let alone posting about their relationships, even subtle revelations like hinting at one can impact engagement, as their male audiences place expectations of remaining “available” or “single” on them.
Vaishnavi*, a 23-year-old influencer with 147k followers on Instagram, says, “When I posted random relationship quotes on my stories once, men who followed my page assumed I was in a relationship. Some of them even texted me, “Oh, why do I feel that you are taken?” and then immediately unfollowed me.”
Sahana’s case, too, serves as a telling example of how swiftly audience dynamics can shift. The moment the implicit markers of “availability” disappeared, so did a noticeable portion of her follower base.
Many women influencers also avoid sharing romantic aspects of their lives altogether, wary of being reduced to labels like “girlfriend” or “wife.” Sreelekha*, a 25-year-old lifestyle influencer with 100k followers is among those who has kept her marriage under wraps. She reasons, “I don’t post my partner because I have always feared being put into a box, just branded as somebody’s wife or as someone who is married and is perceived to be capable of fulfilling just that role. I don’t want my marriage to be the talk of my page. Instead, I want the audiences to talk about me and what I am capable of doing.” By refraining from posting about her love life, she says she is protecting the identity and brand that she has worked hard to build.
For those who choose to publicise their relationship, the pressure to create content with their partner or evolve into couple influencers also exists, not merely from followers, but from brands too. Sahana explains, “A lot of brands, every time they came up to me, asked if I could collaborate with my husband. I was not keen on doing that because I had built this brand around myself. Besides, my husband didn’t want to partake too, he is not into social media.”
Vaishnavisays she also fears the constant judgment from her followers — whether it’s comments on her partner’s appearance, how they look together, or men projecting their own objectifying gaze onto her content, leaving remarks to her partner that reduce her to “attention-seeking”, shaped by their own vulgar assumptions about her.
The loss
Many of these women regard losing followers, especially men who follow them only because they perceive them as “available” or “attractive”, as “good riddance”. Sahana shares, “I was upset about the numbers dropping down, yes, but it pushed me to work hard and produce better videos to gain followers who were genuinely interested in dance, especially female followers. To be very honest, I didn’t see it entirely as a loss… I wanted to change my audience and posting about my marriage started that change.”
But strictly from a work and career perspective, much of this space still runs on numbers. Influencers are often approached by brands based on their follower count. Those with under a few thousand followers are typically approached for User-Generated Content (UGC), where the focus is more on content creation than on the influence or audience pull. Beyond that, the influencer marketing world is broadly divided into tiers. Micro influencers usually fall in the range of 10 thousand to 100k followers, macro influencers are those with 100k to one million followers, and at the top are mega influencers with over a million followers. If a woman influencer who has only just touched a 100k followers posts about their romantic lives, they just might lose their stature even if they lose a few thousands, and risk slipping down to the tag of being a micro influencer.
A former influencer marketer who wishes to remain anonymous, points out that the number of followers alone doesn’t matter today, adding that it has become a combination of followers’ numbers along with insights from quality content. “Two to three years ago, if you told me you lost followers, then it was a huge deal. Brands and agencies didn’t have a Return on Investment (RoI) calculator for influencer marketing. Today, we have insights to show the RoI. So naturally, we also look for quality content and how they have reached the audiences.” These insights, that a creator/business account can access, provide actionable analytics on how the content has performed, the demographics of the audiences, how many accounts it reached, how long people spent on a said post, how many times it was saved, along with a ratio of men and women who engaged or interacted with the post, among others.
Sreelekha explains this balance. “Brands may reach or identify me because of the followers, but I have been focusing on the quality of my content. I am at about 100k followers now and so far it hasn’t been about the number. But I think it is starting to, because since I have hit that number I am able to quote more money than I used to before. But brands still consider the insights from my best performed reels or posts.”
Even if we remove the follower count from the equation, women influencers might still face a drop in their engagement percentage as they admit that a good part of it comes from the male followers who have either formed parasocial attachments or expect the tag of “availability” to remain. Sahana concurs, “A lot of my engagement was coming because of the objectifying gaze.” Vaishnavi adds, “The first 10 to 20 comments are always from men. I can even name those profiles because that is how much they engage with my posts and reels. That too soon after I post something they comment, like, and sometimes even save. These are legitimate people who display their pictures, name, and have followers. Some even post photos with their wives and kids.” Sreelekha also admits to garnering some engagement from men who propose marriage to her in her DMs, who serenade her, or are consistently sending “good morning”, “saaptiya”, and “time ku sapudu” messages.
Systemic sidelining
A deeper and more industry-intrinsic gatekeeping also takes place at agency and brand meetings while short-listing female influencers for promotions or collaborations. The former influencer marketer reveals, “A lot of influencer marketers won’t oust women who have built a brand around themselves but have recently posted their husbands or their boyfriends. But they would consider such an influencer a “risky bet” because they can lose their “appeal”. They would resort to saying things like, “Because she has suddenly put out her relationship, the insights might change now and will take some time to stabilise for us to consider”.”
But do these discussions also take place when a male influencer posts about his relationship? “Sadly, no. I suppose these are patriarchal biases that seep very easily into the room and it is so sad that a lot of these women do struggle and lose followers,” the professional adds. He also warns that such is not the case for influencer-turned-celebrities, or two already existing influencers with strong individual brands dating one another or marrying.
Despite these hurdles, women influencers continue to navigate the space, either abiding by the whips and whims of the audiences, persevering with their own reasoning, or by choosing to defy the odds and taking a gamble. The direction they take can either reward them or stunt their progress and either ways, it affects what often matters the most — their earnings.
*Names changed