If – and it’s a very big if – Essena O’Neill can convince the fawning public to overlook the paradox of using the internet to, well, bash the way she used the internet, the ex-‘Instababe’ may just become the ‘DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DID’ exemplar she obviously wants to be.
In a sprawling screed she shot out earlier today, the former wunderkid of Aussie SocMed had another go at the self-imposed Instagram façade:
“The culture of Instagram fame, sexism in media, the sexual objectification of women, the deception in paid posts, the idea that skinny starving girls get ahead, that if you’re born into the body I have – you get a career out of it, you get an invite into all the parties, everyone wants to take you to lunch, everyone says they love you…
I lived that life and felt so alone, shallow and lost… BECAUSE I WAS.”
That’s all well and good, but she’s apparently put that money where her mouth is – she’s taking a sabbatical from the whole deal to go and tend bar and pen some sci-fi.
“I don’t want my body or perfect lifestyle shots to be what I do on earth. Ironically it’s not because I look down on these careers…
Again, just to be clear – it’s how I used social media, not how everyone else uses it. It’s how I felt online, I have no idea how anyone else feels.”
On top of that, she’s apparently shot the funds she racked up through her self-confessed ‘superficial life’ to charity. The Fred Hollows Foundation, The Animal Foundation of Florida, and notably, the Megan Meier Foundation – a group that advocates against cyberbullying.
The newsletter also addresses the backlash she copped from the first round of internet-detachment, centring
around the reaction of her “friends.” She says she’s reconnecting with old friends and making new ones outside of the internet bubble, so that’s good, yeah?
Perhaps a new, even more nuanced level of self-awareness has formed for her – she says “I’m scared even sharing this will make me seem attention seeking all over again (I guess you can never win).”
Will this be the end of the saga? Will she ever make a full return to the big, bad web? In short: DUNNO, LEL.
Look, fair crack of the whip, having enough self-assurance to turn down some pretty lucrative opportunities to appease your conscience takes guts. Still, she’s certainly continuing to make a pretty big splash on the way out.
Photo: Instagram.
