By Riley Medina
The setting is January of 2022, Julia Fox is spotted on the arm of Kanye West shortly after the rapper announced his divorce from Kim Kardashian. She’s conventionally attractive, decked out in avant-garde clothing and over-the-top black liner… the media prepares to hate her. A month later, this combined hatred and fascination with Fox culminates when a brief interview regarding her role in Uncut Gems is spread across the internet. Julia is crucified for her “valley girl” “baby voice” and the audio from this clip is stitched and immortalized on various social media platforms. Who does this girl think she is? the internet asks. To this day she continues to answer questions about the way she talks and defend her identity as a feminist. When she speaks out about the mistreatment of women, she is a “man hater.” But then in creative circles, she is criticized for stealing relevancy off the backs of male creators… now she is a “bad feminist.” The truth is, Julia Fox knows she is never going to win, and she uses this to her advantage.
As a child, Fox dreamt of being a writer. “I read Angela’s Ashes when I was like nine years old,” she told fellow creator EmRata in a podcast episode, flexing her elementary taste in literature. As she worked on her memoir Down the Drain, she found the lack of media expectation freeing… no one expects anything great from Julia Fox. Perhaps, this is in part because of the way she talks. As I dictated her responses in live interviews I found I could not trust the closed captioning, as it consistently edited out her trademark “um”s “like”s and “you know?”s. It’s hard to blame the auto-generator, this is how ‘girls speak’ and therefore, it is unintelligent.
In one interview with Vanity Fair, Julia Fox is hooked up to a polygraph machine and monitored for honesty. The interrogator asks, “Julia, is this your real speaking voice?” To which she responds, “I think so, yeah.” When the polygraph reader reveals a negative response she turns to the interpreter in mock outrage and repositions herself to explain:
“Um, maybe when I’m nervous I lean into more like ditzy, like, you know, and I feel that it kind of, um, disarms people, and I think a lot of women probably do that… it’s kind of a defense mechanism so that I’ll be taken care of.”
Fox is not the only one known for her ditzy, valley girl affectation. The public loved to hate women such as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears. When it comes to the things these women had in common, it is extremely straightforward. All of them were scandalized for catering to men. All of them represented the stereotypical, air-headed, American bombshell who is both the public obsession and the popular outrage. The qualities women adapt in order to be more palatable to beauty standards and the social covenants of sexism, are the things we most love to scrutinize. There is no better story than the one that bashes a beautiful woman… paparazzi photographers make a living off of it.
However, the most successful of these women learn to take advantage of their own exploitation… it becomes a symbiotic relationship of publicity and profit. Julia Fox works directly with one paparazzi photographer in L.A. for no financial exchange. “He’s like my friend now…” she told EmRata, “he’s a brilliant photographer.” Of course, she is criticized for this as well, with interviewers frequently asking her whether her rise to fame was the result of some villainous master plan. Her ability to give people what they want appears to be a heinous character defect.
“There’s been a lot of damage done you know, like I pretty much learned in my teens that I was a commodity and that I can get money or resources from men so then it just became this game of, okay how do I become more desirable?” ( High Low with EmRata).
The public asks for cream and sugar in their coffee and then publicly shames the barista who made it for masking the flavor of “real” coffee. That barista becomes a household name. This is the Julia Fox effect.
Other social media influencers join Julia in her anti-celebrity status. When you open the social profile of Chrissy Chlapecka, you are greeted with a wall of Pepto Bismol pink and violent blonde. “A bimbo isn’t dumb,” Chrissy pouts to the camera, “She’s actually a radical leftist.” Another influencer known as “glamdemon2004” takes on a more transatlantic affectation, and delivers crushing social commentary while sporting a pink feather boa and a chic French bob. New York nightlife is booming with hyper-feminine intellectuals asking, “What, you don’t like the way I talk?”
Caroline Calloway is one influencer who has received more than her fair share of public hate. On one popular subreddit Calloway fanatics, or rather, persecutors draw out detailed floor plans of her New York apartment and leak the phone calls shared between Caroline and her deceased father. “I know they’re never going to leave me alone,” she says in her documentary My Life Online. Many online criticize her for not following through with a book deal, and hiring a ghostwriter early on in her career as an influencer. Caroline Calloway has been pinned as the “Scammer.” This is the title of her memoir, which is sold alongside “Snake Oil”, her homemade facial oil. Caroline has mastered the art of using public backlash to her advantage. It’s her brand. Looking directly into the camera she quips: “You thought you were watching a documentary about cyberbullying, no, this is actually a heist film.”
Vocal fry and silicone aside, the Julia Fox effect is about the subversion of expectations. Celebrity women are degraded for catering to their audience, and instead of this being their downfall, it becomes their superpower. The relationship between an influencer and their critics is more profitable and powerful than any devoted fanbase. Recently, Kim Kardashian has been mocked for pursuing a career in criminal justice. Now she uses this attention to share the stories of those who have been wrongfully incarcerated. When asked how she felt about delivering a business seminar at Harvard, Kim looked at the camera and sighed “What, like it’s hard?” Regardless of how you feel about their vocal affectations they’ve got you listening, and they have something to say.
Comments