The body positivity influencer lives in a funhouse of mirrors. She's got all these followers, but she's the one who can't look away. She's selling acceptance, but she's buying into an illusion.
I’ve known her for years, even written some of her clickbait personal essays. Every so often, we reconnect when she’s home in Pittsburgh. Today it’s a quick lunch in Lawrenceville, the Steel City’s ersatz Williamsburg.
This place is vegan, which means the portions are lousy and everything’s covered with some weird soy or nut goo to make it palatable. C'est la vie—I’m not paying. She ordered a salad, no dressing. Then a slice of dry-as-leather cake. It was all for show, she told me later. The performance never stops.
She's a size 12 today, she reports. Could be a 10 next week, maybe a 14 the week after. It's a delicate balance, she explains. Too thin, and the fans get angry. Too heavy, and the brands back away. She's found the sweet spot—just imperfect enough to be relatable, just perfect enough to be aspirational.
"I swing between a size 10 and a size 14," she says, stirring her untouched coffee. "Anything else is too thin or too fat and I'll catch hell. I need to do a set number on each post, on every post, or I’m reaching for the Xanax."
The irony isn't lost on her. She's made millions preaching body acceptance, but she's never been more obsessed with her weight. Every pound is calculated, every curve curated.
"My diets are actually really super optimized and programmed," she admits. "Even the cheat meals because I’m supposedly ‘in my feels,’ whole bags of cheese puffs or whatever."
The "whatever" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. She shows me her latest post. It's the classic "posed vs. unposed" shot that's catnip for her followers. In one photo, she's angled the camera to look to all the world like a thickly-built muscle mommy. In the other, she's got a hint of a double chin, a suggestion of belly roll.
"You know how many shots it takes to get that 'unposed' look? Just that much double chin or belly?" she asks. "Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. It can't be too perfect, but it can't be too real either. It's exhausting. The perfect picture."
The caption is an essay in itself. All lowercase, peppered with emojis. It's a rallying cry for self-love, a confessional about insecurity, a call to arms against diet culture. It's also completely fabricated.
"I use Claude AI, just like you showed me," she says, like she's telling me she uses Photoshop or Facetune. "I give it some details and specific hashtags and keywords and ask it to write a post that is vulnerable but not too vulnerable. It's still me, though."
The "though" hangs in the air. I’m not convinced. Is she?
She's not the only one in on the game. Her followers play along, leaving comments about how brave she is, how she's changed their lives. The brands shower her with sponsorships— "most aren’t as generous as followers think, but having a lot of sponsorships makes it look like I’m in demand "— grateful for her "authenticity."
It's a hustle. But it's a hustle with a body count.
100,000 people—mostly young and young-at-heart women—follow her, hanging on every word, scrutinizing every curve. They're learning that even imperfection has to be perfect. That vulnerability is a commodity to be packaged and sold.
The influencer knows this. It keeps her up at night, she says. But not enough to stop.
"I never post workouts that look too easy or too hard," she tells me. It's another tightrope to walk. Too easy, and she's not inspirational. Too hard, and she's intimidating.
Everything’s calculated, down to the last calorie, the last pixel. She gains and loses weight not for herself, but for the content. Her body’s no longer her own—it belongs to the algorithm, to the brands, to the millions of eyes that judge her daily.
She's trapped in a prison of her own making, but at least the walls are made of fool’s gold. The money's not great but it’s too good to walk away from. The attention's too addictive.
As we leave the restaurant, she asks to see my laptop. She wants to make sure she comes across as relatable. I show her the Google doc. It's blank. I tell her I'll probably use AI to write the piece, give it some keywords, ask it to be vulnerable but not too vulnerable.
She laughs, but there's no humor in it. She understands the hustle. Game recognizes game.
I watch her walk away, already composing her next post in her head. She'll tell her followers about meeting a journalist who writes for places like The Atlantic and Men’s Health, how nervous she was, how she almost ordered a vegan burger but chose the salad instead. She'll confess to feeling insecure, which is why she finished with cake, but proud of her journey.
It'll all be a lie. But it'll be a lie that sells. And I’m always happy to do my part—as long as you buy me lunch.