Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - An Authentic Woman

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Mandy Nolan, and I'm launching a brand new social media platform for mums who 1.00

00:00:08.580 aren't good looking. 1.00

00:00:10.020 Mums with shitty lives that nobody wants. 1.00

00:00:13.580 Welcome to Mumsstagram. 0.99

00:00:15.020 It's not for influencers, it's for under the influencers. 1.00

00:00:19.220 Women who drink to kill the pain of their unimaginable life. 0.99

00:00:26.500 That's Mandy Nolan, and she's not a mum influencer. 0.94

00:00:30.000 She's a comedian who lives in Byron Bay, Australia. 1.00

00:00:32.880 Her life on Instagram, in case you're wondering, is messy bedrooms, messy top knots, and messy eye makeup. 0.56

00:00:39.240 Back in March, she posted a picture of herself totally naked and covered in rolls of toilet paper.

00:00:44.120 During the height of the pandemic, I actually did find that very aspirational.

00:00:48.800 Mandy looks like someone I want to drink tequila with at 10 a.m.

00:00:52.380 That is my highest compliment.

00:00:54.580 if you follow the mom influencer world you've probably already been to byron bay

00:01:01.480 virtually at least in the past couple of years mandy's hometown has become ground zero for

00:01:07.580 australia's mom influencing industrial complex sort of like utah here in america that is very

00:01:13.080 funny to me because when i studied abroad in australia two decades ago byron bay is where

00:01:17.380 we drove to buy cheap weed i called mandy to get her take on the mom influencers who've been 1.00

00:01:22.360 taken over her town. So I wanted to write something which really spoke to women's experience and what

00:01:29.840 most people's everyday is like, because these pictures are so curated. You know, a lot of

00:01:35.700 moms do feel that they're not actually meeting those kind of goals. They're not that beautiful 0.69

00:01:39.820 mom in the privileged life. And they're always incredibly privileged. I was on the beach with

00:01:44.340 my dog. It was so funny. We're walking. And this woman doing yoga, she was upside down. And it was

00:01:49.860 So he just went up, he weed on her, like he lifted his leg.

00:01:53.260 Your dog keyed on someone doing yoga?

00:01:55.720 Yeah, he's getting really old and a bit demented.

00:01:58.100 And she was doing like an upside down headstand.

00:02:00.980 So maybe she looked like a tree to him.

00:02:03.440 So he just went up, lifted the leg and walked off.

00:02:05.480 And I went, oh my God, that's so embarrassing, but kind of funny.

00:02:08.920 Even my dog can't stand them. 1.00

00:02:10.480 mandy nolan did her bit about shitty moms in response to a vanity fair article that came out 1.00

00:02:23.140 in july of 2019 it profiled a crew of instagram savvy moms in byron bay one of them happened to 1.00

00:02:29.880 be a woman that i've followed for a while courtney adamo she's one of those influencers that you

00:02:35.280 weirdly feel like you're friends with even though you've never met them in real life

00:02:39.660 I feel like a lot of us have someone like this in our Instagram feed.

00:02:43.780 If I were to become a successful influencer, I'd want my life to look like hers.

00:02:48.720 She's gotten a lot of attention for it. 0.94

00:02:52.180 And with that, because she's a woman who puts her life on the internet, come some haters.

00:02:57.580 When Vanity Fair profiled her in 2019, they led with one snarky question about Courtney's life.

00:03:03.760 From the looks of Instagram, Courtney Adamo and the Surfing Mamas of Byron Bay are living the dream.

00:03:11.400 Can it be real?

00:03:24.440 I brought this up with Mandy Nolan, and her response was, no, it's not real.

00:03:30.840 It's not my life, and it's not the life of any women that I know in Byron Bay.

00:03:36.200 Especially not new moms. 1.00

00:03:38.060 Moms with snotty, dirty kids who don't frolic on the beach all day. 0.89

00:03:42.660 Mandy said there's nothing about these influencers' lives that is at all authentic. 0.98

00:03:48.460 Which leads me to ask,

00:03:50.580 what the hell does it mean to be an authentic woman anyway?

00:03:55.520 An authentic mother?

00:03:56.800 Where does real-life authenticity end and Instagram authenticity begin?

00:04:12.040 I'm Jo Piazza, and you're under the influence.

00:04:16.660 this is episode four an authentic woman just last week i was rejected from the influencer

00:04:33.480 platform reward style unfortunately your request to become a member of reward style

00:04:39.000 was not accepted at this time i still feel kind of shitty about that and i called glennis to talk

00:04:45.100 about it I thought about asking reward style directly why they rejected me like the same way

00:04:52.480 that I once called up an ex-boyfriend and was like why don't you love me I'm sort of amazed that you

00:04:56.940 didn't ask them the reasons you were rejected because that's such a reporter question like I

00:05:00.920 want to know when they went to your social media feeds what did they see that told them you were

00:05:10.660 not right for reward style? What, what was the Harvard interview where they were like,

00:05:17.540 not, not for us. Like, I'm so curious. I am too. I called them. I called the CEO. I called Amber

00:05:26.520 back. And then I just didn't ask. I chickened out. I asked, what were you looking for? It was

00:05:31.140 like this roundabout way. Like all she would say is they want authentic people. Today. It's actually

00:05:36.780 really all about authenticity and off-the-cuff looking content that feels very, very relatable.

00:05:42.700 The stuff that doesn't feel like a stage, that doesn't feel like it's a model,

00:05:46.240 that doesn't feel like a caption, that's like someone who lives in a totally fake world.

00:05:50.640 I don't buy it.

00:05:51.460 Why?

00:05:52.300 Because the influencers that I see doing the best, the ones that are the most successful,

00:05:57.120 seem to have what looks like a perfect life. And that is impossible because no one has a perfect

00:06:02.660 life. There was this Van de Fair article about a year ago. It was about mom influencers in Byron

00:06:08.900 Bay, Australia. The author was A-plus snarky, like gawker-level snarky about the mom influencers.

00:06:18.680 And a big part of her beef was that these women weren't, quote, authentic enough. And one of the 0.95

00:06:24.820 pull quotes was, authenticity is a big part of what Adamo is selling, as is the idea that the

00:06:31.500 life she lives is achievable. Did you think they were authentic? No, but I don't know if it matters.

00:06:38.340 I think the word authenticity is kind of bullshit. So the article opens up by introducing a Hortney 0.93

00:06:45.780 Adamo. And to start, it describes her kitchen in excruciating detail. With its clapboard cupboards,

00:06:54.040 wooden stools, bulk dry goods and mason jars, Blanc marble countertops,

00:06:59.100 Smeg Refrigerator, $2,870,

00:07:02.680 a conch oven and stove,

00:07:04.500 which she says is the range cooker of her dreams,

00:07:07.200 and at about $10,000, a splurge.

00:07:10.260 The kitchen is like a scene out of Little House

00:07:12.320 on the Trust Fund Prairie.

00:07:14.840 The first time I read it, and again, now,

00:07:17.500 I went to Instagram to look at this kitchen. 1.00

00:07:21.720 Fuck. 1.00

00:07:23.700 That's a really nice kitchen. 1.00

00:07:26.080 I covet a Smeg fridge, by the way.

00:07:28.000 I want to say I don't think it's because of Instagram, but I've never seen one in real life.

00:07:32.420 And Nick thinks I'm crazy.

00:07:33.800 Do you think that we should get a smug French?

00:07:35.800 No. 0.62

00:07:36.420 Why? 1.00

00:07:36.900 Because it's stupid. 1.00

00:07:38.300 Why is it stupid? 1.00

00:07:39.720 Because it's like a thousand extra dollars just for the logo. 0.99

00:07:46.760 According to the article, Courtney Adamo's group of friends are a

00:07:50.280 cross-tagging, cross-promoting, mutually amplifying, audience-sharing group of friends,

00:07:54.920 living, loving, working, and posting aspirational lifestyle content in a highly Instagrammable

00:08:00.680 paradise. They live in old-fashioned houses and give their carefully unstyled children names that

00:08:06.960 sound dreamed up for a goop collaboration with Lemony Snicket. This writer is good. She's bitchy,

00:08:12.600 but she's good. They're married to supportive, handsome, and scruffy men of purpose. 0.93

00:08:17.420 It sounds like Nick. They make their own hours and dinners and soap. They have their own brands.

00:08:23.780 They are their own brands.

00:08:29.680 So is this Courtney Adama woman, if I was a mom, just generally on Instagram,

00:08:35.000 is she someone I would know about?

00:08:37.980 Yeah, she's kind of a celebrity. 1.00

00:08:39.980 On the scale of mom influencers, where does she land? 1.00

00:08:44.720 What strata does she occupy? 0.99

00:08:47.060 I love that you said strata because there are strata. 1.00

00:08:49.240 There are levels of mom influencers.

00:08:50.780 She is a mid-tier family influencer.

00:08:54.540 What does that mean? 0.99

00:08:56.780 That means that she's got a little over 250,000 Instagram followers. 0.99

00:09:02.020 But from those 250,000 followers, she's built a pretty big business and one where she can 1.00

00:09:07.940 support her family of five children.

00:09:10.200 She's interesting to me because she's been mom influencing since the beginning of mom

00:09:14.300 influencing around 2011 when she launched the mom blog Baby Chino.

00:09:19.380 She is also a former journalist.

00:09:23.080 Ah, so she has established a bit of a path that perhaps you could walk down.

00:09:30.240 Back in the 2000s, Courtney and her husband, Michael, were both working these 80-hour weeks and scrambling to see each other and their kids.

00:09:37.360 They were on the professional treadmill set to like a gazillion.

00:09:42.180 Also like you.

00:09:43.620 Also like me.

00:09:44.620 And a few years ago, they left it.

00:09:46.240 They left the rat race, sold all their stuff, and traveled around the world with their kids.

00:09:50.680 They documented it on social media, which built up Courtney's brand.

00:09:55.020 And then they moved right outside of Byron Bay, Australia. 0.63

00:09:58.640 And now Courtney makes her living through sponsored Instagram posts and online classes where she teaches other women to build lifestyle brands.

00:10:10.540 When the story was published on Vanity Fair, the reaction was swift and brutal. 0.96

00:10:15.500 and pretty shitty. 0.90

00:10:18.120 There was an opinion piece in the London Guardian. 0.98

00:10:21.620 The headline screamed.

00:10:24.380 There's no study or test in the world

00:10:26.200 that can tell you what happens to your soul

00:10:28.220 when you turn yourself into a brand.

00:10:31.700 I kept thinking about this Vanity Fair article

00:10:34.000 and the reaction to it.

00:10:36.400 I felt real bad for Courtney Adamo and her friends,

00:10:39.220 even as I envied their Instagram perfect lives 0.99

00:10:41.560 and wondered if it was all bullshit. 1.00

00:10:42.860 it. What I find interesting as well is that that criticism is coming from other women. You know, 1.00

00:10:50.960 it's not men who are criticizing those choices. It's often women being critical of other women,

00:10:57.600 which I find really sad. That's Courtney Adamo. I followed her for so long that I kind of felt

00:11:04.620 like I was talking to a celebrity. We should be empowering each other to be able to make those

00:11:11.220 choices. If you're able to be successful in your career based on those choices and you're a good

00:11:17.880 person and you're happy, good on you. We talked over Skype about a year ago. It wasn't too long

00:11:24.680 after the wildfires in Australia had started to burn out. Everyone was relieved that it was finally

00:11:30.100 raining in Viral Day. It's not always perfect in paradise. We're just having this crazy rainy

00:11:36.460 weather right now and we're in our little studio that has a tin roof so Courtney was pretty

00:11:42.120 blindsided by that Vanity Fair article she originally thought the piece was going to be

00:11:46.640 about creatives women entrepreneurs live in Byron Bay when she got in touch with me I thought that's

00:11:53.660 a wonderful way to portray what is really a great amazing community here of women who are building

00:12:02.100 brands and building successful companies and still raising their children. And we're all

00:12:07.140 really supportive of each other doing that. Why should it be a negative thing that I landed here

00:12:12.680 into a community of micro influencers? Why is that a bad thing? I don't know. I don't understand.

00:12:19.200 I pretty quickly got to the point and asked Courtney about that quote about authenticity.

00:12:26.240 Authenticity is a big part of what Adamo is selling, as is the idea that the life she lives

00:12:31.720 is achievable. You can't be fully authentic in terms of saying everything when you know

00:12:38.380 that there are that many strangers following you. But I do think that what I am putting up there is

00:12:44.880 authentic. I really had a hard time with that criticism because I'm not putting up anything

00:12:53.260 that's not real. You know, you're not seeing everything and you're not seeing the ugly and

00:12:58.340 my toddler throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn't want to eat his dinner

00:13:02.180 or because his favorite shirt's in the washing machine and he wants it out now.

00:13:07.400 At those moments, I don't feel the need to get my phone out

00:13:10.020 and take photos and capture it and share it.

00:13:12.840 But we do that even in real life.

00:13:15.680 None of us are going around with the ugly bits out.

00:13:21.520 You know, if that was a group of men they were featuring,

00:13:24.760 every single person would be slapping them on the back,

00:13:28.000 being like, yeah, mate, like you can have your kids and you can go surfing and you're, you know,

00:13:34.340 really successful in your career, like good on you, you know? And why is it that when women try 1.00

00:13:40.180 to do that, we are put down? Why? I don't understand it. I just want them to see this 1.00

00:13:46.920 authentic version of our life. Authenticity. That word is thrown around an awful lot inside

00:13:56.980 the influencer industrial complex brands want influencers who seem authentic who seem real

00:14:03.980 but not too real not scary real not drink two bottles of wine yell at your husband and pass

00:14:10.580 out with your boots on real and that's the question that we asked earlier what the hell

00:14:16.580 is an authentic mother an authentic woman authenticity is not something that we ask of

00:14:22.960 men, not male politicians, certainly not our male celebrities. No one looks at George Clooney

00:14:30.280 shilling for Casamigos with Randy Gerber and asks, is he authentic? Does he mean it? We live in this

00:14:37.240 fucked up world where women who put themselves in the public eye have to be authentic, even though 0.99

00:14:43.740 no one knows what that means. And when they fall short of a definition that no one has clearly 0.99

00:14:48.580 defined, we rip them to shreds. I've done this. You've probably done it too. When I was a reporter,

00:14:56.920 I ripped female celebrities to shreds on a daily basis. I owe an apology to a long 0.68

00:15:02.680 list of famous women. I'm sorry, Brittany. I'm sorry, Jennifer Aniston.

00:15:10.220 I'm not sorry, Kim Kardashian. I'm just not. There's a lot more people I do have to apologize

00:15:14.980 to, and I'm going to do those during a quick break.

00:15:33.240 Yeah, so authenticity means everything, and it also means nothing.

00:15:40.080 Once again, I called up Emily Hund from the University of Pennsylvania to help me crack

00:15:43.900 this influencer code.

00:15:44.980 authenticity has become sort of this ideal if you look into the history of authenticity

00:15:52.860 it's actually really interesting because it originally had a meaning that was related to

00:16:00.020 politics and ethics and so the idea was that the better you understood yourself and the more you

00:16:05.540 know authentic you were to yourself the better you could understand others and the better citizen

00:16:10.480 you could be. When Emily brought up politics, I remembered this story that I wrote about Hillary

00:16:15.760 Clinton's scrunchie. I was a young reporter for the New York Daily News. And for a while during

00:16:20.340 the 2008 presidential campaign, I was on the Hillary hair beat. That was a thing. Another

00:16:26.500 reporter was on the Hillary pantsuit beat, but I was on hair. So one day Hillary wore a scrunchie 1.00

00:16:31.900 and the world lost their fucking minds. Even though I feel like this was the most authentic 0.99

00:16:39.380 thing that Hillary Clinton had ever done. So many of us were guilty for mocking Hillary.

00:16:47.100 I remember the columnist Peggy Noonan writing about this. She said Obama could get out of bed,

00:16:51.620 have a five-minute shower, and walk out the door and just go and start his day. But Hillary, 0.97

00:16:57.100 before any public appearance, had to put in two and a half hours of hair and makeup just so she 1.00

00:17:01.620 could walk out the front door and have people not make comments about her appearance. And that was 0.98

00:17:07.100 just so that she didn't get mocked. 0.99

00:17:09.040 People still went after her way more than they did the male candidates

00:17:12.080 for not being real enough, for not being likable enough.

00:17:16.300 He's very likable. I agree with that.

00:17:19.900 I don't think I'm that bad.

00:17:21.940 You're likable enough, Hillary.

00:17:23.700 Thank you so much. 0.69

00:17:24.700 The political talking heads were relentless in criticizing Hillary's authenticity. 1.00

00:17:29.440 You know, you talk about authenticity.

00:17:32.140 I always have called Bill Clinton sort of an authentic phony. 0.98

00:17:34.920 And Hillary, if you look at it just as theater, is a phony phony. 1.00

00:17:38.440 We expect our women politicians and celebrities to be authentic and real, 1.00

00:17:43.000 but also perfect and well-coiffed with crest white strip teeth.

00:17:46.600 When people say I'm not authentic, what you see is what you get.

00:17:50.760 And now that everyone is kind of a micro-celebrity,

00:17:53.380 everyone's a public figure because we all put our lives on the internet,

00:17:55.900 we expect that from all women, including Instagram influencers.

00:18:00.700 At the end of the day, all of us are curating our lives.

00:18:04.920 just like Courtney said, and not just on Instagram and social media, but when we talk to our friends

00:18:10.500 or our mom, I don't tell anyone when I've had a raging fight with Nick or how my toddler won't

00:18:17.680 eat a goddamn thing except white cheddar cheese or how every night I can't fall asleep without 0.86

00:18:22.420 taking a pill because I'm terrified about my future. But we need to talk about what this 0.99

00:18:27.420 distortion of authenticity and reality is actually doing to us. I don't see my reality reflected back

00:18:34.600 to me on Instagram. I mostly see perfection. Seeing perfection all the time is potentially

00:18:40.800 dangerous for my mental health, for all our mental health. I actually called an expert up to talk

00:18:49.760 about this, a psychologist named Dr. David Lewis. He is British and charming and just adorable and

00:18:56.460 lovely. You want to have a cup of tea with him as much as I want to have tequila with Mandy Nolan

00:19:00.020 at 10 in the morning yep sure go ahead you ask your first question i'll try and bat it back i was

00:19:05.220 so interested in what you said about instagram and these pictures creating a dysmorphic disorder

00:19:11.400 this idea that we're looking at pictures of what our life quote unquote should look like or i'm

00:19:17.660 looking at these pictures of what my life should look like and especially as a mom i feel like this

00:19:22.200 is even more dangerous because i'm scrolling and i'm scrolling and i'm scrolling and i'm scrolling

00:19:26.480 and I'm looking at these pictures of beautiful houses and beautiful women yeah they're so 0.99

00:19:31.520 fucking clean David and then I look around my house and I'm literally covered in shit over here 0.96

00:19:37.240 I know the feeling exactly and I think it puts a lot of people particularly young people who are 0.99

00:19:42.620 more perhaps impressionable have less experience in the world on what is called the hedonistic

00:19:47.580 treadmill and when you're on the hedonistic treadmill you're constantly working away just

00:19:52.500 to keep up with the Joneses, as it were, as we say in England, trying to be as good as or better

00:19:58.420 than the person you see on your screen or in your magazine. So this may involve cosmetic surgery,

00:20:06.700 which is hugely on the increase. It may involve Botox. It may involve a whole range of changes,

00:20:13.580 physical changes to the body to try getting closer and closer to that perfect model, which you see.

00:20:19.540 This explains my recent Botox appointments and why I painted my entire house white.

00:20:24.460 All the fillers, all the Benjamin Moore.

00:20:27.500 And the same when you look at people's homes.

00:20:29.680 They say, gosh, I wish my home looked like that.

00:20:32.080 It's a bit of a mess.

00:20:32.840 I'm a bit ashamed of it.

00:20:34.380 So why can't my house be exactly the same as that house?

00:20:38.000 And so I think, again, we are kind of a consumer treadmill, always to replace anything which

00:20:43.940 is not seen as particularly trendy at that particular moment.

00:20:47.720 And companies will go out of their way to persuade social influencers to influence people in favor of their product or their service or whatever they're trying to sell.

00:20:58.800 Yes, yes, yes to this part.

00:21:00.460 We cannot forget the brands who are paying the influencers to make their lives look like an ad, to make their lives look perfect.

00:21:06.140 And the only way to defend yourself against that is to step back, think about what you're being told, think about what you're seeing, and decide, is this adding to the sum total of my happiness?

00:21:17.720 If it is, go with it. If it's not edited out of your life, we should all be good editors in our lives and know what is good and what is bad and what should be junked and what should be preserved.

00:21:28.480 That's the perfect kicker, David.

00:21:30.260 I'm so pleased.

00:21:33.900 I've been scrolling Instagram for so long that I don't know what's real anymore, what's authentic. 0.99

00:21:39.840 But when I step back and I think about what I want authenticity to mean, I think about someone who shows me messy shit. 0.94

00:21:47.020 And I recently came across a woman who I think might be the most authentic influencer on Instagram. 0.96

00:21:51.960 When we come back from the break, you're going to meet her.

00:22:05.400 So Courtney Adamo told me that what she chooses to show on Instagram is her real life, is her version of authenticity.

00:22:12.460 It's just the nice bits of her real life.

00:22:14.760 And I also never post about the real nasty, messy parts of my life.

00:22:18.720 No one on Instagram knows about my postpartum hemorrhoids.

00:22:21.980 And you don't want to, do you? 0.99

00:22:25.460 But I recently did come across a woman on Instagram who shows her mess. 0.94

00:22:30.120 Her name's Bethany Garcia, and she runs the Instagram account at the Garcia Diaries.

00:22:34.920 I found her when I was trapped in one of my death spirals of Instagram videos,

00:22:38.240 and I saw her giving birth.

00:22:44.460 the first time I saw you was walking through your house in labor and I think someone is

00:22:53.100 behind you holding something underneath you yeah my doula your doula yes your doula is

00:22:59.120 following you around holding the holding I think it's like a pad of my amniotic fluid yes yes your

00:23:05.880 doula is following you and holding your am trying to hold a pad under the amniotic fluid so that

00:23:11.100 that is literally the first picture I ever saw of your body that is hilarious and I saw that and I

00:23:18.020 was like I've got to talk to this girl that is the realest depiction I've ever seen of childbirth

00:23:40.440 Because I've never seen anyone else go through it besides me.

00:23:44.260 Yeah.

00:23:44.700 And I think on this one page, it has like a million views.

00:23:47.520 So not even on my page, but a page that took the video and credited me. 0.99

00:23:51.020 And I'm like, everyone has seen my ass. 0.98

00:23:52.740 It's very different. 0.99

00:23:55.440 It's terrifying to actually think about. 1.00

00:23:57.900 Everyone has seen your ass, but everyone has also seen Kim Kardashian's ass. 1.00

00:24:01.740 And we saw your ass in a way that really improved a lot of our lives. 1.00

00:24:06.100 Bethany was a teen mom. 0.99

00:24:07.380 her family was on food stamps when she started blogging and instagramming about motherhood

00:24:12.240 we were 18 when we got married and got pregnant and literally on food stamps and government

00:24:20.720 assistance and government insurance and could barely pay our 500 a month rent like we struggled

00:24:28.200 so hard the first few years of our marriage and i started researching i started joining networks i

00:24:34.140 started reaching out to companies asking if they'd be willing to pay me for this post that I was

00:24:40.320 planning on doing. And it kind of just started growing slowly from there. And I think in 2016,

00:24:46.320 I probably made like $200. And in the beginning, she fell into the trap of trying to make everything

00:24:52.340 look perfect, even though her actual life was far from perfect. I was kind of still in the whole

00:24:59.240 Instagram aesthetic of everything needs to be white blankets and white walls and everything

00:25:03.960 needs to be kind of perfect. And I was doing things like telling my husband, oh, we need to

00:25:08.260 buy these white bedsheets so that it'll look better on Instagram. Or, oh, we need to make

00:25:12.360 sure we only take pictures in this part of the house because this is the only part that looks

00:25:15.940 good on Instagram. And it was a few years of that before I really was like, okay, this is not me.

00:25:22.760 And it gets draining to be so curated and try to be someone that you're not online.

00:25:29.240 and that's kind of where I really changed my niche to be just more real raw authentic the way I was

00:25:36.600 raised is that you kind of hide that stuff and you make your life seem as awesome as possible

00:25:40.920 all the time to the outsiders looking in and I kind of realized that as I was sharing this real

00:25:48.040 and raw stuff I was actually building a community of people that trusted me and were interested in

00:25:53.280 our lives. And it wasn't like pushing people away. It was actually drawing them in. And I

00:26:00.520 really got messages from moms saying, oh my gosh, see, this is the kind of content I wish I would

00:26:05.000 have seen before becoming a mom. In 2017, Bethany had a miscarriage. Instead of keeping it to

00:26:11.840 herself, she decided to share it with her entire audience. This was her way of staying real and

00:26:18.380 being authentic. And it was a big deal. We've more recently seen celebrities like Chrissy Teigen

00:26:23.940 and Meghan Markle publicly share their miscarriage struggles. But four years ago, it wasn't that

00:26:28.800 common. Which was another really big moment for me sharing authentically what I was going through

00:26:35.080 at that point instead of hiding it and pretending like it never happened. And that was another huge

00:26:41.760 growth moment completely on accident. And then right after that, I got pregnant with my fourth

00:26:47.060 baby which was once again another growth moment like all of these things that are happening in

00:26:52.640 my life I'm just sharing my thoughts and emotions rawly as it's happening and all of these things

00:27:00.620 were making my online presence grow which was so crazy to me too just like by sharing what we're

00:27:06.460 going through as a family but you never know what other people are going through that they can relate

00:27:11.640 to it and by sharing all of this raw reality bethany's following grew and grew i was really

00:27:19.040 considering my blog a business albeit a small business um that my husband was still working

00:27:25.020 full-time and we needed both incomes to both make ends meet and in 2019 um we started talking about

00:27:32.620 him quitting his job because i was making three times as much as he was and we did that in may of

00:27:40.240 2019 so for over a year now my blog has been our sole income wow I mean it's it's congratulations

00:27:49.100 thank you well and I know it's I mean it's so insanely impressive but and so you're able to

00:27:55.900 do this at the same time while you have four kids under the age of four yeah and now five and now

00:28:02.840 five yes exactly yeah we're done are you done yeah I'm so done and so can you be picky now

00:28:11.300 can you be like I don't want I don't want to work with this kind of brand I don't want to work with

00:28:14.480 this oh yes and how and how do you decide what kinds of brands you want to feature what feels

00:28:19.280 real to you so I had a brand reach out last year that wanted to pay me $80,000 for a weight loss

00:28:27.360 program and $80,000 was very appealing to me. Trust me. I'm like, I wouldn't have to work for

00:28:34.480 the rest of the year. But there was no way I was ever going to recommend a weight loss program to

00:28:40.880 my following because I've done body acceptance posts for how many years? And I've talked about

00:28:47.100 how weight loss is hurtful to my mental health. If I had posted that, my audience wouldn't trust

00:28:54.560 me anymore. And so that wasn't worth it to me. That right there, that felt like authenticity to

00:29:01.160 me. Bethany's story is inspiring from food stamps to being the sole breadwinner in her family,

00:29:11.380 all by posting the real messy parts of her life. It's literally the most empowering thing ever

00:29:17.460 that my business that I've built with my own two hands from the ground up.

00:29:22.760 I mean, we were at a place, like I said, where we couldn't pay rent and we were on food stamps

00:29:27.940 and government assistance. And now to be in this place where we are, I'm so grateful and we're so

00:29:34.040 blessed. But I also do know that it's because of the work that I've done and how hard I've worked.

00:29:40.600 And that's so empowering for me as a human being, as a wife, as a mom, to be able to do that for my

00:29:47.380 family. Between Bethany and Courtney, we've seen two wild extremes of what authenticity is on

00:29:55.740 Instagram. And I like both of them in completely different ways. When people find out that I'm

00:30:02.340 doing this podcast, either in real life or on Instagram, they ask me whether or not I think 1.00

00:30:07.640 the women I've interviewed are full of shit. I don't. I think most of them are curating their 1.00

00:30:12.340 lives because this is their work and their brand. But it's not bullshit. It's branding. And it's a 0.97

00:30:18.520 way to make a living. The concept of authenticity and the standard we hold women to, that is 1.00

00:30:24.620 bullshit. So now I need to decide what I want to share, if I'm going to be an influencer, if I'm 0.98

00:30:32.280 still doing this. And this is the paradox that we've learned about in this episode. Audiences

00:30:36.740 do like a beautiful picture. Even when Bethany talks about messy things, she's still gorgeous.

00:30:42.340 Yes. My question that I have to answer for myself is how can I make my Instagram feed

00:30:47.000 empowering for other mothers without making them feel terrible about themselves?

00:30:51.620 I just finally apologized to Britney Spears.

00:30:57.160 Once again, I called Glynis to talk about it.

00:31:01.680 You sent me the other day a video outtake from the photo shoot of everyone crying,

00:31:06.920 including Nick, which I couldn't get enough of, which is true. I watched it like 10 times.

00:31:10.420 my favorite part is when the kids are crying and then nick starts crying along with them

00:31:16.080 and both of them stop crying immediately and turn and look at him to see what's going on

00:31:22.500 and then they both start crying again and i thought that their reactions and nick doing that

00:31:28.380 was so charming when you post stuff of the kids misbehaving or crying like that or like of the

00:31:35.760 kids screaming, which I don't think you do very often, do you notice an uptick in engagement?

00:31:41.040 People love a beautiful picture of Bea and Charlie. Those get the highest engagement.

00:31:46.060 Next highest engagement is when I talk about that life is hard because I think people do like to

00:31:51.460 commiserate. So yeah, people like it when I post things that are a little bit more real, but too

00:31:57.780 real seems to be off-putting. I think they want the picture to be beautiful and the caption to

00:32:03.420 feel honest? I think the people I enjoy the most on Instagram are the ones who are clearly enjoying

00:32:10.720 themselves. What I want to know, Jo, is what is the version of your life that you want to see

00:32:15.040 in the world reflected back to you? I think it goes back to what I do as a journalist. Everything

00:32:20.480 that I've ever written, I want people to feel something, to actually have an emotion. If I were

00:32:27.360 to go back, do you know what the one article I still get emailed like two or three times a week

00:32:31.860 is. Do you want me to guess? Cause I'm in my head. I'm like, I bought myself an engagement ring.

00:32:36.700 I bought myself an engagement ring. Yes. Because you know why you were making people feel better

00:32:42.240 about something that there's a lot of shame attached to in many ways. And I wrote that

00:32:48.280 story for Elle when I was 34 years old and I was lonely as fuck. And I thought I was never going to 0.99

00:32:53.540 get married. I get emails about it constantly. I think it's because I was real and honest and

00:32:58.920 authentic. And I wasn't trying too hard. I was just saying, I'm lonely. And I did this to make

00:33:05.320 myself feel better. And maybe some other women out there feel the same way. If I'm going to be an

00:33:09.280 influencer, if I'm going to do this, I want it to be an extension of what I do as a journalist.

00:33:14.200 It's another way to tell stories. It's another way to reach people. But to tell those stories

00:33:18.400 and to reach people, to grow an audience, you have to play the game a little bit. You have to do all

00:33:22.760 of the things and put in all of the work to get the audience, to be able to tell the stories that

00:33:26.960 I want to tell. And now I guess I have to figure out how to go out there and do the work.

00:33:33.220 Right. And I also think as you're saying that the truth is you both want to tell the truth

00:33:37.740 about your struggles, but you do want to have a nice looking life. And so I think the trick

00:33:42.660 is going to be that you are transparent about the idyllic life that you might be photographing in

00:33:48.560 terms of this is the life I'd like to be leading. So I'm taking pictures of it. If I build it,

00:33:53.680 maybe it will come. Oh my gosh, that's the title of the next episode. If you build it, they will come.

00:34:07.360 That's it. That's, I think we've nailed it. We've solved everyone's problem. Go forth and influence.

00:34:11.840 now i've got to go out there and do the work next week i'm jumping off the high dive and i am going

00:34:24.620 to start making influencer content authentic influencer content and surprise surprise

00:34:31.140 it's way harder than it looks

00:34:41.840 Under the Influence is reported and hosted by me, Joe Piazza.

00:34:48.160 Our story editor is Glynis McNichol.

00:34:50.840 Emily Marinoff is our producer, and we've had production assistance from Mary Du.

00:34:55.120 Sound design by Emily Marinoff and Jessica Kreinchich.

00:34:58.700 Our theme and additional music was composed by Jessica Kreinchich.

00:35:02.920 Mixing done by Jackie Huntington.

00:35:05.360 Additional research, as usual, was conducted by Jocelyn Sears.

00:35:09.720 Julian Weller is our consulting producer.

00:35:12.720 Manga Shatikador is our executive producer.

00:35:15.720 Thank you, thank you to Michelle Lanz and Jasmine Bacci

00:35:18.580 for narrating the Vandy Fair and London Guardian articles.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 25, 2021

An Authentic Woman

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