0:00

Hi,

0:03

I'm Mandy Nolan, and I'm launching

0:05

a brand new social media platform

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for moms who aren't good looking, moms

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with shitty lives that nobody wants.

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Welcome to mom Instagram. It's not for influences.

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It's from under the influences

0:19

women who drink to kill the paine

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of their unimaginable life.

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That's Mandy Nolan, and she's not a mom

0:28

influencer. She's a comedian who

0:31

lives in viron By, Australia. Her life

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on Instagram, in case you're wondering, is messy

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bedrooms, messy top nuts, and

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messy I make up. Back in March, she posted

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a picture of herself totally naked and covered

0:42

in rolls of toilet paper during the height of the

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pandemic. I actually did find that very

0:47

aspirational. Mandy

0:49

looks like someone I want to drink tequila with at

0:51

ten am. That is

0:53

my highest compliment. If

0:57

you follow the mom influencer world, you've

0:59

probably probably already been to Byron Bay.

1:02

Virtually, at least in the

1:04

past couple of years. Mandy's hometown has

1:06

become ground zero for Australia's mom

1:08

influencing industrial complex. It's

1:10

sort of like Utah here in America. That

1:12

is very funny to me because when I studied abroad

1:14

in Australia two decades ago, Byron Bay

1:17

is where we drive to buy cheap weed. I

1:19

called Mandy to get her take on the mom influencers

1:22

who have been taken over her town. So

1:24

I wanted to write something which really

1:26

spoke to women's experience

1:29

and what what most people's every day is

1:31

like, because these pictures are so

1:34

curated. You know, a lot of moms do

1:36

feel that they're not actually meeting

1:38

those kind of goals. They're not that beautiful mom and

1:40

the privileged life, and they're always incredibly privileged.

1:43

I was on the page with my job. It's so funny. We're

1:45

walking and this woman

1:47

doing upside and it was

1:49

so he just went up a weight on her, like he lifted

1:52

his legs your dog head

1:54

on someone doing yoga. He's getting

1:56

really old and a bit demented, and she

1:58

was doing like an upside down it stand,

2:00

so maybe she looked like a dray day

2:03

him. So he just went up, lifted the leg and walked

2:05

off, and I went, oh my god, that's so embarrassing,

2:07

but kind of funny. Even my dog

2:09

can't stand them.

2:18

Mandy Norland did a bit about shitty moms in

2:20

response to a Vanity Fair article that

2:22

came out in July. It

2:25

profiled a crew of Instagram savvy moms

2:27

and Byron Bay. One of them

2:29

happened to be a woman that I've followed for a while,

2:32

Courtney Adamo. She's one

2:34

of those influencers that you weirdly feel like

2:36

you're friends with even though you've never

2:38

met them in real life. I

2:40

feel like a lot of us have someone like this in our Instagram

2:42

feed. If I were to become a successful

2:45

influencer, I'd want my life to look

2:47

like hers. She's gotten

2:49

a lot of attention for it, and

2:52

with that, because she's a woman who puts her life

2:54

on the Internet, comes some haters.

2:57

When Vanity Fair profiled her in twenty nineteen,

3:00

they lead with one snarky question

3:02

about Courtney's life. From

3:05

the looks of Instagram, Courtney Adamo

3:07

and the surfing moms of Byron Bay are living

3:09

the dream. Can it

3:12

be real? I

3:24

brought this up with Mandy Nolan and her

3:27

response was, no, it's

3:29

not real. It's not my life,

3:32

and it's not the life of any women that I know. En Byron

3:34

Bay, especially

3:36

not new moms, moms with snoughty,

3:39

dirty kids who don't frolic on the beach all day.

3:42

Mandy said, there's nothing about

3:44

these influencers lives that is at all authentic,

3:48

which leads me to ask, what

3:51

the hell does it mean to be an authentic woman

3:53

anyway? An

3:55

authentic mother? Where

3:58

does real life authenticity end and

4:01

Instagram authenticity begin.

4:12

I'm Joe Piazza and

4:15

you're under the influence. This

4:25

is episode four an

4:27

Authentic Woman. Just

4:31

last week, I was rejected from the influencer

4:33

platform reward Style, and

4:36

unfortunately your request to become a member

4:38

of reward Style was not accepted. At

4:40

this time, I still feel

4:42

kind of shitty about that, and I called

4:44

Glenness to talk about it. I

4:48

thought about asking reward Style directly why

4:50

they rejected me, like the same way that I once

4:52

called up an ex boyfriend and was like, why don't you

4:55

love me? I'm sort of amazed that you didn't

4:57

ask them the reasons we were rejected, because that's such a reporter

4:59

question, Like I want to know when

5:02

they went to your social media

5:05

feeds, what did

5:07

they see that told them

5:10

you were not right for Rewards

5:12

style. What what was the Harvard

5:15

interview where they were like not

5:19

not for us, Like I'm so curious,

5:22

I am too. I called them,

5:24

I called the CEO, I called Amber

5:26

back, and then I just didn't ask. I

5:28

chickened out. I asked, what were you looking

5:30

for? It was like this roundabout way, like all

5:32

she would say is they want authentic

5:35

people today. It's actually really all about

5:37

authenticity and off the cuffed looking content.

5:40

Um that feels very, very relatable.

5:42

The stuff that doesn't feel like a stage,

5:44

that doesn't feel like it's a model, that doesn't feel like

5:46

a caption, that's like someone who lives in a

5:49

totally fake world. I don't buy

5:51

it. Why because the influencers

5:53

that I see doing the best, the ones that

5:55

are the most successful, seem

5:57

to have what looks like a perfect life, and that is

6:00

impossible, because no one has a perfect

6:02

life. There was a Spandy

6:04

Fair article about a year ago. It

6:06

was about mom influencers in Byron Bay,

6:09

Australia. The author was

6:12

a plus snarky, like

6:14

Gawker level snarky about

6:17

the mom influencers and a big

6:19

part of her beef was that these women

6:21

weren't quote authentic enough and

6:24

One of the poll quotes was authenticity

6:27

is a big part of what Adamo is selling

6:30

as is the idea that the life she lives

6:32

is achievable. Did do you think

6:34

they were authentic? No? But I

6:36

don't know if it matters. I think

6:38

the word authenticity is kind of bullshit.

6:43

So the article opens up by introducing

6:45

a Hoartney Adamo, and

6:47

to start it describes her kitchen

6:49

in excruciating detail, with

6:52

its clapboard cupboards, wooden stools,

6:55

bulk dry goods and Mason jars, block

6:57

marble countertops, snug refridge,

7:00

rador two eight hundred and seventy dollars,

7:02

the cons oven and stove, which she says

7:05

is the range coverer of her dreams, and

7:07

at about ten dollars a splurge.

7:10

The kitchen is like a scene out of Little House

7:12

on the Trust Fund Prairie. The

7:15

first time I read it and again now

7:17

I went to Instagram to look at

7:19

this kitchen. Fuck,

7:24

that's a really nice kitchen. I

7:26

cut it a smug fridge, by the way. I

7:28

want to say, I don't think it's because of Instagram,

7:30

but I've never seen one in real life. And Nick thinks

7:32

I'm crazy. Do you think that we should get a smug

7:35

fridge. Why stupid?

7:38

Why is it stupid? Because it's

7:40

like a thousand extra

7:42

dollars just for the logo.

7:46

According to the article, Courtney Adamo's

7:49

group of friends are a pros tagging,

7:51

cross promoting, mutually amplifying

7:53

audience sharing group of friends, living,

7:55

loving, working and posting aspirational

7:58

lifestyle content, and a highly instagramm

8:00

abill paradise. They

8:02

live in old fashioned houses and give their

8:05

carefully unstyled children names that sound

8:07

dreamed up for a Goop collaboration with Lemony

8:09

Snicket. This writer is good.

8:11

She's bitchy, but she's good. They're

8:14

married to supportive, handsome and scruffy

8:16

men of purpose. It sounds like nick. They

8:18

make their own hours and dinners and soap.

8:21

They have their own brands. They

8:24

are their own brands. So

8:30

is this Courtney Adamo woman? If I was a mom

8:33

just generally on Instagram? Is

8:35

she someone I would know about?

8:38

Yeah, she's kind of a celebrity. On

8:40

the scale of mom influencers.

8:43

Where does she land? What strata

8:46

does she occupy? I love that you said strata,

8:48

because there are strata, there are levels of

8:50

mom influencers. She is a mid tier

8:52

family influencer. Well,

8:55

I don't what's this that mean. That means

8:57

that she's got a little over two hundred and

8:59

fifty thous and Instagram followers.

9:02

But from those two fifty thousand followers,

9:04

she's built a pretty big business

9:06

and one where she can support her family

9:08

of five children. She's interesting

9:11

to me because she's been mom influencing

9:13

since the beginning of mom influencing around

9:17

when she launched the mom blog Baby Chino.

9:20

She is also a former journalist.

9:23

Ah, so she has

9:26

established a bit of a path

9:28

that perhaps you could walk down. Back

9:30

in the two thousands, Courtney and her husband Michael,

9:32

we're both working these eighty hour weeks and scrambling

9:35

to see each other and their kids. They

9:37

were on the professional treadmill

9:40

set to like a gazillion, also

9:42

like you, also like Me, And

9:45

a few years ago they left it. They left the rat

9:47

race, sold all their stuff and traveled

9:49

around the world with their kids. They documented

9:51

it on social media, which built up Courtney's

9:53

brand, and then they

9:56

moved right outside of byron By Australia

9:58

and now Courtney make her living through

10:01

sponsored Instagram posts and online

10:03

classes where she teaches other women

10:05

to build lifestyle brands. When

10:11

the story was published on vendy Fair, the

10:13

reaction was swift and brutal

10:16

and pretty shitty. There

10:18

is an opinion piece in the London Guardian

10:21

headline screamed, there's

10:24

no study or test in the world that can tell

10:26

you what happens to your soul when you turn

10:28

yourself into a brand brand.

10:31

I kept thinking about this Vanity Fair article

10:34

and the reaction to it. I

10:36

felt real bad for Courtney Odama and her

10:38

friends, even as I envied their Instagram

10:40

perfect lives and wondered if it was all bullshit.

10:44

What I find interesting as well

10:46

is that that criticism is

10:48

coming from other women. You know,

10:50

it's not men who are criticizing

10:53

those choices. It's often women

10:55

being critical of other women, which

10:58

I find really sad. That's

11:01

Courtney Damo. I followed her for so

11:03

long that I kind of felt like I was talking

11:05

to a celebrity. We should be

11:07

empowering each other to be

11:09

able to make those choices. If

11:12

you're able to be successful

11:14

in your career based on those choices

11:16

and you're a good person and you're happy,

11:19

good on you. We talked over Skype

11:21

about a year ago. Once it

11:23

wasn't too long after the wildfires

11:25

in Australia had started to burn out. Everyone

11:28

was relieved that was finally reading Environ

11:31

Bay. It's not always

11:33

perfect in paradise. We're just having

11:35

these crazy rainy weather right now and

11:37

we're in our little studio that has a tin roof. So

11:41

Courtney was pretty blindsided by

11:43

that Bandy Fair article. She originally

11:45

thought the piece was going to be about creatives,

11:48

women entrepreneurs live in environ

11:50

Bay. When she got in touch

11:52

with me, I thought, that's a wonderful way

11:55

to portray what is really

11:57

a great, amazing community

11:59

here of women who are building

12:02

brands and building successful companies

12:04

and still raising their children and we're

12:06

all really supportive of each

12:08

other doing that. Why should it be a negative

12:11

thing that I landed here into a

12:13

community of micro influencers.

12:15

Why is that a bad thing? I don't know, I don't

12:17

understand. I pretty quickly

12:20

got to the point and asked Courtney

12:22

about that quote about authenticity.

12:26

Authenticity is a big part of what Adamo

12:28

is selling as is the idea that

12:30

the life she lives is achievable. You

12:33

you can't be fully authentic in

12:36

terms of saying everything when you know

12:38

that there are that many strangers following

12:41

you. But I do think that

12:43

what I am putting up there is authentic.

12:48

I really had a hard time with that criticism

12:51

because I'm not putting up anything

12:53

that's not real. You know, you're not

12:55

seeing everything, and you're not seeing the ugly

12:58

and my toddler throwing a potantrum

13:00

because he doesn't want to eat his dinner, or because

13:03

his favorite shirts in the washing machine and he wants

13:05

it out now. At those

13:07

moments, I don't feel the need to get my phone out

13:10

and take photos and capture it and share it.

13:13

But we do that even in real life. None

13:15

of us are going around with

13:18

the ugly bits out. You

13:21

know, if that was a group of men they

13:23

were featuring, every single person

13:26

would be slapping them on the back, being

13:28

like, yeah, mate, like you

13:30

can have your kids and you can go surfing,

13:33

and you're, you know, really successful

13:35

in your career. Like good on you,

13:37

you know. And why is it that when

13:39

women try to do that we are

13:41

put down. Why I don't understand

13:44

it. I just want them to see

13:46

this authentic version of

13:49

our life. Authenticity.

13:54

That word is thrown around an awful lot

13:56

inside the influencer industrial complex.

14:00

Brands want influencers who seem authentic,

14:03

who seem real but not too

14:05

real, not scary, real, not

14:08

drink two bottles of wine, yell at your husband and

14:10

pass out with your boots on. Real. And

14:13

that's the question that we asked earlier. What

14:16

the hell is an authentic mother? An

14:18

authentic woman? Authenticity

14:21

is not something that we ask of men,

14:23

not male politicians,

14:25

certainly not our male celebrities. No

14:28

one looks at George Clooney shilling

14:30

for Costamy goes with Randy Garberg asks is

14:33

he authentic? Does he mean it? We

14:36

live in this fucked up world where women

14:38

who put themselves in the public eye have to

14:41

be authentic, even

14:43

though no one knows what that means. And

14:45

when they fall short of a definition that no

14:47

one has clearly defined, we

14:50

ripped them to shreds. I've

14:53

done this. You've probably done it too. When

14:56

I was a reporter, I ripped female celebrities to shreds

14:58

on a daily basis. I

15:00

owe an apology to a long list

15:03

of famous women. I'm sorry

15:05

Brittany, I'm sorry, Jennifer

15:07

Aniston. I'm

15:10

not sorry, Kim Kardashian, I'm just not there's

15:13

a lot more people I do have to apologize to, and I'm going

15:15

to do those during a quick break. Yeah,

15:34

So authenticity means

15:37

everything and it also means nothing.

15:40

Once again, I called up Emily Hunt from the University

15:42

of Pennsylvania to help me cractice influencer

15:44

code. Authenticity

15:47

has become sort of this ideal.

15:49

If you look into the history of

15:52

authenticity, it's

15:54

actually really interesting because it originally

15:57

had a meaning that was

15:59

related to politics and ethics,

16:02

and so the idea was that the better you understood

16:04

yourself, and the more you know authentic you were to

16:06

yourself, the better you could understand others,

16:09

and the better citizen you

16:11

could be. When Emily brought up

16:13

politics, I remembered this story that I wrote

16:15

about Hillary Clinton scrunchy. I

16:17

was a young reporter for the New York Daily News and for

16:19

a while during the two thousand eight presidential

16:22

campaign, I was on the Hillary hair

16:24

beat. That was a thing. Another

16:26

reporter was on the Hillary pantsuit beat, but I

16:28

was on hair. So one day Hillary

16:31

war a scrunchy and the world lost

16:33

their fucking minds. Even

16:37

though I feel like this was the most authentic thing

16:40

that Hillary Clinton had ever done, so

16:43

many of us, we're guilty

16:45

for mocking Hillary. I remember

16:47

the columnist Peggy noon In writing about this. She

16:50

said Obama could get out of bed, have a five minute

16:52

shower, and walk out the door and just

16:54

go and start his day. But Hillary,

16:57

before any public appearance, had to put

16:59

in two and a half hours of hair and makeup just

17:01

so she could walk out the front door and have people

17:03

not make comments about her appearance.

17:06

And that was just so that she didn't get mocked. People

17:09

still went after are way more than they did the male

17:11

candidates for not being real enough,

17:13

for not being likable enough.

17:16

He's very liable. I agree

17:19

with that. I don't think I'm that bad.

17:21

Uh. The

17:24

political talking heads were relentless

17:27

in criticizing Hillary's authenticity.

17:29

You know you talk about authenticity.

17:32

I always have called Bill Clinton sort of an authentic

17:34

phoony and Hillary if you look at it just

17:36

as theater, as we expect

17:39

our women, politicians and celebrities to

17:41

be authentic and real but also perfect

17:44

and well craft with crest white stripped teeth.

17:46

When people say I'm not authentic, what you

17:48

see is what you get. And

17:50

now that everyone is kind of a micro celebrity,

17:53

everyone's a public figure because we all put our lives

17:55

on the Internet. We expect that from all

17:57

women, including Instagram influencers.

18:01

At the end of the day, all of us are

18:03

curating our lives, just like Corney

18:05

said, and not just on Instagram

18:07

and social media, but when we talk

18:09

to our friends or our mom.

18:12

I don't tell anyone when I've

18:14

had a raging fight with Nick, or

18:16

how my toddler won't eat a goddamn thing

18:18

except white cheddar cheese, or how every

18:21

night i can't fall asleep without taking a pill

18:23

because I'm terrified about my future. But

18:26

we need to talk about with this distortion of

18:28

authenticity and reality is actually

18:30

doing to us. I don't

18:33

see my reality reflected back to me on Instagram.

18:36

I mostly see perfection. Seeing

18:39

perfection all the time is potentially dangerous

18:41

for my mental health, for all our

18:43

mental health. I

18:47

actually called an expert up to talk about

18:50

this, a psychologist named Dr David

18:52

Lewis. He is British and

18:54

charming and just adorable and lovely.

18:56

You want to have a cup of tea with him as much as I

18:58

want to have tequila with Mandy Nole it ten in the morning.

19:00

Yep, Sure, go ahead, You ask your first

19:03

question. I'll try batted back. I was

19:05

so interested in what you said about

19:08

Instagram and these pictures creating a

19:10

dysmorphic disorder, this idea

19:12

that we're looking at pictures of what

19:15

our life quote unquote should look like,

19:17

or I'm looking at these pictures of what my life

19:19

should look like. And especially as a mom, I

19:21

feel like this is even more dangerous because I'm

19:24

scrolling and I'm scrolling, and I'm scrolling and I'm

19:26

scrolling, and I'm looking at these pictures

19:28

of beautiful houses and beautiful

19:30

women. They're so fucking clean, David.

19:32

And then I look around my house and I'm

19:35

literally covered in ship over here. I

19:38

know they're feeling exactly, and I think

19:40

it puts a lot of people, particularly young people

19:42

who are more perhaps impressura,

19:44

will have less experience as the world or what

19:46

is called the headedistic treadmill. What

19:48

do all the headed distic treadmill? You're constantly

19:51

working away just to keep up with the jokes?

19:53

Is as it was, we say, think trying

19:56

to be as good as or better

19:58

that the person you see on

20:00

your screen or your magazine. So

20:03

this may evolve cosmetic

20:06

surgery, which is usually on the increase.

20:09

It may evolve botox,

20:11

It may involve a whole range of changes

20:13

physical changes the body to try

20:15

and get it closer and closer to

20:17

that perfect model what you see. This

20:20

explains my recent botox appointments and

20:22

why I painted my entire house white. Are

20:24

the fillers? Are the Benjamin more

20:27

and the same. When you look at people's homes, they

20:29

say, gosh, I wish my hope looked like

20:31

that. A bit of a mess. I'm a bit ashamed of it.

20:34

So why can't my house be exactly

20:36

the same as that house? And so I think

20:38

again, we are the kind of a consumer

20:40

treadmill, always to replace anything

20:43

which is not seen as particularly trendy

20:46

at that particular moment. You know, companies

20:48

will go out of their way to persuade

20:51

social influences, to influence

20:53

people in favor of their product or

20:55

their service or whatever they're trying to sell.

20:58

Yes, yes, yes to this part. We cannot

21:01

forget the brands who are paying the influencers

21:03

to make their lives look like an ad, to make their

21:05

lives look perfect. The early way

21:07

to fed yourself again, that is

21:09

to step back, think about what

21:11

you're being told, Think about what you're seeing.

21:14

I decide, is this adding to the sub

21:16

total of why happiness? If it is, go

21:18

with it. If it's not, you know, edited out

21:20

of your life. We should all be good editors

21:23

in our lives and know what is good and

21:25

what is bad and what should be junk that

21:27

what should be preserved. That's the perfect kicker,

21:29

David, because I'm so pleased. I've

21:34

been scrolling Instagram for so long that I don't

21:36

know what's real anymore, what's

21:38

authentic. But when I step

21:40

back and they think about what I want authenticity

21:42

to mean, I think about someone who

21:44

shows me messy shit. And

21:47

I recently came across a woman who I think might be

21:49

the most authentic influencer on Instagram.

21:51

When we come back from the break, you're gonna meet her. So

22:05

Courtney Adamo told me that what she chooses

22:07

to show on Instagram is her real life,

22:10

is her version of authenticity. It's

22:12

just the nice bits of her real life. And

22:15

I also never post about the real, nasty, messy

22:17

parts of my life, no one on

22:19

Instagram. It was about my postpartum hemorrhoids,

22:21

and you don't want to do

22:24

you. But I recently did come across

22:26

a woman on Instagram who shows her mess.

22:30

Her name is Bethany Garcia and she runs

22:32

the Instagram account at the Garcia Diaries.

22:34

I found her when I was trapped in one of my death spirals

22:37

of Instagram videos and I

22:39

saw her given birth. The

22:47

first time I saw you was walking

22:50

through your house in labor, and

22:52

I think someone is behind you holding

22:54

something underneath you. Yea, yes,

22:58

your Dula's following around the holding

23:01

the holding I think it's like a pro pad

23:03

of mytic fluid. Yes, yes,

23:05

You're dula is following you and holding your

23:08

trying to hold a pad under the amniotic

23:10

fluid. So that that is literally the first

23:12

picture I ever saw of your body sizzlerous.

23:16

And I saw that and I was like, I've

23:19

got to talk to this girl. That

23:34

is the realist depiction

23:37

I've ever seen of childbirth.

23:40

I've never I've never because I've never seen anyone

23:42

else go through it besides me. And

23:44

I think on this one page that has like a million

23:47

views, so not even on my page, but a page

23:49

that took the video and credited me, and I'm

23:51

like, everyone has seen my ass. It's very different.

23:55

It's terrifying to actually think about every

23:58

want to seen your ass, but everyone has also seen

24:03

in a way that really improved a lot of our lives.

24:06

Bethany was a teen mom. Her

24:08

family was on food stamps when she started

24:10

blogging and instagramming about motherhood. We

24:13

were eighteen when we got married and

24:16

got pregnant, and literally

24:19

on food stamps and government assistance

24:21

and government insurance and could

24:24

barely pay our five a month

24:26

rent. Like, we struggled so hard

24:29

the first few years of our marriage, and

24:31

I started researching, I started joining networks,

24:34

I started reaching

24:36

out to companies asking if they'd be willing to pay

24:38

me for this post that I was planning

24:40

on doing um And it kind of just started

24:42

growing slowly from there, and I think in two

24:45

thousand's sixteen, I probably

24:47

made like two hundred dollars. And

24:49

in the beginning she fell into the trap of trying

24:51

to make everything look perfect even

24:53

though her actual life was far

24:55

from perfect. I was kind of still

24:58

in the whole Instagram aesthetic

25:00

of everything needs to be white blankets and white

25:02

walls, and everything needs to be kind of

25:04

perfect. And I was doing things like

25:07

telling my husband, Oh, we need to buy these white bed

25:09

sheets so that it's a little better on Instagram,

25:11

or we need to make sure we only take pictures in this

25:13

part of the house because this is the only part that looks

25:15

good on Instagram. And it was a

25:18

few years of that before I really

25:20

was like, Okay, this is not me.

25:23

And it gets draining to be

25:25

so curated and try to be someone

25:27

that you're not online. And that's

25:30

kind of where I really changed

25:32

my niche to be just more real,

25:34

raw, authentic. The way I was

25:36

raised is that you kind of hide that stuff

25:38

and you make your life seem as awesome as possible

25:41

all the time to the outsiders looking

25:43

in. And I kind of realized

25:45

that as I was sharing this real

25:48

and raw stuff, I was actually building

25:50

a community of people that trusted me

25:52

and we're interested in our lives. And

25:55

it wasn't like

25:57

pushing people away, it was actually drawing them

25:59

in. And I've really got messages

26:01

from moms saying, oh my gosh, see this is

26:03

the kind of content I wish I would have seen before becoming

26:06

a mom. In Bethany

26:09

had a miscarriage. Instead

26:11

of keeping it to herself, she decided to share it

26:13

with her entire audience. This

26:16

was her way of staying real and

26:18

being authentic and it was a big deal.

26:21

We've more recently seen celebrities like Chrissie

26:23

Taken and Megan Marco will publicly share

26:25

their miscarriage struggles, but four years

26:28

ago it wasn't that common, which was

26:30

another really big moment for me

26:33

sharing authentically what I was going through

26:35

at that point instead of hiding

26:37

it and pretending like it never happened. And

26:40

that was another huge growth moment,

26:43

completely on accident. And then right

26:45

after that, I got pregnant with my fourth baby,

26:48

which was once again another growth moment,

26:50

like all of these things that are happening

26:52

in my life, I'm just sharing my

26:54

thoughts and emotions Raleigh

26:57

as it's happening, And all

27:00

of these things were making my online presence

27:02

grow, which was so crazy

27:04

to me too, just like by sharing what we're going

27:06

through as a family, but you never know what

27:08

other people are going through that they

27:11

can relate to it, And by sharing

27:13

all of this raw reality, Bethany's

27:15

following grew and grew. I

27:18

was really considering my blog a business.

27:21

I'll be a small business. Um

27:23

that my husband was still working full time and we needed

27:26

both incomes too ble to make ends meet. And

27:29

in two thousand nineteen. Um,

27:31

we started talking about him

27:34

quitting his job because I was making three

27:36

times as much as he was, and

27:39

we did that in May of two thousand nineteen. So

27:41

for over a year now, my

27:43

blog has been our sole income. Wow,

27:47

I mean it's it's congratulations.

27:50

Well and I don't know, it's I mean, it's so insanely

27:53

impressive that and so you're

27:55

able to do this at the same time while you have

27:57

four kids under the age of four. Yeah,

28:01

and now five and now five?

28:03

Yes, exactly done. Are

28:06

you done? Yeah? I'm so done?

28:09

So can you be picking now? Can you be like,

28:11

I don't want I don't want to work with this kind of brand I don't

28:14

want to work with and how and

28:16

how did this? So the brands you want to feature

28:18

what feels real to you? So

28:21

I had a brand reach out last year that wanted

28:23

to pay me eighty thousand dollars

28:26

for a weight loss program, and dollars

28:30

was very appealing to be trust me and

28:33

like, I wouldn't have to work for the rest of the year.

28:35

Um, But there's was no way I was

28:38

ever going to recommend a weight loss program

28:40

to my following because I've

28:43

John body acceptance post for how many

28:45

years, and I've talked about how like

28:48

weight loss is hurtful

28:50

to my mental health. If I

28:52

had posted that, my audience wouldn't trust

28:54

me anymore, and so that wasn't

28:56

worth it to me. That right

28:59

there felt like authenticity to me.

29:04

Bethany story is inspiring,

29:08

from food stamps to being the sole breadwinner

29:10

in her family, all by posting

29:12

the real, messy parts of her

29:14

life. It's literally the most empowering

29:17

thing ever that my business

29:19

that I've built with my own two hands from

29:21

the ground up. I mean, we

29:23

were at a puss, like I said, where we couldn't

29:26

pay rent and we were on food stamps and

29:28

government assistance, and now to be

29:30

in this place where we are, we're I'm

29:32

so grateful and we're so blessed. But I

29:34

also do know that it's

29:36

because of the work that I've done and

29:39

how hard I worked, and that's so empowering

29:41

for me as a human being,

29:44

as a wife, as a mom to be

29:46

able to do that for my family. Between

29:51

Bethany and Courtney, we've seen two wild

29:53

extremes of what authenticity is

29:55

on Instagram, and I like both

29:57

of them in completely different ways. When

30:01

people find out that I'm doing this podcast, either

30:03

in real life or on Instagram.

30:05

They ask me whether or not I think that women

30:07

I've interviewed are full of ship. I

30:10

don't. I think most of them are curating

30:12

their lives because this is their work and their brand.

30:15

But it's not bullshit. It's branding

30:18

and it's a way to make a living. The

30:20

concept of authenticity and the standard

30:22

we hold women to that is

30:24

bullshit. So

30:28

now I need to decide what I want to share if

30:30

I'm going to be an influencer, if I'm still doing

30:32

this, And this is the paradox that we've learned about

30:34

in this episode, Audiences do

30:37

like a beautiful picture. Even when

30:39

Bethany talks about messy things, She's

30:41

still gorgeous. My question

30:43

that I have to answer for myself is how

30:45

can I make my Instagram feed empowering for other mothers

30:48

without making them feel terrible about themselves.

30:51

I just finally apologize to Britney Spears once

30:57

again. I called Glenness to talk about it. You

31:02

sent me the other day a video

31:04

outtake from the photo shoot of everyone crying,

31:06

including Nick, which I couldn't get enough,

31:09

which is true. I watched like ten times my

31:12

favorite part is when the kids are crying and then

31:14

Nick said stays crying along with them, and

31:18

both of them stopped crying immediately

31:20

and turn and look at him to see what's going on, and

31:22

then they both start crying again, And I

31:24

thought that their reactions

31:27

and Nick doing that was so

31:29

charming. When you post stuff

31:32

of the kids misbehaving or crying

31:34

like that, or like of the kids screaming, which I don't

31:36

think you do it very often, do you notice

31:38

an uptick in engagement. But

31:41

people love a beautiful picture of being

31:43

Charlie. Those get the highest engagement.

31:46

Next highest engagement is when

31:48

I talk about that life is hard, because I

31:50

think people do like to commisserate. So

31:52

yeah, people like it when I post things

31:55

that are a little bit more real, but

31:57

two real seems to be off

31:59

putting. I think they want the picture to be beautiful

32:01

and the caption to feel honest.

32:04

I think the people I

32:06

enjoy the most on Instagram are

32:09

the ones who are clearly enjoying themselves.

32:11

What I want to know, Joe, is what is the version

32:13

of your life that you want to see in the world

32:16

reflected back to you. I think

32:18

it goes back to what I do as a journalist, everything

32:20

that I've ever written, I want people to

32:23

feel something, to actually

32:25

have an emotion. If I were to go

32:27

back, do you know what? The one article I

32:29

still get emailed like two or three times a week

32:32

is do you want me to guess? Because I'm

32:34

in my head, I'm like, is it? I bought myself an

32:36

engagement ring? And so I bought myself an engagement

32:38

ring? Yes, because you know why? You

32:40

were making people feel better about

32:43

something that there's a lot of

32:45

shame attached to in many ways.

32:47

And I wrote that story for l when I was

32:49

thirty four years old and I was lonely

32:51

as fun and I thought I was never going to get married.

32:54

I get emails about it constantly. I think it's

32:56

because I was real and honest

32:58

and authentic, and I was trying too

33:00

hard. I was just saying, I'm lonely,

33:03

and I did this to make myself feel

33:06

better, and maybe some other women out there feel

33:08

the same way. If I'm going to be an influencer, if I'm

33:10

going to do this, I want it to be an extension

33:12

of what I do as a journalist. It's another way

33:14

to tell stories, it's another way to reach people.

33:17

But to tell those stories and to reach people. To grow

33:19

an audience, you have to play the game a little bit.

33:21

You have to do all of the things and put in

33:23

all of the work to get the audience to be

33:25

able to tell the stories that I want to tell. And

33:28

now I guess I have to figure

33:30

out how to go out there and do

33:32

the work right. And I also think as you're

33:34

saying that the truth is you both

33:36

want to tell the truth about your struggles, but you

33:39

do want to have a nice looking

33:41

life, and so I think the trick is going to be

33:43

that you are transparent about

33:45

the idylic life that you might be

33:47

photographing in terms of this is the

33:49

life I'd like to be leading. So I'm taking pictures

33:52

of it. If I build it, maybe it will

33:54

come. Oh my gosh,

33:56

that's the title of the next episode.

34:01

If you build it, they will come.

34:07

That's it. That's I think we've nailed it. We've solved

34:09

everyone's problem. Go forth and influence.

34:19

Now I've got to go out there and do the work. Next

34:22

week, I'm jumping off the high dive and I am

34:24

going to start making influencer

34:26

content, authentic influencer

34:29

content, and surprise, surprise, It's

34:32

way harder than it looks under.

34:43

The Influence is reported and hosted

34:46

by me Joe Piazza. Our

34:48

story editor is Glennis McNichol. Emily

34:51

Maronots our producer, and we've had production assistance

34:53

from Mary to Sound designed

34:55

by Emily Maronoff and Jessica crime Chich.

34:59

Our theme and it Just music was composed by Jessica

35:01

Kranchich. Mixing done

35:03

by Jackie Huntington's. Additional

35:05

research as usual was conducted

35:08

by Jocelyn Sears. Julian Weller

35:10

is our consulting producer. Mangas

35:13

Chatikador is our executive producer. Thank

35:16

you. Thank you to Michelle Lands and Jasmine

35:18

Bacci for narrating the Vandy Fair

35:20

and Lendon Guardian articles