#it turns self-care into a pretty performance for social media clout

[syn0vial]

the "that girl" trend on tiktok is so depressing to me because a lot of the habits it encourages are indeed positive and healthy (regular sleep schedule, eating healthy, meditating, journalling) but solely done for the benefit of an imaginary viewer, the quite literally vain hope of being admired and envied behind your back (and, lbr, on social media), rather than a genuine love or care for oneself or a passion and belief in any of the practices it advocates

[chloeywoey]

hi everyone! i’m jay (24, est, she / her) and i’m so excited to be here! this is chloe, my social media obsessed darling who’s faker than a three dollar bill but a good person at heart. underneath the cut is an obnoxiously long intro. i’ll be around tonight to plot, and i’ve got a three day weekend so i’m super pumped to get some good connections going and get active on the dash :))) 

BASICS

full name: chloe ann lautsch age: twenty-one birthday & star sign: february 6th, aquarius birthplace: festus, missouri  sexuality: heterosexual gender identity & pronouns: cis female, she / her    housing: audax  occupation: social media influencer  + traits: progressive, business-savvy, independent, imaginative, go-getting, determined, kind-hearted, take-charge - traits: inauthentic, dishonest, ashamed of her past, perfectionist, performative, untruthful, closed-off  song: sampaguita by navvi

BACKGROUND

— chloe was born in missouri to a mother that was pretty much useless as a parent. her mother, deb, was a bar fly who would go home with almost any man who’d so much as buy her a drink. she inevitably ended up pregnant with chloe, but was woefully unprepared for motherhood. this led to chloe growing up without much structure, forced to be independent. the home was dysfunctional, as the only thing worse than deb’s parenting skills was her taste in men. chloe often found herself having to bandage up her mother’s wounds or with wounds of her own after drunken altercations.  — all things considered, chloe did well in school. though socially, she struggled. it was hard making friends when she couldn’t invite them over without fear they’d walk in and find her mother passed out on the couch. or when people made fun of her due to rumors about her mother. chloe never had much money or nice things in general. and though this made it harder to fit in, it also instilled a fiery work ethic in her. by sixteen she was working two jobs, trying to study for her algebra tests while manning a mcdonald’s drive through or babysitting local kids.  — with everything going on in her life, chloe barely had time to breathe, let alone eat or sleep. with exhaustion taking its toll and SATs coming up, she began buying adderall to help her get through long days and nights. later, her mother began dating a scummy dealer and chloe would steal from his stash, developing a cocaine habit. but chloe was always good at making herself and her life look like something it wasn’t. she mostly did it on social media, after finally saving up enough to buy an iphone.  — at age seventeen, chloe petitioned for early graduation. and with her teachers basically clamouring over themselves to write her letters of recommendation, she was set for college. however, she had no idea what she wanted to do. her instagram had developed a surprisingly decent following for a girl from bumfuck missouri, mostly due to her seemingly “perfect” life. she loved the internet. her instagram followers didn’t know that she lived in a trailer or that her mom was a falling-down drunk. unlike her small town where reputation preceded people, on the internet, people only knew what she wanted them to know. she could make her life be anything. she could reinvent herself. so she’d put together cute outfits, not letting her followers know everything she wore she scoured for at goodwill. or take a carefree selfie, everyone unaware that just an hour before she’d been sobbing due to being pushed over an end table by her mother’s boyfriend. or she’d post food pictures, not saying how she had to drive 45 minutes just to get to the local whole foods and spent her entire paycheck on five items. she was incredibly talented at polishing the turd that was her life and making herself seem like a cool “it-girl” that others would want to be.    — in two years, chloe capitalized on her love for social media by starting a YouTube channel and turning her instagram into an aesthetic wet dream. currently, she has 375k instagram followers, 120k YouTube subscribers and an ebook published. she’s reinvented herself as a vegan lifestyle blogger. her aesthetic is cute cafes and green juices, smoothie bowls, selfies, bikini shots, sponsored outfit posts...the usual cringe.  — she moved to new york at eighteen. and with the city at her disposal, it became easier to live the lifestyle she had to try so hard to fake back in rural missouri. her pages grew to what they are today during her stay in new york, after which she applied to lockwood at age nineteen to study social media marketing.   — however, all that glitters is not gold. chloe isn’t exactly honest with her followers. for example, her skinny body - which she attributes to yoga and veganism - is mostly due to her cocaine addiction which got worse while in new york. she rarely eats. she’s promoting a healthy lifestyle, posting self love quotes and publishing a vegan recipe ebook yet snorting cocaine and stress smoking cigarettes. she’s practically telling people “if you follow my diet, you can look like me”, meanwhile she doesn’t even follow her own diet. she often pretends to use products just to get ad revenue. or buys something, does something or goes somewhere just for a picture opportunity. like posing with a plate of pasta just to throw it away after. so even though she portrays herself as perfect, she’s far from it. 

PERSONALITY

— chloe is obsessed with portraying her life as perfection. she’s borderline neurotic about it. she barely sees herself as a person anymore, but instead as a brand...as something to be marketed and for public consumption. social media is her career and it’s what pulled her out of poverty. it’s her only source of income, and the fear of going back to working retail and struggling between multiple jobs is always one hanging over chloe’s head. she’s absolutely not a rich kid who had everything handed to her, though you’d never know it because she refuses to talk about her past, going so far as to say her parents are dead and lie about where she’s from.  — she’s definitely fraudulent, and there’s no excusing that. she perpetuates an unattainable perfect life to her followers, which is one of the biggest issues with social media. however, she doesn’t do it out of spite or a desire to deceive, but rather she almost feels as though if her life looks perfect, her real problems don’t exist.   — chloe is a go-getter and takes initiative in her endeavors. she’s very business savvy, though that doesn’t mean she’s always been. when first coming to new york and growing her brand, she did do some things that made her uncomfortable. she took advice from predatory people under the guise of caring and only through that, she learned to advocate for herself. it also put another nail in the coffin of her ability to trust others. she’s busy and has little time for bullshit. that coupled with her trust issues lead to most of her relationships not working out well. she also fears abandonment and opening up to people, as she’s ashamed of her past and her imperfections.  — if she had a reputation around campus, it’d probably be as little miss perfect, which is a persona that can be grating. she’s generally sweet, though can be blunt and bold. she’s definitely outspoken about things she believes in and can be found handing out flyers to get more vegan options in the dining hall or standing up to a misogynistic frat boy at a kegger. but she’s also performative, not feeling real unless people are watching. doing things to be perceived a certain way instead of just being authentic. 

CONNECTIONS

— a genuine friend. someone she can just be herself around.  — ex boyfriend(s). she tends to put herself and her career first. she also is obsessed with perfection and most likely trotted her boyfriend and her relationship out on her social media, wanting him to play along with her little games. most of her relationships, therefore, feel inauthentic. — boyfriend or bff for “clout” (i hate that word asdjkdjdl). basically a fake relationship or friendship just to get insta likes lol. fun spin on a fake dating plot. or a frenemies thing, like they don’t actually like each other but pretend to.  — enemies. i’m sure she gets on people’s nerves by pretending to be little miss “i do pilates and drink celery juice and shove veganism down everyone’s throats”.    — hookups and no strings attached things — her drug dealer, since she’s still very much addicted to cocaine   — anything and everything else! <3

[fayewonglibrary]

FAYE ACCOMPLI (2000)

With a new album and a younger beau, Faye Wong again is the centre of media attention. She talks to Life! about her family, daughter, and the paparazzi

By YEOW KAI CHAI

FAYE WONG is a curious, unique and fascinating phenomenon in the Chinese entertainment scene.

Hers is one lit by sacred mystery, slavish fan-dom and marketing savvy – a kind of meteorite which makes an impact on pop consciousness that is felt years later.

Just last week, several incensed Faye-natics wrote to Life! to complain about the less-than-positive review of her latest album, Fable. The letters burned with an unbridled intensity reserved normally for matters of life and death.

Faye is a diva, and divas are infallible even when they falter, these correspondents insisted.

While the bigger Western pop market has always loved its fair share of staunch, individualistic visionaries, ranging from loose cannons like Courtney Love to weird, elliptical New Age daughters like Tori Amos, the East had preferred its female singers decked out uniformly in pretty frills, smiling coyly and oozing saccharine.

The entry of Faye changed all that.

THIS EMPRESS DOES HER OWN THING

A*MEI can belt better, CoCo Lee can shake her bon-bon with more fervour, but Faye – who moves very little on stage, makes scant eye-contact, and banters very poorly – is Queen. Or Empress, if you go by her Chinese name, Fei.

She is the Anti-Entertainer made good, the kind of gauche, strangely-riveting drama unfurling on stage.

Faye as a proposition came at the right time in the Internet era, a child of the global village, where the twain finally met.

As Life! music columnist and “I’ve-never-stopped-being-angry” singer and DJ Chris Ho once told this writer, he fancies the “idea” of Faye Wong, somebody who does her own thing without a care in the world for social approval – never mind whether her songs are good or not.

How many of Singapore’s unloved “indie” rockers would love to have that kind of clout.

Here is a goddess who subsists on both flaws and gifts alike – her lousy media relations, superb style sense, and her talent in out-copycatting her Hongkong counterparts in choosing smarter, more revolutionary musicians to filch from.

All these add up to an irresistible package.

Last weekend, on the popular Taiwanese variety show Super Sunday on the TVB-S channel (Ch 54), Faye was the guest.

She was gorgeous and smiling all the time, but was otherwise in typical Faye mode. She did not play to the crowd, or banter needlessly. She just spoke when she needed to.

Tellingly, the usually-riotous team of Harlem Yu, Huang Chi Jiao, A Liang and premier veteran compere Chang Hsiao-yan wound down their antics and became less irreverent.

They kept calling Faye tian hou (Heavenly Queen), and spoke to the 31-year-old, 1.72-m tall singer in clearly deferential tones.

The more senior Chang, usually quick and particularly ruthless, even gave way to her guest in a contest.

The singer, on her part, looked bemused by the surrounding plebeian inanities, a placid self orbiting at her own pace.

A COOL ONE FOR GENERATION NEXT

THE name Faye, at the cusp of the new millennium, has become synonymous with Attitude and Coolness personified for Generation Next.

Just last month, an impressive turn-out of 500 journalists from China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore flew to Shenzhen. Faye, as part of a promo tie-up with Head &Shoulders Shampoo, was scheduled to emerge from a helicopter in a golf buggy and perform three songs from Fable on an aircraft carrier.

Alas, due to rain, the gig was brought indoors, and she stayed for only about 15 minutes to field questions from the disgruntled press before being whisked off.

It was all in a day’s work on Planet Faye.

MEANING BEHIND THE SONGS

FEELINGS: A diva speaks

On the lyrics of her songs “(Lyricist Lin Xi said) it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep…’

On a message to her listeners ‘No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods.’

On the paparazzi "There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.’

On negative news reports "I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else.’

On movies she enjoys "I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.’

SO, OF course, we didn’t get the one-on-one interview or even a phone interview with this elusive mystery. But we were given the privilege of faxing her a list of questions. And here we have Faye’s answers, recorded on tape.

We cannot tell you what her facial expressions were, or what she was wearing, or what Singaporean make-up designer Zing had painted on her face.

We hear only the Beijing native’s mellifluous, Northern-accented Mandarin, punctuated occasionally by a peal of laughter.

She has ignored some of the more probing questions, preferring to spend precious reel on giving us a very detailed run-down on the mystical meanings of the first five songs, which she says are "all about love and its complexities, from the beginning of creation to modern times”.

Oh, okay. But which songs in Fable mean the most to her?

“The five songs I wrote are the songs I like more,” she declares, not very diplomatically.

“I asked lyricist Lin Xi what they mean and he said it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep, but that’s what he was writing. Anyway, people don’t really have to really listen to the lyrics. They can listen to the music.”

On the whole, what message does she want to convey to her audience with this album?

“No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods,” she offers in a typically-obtuse manner.

“When people hear the songs, they should be able to feel the moods. I only write lyrics and music when I am inspired. I won’t write for the sake of writing. I hope that people can find some form of emotional empathy. No big pronouncements.”

No big pronouncements. Such a casual statement of nothingness can only come from supreme confidence. Faye has come a long way since 1987, when she was an 18-year-old who had left Beijing for Hongkong, to take singing lessons.

Two years later, her singing teacher introduced her to Cinepoly, which released her first three albums, and marketed her as a cookie-cutter balladeer.

At the time, she went by the plain name of Shirley Wong Jin Man.

She was not happy. She was getting famous, but she was an introvert and she did not like the attention brought by fame.

She took a sabbatical and flew to America, where she attended some singing and dancing lessons.

The trip was an eye-opener. In New York, people in the streets dressed the way they wanted, and acted the way they wanted.

It proved to be the turning point in her life. She returned to Hongkong in 1992, more assertive and ready to steer her own ship. She reverted to her own name, ditched Shirley for Faye, and decided to record Mandarin albums instead, save for one or two novelty Cantonese tracks on each CD.

She made an about-turn away from the chart-friendly pop route and transformed herself into a canny alternative popster who spoke her mind and followed her heart. She dressed the way she wanted, and acted the way she wanted.

She struck gold.

Musically, the 1990s was an experimental era which gave free rein to Faye, who borrowed the fine (some say bad) points blithely from the leading female originals of the western pop hemisphere – Bjork’s sartorial and follicular sensibility; Sinead O'Connor’s nuanced vocal styling; and Liz Fraser’s unintelligible phrasing.

She covered the Cranberries, and mimicked Dolores O'Riordian’s yodelling. She even worked with the Cocteau Twins.

On the media front, she was no PR merchant, happily dissing reporters who dared ask her about her marriage/divorce to mainlander Dou Wei.

She would deflect intrusive questions with mystical monosyllables, which, depending on your ardour or the lack thereof, was either intriguing or just plain rude.

In short, she turned the rules of the game upside down. It was shocking, baffling – enchanting. She stood out.

The media and public, thrilled or repulsed by such blatant insouciance, lapped it all up. They trailed her every move, her elusive relationship with Nicholas Tse, who is 11 years her junior, and second-guessed her every new image overhaul.

It was a beneficial media-celebrity relationship for both parties: fuelling her cool, defiant stance and adding grist for publicity.

PAPARAZZI SUCH A HEADACHE

SO WHAT does she really think of the media, especially the paparazzi? How does one maintain the line between one’s public and private selves?

“Of course, I don’t like the gouzai dui (paparazzi)”, is her calm, candid answer.

“The paparazzi make the task of separating work and private life very difficult. There is absolutely no way for me to protect my own privacy. It is a headache!

Although I understand that as a public personality, my private life would be an issue of interest, I still think there needs to be some restraint. There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.”

As for the “negative reports” in the tabloids, Faye, a devout Buddhist, professes she has transcended frustration.

“Now, they don’t affect my state of mind that much. I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else. The report and my life are two different matters. I wouldn’t be bothered.”

It does seem that she has become less irascible, more at peace with her life and its inconveniences.

Asked what kind of movies she enjoys, she ponders, then offers, most beguilingly, “the kind of movies I don’t like”.

“War movies, period movies, I don’t quite like. Things that are distant from my present lifestyle, I’m not so interested in. I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.”

To her credit, Faye thinks that Fable could have been better produced.

“The mixing for this album was done in England. We worked with an English mixer – I don’t know whether people who heard the album could tell that. I heard the CD, and it wasn’t as good as I had expected, but it has its fine points.”

For the next album, she will work again with longtime collaborator, arranger-producer Zhang Yadong, and find some famous European arranger/producer to arrange and mix the album, she says.

Unfortunately, as the singer points out, “the more famous producers are usually very expensive, and we have yet to settle the copyright issue”.

“It’s a headache, but I hope the plan will work out,” she adds, laughing.

HER SUCCESS AND ITS DOWNSIDE

REFRESHING it is to hear Faye, often typecast as wilful and artistic, considering a serious business matter.

At this juncture of her life, she may have achieved equanimity. She has learned how to enjoy success, and dealt with its downside.

Indeed, slavish adoration may come and go, but Faye has one basic guiding principle on how to live her life.

“My parents’ biggest positive influence is on my character. They are very upright people. They have integrity, and they are not fake or insincere.”

If all else fails, there is always her darling daughter. So, has Dou Jingtong inherited Mummy’s talent?

“Yes, she is sensitive to anything that has rhythm. She is acutely sensitive to music. I don’t think it’s all hereditary though. Maybe she was a musician in her previous life!”

As if surprised at her own elucidation, Faye chuckles, sounding truly embarrassed. And for a second, you think you hear beyond the Superstar, the Hype and the Fable, the wide-eyed girl who once marvelled at the things she had seen for the first time.

Fable is out in stores.

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SOURCE: THE STRAITS TIMES / LIFE