Jen Selter Vanity Fair Spread: Can the Butt Selfie Instagram Model Really Get Famous?
Jen Selter, an "Instagram model" whom the mainstream has dubbed the "Butt Selfie Queen," has landed herself a spread in Vanity Fair (and you can see one of the photos right here), and it's caused quite a stir of discussion into the topic: can an Instagram model really get famous?
The 20-year-old Jewish girl from Long Island has recently been signed to the Legacy Agency, according to Vanity Fair. She stands out from the pack of millions and millions of other girls, according to the same outlet, because she serves to "inspire" others. Apparently, the new feminist movement involves a pose called "seltering" -- where one poses with a leg in the air and butt on full display. Progress! So that's what Gloria Steinem, et. al., marched for! (/sarcasm)
Indeed, even New York Magazine is marvelling at Selter's many "accomplishments": she's shown Barbara Walters how to take a "belfie" (butt selfie) and she's appeared on Good Morning America to show millions of other girls how to strike her pose (because lifting a leg is, like, totally hard fersure...).
Of course, not everyone is impressed with Selter's "career" (this writer included). Social media stars are nothing new -- we're going all the way back to Jeffree Star and the MySpace days -- but the "Instagram model" breed of social media star is particularly odious. For one thing, it imposes an unrealistic standard of beauty upon women (Selter's much-lauded behind, which -- in this spread -- is covered in a Louis Vuitton bodysuit that probably costs as much as an Oldsmobile, is NOT real; Selter worked for a prominent Long Island plastic surgeon who injected her butt with FDA-knows-what in order to get that look). Secondly, Selter is simply appropriating another culture to her advantage -- there are plenty of much better looking, much better known black and Hispanic "Instagram models" who have a butt like that naturally, but whom are excoriated by the mainstream because they're "urban" and "hood" on account of their skin color. (So a rich Jewish girl from Long Island with an artifically big butt is a "model," but a poor Hispanic girl from Washington Heights with a naturally big butt is a "hoodrat." Got it.)
Indeed, the gossip board Lipstick Alley takes Selter -- and every mainstream media outlet who lauds her -- to task for this very reason. "Where's my damn spread in Vanity Fair? My s--t is bigger than hers and I didn't have to do a squat or nothing," writes one commenter. Another asks if this is Vanity Fair or Black Men's Magazine; still another points out that the "white media" likes to blow up what's been "popping" in the black community for years; and yet another points out that "when certain aesthetics are on a Black woman, it's 'ugly' and 'bizarre.' On others, it's 'exotic' and 'sexy.'"
Your thoughts on this?
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