Dear Gossips,

By now, probably, you’ve heard of or participated in the #10YearChallenge. And by now you may have heard of or participated in an angsty debate about how the #10YearChallenge is basically just a reason to show off how much better people look now than then. Which … I mean…isn’t that the whole point of social media? It’s not like social media wasn’t vain before. Of course this challenge is about vanity. Which is why the vainest butterfly in the universe did it best.

I f-cking love her SO much.

Once in a while, and more often than you think, I’ll get an email or a tweet from someone all like, ugh, why do you like Mariah Carey so much, she’s so full of herself. Ummm…yeah. AND?! They’re ALL full of themselves. They just front like they’re not. Take this, for example:

Is this really about time flying when you’re having fun? Or is actually about how she hasn’t aged at all, how good she looked then and how amazing she still looks now? Nobody’s sending me an email today, though, bitching about how Reese Witherspoon is annoyingly full of herself, like Mimi. Please. At least Mimi comes by it honestly.

Which is more than I can say for…me. I picked out my photos for the #10YearChallenge a few days ago. Had it all laid out, ready to post, and I look good in the pictures, obviously. Haven’t we established by now that social media is a platform for civilians with celebrity urges (everyone, in other words) to flex that muscle? And then I couldn’t pull the trigger. Not because I’m not vain. I’m vain AF. It’s because I was worried about looking too vain. And that’s vanity too, non? Like those people who don’t own a TV or watch TV who somehow find ways of mentioning that they don’t own a TV or watch TV because they prefer “real art” like books and museums and classical music. They’re vain about being above television. They’re vain about not being trendy. They’re not trendy for the sake of not being trendy instead of, you know, just legitimately enjoying books and museums and however you choose to define “real art”. It’s vanity about not having any vanity. And I guess it’s all about being seen, or how we want to be seen. Which is part of identity and our preoccupation with who we are or presenting who we think we are/who we want to be – are we more obsessed with it now, or has it just always been like this?

Mimi, for sure, has always been like this. Mimi has consistently denied the existence of birthdays, the need to walk, overhead florescent lighting, flying commercial, weather-appropriate clothing, daylight, and green at Christmas. In that sense, in her vanity, in her extremely over-filtered existence, she may be one of the most authentic.

Yours in gossip,

1zplay