I’d had various online avatars since I was little—the cartoon
creatures of Neopets and Webkinz, the dolls and celebrities on
dress-up-game websites like Barbie and Stardoll, the projections
of future me on Sims 2. But with a camera and a blog, I could be
my own avatar. I could be myself.
I got to know my own face intimately. I noticed my body
changing in these photos before I did in the mirror. (Looking in
the mirror was always about my outfit; my body was just a way
to wear clothes.) As my blog gained readers and received press,
my face began staring back at me from other websites, from
magazine covers, from the monitors at talk-show studios, and
then from TV. After a childhood of community theater, I used
the talent agency that approached me about my writing to start
auditioning for movies, and then I saw myself on bigger screens,
too. Sometimes it scared me, so I tried to differentiate between
the fear of being seen for who I am and the dissociating feeling
of being looked at for who I’m not. Mostly, though, I was game:
The landscapes I once Photoshopped my way into were materi-
alizing around me.
Once my blog started getting readers and press, it was also
met with skepticism, with a writer for the Cut even speculating
that it was a hoax. Ten years ago, just the idea of a child sharing
parts of her life online to an anonymous audience was a novelty.
Famous young people were usually musicians, actors, models,
athletes—people with corporations and contracts behind them.
Few fashion bloggers were monetizing their hobby back then,
and there wasn’t much of a road map for doing so. There were
YouTubers with niche followings but no full-time influencers as
we think of them today. Ryan, the 8-year-old unboxing star who
now makes millions of dollars on YouTube, was not yet born.
When bloggers like myself first got invited to Fashion Week,
some editors and critics voiced their disapproval, citing our
lack of credentials or, in my case, the idea that it was unhealthy
for a 14-year-old to attend (as long as she was writing and not,
say, modeling for free, like other girls there my age). I felt like
my blog’s popularity was more symbolically powerful than
actually threatening. I also saw the two forms of media as serv-
ing different purposes: Magazines were the authorities on fash-
ion and fashion news; I was just writing about what I liked, just
being myself.
Now, that power balance has shifted: Influencers (or people
ostensibly just being themselves) and brands with faces have
larger digital followings than legacy titles on the social platforms
where most online engagement happens. I used to feel I saw a
clear line between those whose careers would not have existed
without the internet (YouTubers, bloggers like me) and those
who had already been approved by the pre-internet legacy-
media Establishment (most celebrities). Today, even those who
already had the approval of that Establishment are increasingly
pivoting to influencing: Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica
Parker, Jessica Alba. Whether calculated or not, shirking Insta-
gram in exchange for privacy and mystique is now a status sym-
bol reserved for only a handful of stars.
After starting high school, I became disillusioned with the
fashion industry, writing on my blog about the day in 2011
when I sat next to Anna Wintour in the front row of a Band of
Outsiders show: “I felt like I was watching everything going on
around me through a window. Usually I could see out of it, but
every once in a while I was forced to look at my own reflection,
which was less fun.” I didn’t want to work in fashion; I wanted
to go to high school and write about high school. I wanted a
feminist teen magazine to read, written by actual teens and
other bloggers I liked, and I wanted to start it and edit it myself.
So, also in 2011, I announced to my readers that I was starting
Rookie. Jane Pratt gave it her blessing. Ira Glass advised my
dad and me on how to monetize it. New York Media became
our ad representative.
My readers became Rookie’s readers, contributors, and edi-
tors. For seven years, I dictated our monthly editorial themes,
reviewed pitches, scoured the internet for new contributors,
DM’d celebrities to ask them to do something with us, and wrote
a monthly “Editor’s Letter.” I edited and art-directed our five
print anthologies and promoted them through press and tours
and, of course, on Instagram.
At first, I shared mostly “vintage-looking” iPhone photos—
details of outfits and corners of my room disguised by Insta-
gram’s old-timey filters. I also posted about Rookie’s books and
events but rarely our content. I didn’t want people to see Rookie
as my lifestyle brand or feel like they needed to like me in order
to get something out of Rookie. Another rule to protect my soul,
carried over from my blogging days, was to ignore the num-
bers—my follower count, Rookie’s traffic. Being considered a
polarizing figure as a tween had taught me that fame was largely
arbitrary and impersonal but could be leveraged to get opportu-
nities and to find an audience for my work.
I wanted to reap fame’s benefits without feeling like my life
would become a video game of winning people over and seeking
attention. I wanted Rookie to reap the benefits of my fame with-
out being inhibited by it and without inhibiting me by feeling
like the whole of my identity. My blog had found its readers
organically—that is, without the aid of marketing, advertising,
a publicist, a manager, what have you—and I thought making
Rookie really good was enough for it to do the same. It was, for
a while.
After high school, I moved to New York, and the black hole
came to life. Everyone and everything I encountered in person I
had already interacted with or consumed online. The people I
was fans of became real people I knew, but they didn’t know
what I knew about them, and I didn’t know what they knew
about me. There were a million versions of all of us running
around in one another’s heads.
I acted in three Broadway plays. I gossiped, bought lots of
clothes, drank too much. On Instagram, I posted my own press
photos, party photos, and red-carpet photos, and I quieted the
inner, younger me who would’ve found that shallow and gross.
There was no need for another private fake-public account for
these moments; they became my everyday. At last, I could claim
the realm of visibility I’d authentically infiltrated.When I review posts from this era now, I almost envy my own
life as though it were someone else’s. Then I mentally fill it out
with everything that happened off camera. Here’s my friend
and me dancing at a fashion party in very tiny outfits; today,
we no longer speak. Here’s me in the pool at my Palm Springs
Airbnb; I self-medicated so much I missed my flight home.44 new york | september 16–29, 2019