Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Alix Earle, is the physical embodiment of everything I will never be. In 2020, the then first year at the University of Miami made her viral internet debut from makeup routines and fashion videos. She was popular then, but her notoriety has really begun to grow this year as she’s gained media attention from outlets such as Forbes and Rolling Stone.
Scrolling through TikTok accounts of people who seemed to have won the beauty lottery — at least according to mainstream, Eurocentric standards — typically make me feel terrible about the unattainability of their status and the arguable mediocrity of my own life as a middle-class woman of color. When I fall into the inevitable TikTok doom scroll through Earle’s page however, I’m transfixed by her intimate, Facetime-esque “get ready with me” (GRWM) videos in which she’ll prepare for events varying from a frat party to The Kelly Clarkson Show. Earle sprinkles in life updates, such as friendships and dates, into her videos — and I inevitably watch her, not just for the makeup routines, but to catch up on my parasocial internet best friend.
The term, “It girl” refers to someone who attributes their celebrity status to their socialite lifestyle. Earle isn’t the first TikTok “It Girl,” and she won’t be the last. She’s merely the newest subject of TikTok’s propensity to highlight pretty, young, well-to-do women and rapidly afford them large-scale internet notoriety for well, being pretty. In 2019, 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio paved the way for TikTok “It Girls” as she danced on camera to rapper K Camp’s “Lottery.” Seemingly overnight, D’Amelio had amassed millions of followers, a Hollister sponsorship and her own coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Earle’s fame follows trends of pursuing false intimacy within parasocial relationships such as the success of shows like “Keeping up with the Kardashians” or “Jersey Shore.” You feel like you know her as she highlights “relatable” aspects of her not so relatable life. Between videos of her trips to foreign countries, Earle shows a candidness discussing struggles with familial life, mental health and just recently in her new podcast, Hot Mess, her eating disorder. Through Earle, a new definition takes on the internet “It Girl” speaking to a multidimensionality in the internet personas we deem “perfect.” Her relatability comes from a treatment of mundane issues many women coming of age face: acne, relationship troubles and questionable nights of partying too hard. Earle’s fame might also be a signifier of a societal shift from expecting perfection of our favorite internet celebrities to a more realistic ideal. Earle’s personal life, like the lives of many, is complicated. Her family has long been under the microscope of the media. In 2008 her father Thomas Earle was subject to media attention from having had an affair with escort Ashley Dupre, infamous for having sexual relations with New York governor Eliot Spitzer.
I often wonder about the notoriety that’s directed towards the internet “It Girls.” Somehow millions of people like me, are able to find comfort and relatability in someone so different from us. While pondering, I landed on Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey argues that, as men experience their superior on–screen “like” (role model) — the James Bonds and Brad Pitts of the world— they take on their “like’s” identities and relish in the power these counterparts hold. Though Mulvey relates her findings to men, I believe the same is happening in my approach to Earle’s content. The real, relatable woman on screen promises proximity and authenticity to viewers like myself. Earle shows her highs, her lows, and I identify with her and her struggles. Yet, if Mulvey is right, my readiness to identify with “It Girls” like Earle and others is really an indication of what I consciously or unconsciously desire: power, beauty, luxury and fame. Watching her through a black mirror, I feel we are one in the same and am empowered by it. That is, until the screen turns off.
In the age of cancel culture and social media’s incessant need to dig up one’s most controversial histories, I’m hesitant to say that I like Alix Earle. In the end, I know only so much can be known through what one chooses to share online. What I can say is that through her internet persona she’s created a special “in” through which I, and 6.4 million others, can, to an extent, identify with an on–screen “like.” And for this I do commend her. We’ve been sold make-up and outfit videos but stay to watch in an attempt to fulfill our desires.
Contact Shea Salcedo at ssalcedo@oxy.edu
