Page 12 of Filter This
Ali smiled and turned her front camera on to take a selfie. She angled the phone above her but not so much that you could tell she was taking a piss. The light was so nice. She sucked in her cheeks slightly, touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth (a tip from Kate, who swore it killed any hint of a double chin), pouted heavily and snapped a few options – thirty-six for safety. As she edited the pic in FaceFix she had to admit her skin was good, but definitely through no efforts of her own, plus @Janet_pics had never actually seen her skin unfiltered.
Ali finished prepping the pic then googled a green juice recipe and pasted it into the Instagram caption.
So many people have been asking about my skin, and while I think it’s mostly genetics, here’s the green juice recipe I swear by. #greenlife #skinfluencer #DublinIgers #DiscoverUnder10K #Juicing #HealthyAf
Instantly the likes started rolling in. Selfies do well but you can’t be seen to be doing too many or people think you’re too up yourself. Ali sighed. It was a delicate balancing act.
She finished up in the loo and headed to make-up, where Shelly would need escorting to her next scene.
In the make-up chair, Shelly was scrolling on her phone. She looked up and smiled as Ali jogged towards her.
Ali was nervous around Shelly. She was so perfect-looking and Ali was afraid of coming across as desperate.
‘Hi!’ Shelly smiled, putting the phone away. ‘Are we set?’
‘Yep, Scene 36 down in Imelda’s living room.’ Ali picked up Shelly’s script and water bottle and they headed down to studio.
‘So how are you? All going well with your account?’ Shelly was always polite but a bit distant with Ali and she sensed that Amy, Shelly’s assistant who often hung around set, did most of the likes and comments on Ali’s posts that purported to be coming from Shelly.
‘Yeah, great, really looking forward to the Glossie Awards launch tomorrow night! Any excuse to get dressed up.’ Ali smiled, ignoring Stephan’s shouting in her headpiece about where the fuck were they. Ali tried to maximise these moments to ingratiate herself with Shelly. She held the heavy door to the studio open for Shelly and ushered her in, helping her over the spaghetti junction of wires and shielding her from various crew bustling past as they made their way around the back of the set.
‘Oh, I know.’ Shelly smiled. ‘There’s actually a really exciting new element to the awards this year,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘They’ve got a wild-card nomination that will go into the Influencer of the Year category!’
‘Seriously?’ Ali’s eyes widened. ‘So just anyone could be picked?’
‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you but they’ll be announcing it on their social tonight so no harm. Basically, anyone who wants to be in the running for the wild card just needs to post an #OOTD tomorrow and the winning OOTD will be announced at the launch party! It’s an initiative to boost up-and-comers. They’re actually letting me judge the posts!’
It seemed a bit much that the woman in contention for Influencer of the Year was permitted to essentially choose the wild-card entry for that same category, but then what wasn’t irritatingly incestuous and nonsensical about the whole Irish Insta-world? And in a way, it could work in Ali’s favour. Shelly Devine would never crown a winner among any of the upper mid-level influencers, whose clout she most likely genuinely feared. Ali’s non-threatening just-under-10K followers would be much more acceptable to Shelly. Plus, she actually knew Ali existed, unlike the other faceless nobodies.
‘That is so exciting, Shelly, wow! Oh my god, it would just make my life to get that wild card!’
‘Well, you’ve got the heads-up on it anyway.’ Shelly winked and tapped her nose. ‘No ’gramming that now or I’d be in major trouble.’
Shelly continued onto set as Ali considered the news. Getting that nomination was a long shot but a long shot Ali’d been waiting for, a chance to get some notice and seriously up her Insta profile.
5
The next morning Ali began her Insta prep early. It was still dark out and the heating hadn’t kicked in yet as she sat in front of the ring-light, smoothing serum over her face. She was feeling super-positive about the wild-card nominations – this was the boost she’d been looking for. If she could just nail a spot in the Glossies everything else would fall into place.Glossie Life, the best-read women’s mag in the country, would be promoting her account; the other influencers would know who she was. It was going to be huge. She’d even swapped shifts with Ruairí, one of the other PAs, so she’d have the whole day off to prepare.
She’d also put Liv on notice, WhatsApping her the night before. She might hate Insta but Ali’s #OOTD shots had come on in leaps and bounds since she’d first started haranguing Liv to photograph them. Liv had replied:
I’ll do it but no lengthy location scouting, Ali. I am chained to my desk. Emer gave me an extension for the purposes of salvaging my thesis, not shooting 450 different options of you doing hip-pops and trying to ‘find the light’.
Yesterday’s meeting with Emer must have gone OK – maybe an unanticipated upside of being screwed (literally) by your tutor was that they didn’t really have an option but to give you an extension when you needed one.
Ali brought up her profile as she blended her foundation. Really, she wasn’t doing so bad for only having been around for a year. Nearly ten thousand was not terrible by any stretch. And she would surely double that by the time the awards came around in four months’ time. If she nailed the post today.
Interrupting her thoughts of 20K followers and Glossies glory, Ali’s phone buzzed to life and the words ‘Mini calling’ began flashing.
Ali felt sure no good would come of answering this call but her mother had a hold over her, a kind of nefarious force that meant Ali felt compelled to hit the green button.
‘I know you’re still mad at me so, believe me, I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t absolutely have to, but there’s been a disaster with Edmund in Paris and I have to get over there and do some damage limitation. Miles’s consultant is coming by today and one of us has to be there, and since I’m already on the plane, I’m afraid you have to, darling.’
At this Mini drew breath, giving Ali just about long enough to catch up with the fact that her whole day was being hijacked by her mother.
‘But, how’re you calling if you’re already on a—’ Ali tried to cut across her.
‘You’d swear a visit from the consultant,’ Mini steamrolled on, ‘who we effing pay a private fee to, by the way, was akin to a sighting of the messiah for all the advance notice we get. Anyway, anyway, anyway, you’re going to have to get up there, Alessandra. And the worst part is there’s no exact appointment. It’s like a DHL delivery – he’s coming between 10.30 and 4.30. You’re so good – let me know what he says. Bye, darling, thanks, thanks, bye, bye, bye.’
