knowing nothing about camera
angles, lighting or video editing.
She was enjoying a scoop of ice
cream with a friend a few months
later when her phone began to
blow up. Earlier in the day she had
released “Official Guide to Brown
Girls,” an 11-minute comedy bit
about the quirks of Indian women
and the men who woo them, and
it was rocketing to 10,000 views.
“My phone was going bing, bing,
bing,” she says. “After that, I
turned off the notifications.”
Singh’s parents knew noth-
ing about their daughter’s (very
public) secret hobby until family
members starting calling and
asking, “Is your daughter, like,
doing things on the internet?”
Although they would have pre-
ferred that she get her master’s,
Singh convinced them to give her
a year to focus on YouTube. She
invested more time (and money,
saving up for a $600 professional
camera) and began collaborating
with other YouTubers. Soon, her
profile started to grow. Graduate
school was shelved indefinitely.
Initially, the paychecks were
small — her first invoice from
YouTube, which splits ad rev-
enue with channel partners, was
about $18 — so Singh made ends
meet by emceeing events around
Toronto. She didn’t hit 1 million
subscribers, a magic number
that equals success within the
YouTube community, until 2013.
That’s when her channel began to
take off, amassing the next mil-
lion in a matter of months.
“She has never gone viral. She
has never had that ‘big break.’
She never got discovered by that
celebrity,” says Kanwer Singh,
a fellow Torontonian (no rela-
tion) who came up on YouTube
under the pseudonym Humble
the Poet around the same time
that Superwoman was making
her name. Instead, he describes
Singh’s appeal as “a mixture
of honesty and intelligence”
that strikes a chord with fans
around the world who relate to
her frank and open discussions
about mental health and the way
she describes her own coping
mechanisms — like escaping in
her mind to a happy place called
Unicorn Island when she’s feeling
sad. “It was clear that she had a
message that really resonated
her first apartment in Mid-City
(she dubbed it the “Lillypad”)
and really got down to busi-
ness. A 27-stop world tour, a
feature documentary, cameos in
films like Bad Moms and brand
sponsorships from Smashbox,
Skittles and Coke followed. The
girl who once balked at spend-
ing $600 on equipment was now
raking in five-figure brand deals
(those now can draw upward ofwith people,” says manager Sarah
Weichel, who in 2013 was shown
one of Singh’s videos and flew her
to Los Angeles for a meeting. “I’ll
never forget, the first thing she
said to me was that she wanted
world domination. That was the
thing that really drew me to her,
how ambitious she was.”
In 2015, at 26, Singh finally
moved out of her parents’ house
and to L.A., where she rented$1 million, contributing to a total
income said to be in the high-
seven figures annually). Onetime
idols like Priyanka Chopra and
Dwayne Johnson (with whom
she struck up a friendship after
they met at the 2015 MTV Movie
Awards) also began to pop up in
her videos. “I’ve seen Lilly just
plow through her vision boards,”
says Kanwer Singh. “You can
imagine almost 10 years ago“There’s a part of
me that’s like, ‘Is
everyone going to
like this?’ ” says
Singh of her show.
“That’s obviously
a fear.”
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