I Have A Lot of Thoughts About Bella Hadid on Her Birthday

Due to the sheer volume of fashion accounts that flood my Instagram’s explore page, even now as I renew my commitment to quarantine attire, I became aware as soon as I began my ritualized morning scrolling in bed that today’s model and megainfluencer Bella Hadid’s twenty-fourth birthday.

It seemed almost obligatory for all influencers and publications to pay their dues to Bella today. Did they fear excommunication if they didn’t? Some fashion outlets, who I dare not name for a deep sense of embarrassment on their behalf, went as far as writing articles labelling Bella, the child of a $200 millionaire, a “street wear queen.” This sentiment which reads as both tone deaf and ignorant, also makes me laugh, loudly. We all remember that video of Bella muttering the word “homeboy” while in front of a sneaker wall, publication who shall not be named. You’re not fooling us.

I understand her allure, even if now our love for her is no longer genuine, but expected.

When she first hit the modelling scene as an edgier version of her sister, the girl-next-door Hilfiger muse, Gigi Hadid, I became entranced. Her face still full, her eyes still human and less feline, I became laser focused on her career. Bella’s face still reflected her heritage and didn’t yet read as an Instagram collaboration.

Slowly, I fell out of love with Bella. As her Instagram follower count grew (she now sits at 34 million followers) her body slimmed drastically and her face migrated upwards. Her nose transformed, stripping her face of the uniqueness that entranced so many of us. The unique outfits represented on her accounts and in paparazzi photos and her “fuck-you” attitude seemingly ceased to exist all at once, leaving me with whiplash. Where was the cool yet still clearly rich and socially elite influencer-socialite-model hybrid I came to know and love in spite of my pure hatred for the upper classes?

Although the previous paragraph will leave many assuming that I hate her, I don’t. I hate the machine that both established and changed her. She’s the perfect example of Hollywood’s total and complete rot.

Bella both benefits from and is oppressed by Hollywood. Without nepotism (her mom’s a model and ex-reality show star, her dad’s a millionaire real estate developer, her sister’s a supermodel, her ex-step dad’s a music producer and executive, etc) Bella’s career would be but a dream. She’d be but another girl wearing nikes and bike shorts taking photos with Kith ice cream.

Nepotism’s currently renewed its fifteen minutes of fame. After making its way to the white house through the demonic vessels that are Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, nepotism’s decided it no longer needs to linger in the shadows, so Bella’s safe.

I’m tired of looking up and seeing celebrity’s kids on billboards. I can’t escape constant reminders that the American dream is dead. Reminders that the class you’re born into is the class you’ll die still inhabiting. Unless you know someone, unless you’re rich, now, you’re fucked.

Bella reminds me of the barriers I, and millions of people like me, face. Talent, merit, and diligence no longer exist as employable currencies. Parents, friends, and siblings with power and influence matter now.

My hatred for capitalism and elitism aside, Bella also invokes a deep sense of empathy in me.

Although Hollywood and the fashion world have begun, at least on a surface level, to acknowledge and remedy the deeply entrenched misogyny and rape culture that sits comfortable within the foundations of both industries, they’ve yet to address the worsening of unrealistic and harmful beauty standards forced upon women, like me, like you, and like Bella Hadid.

Paradoxical and reactionary, as women’s liberties have increased, the policing of their beauty and their bodies have also increased. Bella Hadid’s an example of a young girl who was devoured by the beauty machine. The patriarchal machine’s sat upon her chest and bent her body to its will.

At only 24, it’s speculated that she’s had numerous facial surgeries. Eyes have been upturned, noses chiseled, and bodies slimmed. She no longer looks unique, but like the vaguely ethnically ambiguous carbon copy of every Instagram influencer’s dreams.

I no longer feel mad when I look at her, I feel an aching in my chest. Bella feels like my little sister. I want to protect her. She was a child, barely finished growing, when society decided her face and her body weren’t enough.

What’s worse yet? Millions of young women and teenage girls glance upon her posts, willing their faces to look like that. Willing their bodies to magically invert. What they don’t know is that they’re not looking at a picture of Bella Hadid, but at an edited picture of patriarchal beauty standards and the internalization of the male gaze.

Bella’s complex. She exemplifies American societal rot, Hollywood’s elitism and decay, and the physical effects that the worsening of beauty standards has on America’s young women.

I can’t quite figure her out, but, who really cares? There’s more important things to delve into now anyway.