The TikTok Influencers who Comfort my Daughter
Or, "It's okay to like Charli D'Amelio more than Greta Thunberg."
“It makes me so mad when people body-shame Charli D’Amelio,” Heloise declares.
It is Saturday morning. David is at his sports camp. As almost every week, between his drop-off and pickup, my daughter and I have a rare, precious 90 minutes alone together for Starbucks and conversation. This particular morning, at my insistence, we’re driving up and down residential streets in Mid-City, looking for jacarandas in bloom.
I am obsessed with jacarandas. Heloise is obsessed with the young TikTok influencers like D’Amelio, her sister Dixie, Addison Rae, Noah Beck, and others.
(If you have a teen or tween girl in your life, she knows all about these folks; if you don’t, start with this Atlantic profile of D’Amelio and her fellow iPhone superstars.) Heloise’s mother does not permit her to have her own TikTok or Instagram, but my daughter has found ways both to watch the content the influencers produce, and to track the controversies they engender.
I’ve mentioned to Miss Mouse, once or twice, that the primary role of influencers is both insidious and benign: they just want to sell you stuff. Heloise knows this, and I’m not sure that it matters to her. Commerce and authenticity are not antithetical in her mind, nor in mine. One can wish to convey a positive message to one’s young followers and long to make heaps of money at the same time. My daughter asked for and received the Addison Rae sweatsuit for Christmas, and near the peak of late summer L.A. lockdown last year, insisted I take her to Dunkin’ Donuts to order “the Charli.” I am ever a dutiful, compliant, and bemused papa, and I did so.
The D’Amelio family moved to Los Angeles to launch their daughters’ influencer careers. They already had means; for a working-class dad of an ambitious girl, it is deeply depressing to see that the most talented and famous young stars almost invariably have wealthy, or very well-connected parents. (Hi, Taylor Swift; hi Billie Eilish, hi Hadid sisters.) There are precious few genuine rags-to-riches tales. This doesn’t mean that the Billie Eilishes and Dixie D’Amelios of the world aren’t insanely good at what they do – it just means that in a world overflowing with young talent, it is those talented little llamas with rich parents who are best positioned to catch the eyes and ears of decision-makers.
Every time Heloise talks to me about her dreams, I have to fight the urge to make my failings into a ceiling on my children’s ambitions. I try not to think of the money and connections I once had that I could have used to help her. My self-loathing and inability to forgive myself for what I did is my burden, though – to whatever extent possible, it cannot be my kids’ dead weight to carry. So, I keep my mouth shut, and talk to my daughter about the opportunities she does have, and that her mother and I can and will still find for her.
For all the handwringing about TikTok’s influence on Generation Lockdown, celebrity still functions as it always has for teens and tweens. I grew up reading Tiger Beat for the latest on Brooke Shields and Leif Garrett; a century ago, my grandmother’s generation read Photoplay for gossip about Rudolph Valentino and Theda Bara. The trials and travails of young stars function as cautionary tales for some, road maps for others, happy distractions for most. Each generation of parents imagines that those who influence their kids are less talented and more insipid than their own nearly-forgotten adolescent idols, but they are invariably mistaken. The magazines now come to you on your phone in brief viral loops, but they are the same as they have always been. They are still selling stories of beautiful and gifted young people facing struggles real or imaginary; they are still opening doors to barely-imagined possibilities, they are still providing a structure to talk about things that might otherwise remain unmentionable.
(Parenthetically, celebrity can be genuinely inspirational at any age. I am deeply interested in the Royal Family. This morning, I watched clips of the queen’s speech. The 95-year-old monarch is still grieving the death of her husband, and she looked clearly tired. And yet, she put on her ceremonial garb and went to Parliament and gave the address tradition requires she give. And today, when I am bagging groceries and saying pleasantries to customers I do not mean with my whole heart, I will think of Her Majesty uttering the prime minister’s drivel, and I will find in thoughts of her perseverance the incentive to keep on keeping on. My celebrity inspirations are not my daughter’s, but they function more or less identically for us.)
For Heloise and her parents, Charli’s struggles with boys and online bullying are a trailhead into conversations about her own doubts, hopes, and worries. It is not my place to write my daughter’s story on my Substack, but it is no betrayal to say that as for so many girls on the cusp of adolescence, the culture of crushing and contradictory expectations has hit Heloise hard. In 2021, all the same pressures to be thin and beautiful endure, as they have for at least the last five generations. It has been intensified too – just as filters on phones present an ever-more distorted picture of the visual ideal, young teens are struggling to adapt to a censorious and judgmental culture that parses every word they utter or type, hunting for evidence of some tiny hidden bigotry that can be instantly weaponized against you.
Seeing Charli D’Amelio navigate that intense, unforgiving and obsessive scrutiny comforts Heloise. Someone has learned how to do this girl thing and still be happy. Someone has opted in to all that pressure and survived. Parents can give all the lectures they like about joy being an inside job, and the importance of self-acceptance, but if we’re wise, we know that we can no more build a wall against the culture and peer pressure than King Canute could stop the surging tide. We can’t stop the waves, but we can help the child learn to ride them. Watching others ride those waves is as much comfort as it is challenge.
I do not worry that my daughter is so focused on Charli D’Amelio. I could, I suppose, shame my child for not being more interested in the doings of Greta Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai, whose struggles seem so much “worthier” and “more important” to certain adults. Heloise has written reports about both Greta and Malala, and honors what they have achieved. My children and I heard the former speak at a climate rally in L.A. in 2019; afterwards, Heloise remarked that Greta was impressive, but seemed utterly single-minded. “Only one thing matters to her. It is an important thing, I know, but I have so many things that matter to me. I can’t just have one issue. I don’t want anyone to make fun of what’s important to me.”
I cannot make my daughter into Greta Thunberg. I wouldn’t if I could. I cannot make her not care about her looks, or her peers. I can insist she work hard in school, I can push her on her manners and social graces, I can remind her that no matter what, no matter what, no matter what she can always come to her mother and to me with anything. I am not sure that is enough, but it is the best we can offer. In the meantime, I can embrace without derision or disappointment the heroes my child has chosen to help guide her on her journey.
Some children are born to defy the culture, others determined to master it. My daughter, for now, is in the latter camp. Seventeen-year-old Charli D’Amelio helps my daughter find some small sense of mastery, and I honor her for it.
(The song that I listened to on repeat while writing this is a Dar Williams classic about idolizing an older girl: The Babysitter’s Here.)