opinions on the inflation of ego, economy, and Kendall Jenner
Strangely, after years of wishing for nothing more, confessing to my immediate circle that I’ve flown home to shoot a real life movie is a little embarrassing. I disclose it with a trepidatious whisper, overly conscious of my latent performance skills and the potential inflation of ego. Around my mother, however, I let it soar. “Sorry I can’t,” I say to excuse myself from some task, “I’m a movie star.”
Unfortunately, being a movie star working actress is a deceptively unprofitable position. While my ego inflates, so does the price of an iced coffee, and thus my bank account rapidly deflates. The flight home meant I just barely break even after a week of filming. I’m grateful to be in a city that does not immediately cost seventy dollars upon stepping outdoors, and my recent accrual of senior year student loans humble me. Grounded by debt, I maintain my morals. Now that I am reminded of my relative poverty and that there is in fact a world outside of Manhattan, I’m excommunicating myself from my delusions of grandeur. In returning to the heaven that is midwestern summer, I begin the process of stripping myself of cosmopolitanism and consumerism.
As an adolescent, Vogue was the pinnacle of class and style. I was a subscriber to the fullest extent of the word; I subscribed to its values, taste, elitism, and the actual physical magazine itself. Every month I poured over its pages, without consciously considering its content. Upon landing in Minneapolis, I refreshed my inbox to find yet another email from the company attempting to brainwash me into worshiping Kendall Jenner. Without thinking twice, I finally clicked on the fine print: “Update Preferences”. After successfully unsubscribing from the email list, I performed a general search for her name in my inbox:
The Kendall Jenner campaigning ad nauseam suddenly was no longer simply annoying, but simultaneously offensive. I belonged to some email list that had the audacity to suggest I might value these communications. Living without abundance is my current embarkation, whether it be abundance of ego, fiscal abundance, or Kendall-Jenner-propaganda abundance.
