Some Arguments

on Fran Lebowitz, Emma Chamberlin, and Stacie Orrico

I saw an article floating around recently about Fran Lebowitz, on why Gen Z is obsessed with her, allegedly. I thought I had a problem with Fran, but I think my problem is with the article. My main problem is that it sort of annoys me when people refuse to evolve with the times and are praised for it. She doesn’t have a phone, computer, or typewriter and gets applauded for it. An enigma! The article says that it makes her “extremely present” because of this. Does it? Wouldn’t that imply that before everyone had a smartphone they were also extremely present? To be present doesn’t mean a lack of things distracting you. To be present is a skill, a thoughtful act that takes intention and desire. I have no idea if Fran is present. That’s my problem with Fran. I don’t seem to know anything about her at all, because she doesn’t seem to let anyone in. I mean, really in. She talks a lot and makes a lot of jokes, but I can’t ever seem to get to the core of her heart. She keeps it guarded from even herself. People want her answers because they think she doesn’t care about anyone or anything and has it all figured out, but to me, she just looks like a closed-up clam. There is no vulnerability to her, no bruised shades of the heart. She’s all stone and tough and seems to not need anything from anyone. Where’s the humanity in that? How is that even New York? I get the stance against celebrityism and striving to be an influencer, but with her great disdain for it all she fails to see the humanity in it too. I think there is a lot to discuss with everyone's desire to be famous, and while I don’t think we should aspire to it, I cannot fully shame someone for wanting it. I think dismissing it takes out any progressive conversation we can have about it. I think it’s a natural desire in our times, even a form of escapism. It can feel unjust that some get to lounge in expensive clothes while the rest of us have to figure out how to cover this month's rent. So I get the inclination. Fran talks about indifference to her neighbors. She doesn't want to know her neighbors and doesn't want to be reached, but she loves talking, or maybe being heard. Is Fran a narcissist? Or just self-absorbed? She seems defiant, stuck on not changing, growing, or reflecting. Though I realize this falls on deaf ears and I am maybe making Fran’s point, when she says, “It’s not that I don’t care what people think of me as a person. But I don’t care how they feel about what I think. So you don’t agree with me – so what? It surprises me, in general, how angry people get because they don’t agree with someone. What difference does it make?”

Fran Lebowitz

I guess I’m split down the middle. The thing is Fran sort of reminds me of my aunt. My aunt never married or had kids, and has lived alone most of her life. I spent a lot of time with my aunt growing up. Like Fran, my aunt never really evolved with the times and was defiant in not keeping up with the rest of the world. She gets those burner smartphones, but she still gives me verbal directions every time I need to drive her somewhere new, even though I tell her not to worry about it I’ll put it in my GPS. She’s not as bad off as Fran I guess, she gets on eBay and buys her clothes, and she has certain channels she watches and certain news outlets she reads, but for the most part, she is pretty oblivious to how the younger generations live, how even most of her generation has evolved alongside everyone else. And the thing is if you don’t evolve you get left behind. Maybe the people who opt out don't mind being left behind, maybe they enjoy walking slowly while the rest of us are speeding by in cars, and sometimes I do too. Sometimes I yearn for that or envy others who seem to not need the world as much. But not everyone was built to survive like that. And I don’t know if it's inherently good. Every time I talk to my aunt she talks to me like I'm 8 years old, I somehow have not evolved past that age in her mind. Because somewhere in the time I was growing up the world was too. She used to write me letters and share photos in person and slowly everything began to transition online and she resented that. She thought it was all moving too fast, but that’s where I was, just a young girl moving collectively with her peers and the booming technology. And she stayed behind, leaving a giant gap between us. And now that there is no more letter writing or sharing of photos, we have lost a sense of common ground. She is stuck in the past, and I, the future. Where is the present?

While I was thinking about Fran and this article, I was on TikTok and saw a few videos discussing Emma Chamberlin’s podcast, and almost all of the criticism was saying, she needs to go to college. Now this is strange, I thought. The irony of people telling Emma to go to college is that they are the same people praising Fran who also dropped out of high school and didn’t go to college. For context, I never watched any Emma Chamberlin YouTube videos when she was coming up, or even now. But I became aware of her when she was doing interviews at the Met Gala and I have seen articles and videos about her rise to fame and how “relatable” she is, or was.

Emma Chamberlin

So, the facts: She is a 22 YouTube star with a net worth of 22 million. She has a podcast called, “Anything Goes”, where it looks like she posts about every 3-4 days. They are short (20-40 mins) musings about life. 

The opinions: People are making fun of her because they are saying her musings are “dumb” or “obvious” or “things I've thought about in college.” I listened to a few of the podcast episodes to see what everyone was talking about. They are what you would probably expect a very wealthy 22-year-old YouTube star would muse about, though I would say she is a lot more self-aware than a lot of famous 22-year-olds. They aren’t revolutionary by any means, but she’s 22. What more do you want from her?

What I disagree with is the notion that to muse about life, you must do it in a structured setting like college. Some have even gone so far as to say it's dangerous to do it without the guidance of teachers and peers. It’s usually these same people who also believe musings should be left at school once they graduate. So to consign it to only college is limiting to everyone, and should be encouraged within and without the confines of college. Of course, Emma Chamberlin is maybe saying some “dumb” musings that feel big to her right now. We all did. Some of us wrote them as Facebook statuses or tweeted them, or kept them in our circle of friends and journals. Others, including myself, embarrassed ourselves by sharing our musings with our teachers in class or talking to older coworkers. We might not have launched a podcast talking about them, but who cares?

Self-portrait 2023

I think the problem is that we equate success with too many other things: smart, mature, put together, empathetic, and the list goes on. When it means none of those things necessarily. I also assumed since Emma had all this money and accolades surely she must be significantly smart and mature. But how self-aware can you be at 22? I can’t even remember all the dumb revelations I had at 22 that I thought were profound, but the thing is, they were profound for me at that age and allowed me to progress further. Most of these people criticizing Emma are her peers, so they cannot even see themselves yet. They cannot see how young they are, they cannot yet see how “dumb” their revelations are compared to their future selves. But it's natural! It's the natural progression of life! You can only get to the deeper revelations by first experiencing the more “obvious” ones. This is another thing I struggle with; “obvious” revelations are subjective and based entirely on our perceptions and set of life experiences, how much work we are putting into ourselves, and how much critical thinking we are doing. What's obvious to me may not be obvious to you, and vice versa, which is both the beauty and annoyance of life. I think it's life's way of humbling us. And hey, critical thinking is a skill. The more you do it the better you’ll get at it.

To me, Emma’s podcast feels like an audio diary. A way for her to just dump out what one would normally journal. I do think it’s interesting that she is essentially doing a live audio journal, I suppose this is the evolution of the journal in the digital space. Some argue that it's unhealthy for her to only be talking to herself about these things and could benefit from some feedback. If she is taking the audio diary approach there’s not an inherent need for feedback. That’s the point of a diary, it's just your innermost musings, but since she is sharing it in a podcast form, I would argue that the comments are her feedback. To have musings alone at first, or at all is not wrong or bad, and does provide personal growth. Processing these thoughts be it through talk or written word is healthy. Did we forget that talking to ourselves can provide revelations and epiphanies? Look I'm not saying being famous and rich doesn't have its cons. Trust me that's another argument I could go on about, it is deeply flawed and makes you out of touch, but it seems like everyone wants to hold Emma to a different standard than the reality of who and what she is. And they are also forgetting a lot of the great thinkers, and writers didn't go to college, and often sat in their bedrooms pondering the point of life with no one around.

I believe in allowing people to express their thoughts, even if it's “dumb” or “shallow”, otherwise it builds shame, which leads to secrecy which further stunts their growth into developing themselves. Like everything, we have to start somewhere, and like most things, the beginning is always messy, sloppy, mistake-ridden, often dumb, and maybe silly, and as we do it more or get older, we fine-tune all the things we have been working on over the years. But we have to start somewhere. There is much more learning to be done outside of the classroom, on the ground, with real people, working real jobs, living real lives. So yes, I believe in higher education, but I believe it should never start and end with college. It should never only be associated with the classroom.

Left/top: Emma Chamberlin, Right/bottom: Fran Lebowitz

We can draw comparisons of what life on social media vs not has done to us intellectually and emotionally through Fran Lebowitz and Emma Chamberlin. We can also draw comparisons on how these two like to talk a lot. I still believe it’s the intentional work we put behind ourselves that counts for anything. To be without social media won't be inherent intellect and to be with social media won't be inherent ineptness. 

The more I read about Fran, the more the word happenstance comes to mind. Fran doesn't have a lot of radical thoughts or choices and most of what we think are radical thoughts she just happened upon them. In interviews she often makes it a point to say that a lot of what people attribute to her “radical thoughts” were not moral choices for her, they were just something she said or did. Happenstance seems to be so common, or are we saturated with examples of it online because of viral influencers and people like Emma who practically stumbled upon fame? 

In her Shondaland interview in 2021, Fran said, “I guess the most un-American thing you can talk about is talent. Talent is not something that you can get. You can't get it by working hard, you can't buy it — the worst thing in the United States is when you can't buy something. You can't work toward it. You have it or you don't have it. It's the most democratic thing actually because it's just randomly sprinkled throughout the population. You can't inherit it. We know that many children of people who are writers become writers. I always think, bad choice, do something else. Sometimes they succeed. This is true in every art form. There's nothing less inheritable than talent. That makes it, to me, the most American thing.” 

Stacie Orrico

I guess I have been thinking a lot about talent, success, and what our measures for that are. Hayden and I were taking a 30-minute drive north to pick something up when we started talking about the state of music and where it was going. We were talking about trendy music, the levels of success, and how sustainable they are. If this was a bar graph we were only talking about the people at the top of the bars, forgetting whole valleys in between. Hayden pointed out to me that I was only grabbing the top success stories and blanketing everything around them. “You’re forgetting about all the other thousands of artists out there that aren’t in that sphere but equally successful.” Later that evening I was scrolling through social media and came across an old video of Stacie Orrico. I used to love her! Her songs “Stuck” and “There’s gotta be more to life” used to play on repeat on my boombox. Even back then, I felt like I had discovered her. I didn’t know many people who loved her so she felt like a little indie star before I even knew what indie was. The post I saw was an old clip of her music video “Stuck”. I clicked the comments and everyone was asking where she was now, as if to no longer be “famous” meant she fell off. I got curious and found her page and saw that she had started some business, after stepping away from the entertainment industry. I read her testimony, about how she was 17 singing these songs someone else wrote and she felt like a fraud, and preyed upon in a room full of adult men. She is now married with 2 kids and still sings sometimes in Georgia, usually in a jazz group of some kind. Pillars of success, I thought. All we consider “success” stories are the people at the top of the bar graphs, the Emmas, and even the Frans of the world. But what about the people in the valleys? With as much success, maybe less known, they have their privacy, and their lives are still enjoyable because they are not so out of touch with the rest of the world. They are still grounded, connected. I suppose fame was always for Fran because she never wanted to be in touch with the world. And the only thing I see or hear when I watch Emma Chamberlin's content is sadness. “I’m not excited about anything. I just feel like I’m surviving.” She seems so sad and lonely and lost. To be fair, I think we are all a little sad, lonely, and lost when we are 22, but to be doing it in such a grown-up world seems scary. 

Maybe that’s what they mean by selling your soul for fame. It’s the “simple” notion of trading your life for access and money. Which one will you be on the bar graph of success? I think I rather be in the valleys and keep my soul.

Selfie with Gordy