I give him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, let me just get that.” I scamper back to the guest room and answer the phone call. “Hey, Lulu?—”
“I hate them,” she spits.
I sit down on the bed, stroking the sleeve of Cameron’s jumper. “Um, okay.”
“Don’t worry. I’m working on a plan to fix this. Why weren’t you answering my texts? Did you sleep in?”
“What are you talking about? Fix what?”
“You haven’t seen?”She sounds shocked. “What were you doing all night?”
“Well,” I start, “since youasked.You know I was talking about my Airbnb host?—”
“Summer, focus, okay? Someone wrote an article about you. It’s bad.”
TWENTY-SIX
SUMMER
My stomach goes cold. “What?”
She hesitates.“You know, if you haven’t seen it, maybe you should keep it that way...”
“Send it, I need to see!”
She sighs.“Fine, but only so you don’t go looking for it. Don’t name-search yourself right now, okay?”
My phone flashes with a link. I open it. The headline blares up at me.
The Summer Faye Effect: What is Social Media Doing to Young Women?
Underneath it is a screengrab from the video of me crying.
The article is byThe Grand Chronicle. That’s not some trashy internet publication. It’s a real newspaper. Everyone will see this. Mymumwill see it.
No. No, no, no. I start skimming the article, my heart thumping painfully.
If you’ve been online in the past week, you’ll surely have seen it: the video of fashion influencer Summer Faye on her knees in a bathroom, sobbing over a broken lipstick. The video has gone mega viral, racking up over twenty-five million views. You might assume Faye is yet another nepo baby or A-lister’s daughter, but scrolling back through her feed tells a different story.
In fact, just three years ago, Faye was an aspiring fashion designer working two jobs to make ends meet. Her first videos depict her altering secondhand clothes purchased for cheap. Her outfits are quirky and original. She could be any talented fashion student.
Nowadays, she’s become a billboard for designer brands. Gone are her unique looks and secondhand finds. These days, she poses for the same bland labels that appear on everyone else’s feed. She coos over glittery eyeshadows and “obsesses” over the latest skincare trend. Faye has clearly mastered the art of becoming whatever she needs to be to be liked by the masses, with the unfortunate side effect of ironing out anything that was ever interesting about herself.
But how does this happen? How did a hardworking fashion student on the rise become a spoiled brat who sobs in public over her makeup? And what does her story have to tell us about the young women who watch influencers just like her every day?
“Don’t bother reading it,” Lulu snarls. “It’s all a bunch of drivel. They’re basically blaming ‘superficial female influencers’ for the collapse of society. Sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but Godforbida woman get paid to promote clothes and makeup, right? I swear to God, why these people will never realise influencing is literally just amarketing jobis beyond me?—”
I tune her out, rereading the words over and over again:
Faye has clearly mastered the art of becoming whatever she needs to be to be liked by the masses.
I feel dizzy. “What do I do?”
“We’ll need to switch gears. You have to apologise. Clearly ignoring it isn’t working.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll apologise.” My throat feels thick. “Er…for crying?”
“Do you want to just be honest and say ‘I’m neurodivergent and sometimes get overwhelmed, especially when I’m in Bryce’s horrible stinky hovel,’ or whatever?”
