Page 14 of You Will Never Be Me

Noemie:“Um…”

Aspen:“What?”

Noemie:“Nothing.”

Aspen:“What??”

Elea:“She hates them too.”

Noemie:“I do not!”

Elea:“You throw them away at school.”

Noemie:“I—Elea! You promised not to tell!”

Aspen:“Seriously? You throw them away?”

(No answer.)

Aspen:“I can’t believe this. Do you see how hard I’m working to make them for you?”

Noemie:“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

Aspen:“Do the other kids know? Do they see you throwing it away?”

Noemie:“No.”

Aspen:“Okay. Fine. Jesus. Look—can I just—can I have some peace, please, girls? Okay? I’m working here.”

She resumes shaping the dough into cute knots. When they’re done, she places them carefully in the lunch boxes and surrounds them with beautifully sliced fruit and vegetables in an artful pattern. The results are two lunch boxes that look like they came out of a cookbook. Then she takes out the bread knots and replaces them with store-bought crackers before putting on the lids.

In the final version that she posted, the text in the video says: “The girls’ favorite low-carb knots. These are TO DIE FOR! It’s no wonder the twins are always begging for these. If you hadn’t told me that they’re low-carb, I wouldn’t even have known! Srsly, best bread ever. Recipe in the comments! #AllDayAspen #DiabetesAwareness #NoemiesJourney.”

Again, as an influencer myself, I am of course aware of just how much we fake for the ’gram. But whenever I’ve tried to make food that looks appetizing for social media, it usually turns out tasting like crap. Take buttercream, for example. In order to make it look really good, to make those gorgeous buttercream flowers, you need to mix in enough sugar for the cream to be stiff enough to stay in the fragile shape of petals. If you didn’t, they’d melt, and wilt, and generally look like shit. But with so much powdered sugar mixed in, the buttercream tastes awful; hard and sickeningly sweet. There is a metaphor hidden somewhere in here about social media, I know it.

But I didn’t know the extent to which one could fake it for the camera. Seems obvious now, but I never thought of making beautiful food that I would later simply throw away and replace with less aesthetically pleasing ones to eat. And as I scroll through Aspen’s uncut videos, it becomes stunningly clear that this is what she’s been doing for years. Her Reels are…productions. They are not snippets of her life or glimpses behind the curtain. They are entire productions that she’s composed beforehand and then taken time out of her real life to act out and edit. A complete fabrication of what a life governed by aesthetics looks like.

Another example: a video of Elea as a chubby baby, pulling herself up to a standing position.

Aspen:“Oh my gosh, she’s doing it! She’s standing!”

Ben:“Oh wow, go, sweetie pie!” He rushes into the video.

Aspen:“Ben, what the—you’re in my shot. Ben!”

Ben:“What?” He swings around, confusion written all over his face.

Aspen:“You’re in my shot. You’re ruining it.”

Ben:“In your—what? Aspen, I’m trying to watch our baby stand up for the first time in her life.”

Aspen:“Yes, but this is such a huge moment. I’m trying to record it for my followers.”

Ben:“Are you insane? Screw your followers. I’m her father.”

Aspen:“But they—”

(Pause.)

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