Digital entrepreneurship is often positioned as a way for women to “have it all.” This is
exemplified in the rise of multilevel marketing companies (MLMs) that rely heavily on the
Internet to recruit and sell and are often targeted toward women. However, MLMs are
often derided as pyramid schemes. This qualitative study aimed to examine how MLMs
leverage their websites to rhetorically frame MLMs as legitimate operations. Through the
examination and analysis of the visuals and texts of 10 different MLM corporate websites
from 2019 to 2022, our results reveal that MLM corporate websites use gendered framing
and appeal to entrepreneurism as an important component of their legitimation discourse.
Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation strategies as a framework, we identified six key themes
at work in the MLM legitimation rhetoric.