Fame: Fleeting, Fake and In Your Face

Before today, had you ever heard of Essena O'Neill?

Me neither.

Well, apparently we're a little behind the times. 

Essena, a 19-year old Australian model and social media personality, has hundreds of thousands of followers on the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. (She also seems to have a number of Facebook pages, but since the 'book of face' is quickly becoming more of a midlife community, her numbers there aren't quite as staggering.)

For the past few years, Essena has spent countless hours posing and posting. Blonde with a preternaturally tiny waist, she's perfected the swimsuit selfie. You know, that pose that says "Just puttin' myself out there because I'm so hot. So hot. You know I'm so hot. But yo, if you don't know, well now you know."

Her online popularity has led to a modeling contract with a major ("the biggest") agency down under, as well as advertising revenue and product endorsements.

By her own account, she is a product of — and addicted to — social media. When she was 12, she began posting and thought she was worthless because she had no likes or followers. For years, she perfected her pretty pouts, sometimes shooting an image 100 times before it was deemed attractive enough to get the reaction she was looking for. Now, at the wise old age of 18 (and after 3 years of pretty much living online), she knows better. "Validation from numbers? It means nothing," she insists.

Recently, Essena stunned the interwebcyberdigisphere by publicly resigning. She explained why she's not going to post anymore in a video (that she posted, of course). "I don't agree with social media as it currently is. It's so detrimental to human health and human abilities."

Wow. Profoundy.

To add cred to her cause, she made the video without makeup ("Gasp!"), a fancy blow-out ("Oh my!") or even a bikini ("Say it ain't so!"). 

She's challenging her fans to swear off social media for a week. If they do, she promises they can have life-altering (she really uses that phrase) experiences just like she has. For example, she's spent her newfound offline time "Looking at trees." And, "Listening to people."

With due respect to Kafka, Essena is clearly going through a metamorphosis. And, she's going to share it with us. In fact, she'll be posting about her life post-posting 3 times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. ("Australia-time.") She'll talk about books she's reading, what she's doing, "game-changing projects and plans." Her focus won't be on how she looks but how she feels "insiiiiiiide." She caresses the word with a sense of wonder, as though she were the first to coin the concept.

So, Essena has launched a new "Game Changers" blog where she is — through the use of social media — encouraging people to turn away from social media. "Let's talk about real stuff!" After a couple of days of jubilant observations and tearful gratitude, she realized that her new venture, as noble as it was, wouldn't pay her rent. So she posted a video asking for donations and added a "Support" tab to the site where you can demonstrate said support with a major credit card. This was picked up by the media and opened her to a veritable hailstorm of cynics and detractors. (The plea has since been taken down.) 

But, crowdsourcing aside, she insists that her new venture is "Not about likes; not about money."

In fact, she boasts in her initial video, "I almost took this off YouTube." 

But ya didn't. Did ya? 
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book  Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.

Whose Bright Future Was It Anyway?

Sometimes, you have to be serious.

When I started Lovin' the Alien (two years and one week ago, exactly), I wanted it to be funny. I was going through this wild ride as my daughter evolved from a child into a tween, and I had this real sense that if I could laugh about it, things would be easier. 

Now, 244 posts later, I've addressed some pretty serious topics, like the sexification of underage girls, eating disorders, gender and race and sexuality discrimination, domestic violence. MENOPAUSE!

For the past couple of weeks, I've avoided writing about the Steubenville rape trial. (Although, if any of my readers are friends with me on Facebook, they've already heard some of my — fairly vocal — views.) After all, what could I say that wasn't already being said? The outrageous crime perpetrated by the two "promising" young men was compounded again and again by the media and organizations like the NAACP, whose former chapter president said today that the "alleged victim" was "drunk and willing."

Enough already!

Before sitting down to write this, I wanted to learn a bit more about rape shield laws, those that are supposed to keep the focus on the decisions and behavior of the accused rapists rather than the raped. Here's a telling piece of cyber trivia for you. When I Googled "law prohibiting victim trial rape," the first (paid) listing was for a Boston Sex Crimes Law Firm, that offers to represent individuals charged with a variety of crimes, ranging from "date rape" to "child pornography," "molestation" to "solicitation of a minor." The firm promises that "Our legal team includes former police officers with a thorough knowledge of what police are allowed to do, and what they are not as far as evidence is concerned."

Yes, of course, under our system of government, one is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, of course, everyone deserves legal representation and their day in court. 

But pardon me if the website made me feel a little queasy.

No more discussion, please, about whether the girl was drinking. Whether she had a crush on one of the athletes. What she was wearing. Who she was dating. For the record, I'll just repeat what every feminist, progressive, humanist voice has said already. Rape victims are victims. End. Of. Story.

I was thrilled when two important men in my life (one of my business partners and my husband) forwarded this video. It was created by college sophomore Samantha Stendahl (supposedly while she should have been studying for finals, but we'll give her a pass this once). 

Right now, Samantha's video has about 1.7 million hits on YouTube. That's 300,000 more than the "Leaked Steubenville Big Red Rape Video" with teenage boys debating the pros and cons of raping a dead girl as they laugh about the actual rape going on in the next room. Apparently the "She's deader than ..." jokes prevented any of the snickering boys from calling 911.

(The star of that excruciating 12-minute video, by the way, is a scholarship student at Ohio State. His own attorney defended him by calling him "young and stupid." In my book, that doesn't begin to cover it!) 

For the sake of my teenage daughter (and all of us), I hope that the future of YouTube will include a lot more videos like Samantha's. 

And, maybe someday, no more of the other kind.