My name is Ann(ie). I am a video and performance artist currently pursuing my MFA. You may recognize me as YouTube "cewebrity" Scandalishious, aka "Caroline".

You may also recognize me from Vh1 and 51 Minds latest attempt at facilitating (or perhaps simulating) romance for audience pleasure: Frank the Entertainer…In a Basement Affair. Basement Affair places fifteen women in a house vying for the attention of Frank “The Entertainer” Maresca, a thirty two year old contestant from I Love New York 2 and I Love Money who still lives in his parent’s basement. The kicker was we all had to live in a house with him and his parents.

(I'm the skinny awkward girl in a pink tank top in the back row trying not to have a nervous breakdown)

Originally, I went on the show to do a wacky performance piece, attempting to play up the ridiculousness that is reality television and the characters it produces, a satire on a genre that is already a satire of itself. I was interested in the way reality television is reproducing female stereotypes at an alarming rate—using “real” people to validate these stereotypes’ existence.

But ultimately, I wanted to become a Famewhore. I've been drawn to Famewhores for as long as there has been trashy reality television, socialites releasing sex tapes, since the first woman shook her ass on YouTube. I was there, watching and wondering. What is not only my, but also many of ours, fascination with the Famewhore? Where did she come from? And what effect does the Famewhore have on us? I felt the only way I would find out would be to become one myself and surround myself with them. In doing so I would need to get over my self consciousness about my awkward body, eccentric demeanor, large nose, shyness around new people and just say "Hey, this is me. I’m super. Love me and/or hate me please. All I ask for is your attention."

Of course, none of my family or friends wanted me to become a Famewhore (although I was already a Camwhore, via Scandalishious, the Famewhore demands a larger audience). For myself, the Famewhore persona is ridden with a self-imposed shame. Most educated, upper middle class people (such as myself) tend to look down upon the women on these dating shows as desperate, slutty and stupid. Most people, especially production, assume that one must be a complete moron to subject themselves to being humiliated and to be judged solely on their sexuality.

I believe there is more to the Famewhore than sheer stupidity. It is this something more that is important to understand how female stereotypes are currently being validated by reality television. It is precisely the belief that it is purely stupidity and vanity by both production and viewers at large that allows for the continuing negative representations of women. Despite my inclination to not be viewed as a stupid slut, I had to become a Famewhore in order to shed my own assumptions about what it means to be one.

But first, I had to get on the show. I performed in character during my audition and my pre-house interview. I knew I had to make a completely clueless yet outrageous idiot of myself in order to get on the show—aware that I lacked the typical "look" of the reality starlet. I told them about the inner most secrets of my sex life and my attraction to Frank's perfectly proportioned neck. They loved every second of it. I was cast. It was all so easy….

I knew I would not be prepared for what being on the set of a reality show would actually be like but I thought I could handle it. I was wrong. I hid in a corner as often as I could and avoided social contact. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. The first morning I wanted to give up and go home. The cameras freaked me out. For the first three days I couldn’t ignore them and the pressure to perform (both for my own artistic goals and for the entertainment of the show itself) crippled me. My original plan fell apart.

I took my nervous breakdown as a sign. The "wacky performance art piece" was too easy. Performing a character is more or less what many contestants are doing anyways, just not under the guise of art critique. What I believed would be contradictory to the reality television model would be for me to be my awkward, shy, cynical and bashful self—the person production never would have cast-- even if that meant putting my dreams of famewhoriness on hold (or perhaps my new “real” persona would just hide those desires more effectively).

In the house setting—this was easy. The girls were nice overall and once they saw I was “being real” and didn’t particularly give a crap what they thought of me, were respectful of my presence. I began to feel more at ease and could ignore the presence of the cameras. However, in the interview setting, I found it harder to be my normal self. The camera demands the performative and I found myself hamming it up constantly. Thus, I found the performance became one that combined my "real" self with what I believed my "character" should be—what I call, my "reality TV self".

I could not have taken the production of this show as seriously as I did if I did not have a genuine interest in Frank. While I had thought he was good looking from television and had genuinely admired his character from the shows I had watched (yes, I am a reality television junkie and I found his refusal to play dirty on I Love Money endearing) I was surprised by how much I liked him and his parents. Frank is far more attractive in person and is very charming. I liked him. I wanted to legitimately compete in a game for his affections (rather than camera time) because I believed that would be the most ridiculous thing to do. And that was what no one else was really doing.

And why would they be? It's television! Maybe some of the girls came to like him as I did but ultimately everyone was there to be on television. To subject oneself to being on reality television (albeit fun and exciting at times, it is a more or less traumatic experience, whether you are conscious of it or not, that takes away all your adult freedoms and places you in a constant state of confusion and distrust) for reasons other than wanting to be on television seems fairly unbelievable.

The desire to be on television and to be a Famewhore is not a negative thing necessarily. It seems like a fairly reasonable desire-- stemming from our culture where a woman’s self worth is based on the attention she receives from others. My writings to come about my experience on the show will further explore not only my own performance on the show but also how production casts Famewhores and then shames them for their innate and reasonable desires. By placing the blame of any potential disingenuousness of the show onto the female contestants, production is able to obscure their own presence and give the show a more believable illusion of "reality." It is precisely this "reality", which obfuscates production's hand in the show, that works to continually perpetuate negative stereotypes of women.

In Part I of Shaming Famewhores I discussed going on the reality TV dating show Frank the Entertainer…In a Basement Affair, currently on Vh1, as a performance art piece. I performed as myself rather than as a typical wacky performance artist in hopes to deny what I believed was production's expectations of me. I also went on the show to do research on the stereotyping machine that is reality television. To do so, I needed to challenge my own assumptions about the women that go on these shows and accept my own inner Famewhore.

To my astonishment, and most likely everyone else's, I survived six eliminations. I can only credit my survival to a genuine connection with Frank, and my presence being a complete anomaly on the show. My original shyness of the cameras turned to indifference and I was able to interact with the people on the show at a relatively normal, although still extremely guarded, level. I wasn't the best Famewhore I could be, but my reticence, or perhaps inability, to conform to the typical model allowed me to stand out. To be a successful Famewhore, and also the winner of the show I found that one needed to command and desire attention while appearing oblivious of that fact.

To stay on the show you needed to have both Frank and production on your side. Production acted as a big brother to Frank, able to enlighten him with information and fabricating drama with some women while allowing others to fly under the radar to continue a courtship.

I developed a genuine relationship with Frank that was rooted in friendship and I wanted our interactions to be real and not just for television. I began to compare my interactions with Frank with the interactions he was having with the other girls. And certainly the difference was a lack of a sexual chemistry between us. Frank was not attracted to me.

In my attempt to unleash my inner Famewhore I was unable to cultivate the most important feature—sex appeal. Whether it is subtle or overt, a woman who can demand a large audience's attention usually must have large amounts of sex appeal. My own brand of Famewhore tended to use humor rather than sexiness to get attention. However, that sort of behavior typically renders women romantically disabled.

I knew in some way I had to perform my sexuality not only to entice Frank but also to be able to stay on the show. My previous experience attempting to be sexy in a public forum was as my internet persona Scandalishious. I used this character to speak about the ways young women have come to imitate sexiness. My performances as Scandalishious, mirroring a phenomenon in which young women attempt to be sexy based on popular culture's definition of sex appeal, demanded that I too attempt to be sexy. My performances showcased my own awkwardness as a way to speak to a defunct definition of female sexuality. Aware of my own inability to master a sex appeal that could be deemed socially acceptable, I knew any attempt on television to master it would be awkward and disastrous.

I found this predicament to be damning and frustrating. While originally being cast on the show as a zany mess, once in the house my character was reshaped to be the shy, sweet girl—the "realest" girl in the house, as I was often told. My character as the nice girl was also devoid of sexuality, and the non-sexualization of my character, both through my own doing and through careful editing (i.e. clips of me staring mysteriously at a bikini top or awkwardly pulling a bra out of my dress contrasted with the blatant objectification of some of the women's jiggling asses or strutting legs) rendered me an inadequate partner for Frank. To give both Frank and production what they wanted from me in terms of sexiness would have only ended in humiliation. To be unable to perform sexiness would be seen as a failure.

These are societal pressures that in the real world are much easier to ignore. However, on the set of a reality television show, they are intensified. I realized the effect that production's expectations were having on me and decided to come out of my perfomative shell. For a moment I stopped being the “Annie” character in order to break the role that had become determined for me—one that kept me bound so tightly.

So, at a "crooning" challenge, instead of singing the song I had carefully constructed with my partner Dana, I rapped (well, really yelled) a song about getting freaky with Frank, spouting out expletives about Frank cumming in my mouth not only in front of Frank, but also in front of his supposedly "horrified" parents.

I was sure that I would be sent home. No longer at the point in the show where everything was fun and games, the competition was beginning to become real in that connections with Frank had to become more substantial than just a few moments of dialogue and a kiss. I was feeling the pressure to further entrench myself in a stereotypical character and allow myself to be used for production's ends or suffer the consequences. This was a game I could not play since I was not willing to engage in a faux romance with someone I cared about. Nor was I willing to play a role as a woman I did not feel comfortable in. While originally willing to play along with reality television, I found I could play along no longer.

My lyrical outburst was an attempt to illustrate and also poke fun of my frustration and inability to perform my own sex appeal in a socially normal way. Rather than sing romantically, dance sensually or even act respectably, I wanted to throw these expectations of me out the window. I wanted to break character in a forum production would not be able to edit out. I wanted everyone, both people on the show and viewers at home, to see the ridiculous game of expectations we were all playing. I didn't want to allow production to be rid of me for not fulfilling the role of the “accepted” female mate. I wanted them to be rid of me for making a mockery of them to increase ratings rather than the other way around.

Production, using Frank as a proxy, attempted to use the "friendship only" feelings he had towards me as an excuse to let me go. But in fact production wanted me gone because I had stepped out of the role I was assigned in a significant way. Production could not reconcile this difference in character for an audience and now being uncertain in the role I would be able to fulfill for them, had to let me go. By showing my true colors as a performer rather than a potential mate, I temporarily disrupted the illusion of reality production carefully crafts.

I would still call myself a Famewhore. The desire to be desired by many is a quality that exists in many women. It is cultivated within us from a young age while we are simultaneously shamed for it. Reality television didn't invent this predicament; it simply exploits it to hide its own hand in perpetuating stereotypes. Production claims to be on the side of the bachelor on these shows by purporting to help him sort out who is there for television versus who is "real". This is production's mask of seeming genuineness, which occurs by taking the stance of the savvy viewer in acknowledging that reality television can be fake and people on reality television can also be fake. Therefore, production's supposed job is to sort out the fake from the reality to provide viewers with the most "real" experience possible. But of course production tends to cast women who they know they can expose as being fake or not, depending on how they believe they can cast each woman to fit society’s notions of an acceptable female partner.

As viewers, we are only able to place the blame on the women in these situations because our position as viewers will never allow us to truly see production's hand in the show. Even as a contestant on the show, I was not fully able to see this, although production's methods of fabrication did become much clearer than if I had not gone on the show. The construction of reality television is not a simple binary between the real and the staged but rather a far more complex system, which involves a lot more facilitating, composing, simplification and imitation. This will be explored further in my final blog. For now, by beginning to learn to reevaluate how women are viewed in general we can begin to uncover the mask reality television production hides behind. Rather than shame the Famewhore we must learn to accept her.

In Part I of Shaming Famewhores, I talked about going on Vh1's reality dating series Frank the Entertainer…In a Basement Affair as a performance art piece to explore firsthand this decade's "famewhore" phenomenon. In Part II of Shaming Famewhores, I discussed how my attempts at being a famewhore ultimately failed. In an effort to rupture production’s veil of realism and to expose their narrow portrayals of women I decided to break my sweet and quirky character through a profane rap song. This was reality TV suicide, as production knew they would be unable to reconcile my character, ensuring my elimination.

An appearance of reality is upheld by the production team's ability to create an environment for their cast that obscures the boundaries between fact and fiction. What is authentic versus what is artificial is at times unclear to all participants involved (including the production team themselves). Therefore, when asked, no cast member can clearly describe to you whether or not reality TV is "real" or not. This is the best way I can describe the experience:

Imagine being a prisoner. In your prison, you can't trust your fellow prisoners because you don't know what crimes they have committed, or what crimes they are capable of committing. You can't trust the guards, the authority within the jail, because they have another agenda that you are not aware of, to ensure cooperation. The guards are rarely coercive; they just engineer situations in which desired outcomes may occur. The bachelor and his family functioned as privileged prisoners, enlisted by the guards to act as their hand within the jail. As a participant, I could either try to decide what was real or not, or accept that I would never know.

What ends up happening is that the layers of reality become so convoluted that it is impossible to distinguish between genuine or staged actions, which is production's intention. A planned or facilitated action may spur fifteen different legitimate reactions, which in turn spawns fifteen over-exaggerated reactions and fifteen other sincere ones.

During the taping of the show, production's agenda for eliminations seemed arbitrary. However, after watching the show, their contrivances became clear. In the interests of creating a show that would appeal to a broad audience, production reinforced sexist and racist stereotypes.

Production often accomplished this by being able to fall back on the idea that some of these women may not have "really been there" for Frank. The entire cast came on the show to be on television. However, the women came under the most scrutiny for being famewhores, and the successful contestants were just better at cloaking this.

Out of the original fifteen contestants, there were only two black women, one Asian woman, and one woman of mixed descent. The remaining eleven women were white. The four women that were finalists were of Italian heritage, like Frank.

The first few episodes were spent weeding out the women who didn't fit Frank racially (all non-whites had been eliminated by the fourth episode). Jenny, the last of these eliminations, was by far the most shocking and telling of production’s biases. At the elimination ceremony, Frank exposes slightly risqué pictures of Jenny that he found on the internet. He says to her, "The bottom line is Jenny, I just don't think you’re here for me."

Jenny is unbelievably beautiful, kind, smart and educated. Despite all these positive qualities, Jenny could not have been an appropriate match for Frank because she is black. However, Jenny couldn't have been visibly eliminated for this reason, nor was it really possible for production to find anything else wrong with her (such as with other girls: a ditzy demeanor, lack of chemistry, Frank's mom doesn't like her etc). For production to be rid of her and claim her as an unsuitable match for Frank, she had to be exposed as a famewhore. Some of the final contestants had equally racy pictures of themselves on the internet, and this was not used against them during eliminations.

Tammy, a Vietnamese woman whose second language is English, took a rough beating as well. In her last episode, Frank claimed that he had trouble communicating with her and eliminated her. Tammy was spared the shame of being called a famewhore, but was blatantly stereotyped as the show's only Asian woman. In an interview, another contestant proclaimed that Tammy was a Cup of Noodle while Frank was spaghetti and meatballs and that these two dishes don't mix. With these interview interludes, production worked to reinforce ingrained notions of what kind of people belong together. For starters, people of different races shouldn't mix.

After the removal of the women of color came the elimination of women who were sexually lacking and/or immature. There was Christi, who was eliminated for being "too young," and for supposedly still "hooking up" with her ex boyfriend, Renee, who failed to capture Frank's attention with a whipped cream surprise and tacky saloon girl costume, and myself, who was lumped into the "just friends" category.

Then there was also an extrication of women who didn't fit with Frank culturally. Within the final six women, one woman from Minnesota was eliminated for being too "white trash" and another woman from Tennessee was eliminated for being "too nice." Neither a supposedly culturally backwards Midwestern woman nor a genteel southern woman would be right for a brash Italian boy from New York.

The final two women were two native New York Italian women who also happened to be friends before the show, Cathy and Kerry. Kerry had received a glowing edit the whole way through. Kerry knew how to carry herself; how to be sexy but not slutty, how to be kind without appearing fake, how to be smart without seeming pretentious.

Kerry was also the good girl. She helped her friend Cathy when she got too drunk one night. Kerry also refused to go all the way with Frank in the basement. Cathy on the other hand received the "slut" edit. Half way through the season we learn that Cathy was sneaking into the basement to have sex with Frank. She may be the only woman on a reality dating show to admit to having sex with the bachelor. Time after time, we heard about Frank and Cathy's "amazing" physical connection. The viewer was left to wonder if that was all they had.

I saw Frank form a bond with both of these women. However, Frank could only choose one, and like Brett Michaels and Flavor Flav, he chose the good girl over the slut.

The slut tag is incredibly detrimental. Cathy didn't have sex with Frank to stay on TV or to make him like her. Cathy had sex with Frank because she wanted to. The show reinforced the idea that women should save themselves for the right man, and that women with strong sexual desires are inadequate life partners. Instead of being viewed as the self-assured and sexually powerful woman that she is, Cathy was merely viewed as a slut.

This is made explicit by the over-emphasis given to the sexual side of their relationship. In the final episode, Frank's parents confronted Cathy about her behavior in the house and asked her if her parents would be proud of what she had done.

Cathy is someone who is more open about sex, and honest about her own desires. This is one of her most refreshing characteristics. However, in the eyes of many, this is seen as trashy.

I am not advocating for Cathy to have beaten Kerry in the end to send a big win to all the women out there who like to have sex with whomever they want whenever they want, but rather, I am advocating for the dichotomy between the slutty girl and the good girl to be dismantled. Cathy and Kerry were purposefully kept until the end, not only to capitalize on the drama of them being good friends, but also to illustrate this simple dichotomy to viewers.

From casting to editing, production reinforced preexisting negative stereotypes of women as a device to uphold an illusion of reality. Production asserted itself to weed out the "famewhores" from the genuine women. Ironically, production made artificiality the subject matter of the show, masking their own manipulation. Viewers focused on the fakeness or the easily consumable stereotyped behavior of the women on the show rather than the way production controlled their viewing experience.

Ultimately, this was impossible for the viewer to know, because of production's orchestration that creates sincere, false and over exaggerated actions and reactions from its contestants. Viewers are left to rely on what they do know, stereotypical judgments of people based on limited information.

i've known about young internet fashionista, writer and persona bebe zeva for about three years. my familiarity with bebe began by following her on hipsterrunoff.com, a blog by anonymous ”carles” whose writing has evolved into an honest assessment of the way the internet has changed the music industry through the exploitation of hipster, or niche, culture interests. bebe appeared as one of carles’ first true fans, genuinely reenacting the meme machine that carles described being essential to building any band or person’s “personal brand.” carles often showcased freshman bebe to show the way in which a younger generation was becoming increasingly savvy about their own imagery and persona, and understood how to use the internet to perform themselves as a means to gain an audience.

at first, bebe started off as just plain cute and endearing.



carles continued to use bebe to promote his blog's "personal brand" over the next few years. he enlisted her to be the model for his clothing line of tshirts. as bebe grew older, she tried to be cute, and that was cute.



more recently, bebe has begun to make a name for herself on her own, independent of carles, through her blog (which has gotten her featured in teen vogue and seventeen magazine), tumblr, as a contributor to thought catalog, twitter and lookbook (where she currently has one of the top rated pages). she tried to be sexier, more grown up (and succeeded). and that was cute too.



i dont mean to be patronizing, but my guess is that many women can recognize bebe's progression as similar to their own. we realize, at some point, we're not kids anymore, and we have to make the transition from garnering attention by using our cute kid appeal to one where we use our new found sex appeal. while attention isn't everything in this world, it certainly is something. and in this age of attention currency, the better you are at getting attention, the more one tends to believe their existence is validated by it.

barbara kruger wrote "I shop therefore I am." and while that may have been true for the 80s, today's slogan would be closer to "I am watched, therefore I am."

i was fortunate enough to have met bebe zeva back in march, when she came to nyc for the screening of a documentary made about her by writers, husband and wife team, tao lin and megan boyle. bebe was outgoing, confident, funny, smart, super cute, fashionable, articulate, self aware and so on. she was also self conscious, vulnerable, searching for approval and unsure of her burgeoning adulthood. pretty typical feelings for a teenage girl.

bebe was kind enough to extend an invitation to me to the screening. a successful camwhore in her own right (and i hope she knows i use that term in the highest regard) bebe has become a mysterious figure within the internet community. we are inundated with her photos via hipster runoff, her lookbook and her fashion blog, but videos from bebe are rare. we have never seen her talk or act. if this documentary was an extension of her online "personal brand", what would she give us? i was excited to see it. i hate to fetishize her internet celebdom, but bebe had created such a potent presence on the web, that those were truly the feelings i felt.



as a film, the documentary was pretty bad. tao lin and megan boyle are mainly known as writers, whose detached voices often illustrate the loneliness and disillusionment many young people feel about our current era of internet interactions and increasing police state. they are also known for their internet exploits, which have made them notorious as famewhores. Bebe Zeva, The Documentary is another piece of content that furthers their aims of showing lonely, hip youth culture in a provocative manner. but what tao lin and megan boyle as amateur film makers did correctly was choose an engaging subject (bebe). and she carried the show for 90 minutes. that’s not easy.

in the documentary, tao and megan meet bebe for the first time at her home in vegas. they go to tao and megan's hotel room, to the mall, meet up with bebe's friend travis, briefly back to bebe's house, drive around, swim in the hotel pool and so on (not necessarily in that order).

along the way bebe talks about her life being home schooled, her isolation, her philosophy on life and the internet and her strange family situation. the best moments are when bebe talks candidly about her unusual life, which is focused on her internet presence, or makes comments that shows us she knows exactly how ridiculous it is. bebe says "I understand that life is bleak and you can either kill yourself or donate yourself to social commentary. I'm just a brand. I'm just shit. All of my content regarding my personality is available."

but what is most refreshing about bebe is how much she feels things. tao lin's brand of illustrating today's youth involves an inordinate amount of apathy. despite being thoroughly engaged with the isolating system that is the internet, bebe shows little of it. she is fully aware of the "bleakness" of the world but still feels immensely towards her friends, people she encounters irl and online and especially towards her idols, tao and megan.

the most disturbing parts of this film are when tao and megan project their own apathy onto bebe. for example, at one point tao instructs bebe to open her mouth and he fills it with whipped cream until it covers her whole face. then he smushes it into her hair. at another point, tao tells bebe to steal a bebe brand clutch which she does. bebe goes along awkwardly, especially at first. obviously uncomfortable but eager for tao and megan to accept her.

after the screening i decided i enjoyed getting a glimpse into bebe's world but was also slightly disturbed by the way tao and megan treated her. however, i became upset when in the week after the screening i read this review of it on the vice blog.

the author focuses on (and criticizes) bebe's obvious teenage insecurities, using them to discount her successes, her insights, her openness. certainly i agree with the undertone of the review, that we are a society obsessed with teenage girls, but to place the blame on the girls themselves seems misplaced.

in the same month that rebecca black became the most despised 13 year old for making a silly music video and a jersey school superintendent called out young women as being the central problem for today's schools, the vice review of bebe's documentary showed that as a society, we love to villainize teenage girls (duh).

obviously, society's problem is not teenage girls, rather what society views its problems to be often become fully embodied by the teenage girl. in other words, the teenage girl has become a mirror, in which we see everything we believe to be bad about our culture and ourselves—excess materiality, a desire for fame, vapidity and so on. as a young woman it can be close to impossible to avoid taking on these qualities when our society values our beauty over our intellect and the services we can provide rather than our contributions.

if we blame young women for their seeming superficiality, desire for fame and unstable emotions, we can assign them fault for a society which perpetuates over sexualization of them and violence against them. these young women are just "asking for it" aren’t they?

what is unique, special and hopeful to me about bebe zeva is that she has achieved a level of success on her own terms, carefully crafting her persona, rather than happening into viral fame like rebecca black or boxxy. however, this requires a level of skill beyond most teenagers. the author of the vice review, who accompanied bebe in her cab ride home after the screening, wrote about bebe at one of these crucial moments in a young woman’s life, when one decides not to simply blend in, but to stand apart and it is obvious bebe felt vulnerable for how she put herself out there. rather than focus on the gross displays of control and manipulation that bebe was subjected to during the making of the documentary, the reviewer focuses on bebe's ambivalence about the experience, assigning her guilt for it.

all too often teenage girls are thrown into the limelight to benefit whoever is tossing them in there. my hope then, is that people will stop hating teenage girls and instead focus on questioning the attention economy that creates insecure girls in order to exploit them and then shame them.

recently (altho like 1million internet yrs ago) some1 "anonymous" conducted an interview with natacha stolz (aka spaghettio vagina squirt girl) and posted it on the rhizomes.

in case u are like completely out of the loop, back in august a video of natacha stolz performing her piece "interior scroll" went viral. in the video natacha tries to open a can of spaghettios and then smears some dirt on her chest/boobs while speaking gibberish and then she cuts her pants crotch open and goes into her vagina and then spaghettios come out. then she got trolled really hard by 4chan/hipster runoff etc.




obvi, as a "feminist" who went thru "finding myself" in my college years as an art student, i am a fan of natascha's efforts and see a bit of myself in her. i too went thru a period of silly shit like drawing a puppy on my nipple with lipstick and making it bark and like putting glasses on my vagina and having it read luce irigaray and this was all necessary to get to where i am now, which is being a microfamerresearcherfamousontheinternet performance artist. altho obvi my best work is still to come duh.

my point is a lot of people hate/have hated on natacha whereas i see her journey as an emerging feminist spirit commendable. growing up as a young lady today, we are taught that girls and boys are equal, that everyone has the same opportunities and you can do/be anything u want if u just try etc etc. but unfortunately that is still far from the truth! a part of coming of age for a woman (especially us feminist minded ones) is figuring out what does my body mean to me—to others?

these r topics i see natacha addressing. pretty courageous shit considering how ashamed women are made to feel (or simply reduced to objecthood) at any expression of sexuality or even simply assertions of being a feminist (feminist= whiny bitch who can't get laid/are lesbians or we are just lazy and have no skills cept for complaining).

so anyways i was excited natascha got a chance to speak! yay…and not just in garbled talk like she did in her video, but in real words..and on rhizome!@!!

before the interview anonymous person discusses why they think natacha got trolled so hard.

"… it was the label on it—art—and the work's perceived demographic—hipsters—that crawled under people's skin."

anonymous interviewer is right…it is the label on the work as art that got ppl all riled up. however—it is this fact only in conjunction with the sexual and unusual nature of the work, by a woman, and using feminist tropes that truly inspired the hatred/trolling.

"Why do you think the piece touched a nerve?

I think people are still uncomfortable with women's bodies. It's offensive to people to see woman touch her body the way I do in that piece.

I was thinking more about people's idea of what art is supposed to be—

Well, of course there’s that too."

amen, natacha.

anon believes natacha got trolled because she made "bad art" or at least art that ppl didn’t like. anon goes on to talk about how art is a matter of taste, and ppls taste vary and what the "art world" decides is good art can be full of political implications because WHO is deciding what is good/bad is super loaded.

what anon is maybe hinting at and what natacha is grasping..is WHY didnt ppl like natacha's art? why not like spaghettios comin out of a vagina vs not liking a really terrible color field painting? why do we accept this crap as acceptable contemporary art….



(sean scully….yea im sorry but i just dont care. maybe u coulda been relevant like uhm 60 yrs ago?)

and not natacha’s??

ok ok i get it, there is a long history of painting as being art—but there is a history of women using their bodies in art too! albeit relatively recently…ie the works of art from which natacha named hers after (both 1975, semiotics of the kitchen and interior scroll, luv u carolee/martha)

AND the internet is savvy/knowledgable enough for this dialogue. just look at their acceptance/critique of marina abramovic’s the artist is present documentation on flickr. another huge performance art meme but one that was not met with so much hatred or disgust (altho def laughter..but it was kind of funny…but a lot of art is funny, especially when it is trying to be all serious) even tho marina was using a contemporary medium (live performance), like natacha.

the truth is—despite the advances made by the feminist artists of the 70s and even the more or less mainstream knowledge of their work, viewers (men and women) don’t want to take seriously and would like to dismiss a woman using her body in a provocative or weird/gross way as being just well…silly and immature. it’s like we're supposed to "wise up" and be better smarter women artists by either 1) pretending sexuality, specifically our sexuality, doesnt exist at all (that we’re like better than our sexuality) and we're all neutered motherfuckers or 2)exploit our sexuality in a way that other ppl get pleasure from (like taking sexy pics/sexy paintings of ourselves nakey…and if you’re an old/fat/ugly lady…well you dont really have that option and it is going to be 10times as hard for you to “make it”).

are these old arguments? yes duh but like…these biases still exist despite advances and despite thoughts that like the playing field is even now or whatever.

perhaps the quest in finding our own unique womanhood is a step in maturity but when one takes an alternate path (like natacha or myself) we shouldn't be met with hateful criticism. those are the mindsets that need to change and that natacha is working to fix—which is why i am a fan!

when i was in my junior year as an undergraduate sculpture major (i kno rite..hard to believe i made shit at one point) after making one of my first series of short feminist inspired videos (because this was around the time i was discovering that work) in which i used my body sometimes in bizarre and perverse ways i was met with the criticism from some of my peers that i was just a stupid feminazi making silly girl work.

to me, this said more about that dude's feelings about women than my own work, but this is why i have continued making work as a silly feminazi. because women have a hard enuf time out there trying to fit in to what we think we’re supposed to be like that if i get out there—do my crazy ass shit and come out ok—hopefully more women will be inspired to do the same. and that is exactly what natacha is doing. and we shouldnt condemn her, patronize her or taunt her but rather see her work for what it is and be able to gain something from it—despite our ingrained notions of what good/bad art/woman is.

we have this idea that art is supposed to show us like subtle beauty in the world or some shit (for example, lots of ppl were posting this feel good line on their FB walls recently via jonas mekas "Art is here so that everything could become more beautiful and more subtle.") and that art is supposed to be produced by someone with great skill and be super ambitious, or expensive, or big or something. and that is all fine when it happens like that but it shouldn’t have to. art can and should be messy, haphazard and a bit lost at times because that is how we will get to new/interesting ideas. it is not a matter of GOOD or BAD art but being able to gain something from what it IS.

im not defending/attacking natacha's work. i am simply questioning the response to it and asking people to seriously think about why her works offends them so much (beyond the fact that it was "bad" or “its been done before” because thats not really getting at anything). my guess is they will discover they have serious notions/beliefs about how they think a woman (specifically a woman artist) is supposed to act.

as natacha says "everything is shit"
ditto…jk

i came across boxxy in january of 2009 while personally entrenched in the darkness of youtube, deep in the midst of my research as a camwhore. i came to her a bit late in internet time but was able to catch up on her story and was just in time to witness the downfall of this queen of /b/.

immediately, i was fascinated. first because she had brought down 4chan (if only temporarily) and started a civil war amongst them. and also because i related to her. i had gone through a few periods of being trolled by 4chan and was advised by anon fans to ignore this attention or it would get worse. i began to see my experience, boxxy's experience, not as rare occurrences but as becoming more and more the norm for young women on the internet. i wondered why were personas, like boxxy's, such a big deal to 4chan?

even though her story is over two years old, the boxxy phenomenon is still the most relevant meme to date (sorry rickrollers) because of the way it highlighted an extreme dichotomy of opinion on the internet. the question here is not HOW boxxy started a civil war amongst the btards—because she herself had very little control over this situation— but what was it about boxxy that got 4chan so riled up?



boxxy's reign reflects a shifting paradigm in our culture that has to do with how the internet is changing the traits we value in people. the internet has fostered a sense of openness by allowing individuals to self broadcast. however, the boxxy dichotomy here is that many users fear this ability is leading to the "feminization" of our culture.

this feminization comes out of the idea of the "camwhore." it is a female trait, and as one user on urban dictionary defines it, a camwhore is:

Originally defined as girls who take infinite pictures of themselves being, the term has now also included girls who broadcast live or vlog on a regular basis (adapting to newer technology.)

Girls, usually of high school age, broadcast themselves in live and recorded video in an attempt to be showered with compliments by online strangers in a chat or comments section with things like "omg you’re so hot." This method allows the girl to feed her incredible natural insecurities without having to be face to face with online stalkers.

during boxxy's reign 4chan became divided, mainly between "oldfags" who hated boxxy because of her camwhoreishness and "newfags" who loved her because of it. oldfags (who, for our purposes, let's say are btards over 16 and newfags can be under 16) saw boxxy's camwhoriness as a troll, by putting herself out there in an outlandish way to gain attention. oldfags saw her methods in releasing videos as calculated, and intended to continue to cause disruption within 4chan. they also couldnt understand why someone would want to act so idiotically so publicly. she must be desperate. desperation is gross.

boxxy's presence perpetuated this desperation beyond herself and newfags were validating it by loving her, affirming her presence by defending her. she set off a storm of other young btards to act the way she was acting— like a camwhore, without humility, without shame. even haters fueled the boxxy fire by posting their own camwhoreish videos.

the most traditional of the oldfags simply wanted all the hype around boxxy to end. this was the only way to end the "cancer" that boxxy was spreading. an anon group, CBCR, posted some videos after they hacked boxxy's YT account in which they wrote:

we are not happy with what you have done to us. the cancer which you have spread across the web is now over. never create another video again.

for oldfags, the wars, the comments, the videos, in the end, reaffirmed her existence as a camwhore. all attention is welcomed by the camwhore.

this attention seeking is disgusting to oldfags, who take pride in attributes like humility and dignity. but for newfags, these are becoming outdated values. why be humble and invisible when you can show the world who you "really" are? dont hide yourself—flaunt it. people will love you and as a result will come to love others like you, and love themselves more as a result—so long as we are all open.

the newfag way is utopian in this sense. older values which suggested that women who act this way are "whores" and men who acts this way are "gay" begin to disappear as we all embrace our inner camwhore and are willing to be more open. this openness could potentially lead to the disappearance of biases toward race, gender and sexual orientation, as we all come to realize—hey we are the same—-we have tons in common (like a love for lolcats).

a new sense of social transparency could be nice. however, what we are getting on the internet, is not exactly transparency. it is a performed transparency or more precisely, individuals performing with the intention of seeming transparent in an effort to cultivate love/attention.

are we all really so goddamn lonely?

no, i dont think we are. but we, especially as women, have been taught our self worth comes from the validation from others. and now, in a culture where being watched validates ones existence (via fb, yt, reality tv, etc), this mindset is spreading to men as well.

newfags fought for the normalization of camwhore behavior for both genders. oldfags resist this tendency and believe in a sense of personal privacy. but as we all know, personal privacy is quickly disappearing. and while oldfags are trying their best to stop this seemingly inevitable outcome by championing anonymity, newfags embrace it by capitalizing on this system for their own benefit. the only problem for newfags is that unfortunately, the promise of capitalizing on this system is far larger than the reality of it. and what has ended up occurring, and what will continue to occur, is that people will continually be harvested for their information, their creative output and their ideas without much in return, except for the promise of microfame.

and unfortunately, as we continue to fight for this limited amount of attention awarded to a few people, we will continually need to resort to standard tropes of attention getting. for women, this includes using our bodies and/or our sex appeal. boxxy was a rare exception to this. her infiltration of a forum whose mantra for women is "tits of gtfo" is especially noteworthy because she showed newfags how to cultivate attention without resorting to dehumanizing tactics. in the newfag's dream—that is the utopia.

As an artist, my utopian goal is to educate both men and women in subtle and affirming ways on the power discrepancies that still exist between them. I shed light onto where these power structures still exist by putting myself in the midst of them and reporting back my findings to the curious public.

In my dream world, everyone would realize how far we have to come in this power struggle. In this dream world, to solve this problem we would have pleasant debates in which our minds are mutually opened, and we learn from one another. Sometimes, I am fortunate enough to see this happen.

But that is not the reality in most cases. Sometimes, the way men treat me, or their comments on Facebook, Twitter etc infuriate me. I can’t help it. The love in my heart and desire to educate them disappears. I just want to troll those guys so hard. So hard they don't even know where it's coming from or why they suddenly feel so shitty about themselves. And this is how I came up with frilling. Or, flirting as a form of trolling.

If a troll is defined as someone who posts deliberately provocative messages with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument (via urban dictionary) then a frill is someone who posts deliberately provocative (but a different kind of provocative no?) messages with the intention of causing maximum sexual tension. By creating and controlling this sexual tension, the frill demands the disruption takes place on her own terms.

If trolls fuck with you by playing on your insecurities that you've been societally conditioned by (your looks, your sexual behavior, worthlessness, etc) or their dominance over you as a man, the frill defuses this by fighting fire with fire. The troll's fire is his supposed superiority as a man. The frill's fire is her supposed ability to control men via sex. Just as the troll has fully embraced his role as asshole man to get to you, the frill embraces the role of evil temptress and uses it to silence the troll and humiliate him.

There are a wide variety of frilling tactics that can be used. It depends on the kind of troll you're dealing with. For a nasty random troll you could try a sexual comment combined with an insult like, "Ooo baby dick needs a handjob." To a guy who thinks he deserves sexual access to you because of some cute selfies you posted, "Why don’t you come over tonight and I’ll fuck your dick so hard until it bleeds?" Or for a more mature/mansplainer troll, "I'm sorry you think this conversation on my Facebook wall about getting more women into art institutions is irrelevant. Why don’t we get a coffee sometime and discuss it in a more intimate setting?" (And never cash in on those offers, obviously).

By fighting fire with fire, you're denying him the upstanding and respectful woman you know he is trying to break down. You’re letting the troll know he can't get to you. You are in control of your sexuality, not him. You’re crass, you're dirty, you have no shame and you wear those qualities proudly. You're changing the rulebook on him on what you think it means to be a woman. The frill uses the troll's weapons against him, throwing intellectualism out the window and engaging with the troll on a base level. The troll cannot sexually defile you, because you are telling him female sexuality cannot be defiled.

Male charm is a power used by men to manipulate others. When women use this charm, it is called flirting, and all the sudden it is unfair. But women can't be allowed to flirt! How unfair, for women to use their sexual advantages over men. I'm sorry—isn't this what men do all the time? Use their power as a man to get what they want? A woman should be able to use her charms to control crazy trolls, annoying mansplainers and other power hungry or otherwise obnoxious men. Is it "right"? No, but it at least levels the playing field a little tiny bit.

The trolling of women is so commonplace; we sometimes take it as normal. You can't stop the trolls. Freedom of speech. As women online, we just have to accept the trolls. It is similar to accepting street harassment while walking the streets of an urban city. It's going to happen, it's an inevitable truth.

I don't believe in those inevitable truths and I admire the people who are working on changing those truths such as Hollaback!, Stop Street Harassment and the bravery of someone like Anita Sarkeesian. But these processes take a long time. In the meantime, for dealing with the douchebags out there, frilling makes you feel powerful in what often seems like a hopeless situation. Let's shed the shame that is often associated with being a woman who flirts to get what she wants. We're not "cockteases". We're just frilling.

Now you might be saying, but not all women can frill. Only young, beautiful women can frill. That is completely untrue. The idea is not to make men sexually fall for you. The idea behind frilling is essentially sexual confidence. Tell yourself, I am a woman who deserves love and sex in the way I want it and when I want it. When I frill a troll, I'm manipulating him into thinking he's sexually desirable as a means to pacify him and to let him know, he does not determine my value as a human, I do.

You should also frill in a way you feel comfortable with. Maybe you just give a little winky face. A small compliment. An innuendo. It can be hard to do when you're dealing with someone you find so repulsive, but such is the art of manipulation. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to get things to go your way.

To clarify, the frill is not someone who is giving into the stereotypical smiling, happy, pleasing woman. The frill is an absurdist in her frank sexual candor but also manipulative and powerful. She takes the pornographic fantasy of the woman who is willing to please and shoves it down the troll’s throat.

Frilling is fun, but it does not work for every situation and I recommend being aware of when it is appropriate and when it might not be. I would not frill a close male friend. I would not head into 4chan and just start raging. I would frill an anonymous troll in the Gawker comments, a man I'm not close with who is writing nasty comments on Facebook, or some dick who is just bugging me.

Frilling is not just for women, but for people who come under attack for having "feminine" qualities. I encourage men under fire from hyper masculine and aggressive trolls to frill as well. I suspect it will be equally as effective.

Is frilling problematic? Yes. The frill does not help with the stereotypes that all women are just Eve’s, evil seductresses, dying to get Adam to taste the forbidden fruit. And us feminists constantly struggle with getting men to see women as more than just sexual objects. Frilling will also not produce conversations or instances that will solve any deep issues between the sexes. But let me tell you, frilling feels so good.

There are instances in which I strive very hard to communicate with men and women why we must still fight the good feminist battle. But there are also times when I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle. And it doesn't matter what I throw at my opponent in terms of reasoning, statistics or feelings. I know I’m never going to change that dickheads misogyny against me, no matter what I lay on him. So, it's much more fun to fuck with him, just a little.

"The new economy relies on the assumption that individuality can be recovered from mass society through the process of individuation via customization… Crucially, this participation comes about largely through the surveillance process—hence the equation of pervasive monitoring with creativity and self-expression that is one of the hallmarks of the current generation."

-Mark Andrejevic: Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, 2004.

The popular embrace of surveillance presents a dilemma particularly for women, who have a history of problematic visual representation. We are living in an era in which we are more likely than not to be publicly represented in some manner. Through self broadcasting over the internet, the notion that female representation could change to offer a less objectified picture becomes a more viable option. However, the disciplinary control of surveillance surfaces in these democratic new media platforms. The women who self-represent often portray the same conventions of television, films, and magazines. The women watching those self-produced broadcasts in turn imitate those imitations, illustrating a cycle of identification and internalization of stereotypes, rather than subversion.

Additionally, places for women to occupy on the internet are limited. In certain areas, we are told "tits or GTFO". While in others we must not express our sexuality for fear of seeming like a "camwhore". We want to after all, be taken seriously. For a woman to be taken seriously, she cannot be seen as wanting sex or asking for sexual attention.

There is not much space on the internet to express ourselves sexually without avoiding extreme objectification. The goal is to create instances which begin to transcend this problem.

Why is it that sexuality must still exist separate from intellect? One who exerts his or herself in an overly sexual manner is rarely taken seriously. Within normative culture, the sexual mindset and the intellect operate in two different realms. We can admit we are both sexual and intellectual beings, but never at the same time. We know this separation intrinsically, which is why we have come up with phrases such as "he was only thinking with his dick". But rather than seeing them as two disparate modes of thinking or operation, they should be thought of holistically. Our brain and our genitalia operate together to help form our sense of self.

The internet is a place where for the first time (more or less) individuals are able to create imagery of sexuality in their own image and disseminate these images widely. We are also able to be part of communities who share our sexual interests without causing shame. The one-to-many hierarchy of traditional media no longer has to be the arbiter of normative sexuality, but can be figured on an individual level. Unfortunately, though, at the moment, as a collective force, we are currently struggling to create our own images while we remain slaves to the tropes of older models.

The internet did not create the patriarchal system that objectifies and humiliates sexual women but it certainly has had the ability to magnify it to the millionth degree. Pornography—a genre built on female domination and exploitation—is bigger than ever. Women attempting to create their imagery anew are drowned out by pornography that asserts women are objects.

However, while the internet has simultaneously intensified our existing problems, it has, as mentioned, provided us with the medium to fight back. My hope is that more women will take up a form they feel comfortable in, whether it be blogging, vlogging, producing, updating, posting, etc and express themselves in a manner they feel is demonstrative of their whole person.

*hugs*

It is late in the morning on this hot summer day but hardly any light finds its way into Mary's bedroom at her parent's house. The trees cluster around her window providing endless shade.

Mary takes off her sleep clothes and sits naked, carefully balanced on her swivel desk chair. She is ugly. Not so ugly you can't look her in the eye, but ugly enough that most people wouldn’t call her pretty, and they wouldn’t find her attractive. She’s been ugly all the days of her 21 years. She was a strange looking child even, with frizzy black hair, big clef chin and wide set eyes. No, Mary has never known what it feels to be beautiful. She would have to make a herself into a personality to get any of that attention that young women often yearn for.

One finger traces a straight path along her track pad from the bottom of the screen to the top. She clicks. They are waiting for her to sign on, for her daily 1pm show. Many have seen her old videos and have come to find beauty in her simply through familiarity. Or perhaps they like her because she is ugly, so they don’t feel so intimidated to chat with her, like a realistic conquest.

Mary begins every show with small talk. She tells them a little inconsequential detail of her life, to make them think they might know her. Today, Mary tells them about how she had soggy Frosted Miniwheats for breakfast and questions if anyone out there actually appreciates soggy cereal the way she does? Because it becomes soft enough to just swallow, without chewing and chewing can be hard sometimes.

In the chat, the men take her seriously and honestly wrestle with her question. No, they declare, crispy cereal is much more satisfying and chewing is often always worth the effort. Some dissenters agree with Mary and try to soothe her into taking her shirt off. Mary complies and begins the real show, the show she came online to do. After some short moments of touching her uneven breasts, she lifts both her legs and spread-eagles them on both sides of her laptop. She holds her wheelie chair down with the strength of her buttocks. She aims her webcam slightly down.

For the most part, Mary has gotten by just fine without being pretty. She has a good life. Family, friends, success in school, and she’s even had boyfriends. They would tell Mary she was pretty, because they loved her deeply, but she knew better.

Mary hears a creak outside of her door. Maybe her brother was home after all. She double-checks the lock on her door.

Mary had accepted her mediocre looks for so long she had forgotten about it really. Until one day she started a Tumblr. She would reblog things she thought were funny, important or politically disarming. Occasionally she would post a picture of herself, in front of her mirror, her iPhone by her head, her stare blank in concentration and nonchalance. And she liked doing it. It gave her a little thrill every time she posted one. The feedback was immediate. People would comment or favorite it. She felt, well, physically appreciated.

Mary knows today that if she can masturbate for half an hour she’ll make $50. In the fifteen minute lead up she makes half that so long as she can sustain enough suspense to get the men to fill up her tip jar, as a way to encourage her to get going. The real money is in taking a really long time to cum while staying wet. She is very good at cumming quickly so she must make an effort to go slowly.

The air outside is hot, very hot and very sticky. The humidity comes down on her parents' house like a force, a hazy cloud of wet impermanence. But inside she doesn’t feel the heat; the trees keep the house cool. Mary finishes her show, promises the men a show tomorrow and signs off. She dresses and heads to her car. She held on for 20 minutes today. She deserves a snoball with her boyfriend. No, not that kind of snoball. She wants softly shaved ice with flavored syrup. There is a wide variety of flavors.

In the car the air conditioning is on full blast and when she pulls up at the snoball stand her boyfriend David is waiting for her at a picnic bench. He has just gotten off work. He is beefy and his button down short-sleeved shirt is already soaked through with sweat. But it is OK, he tells her, because he has no air condition in his old Corolla and the slight wind feels nice in his thick black hair.

Mary hugs him and doesn't mind the sweat that rubs off on her chest and on her neck. It feels so good to be in his arms, she thinks. And I love him so much. He runs his fingers through her rough black hair and puts his thick arm around her waist. They wait in line and order one tangerine snoball with marshmallow topping and one skylite snoball. She treats him this time. The sun lays its thick afternoon rays on them, purring its light out far beyond the Baltimore suburbs. Up to Maine and down to Florida.

How was your day? David asks her.

Good. Woke up late. Watched TV. Same old.

Must be nice having summer break.

Yea, I love it. Too bad it's my last one.

And then you'll be like me, and have a real job.

Sigh. I guess so.

They drive back to her house and have sex before her parents come home. He wonders if her brother will be able to hear them. No, he is in the basement watching TV, Mary tells him. David kisses her mouth and all over her body and it feels so nice to Mary. He holds her very carefully but also firmly beneath him when he goes inside of her. He touches her down there while he has sex with her so that she is able to cum too. With David, Mary doesn’t have to put off her orgasm, she can let it happen whenever she wants and if David isn’t done yet she can have another one if she likes or she can just enjoy him enjoying her and she likes that a lot. Sometimes she catches herself performing, like she does for her show, but stops when she realizes what she's doing and how it’s not honest and isn't fair to David. Mary knows he prefers her real pleasure, whatever that might be, as opposed to her idealized pleasure.

Afterwards, they lie on her bed together, looking up at the baby pink ceiling. He hugs his body around her and she snuggles inside him. He can never know, she thinks. He will hate me. And I need him.

Is it cheating though, Mary wonders the next day. She takes out her favorite purple dildo from her closet and waves it in front of the webcam. It wobbles up and down with the promise of penetration. She hopes to excite them, to get them to add more to the tip jar. $10 is added instantly as the men in the chat type out their happy exclamations in anticipation of her masturbation. Well, Mary decides, I'm only having sex with myself, so that can’t be considered cheating.

After the session, one viewer, Bombsaway666 sends her a private message.

I have a proposition for you, it says.

Mary is listening.

I'll pay you five hundred for a more intimate video, something I can’t see on the site.

What did you have in mind?

True close-ups of your insides. I want to see you stretched wide open. I want a dick's eye view.

She's going to think about it. $500 is a lot. And it’s not like she was going to have to get butt fucked. Just show her inner workings to some perv. Who cared? It was all biology anyways, just blood and guts and cells and tissue. Might as well be her esophagus, it makes no difference.

Around the dinner table her parents have prepared a delicious meal. They serve their children, their babies.

Excited for your senior year? They ask her, they're eyes fixed, attempting to make this seem like an innocent question with no ulterior motive.

Yes.

Still going to be a painting major?

Yes. I love painting.

But what kind of jobs are out there for painters?

What kind of jobs are out there for anyone?

Her brother chimes in, you should be a drug rep.

But I hate traveling. Don't worry about me, I'll teach.

Teaching… you can teach with a bachelors degree?

Yea sure, at a private school.

Well you better start applying to those jobs now. I bet they're very competitive.

Silence.

Just remember, you're going to have to pay off your student loans.

After watching America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 with her mom, Mary goes into her room.

How do I know you'll pay me? She asks Bombsaway666.

Upload the video to me. When it's at 75% I'll put the money in your paypal.

Mary takes her webcam and places it on a stand just below her bed. She takes off all her clothes and sits on the edge of her bed. Using her hands she spreads herself wide open, so far open the walls of her vagina nearly enclose the lens of the camera, swallowing it up. She turns around and does the same with her ass.

My body is not a temple, she thinks. That is old hippy feminist mumbo jumbo. My body is just material flesh, just like anyone else's. It's no different. I'm not special. Our bodies are overvalued. I just want to stay healthy, that's all, but who cares about the rest? This isn’t the big deal everyone makes it out to be.

While she compresses the video she messages Bombsaway666 and tells him the video is ready for him.

I can't wait to see it. You're so hot. I can't wait to see you, your outside, your inside, your everything. It turns me on so much.

So you'll really give me the money? You have to put it in my paypal when it's at 75% or I’ll quit sending it.

Yes, of course I will, just send it.

They're using AIM, yes it is an outdated form of messaging but it's still the only place you can send a large file over a long period of time directly to a user for free. She begins to send him the file, watches the file progress bar go from 1%, to 5% and up from there. The blue bar twists and twirls in confusion. Is it moving or is it just an optical illusion? She can't tell. It is taking awhile and she gets impatient, staring at the screen. Her file is only 50mb but the status bar says it will take one hour. Damn technology, why is it so slow? It’s 2010, shouldn’t this shit be faster than this? 50 fucking megabytes, that's it, why can't it send already?

Now she has an hour, an hour to agonize over her decision. The internet of today isn't like the way it was when she was a kid. No one had videos, no one could send them over the information super highway, you were lucky if you could send a photo of yourself. When she was young, things were anonymous. But now, videos could spread in a second. What if this guy spreads her video on forums? Like 4chan? What if her brother sees it on one of those terrible porno sites he watches when no one is home? She didn't care if she sold her body for money, but will her parents? Will her grandmother be ashamed?

The trees outside are still in the summer nighttime heat. There is a mirror at her vanity table, a mirror on her bathroom door and a full-length mirror near her dresser, forming a triangle of mirrors around her. Mary looks around at her selves. They surround her, each comprising a different angle of her awkward face. She spins her head in a circle, looking for the best angle, but can't find one.

I need the money. I have no regrets in my life. I love myself. I am a good person.

She dials David's number. She makes a snap decision to lay everything on the line with him. If she was going to start making serious money, she needed to be forthcoming.

Hey baby, David says upon picking up.

Hiiiiii, Mary cooes.

What are you doing?

Not much. I miss you.

Oh yea?

Yessss….. I miss you too baby.

I have a question…well really I mean I'm doing something and I just don't know if I should and I need your advice err your perspective I mean I don’t know.

What's going on?

Well it's just you know I've been doing some webcam stuff, nothing bad, just stuff by myself, I mean I'd never be with anyone else, I'm with you, but I get a lot of money for just being with myself and so this one guy who watches me in the chat he wanted a special video and he said he would give me a lot of money so I'm sending it to him right now.

What? Baby…you cannot do this. You cannot send him that!

Mary is silent for a moment and thinks What has she done?

David's voice begins to tremble and then it booms. What's wrong with you??

I can't? But I mean, it's really no big deal. It's just a body, we're all just bodies, what does it matter?

Then David yells, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? ARE YOU CRAZY? DON’T SEND IT TO HIM. PLEASE DON'T SEND IT.

But why not?

HAVE YOU EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT THIS? WHAT IF SOMEONE SEES THIS? DO YOU EVEN CARE? DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT ME? YOU BETTER NOT SEND THIS VIDEO.

She wants to explain to him how it's not cheating, how sex and being sexual isn't such a big deal as society makes it out to be, but it feels like there is something stuck in her throat and she is getting hot, feeling very hot, hot like the Baltimore sticky air, feverish, crazed, she is dizzy and the panic starts to set in, her heart beats quickly and the pink of her room makes her sick, sick to her stomach and it swirls around her, not like an optical illusion but like a truth, one that hits her hard in the gut and she wants to tell him how wrong she is but all she can get out is, OK.

Ok, I won't.

YOU WON'T?

No.

She chokes this out and turns off her phone. She returns to her screen and presses the small X on the progress bar.

Bombsaway666: The file stopped sending. Will you send it again?

No.

Why not?

I don't want to send it anymore.

Don't you want the money?

No. It's not worth it.

Babe. Come on. You promised.

I know I'm sorry. I’ve changed my mind.

Ok. Well how about for $700?

No.

$1000. Final offer.

This really isn't about the money although I am flattered at your offer.

He doesn't respond. He has given up, she thinks. Or maybe he is pursuing another webcam girl. Mary's heart is racing and she lets it calm down. You were about to make a mistake, but now it’s over. David will still love you and you won't lose him.

After some time, she resumes her normal virtual activities like checking her Twitter and then her webcam inbox for flirtation notices. Sure, making private videos might not be the best thing for her to do but maybe she could still do her webcam show. It was far less personal and intimate after all. And much less likely to be spread over the internet.

Mary feels better that she didn't go through with it. And she is happy she told David about it all. She hates hiding things. She wants him to know everything about her so he can love her still for who she is, not who he would like her to be.

But who is Mary? Is Mary a webcam whore? Is she a good girl? Is it in Mary’s nature to perform sexually for men or is this a put on? Can both possibilities exist simultaneously? No, no…you can’t act like a slut and have respect as a woman. No Mary, it doesn’t work that way. And how long could she really keep all this a secret?

She told David, yes, but he will still be mad. She will have to call him back and address the situation.

I didn't do it baby. I’m sorry.

Why would you even want to do that? I don't understand.

I don't know….I guess it's just an easy way to make money. And I don't think societally it should matter socially as much as it does. I want to define my own sense of morality, you know?

Ok but babe, I am your boyfriend. You think I want other guys looking at you like that?

I don’t understand why it matters if they do. I’m not having sex. Men look at me on the street all the time.

But they don't see you naked!

So what? My body is just a body, we all have them.

I can't believe you don't get it.

No I do. I just don’t believe in it.

Well, I do!! So you better too!!

Mary loved him so much. Her heady realizations didn’t matter. The men who watch her show don't matter. Only David matters.

Ok baby. I won't anymore. I love you.

I'm a good girl, Mary decides, I’m not a camwhore. Is it worth the money to hurt her boyfriend? No it isn’t. How could Mary be so selfish and naïve? I want to be a good person, Mary thinks. I want to treat people right. I don’t want to think only of myself.

Without any warning to her male acolytes, she deletes her webcam account. So far, no one seems to mind. It is like Mary never existed. Will any of them miss her, she wonders. Will they think she’s died tragically, or had a baby? Will any thought even cross their minds? Probably not, she decides.

After dinner the next evening, Mary watches The Bachelor with her parents and her brother.

Oh, these girls are so terrible, her mother decries.

Mary asks her why?

Because they are just so desperate for attention. And why are they always so dressed up and have so much make up on? Can they ever relax?

Her brother interjects, Mom, they’re on TV, duh.

Well, her mother continues, I would like them better without all that makeup.

Yea, OK Mom, well I think you’re the only one, her brother states.

Mary watches the rose ceremony and thinks she is so glad she stopped doing her show. Her mom would hate her. And now she can be good and honest.

In the morning, Mary lies in her bed, trying to recall her dream from the night before but it, sadly, has slipped away. David is at work, but she sends him a loving text message, so that he knows she has changed.

Without her show to occupy her afternoon, Mary is bored. What did I use to do with all this time, she thinks. Watch TV? Go on Facebook? Hang out with friends? Mary can't remember so she decides to go for a run. The heat outside hasn’t broken so she heads to the basement and sets the treadmill for thirty minutes.

What a nice run I'll have. And then I’ll feel so great. Mary watches How Do I Look while she runs. I wish I were a stylist on that show. I would give everyone a unique style.

After she showers she sees what her friends are up to on Facebook. Not much, Mary thinks, but she clicks on links to a few good articles. She feels glad she read something today.

I have it, BombsAway666 messages her on AIM. She had accidentally left her account logged in because of the events of yesterday. Mary didn't mean to stay logged in and gets angry at herself for allowing him to be able to contact her again.

Have what? She decides to respond. She is a bit scared.

Part of your video. Nice, real nice.

What are you talking about?

You're such an idiot cunt. You think I'd really pay to see your ugly pussy? I ripped the half you sent me before you canceled using a VLC player. So now, you'll send me the rest. Or else I’ll post this video everywhere.

I don't believe you.

Within a few minutes Mary receives an email from TashRenedy@yahoo.com. It is another alias of BombsAway666. He attached the first half of the video she made to prove he wasn't lying. She opens the video and watches. She looks at herself naked and awkward, moving the webcam closer to her vagina and then taking her vagina lips and spreading them wide over the camera. Before the webcam is lost inside of her, Mary catches a glimpse of her own face, grimacing back at her. Her insides are dark, nearly impossible to make out. The video ends on a shot of Mary passing the camera around back to her butt.

Mary cries. I didn't want it to be this way, she thinks. Thank god he didn’t see the anus part and Mary cries some more in self-pity. I don't want to be on the internet anymore!! She screams this statement in her head. But Mary knows it is too late now. There are virtual traces of her everywhere. And even though she never used her real name on the webcam site surely at some point someone will be able to connect it to her Facebook, her Twitter, even her old Tumblr. How did she get so entangled in this mess? She’ll never be able to get out now. David will hate her forever. He will never trust her. No man will.

In her head, Mary knows her body is not a temple, despite the concessions she has made for David, but to BombsAway666 it is. And he would like to desecrate it. I thought I could avoid humiliation by declaring that there is nothing to be ashamed of. But Mary is about to be humiliated, because no one else agrees with her.

I'm not sending you the rest of this video.

Oh really? So you're fine with me posting this everywhere?

No. How do I know you won't post the full video once I send it?

You have my word. No one wants to see this ugly ass except me anyways.

Ok, I'll send it.

But Mary doesn't send it and she has no intention to. She wants to see how long she can string him along for, making him think she'll send it to him soon. Over the next few weeks he asks her repeatedly to send it, with vague threats of dispersal. She promises again and again to send it soon. But Mary never does. Eventually, she never signs onto AIM again and gets a new e-mail account so he can't contact her again. She doesn't tell David, she wouldn't want to worry him. She can take care of his mess herself.

The mid Atlantic heat burns the back of her neck as she moves into her senior year dorm room. I'm not nearly far enough away from home here, Mary decides. She spends months waiting to see if a video of the inside of her vagina pops up somewhere, for some annoying boy in her dorm to give her a funny look, for people to whisper. But it never happens and eventually Mary mainly forgets, assuming if it does exist out there, it is lost in the infinite world of amateur porn. And she is thankful for the eternal depths of the internet, for the millions of other videos other young women like her have posted, or have posted of them, of their own ugly bodies, so that hers doesn't seem special or unique in any way to anyone who might happen upon it.