NOT REAL LIFE

November 3, 2015 4:06 PM

Essena O'Neill was a social media celebrity, with over half a million followers on instagram and deals with brands to advertise their products. She was 16. Then she decided to stop.

She is in the process of editing the captions on her old instagram posts to reflect the reality of what she was experiencing in the moment ( like loneliness or insecurity) or to talk about the artifice behind them.

posted by lunasol (47 comments total)

Well, good for her.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:14 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I sometimes think of Facebook etc. as a virtual panopticon where we are both the prisoners and the guards.
posted by carter at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2015 [27 favorites]

*shudders in horror at the absolute trainwreck that my life would have become had people actually paid attention to my LiveJournal when I was 15*
posted by schmod at 4:25 PM on November 3, 2015 [44 favorites]

Ah I read all her old posts yesterday while procrastinating. She's really into veganism/other animal rights causes now, and while I disagree with her on some of those issues, it's really wonderful to see a girl grow up and realize so early how she's being used/tempted to waste her time appealing to men. Like, I remember when I was 19 and had so much determination and energy, but she's also brave and really trying to make a difference, and it really warms me.

Also, I know choice feminism/etc. is en vogue at the moment, but it's interesting to me how she strikes a balance between wanting to save her old self and also chastising her old self for the narcissism/superficiality that was involved in her lifestyle. I mean, I think it's inappropriate for random people to judge young girls for taking selfies or whatever-- those girls are growing up in a world that hates them and wants to make them into sexbots, so-- but this woman seems to have realized on a really deep level how unhealthy all that was for her, and it's very cool to see her come into her own.
posted by easter queen at 4:36 PM on November 3, 2015 [33 favorites]

This reminds me, yet again, of the sheer number of pictures I have seen of myself at 14, 16, 18, 22, etc. where I look absolutely gorgeous to my grownup eyes but hated myself at the time. Mostly for the way I looked, but sometimes with a sheer and complete self-loathing of every aspect of my being.

I think we (humans in general, but especially women) get sold this idea that someone who is pretty and smiling and compliant with beauty standards must be happy. Their life must be easy. That a seemingly effortless image corresponds to contentment away from the camera as well.

(And do not even get me started on the number of pictures that go around instagram and pinterest that are nothing more than thinspiration.)
posted by Sara C. at 4:54 PM on November 3, 2015 [18 favorites]

This reminds me, yet again, of the sheer number of pictures I have seen of myself at 14, 16, 18, 22, etc. where I look absolutely gorgeous to my grownup eyes but hated myself at the time.
Yes. I'm 32 and I hate the way I look now, am envious of the way I looked then (for nearly any value of "then") and I am just going to keep getting older and less attractive (conventional standards are pretty deeply embedded) and this is going to probably keep going for the rest of my days. Sad, and incredibly common.
posted by sockermom at 5:17 PM on November 3, 2015 [7 favorites]

and I am just going to keep getting older and less attractive

That's not true....attractiveness is subjective. We love to love... and sometimes age is better.
posted by Benway at 5:28 PM on November 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

I am just going to keep getting older
Yes, sorry, it sucks, nothing to be done about that.

and less attractive
Super questionable. I look (and feel) way better in my late thirties than I did at 22. By miles. I see gorgeous, stylish, active-looking women in their 40s and 50s and 60s every day. I see the lines on their faces, it doesn't make them look worse. It looks like they've lived a bit and know stuff. Maybe it's cohort goggles, where people of your age and a bit older stop looking relatively "old", but I don't know, I see lots of people out there looking great. (I know Susan Sarandon's an outlier, but look at her, anyway.)

(conventional standards are pretty deeply embedded)
Yeah. I see them changing, little by little, though.
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:31 PM on November 3, 2015 [15 favorites]

Or you could just decide that if you used to be beautiful and think you were ugly, there's a strong chance that this is still the case, and that it'll continue to be the case, and not worry so much about some nebulous future where your attractiveness will be at its nadir.
posted by Sara C. at 5:34 PM on November 3, 2015 [30 favorites]

and yet another photo taken purely to promote my 16 year old body. This was my whole identity. That was so limiting. Made me incredibly insecure. You have no idea.

Just the first sentence of this comment contains so much. When you're an attractive young woman, it's easy to feel like you're playing the game and winning - only to realize much later you were never even considered a player, just the trophy. O'Neill is wise to realize this at such a young age.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:58 PM on November 3, 2015 [54 favorites]

This is wonderful. Reading her captions hits the sweet spot at the intersection of honesty and vengeance. I think of all the times before I transitioned where it was so transparent that men saw nothing but the superficial. How many times I wanted to just scrawl across my forehead "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHEN YOU'RE DEPRESSED". There is something deeply wrong with this commodification of "woman". It is a vicious cycle -- beautiful women selling beautiful things, men wanting to acquire the women like they want to acquire the things, men who acquired the things feeling entitled to acquire the women, men who can't acquire the things resenting the women. Humanity does not live in such images and, as such, women are robbed of their humanity, constantly.
posted by sevenofspades at 6:07 PM on November 3, 2015 [21 favorites]

It's fantastic that O'Neill's critiquing her participation in this phenomenon, and broadening her commitments to things beyond herself. Great that her fans get to see her puncturing the damaging illusion she created.

I think maybe that for some people commenting here (i.e. those who grew up hating their own image, or alienated from their physicality, or who took on ascetic aesthetics/values early on, to their detriment [if it was a detriment]), learning self-acceptance (acceptance of their surfaces, finding beauty in them) and embracing materiality and all that earthy stuff can be valuable (and yes, complicated, necessarily, because of how things are. But important).
posted by cotton dress sock at 6:13 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I sometimes think of Facebook etc. as a virtual panopticon where we are both the prisoners and the guards.


Relevant Stewart Lee:

I hate Twitter. It's like a state surveillance agency staffed by gullible volunteers.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:20 PM on November 3, 2015 [8 favorites]

The other day in Boston I was strolling along and I saw what I thought was vitiligo on someone's face and thought with some pity, "Why is it always around the eyes and mouth like that so that it looks like a mask," and then she got closer and I saw it wasn't vitiligo, it was a burn. Her whole face, I don't know if it was acid or hot water or what, but she was just walking along in Boston going somewhere, living her life, thinking her own thoughts that were very probably not about new ways to torture herself about how she used to look younger when she used to be younger. Fortunately you don't have to suffer a terrible burn to stop harassing yourself about how you're not beautiful or you used to be more beautiful or what the hell ever. Eventually you start looking enough not like yourself when you were 15 that you can see the skull under the skin, and then you stop thinking about how you're not 15 and start thinking about how many years 'til you're too old to walk or dance and what therefore you need to go do right now to still have a great, fun life. You're not going to be pretty forever. You're not supposed to be pretty forever. Pretty is fine when you're a mere child but staying pretty too long is unseemly folly. You better be grateful you're aging like a normal human being and not staying bizarrely pretty. People would turn away from you in the street the way nobody was turning away from the burned woman in Boston. If you don't believe me, take a peek at Mickey Rourke these days, just Dorian Graying himself to an absolute frazzle and scaring children and animals wherever he goes.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:57 PM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wanting to be "pretty" forever, all dewy like a teen, like a girl, isn't helpful or realistic, no. But you're veering dangerously towards (or into) the idea that not only should older women not want to feel attractive or sexual by any standard, but that that idea is monstrous, or ridiculous. Which is some anti-human bullshit.

Most people want to feel good about themselves, and their bodies, period. Even when they're 70. Obviously there are more important things to do and think about - very glad O'Neill recognized this - but it's not unimportant to everyone, and it's not ridiculous when it matters to them.
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:11 PM on November 3, 2015 [10 favorites]

All the links say "content not available". Is it just me?
posted by Justinian at 7:49 PM on November 3, 2015 [7 favorites]

Me too - I could click through earlier today and see her posts, but not now. I wonder what's happened.
posted by rtha at 8:06 PM on November 3, 2015

It's complicated and I'm fishing for metafilter likes so I can shill for a canned bean company.

Remember when being 15 by and large meant your social mistakes wouldn't follow you your whole life like a venereal disease?

Instagram, Twitter, et al are like vectors for social media herpes.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:09 PM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

You can't do anything about it, though. If there's any way not to feel bad about it, go with that. If for instance you start to worry that you might be starting to have multiple chins--or really just more like no chin, or no break between chin and neck, and if you know, having seen your aunts and your mother and your grandmother progress down the road to chinlessness or neckchin, whatever it is called, that you're going down that road, too, you're just beginning the journey, once you realize that it seems to me you have two choices: you can mourn it starting now and ending when you end or you can try at least not to mourn it at all. Nora Ephron felt bad about her neck and then she died. I have to die; I don't want to have to feel bad about my neck. I don't want to think about Nora Ephron spending a millisecond of her time feeling bad about her neck. I get that her feeling bad about her neck and saying so is brave and that it's kind and generous because it makes me feel better about feeling bad about my neck but I don't want that from her, I don't want that, I don't want to feel bad about my neck. I don't want to construct a Dove-ad interior monologue about how my physical idiosyncracies add up to unique beauty. I don't want to have to think about how I look at all; it's exhausting. I mean, excepting dress-up, of course, when it's fun. But I don't want fun dress-up wrecked by bad neck feelings. So whenever I start to poke at my chineck while gazing in the mirror, I find it very helpful to let my eyes cross slightly so that I can't see anymore and imagine Mickey Rourke's face so I can stop thinking about mine. I have to die, I have to have a chineck, I do not have to feel bad about it or good about it or anything the hell about it. I happen to know from observing my mother, aunts, and grandmother that the last part is true. Once they achieved full chineck flower, it seemed like a switch flipped and they were like that woman in Boston. "Fuck it," they were obviously saying to themselves. Not that any of them would use that word in a million years. I would like to get to "fuck it" stage as soon as humanly possible because this interim shit is an enormous, and enormously painful, waste of time and mind.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:11 PM on November 3, 2015 [8 favorites]

OK, this thread is just weird.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:16 PM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

Remember when being 15 by and large meant your social mistakes wouldn't follow you your whole life like a venereal disease?

Is this an example of that?

This is much more like a child actor who decides to retire and go to Yale than it is like someone who made some kind of mistake that will follow her forever. This young woman used to be a model, realized she doesn't want to be a model anymore, and quit in a very public -- and frankly intelliigent -- way.

Unless it's a mistake to be a model, a mistake to change your mind about a career decision made (possibly slightly outside your own agency) as a child, or a mistake to be a woman negotiating sexuality, politics, and personhood on your own terms?
posted by Sara C. at 8:24 PM on November 3, 2015 [5 favorites]

She deleted about 2,000 old Instagram posts today, which is why you're getting "content not available" on certain links.
posted by palomar at 8:27 PM on November 3, 2015

...actually it looks like she deleted her entire Instagram account.
posted by palomar at 8:29 PM on November 3, 2015

(probably because she's being attacked left and right. poor girl.)
posted by palomar at 8:29 PM on November 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

The older I get, the more I understand what Stefan Sagmeister meant when he said, "Trying to look good limits my life."
posted by davejh at 8:49 PM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

I hope she comes out of this OK. She seems like she's at a juncture where she's going to invite toxic criticism no matter what she does.

I'm mildly hopeful. She seems to have realized that the best course of action is to opt out entirely and pull the plug, and actually seems to have done so for some pretty good reasons. She is wise beyond her years, and I only hope that she's receiving some level of affirmation that she made the right choice.

I'm twice her age, and I don't think I'd handle this nearly as well.
posted by schmod at 8:49 PM on November 3, 2015 [9 favorites]

People are saying on twitter that she made a new website to 'pay rent' now that she's not on Instagram anymore. It's ugly. As a person that had serious body issues, I support her all the way; so what if she made money from it [the event]? More transparency in the new industry of paid-promoting and social media marketing is good to me.

It's a shame though that she deleted her account. Or is it hacked? Her instagram name has changed to 'tomaswhatever'.
posted by tirta-yana at 8:54 PM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Super questionable. I look (and feel) way better in my late thirties than I did at 22. By miles. I see gorgeous, stylish, active-looking women in their 40s and 50s and 60s every day. I see the lines on their faces, it doesn't make them look worse. It looks like they've lived a bit and know stuff. Maybe it's cohort goggles, where people of your age and a bit older stop looking relatively "old", but I don't know, I see lots of people out there looking great. (I know Susan Sarandon's an outlier, but look at her, anyway.)

I'm in my mid thirties and bought wine the other day and got carded. The woman peering at my license shrieked OH GOD when she saw my birthdate and was like " you're my age!" Which I was like compliment? Not compliment? Carded but shriek inducing old? She's like "you're doing something right!" And I furiously mumbled "I drink wine," but really I'm just Asian.
posted by sweetkid at 9:05 PM on November 3, 2015 [17 favorites]

She was 16.

She's 18 now. In her first new video she mentioned she wanted to keep the edited Instagram posts (and her YouTube videos) up, since they might hold an educational purpose - not sure what happened, if she changed her mind about that.

Coupled with Heather (Dooce) Armstrong's recent exposé about her own quitting, there's quite an awakening afoot.
posted by progosk at 9:42 PM on November 3, 2015 [24 favorites]

Wow that Dooce video.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 10:28 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Brave of her to walk away from something she was so invested in and so good at. I'm treading water into my fifties and it scares me to think how long my own self esteem has been wrapped up in my career and the approval of my peers.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:34 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

(She's changed her mind, and deleted both the Instagram and the YouTube account. Oh, and: she's 19, turns out.)
posted by progosk at 12:23 AM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

So she had a Jerry Maguire moment and because she was 16 she had the option of sticking to her convictions.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:11 AM on November 4, 2015

Every single link: Page Not Found. Even the NYMag piece.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:16 AM on November 4, 2015

No, this is really nothing like being a child actor, because she wasn't ever a real model with an agent or agency. If we are being kind about the so called gig economy she was sorta squint and call it semi pro, but come on. Her sister was talking most of those photos.

Every 15 year old girl with a certain look dreams of modelling. Many flirt with the idea and may even get some experience. But you cannot call some instragram shilling "modelling".

This was a crazy teenage idea based on little girl fantasy, and that's fine. She grew up and saw the facade for what it was.

My previous comment was about how awkward such a public growing up is still a shame. She is going to have this history for the rest of her life.

She is still social media famous. Maybe just for less venal reasons now.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:25 AM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sort of a Stanford Prison Experiment for the 21st century

Hah, yes, although we now play both roles simultaneously ...
posted by carter at 5:33 AM on November 4, 2015

I am just going to keep getting older

Well, as my dad would say, "beats the alternative."
posted by brand-gnu at 6:29 AM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

because she wasn't ever a real model with an agent or agency. If we are being kind about the so called gig economy she was sorta squint and call it semi pro, but come on. Her sister was talking most of those photos.

Well, I mean, she was (is?) a "real" model - in one of the videos she says that she has a contract with a modeling agency (although she doesn't know the status of that after her recent actions), and some quick Googling shows that she's got a portfolio with IMG, and at least a couple of the re-captioned Instagram photos certainly implied that there was a pro photographer taking the shots for some of the photos. She didn't start as a pro model, but she definitely ended up there.

But (from many of the things I read before it all disappeared) it seems that a lot of the motivation behind her actions was disgust in that even after she was pro or semi-pro, getting paid by an agency or by the clothing companies, she wasn't supposed to (or allowed to?) divulge this. That even when she was getting paid by a clothing company to post a pic of herself in their clothes, even if a pro photographer was involved, she was just supposed to be posting these pics as "ordinary cute teen selfie", with maybe a quick mention or hashtag of the clothing company. She was basically a tool of stealth viral marketing - she wasn't posting, "Here I am modeling So-and-So's new floral bikini", she was posting, "Day at the Beach!! #sun #beach #fun #clothingcompany." And she was concerned that other young women and teen girls were going to find themselves in the same state of mind she used to be in - desperate for public validation, taking "inspiration" (or (yuck) "thinspiration") from what were supposedly ordinary Instagram/Tumblr pics of an ordinary girl, while never grasping that these pics were actually professional modeling shots intended to sell clothing.

But you cannot call some instragram shilling "modelling".

That was exactly one of her points - she absolutely was "instagram shilling", and getting paid for it, which makes it "professional" modeling, while hiding the fact that she was shilling.

I mean, I dunno where you draw the line between "pro" and "semi-pro", but she claimed that just before she ended it all she was getting anywhere between $400 and $2000 Australian dollars per post, so . . . .

Even if she was only getting like $50 per post, I can certainly understand her eventual disillusionment with the idea that she was collecting money for something while pretending not to.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:51 AM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

because she wasn't ever a real model with an agent or agency

She was paid to model clothes in photographs. It doesn't matter whether she ever had an agent, who was taking the photos, etc. Also, "professional" models are treated like garbage and thrown away when they turn 18-19, so she did well in limiting her career to platforms she retains control over.

It's weird to me that the line between a person with a job and a "shill" is that, in this case, the teenager gets to retain some control over her own destiny.

It's also weird to me that, here, on Metafilter, in 2015, there are people who insist that if you do it on the internet, it's not a "real" job.
posted by Sara C. at 9:41 AM on November 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

progosk, that Heather Armstrong video you linked is great and worth watching.
posted by mochapickle at 9:56 AM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm concerned that people arguing about the definition of shilling and the definition of modelling based on who takes the photos doesn't understand the insidiousness of brand infiltration in social media, and the total lack of disclosure when this takes place. Which is, you know, constantly.

When you look at the Instagram account of someone only famous for having an Instagram account, when you can see the label on their teabag, that's paid placement. When you can see the brand of their smoothie maker, that's paid placement. And as this young woman herself says, when you see a bikini, that bikini is a paid placement.

Given contemporary reality, while I admire the words coming out of Essena's mouth, I am reflexively dubious about any sudden awakening like this one, especially if there's a simultaneous crowd funding campaign, which I think there is in this case (?)
posted by DarlingBri at 11:48 AM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sure, but all of that is also true of every magazine you've ever read. Every "review" of a beauty product in Glamour is a paid placement.
posted by Sara C. at 12:08 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think the Stanford Prison analogy up top is apt, but to me it's even more interesting than that. In the SPE the researchers set up the conditions, decided that there was a prison and who the guards were. Instagram is such a blank slate. It's an app to post pictures with filters and captions; people can comment on and "like" your pictures and "follow" you; there are hashtags for searching. And that's about it. Everything else emerges from the behaviors of the users. The pressure to look a certain way and do certain things are what we've projected onto that canvas.

It's by no means inevitable. I think IG can be great if you limit who you follow (and who follows you, to a lesser extent). Do you need to see pictures of a stranger in a bikini? It seems like her story is the story of the dark side of celebrity 2.0. Only the medium has changed.

I'm glad she realized her behavior was harmful and it sounds like she's really learned a lot from the experience.
posted by Horselover Fat at 12:59 PM on November 4, 2015

Savannah Brown has the best response to this whole Essena O'Neill thing "Old media is going to take this story and this girl and use her as fuel for claiming that the whole internet and social media is just ruining everything"
posted by Lanark at 1:14 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

OH JEESUZ H MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST the end of the Heather Armstrong video and the look on her face during that hate voicemail.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:30 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interestingly, Essena's good-bye coincides neatly with an Instagram series that's also just come to an end: Sociality Barbie.
posted by progosk at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2015

"*shudders in horror at the absolute trainwreck that my life would have become had people actually paid attention to my LiveJournal when I was 15*"

Jesus fucking christ, right? I would have to awkwardly explain why my livejournal was written as if I were a girl. Especially in this day and age. No, not trans at all, completely male, cis, whatever. Just uhh, was a horny 14 year old boy and got more attention in the IRC chat for the webcomics I read that way. Plus free items in Diablo 2.

Also, how many of the other girls I was friends with online at that time were also weirdo boys or creepy old dudes? Teenagers deffo shouldn't be allowed online.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:47 AM on November 6, 2015