“S,” I called from the bathroom. “I need you to take a picture.”
“Sure.” He smiled at me as I walked, still barefoot, toward the bed. “Well, don’t you look pretty,” he said gently, opening the camera on his phone.
“Thanks.” I felt my cheeks grow hot. When S and I first met, I’d been embarrassed by my relationship to Instagram—by the desire, at that point in my career, to increase my followers so I could continue getting paid by brands to promote their products. I hated having to ask him, as I sometimes did, to take my photo to make that happen. It took me six months to get over my shame and call upon him to participate. While cheesy, it paid the bills. The ability to make a living off my own image shouldn’t be cause for embarrassment, I figured.
I moved to the center of the view, facing the water, and placed my feet on the metal ledge of the sliding glass door, just a few inches from the downpour but still dry and out of the rain. “Thought we should get this out of the way.”
“Look at me,” S instructed, and I did, feeling the fat of my ass fold into the back of my leg, my expression blank.
“Got it,” he said, passing me the phone.
I posted the image, unfiltered, knowing that people like seeing a picture they might have taken themselves. I captioned it “Hi. This is my butt in @inamoratawoman”： simple and to the point. I made sure to add tags so followers could buy the suit straight from the app.
We rode to the breakfast buffet on the bikes provided by the hotel. I put on S’s tie-dye tank top over my bikini and one of the hotel’s rain-resistant hoodies over that. As our sneakers pushed against the pedals, all we could hear was the soft tapping of raindrops hitting thick, oversized green leaves, and the crunch of our rubber tires against the white sand. We raided the opulent buffet, two plates each, piled high with everything from dim sum to French toast. I smirked at S as he examined my ridiculously full plates, and we sat down at the table. I pulled out my phone and opened Instagram, holding up the screen as I crammed a piece of toast into a tiny jar of jam.
“Five hundred thousand in an hour. Not bad.”
“Damn, that’s a lot,” S said, chewing on a piece of dim sum.
I nodded and ate my toast, watching the sales of the bikini rise. We’d made a decent amount of cash and added three thousand new followers to the brand’s account, and the US wasn’t even awake yet. I didn’t bother to check the count of my own followers. I didn’t need to; I knew that whenever I posted something sexy, I’d lose some of them. The next day, however, without fail, a wave of new followers would arrive.
I’m still addicted to the sensation I get watching a post go crazy with comments and likes on Instagram. Casually snapping a picture and uploading it for 28 million people provides a pretty serious high. There’s a thrill in knowing that folks all over the world might be talking about what I posted. It’s quite a rush to create a tidal wave like that whenever I want.
For better or worse, I’ve always been drawn to overexposure. Making myself big gives me a sense of security. Be the loudest in the room, the most opinionated, the one in the most revealing dress. Do the most. Being big also means becoming a target. But by inviting people’s gaze and attention and therefore their attacks, I have a sense of more power, less vulnerability, since I’m the one putting myself out there. Or at least that’s how it feels, some of the time.
I was getting paid to take this vacation with S. A large hotel conglomerate had just opened a new luxury resort in the Maldives. The hotel cost $400 million to build. The island was owned by some super-rich guy from Qatar, we learned from the general manager, a French man wearing all white who came and found us at breakfast. The hotel group needed to generate awareness, and having me visit and tag their account and the location was valuable to them. For this kind of advertisement, I was able to make a shit ton of money just by vacationing here for five days and posting the occasional picture.
The rain stopped just long enough for the ten-minute ride back to our room. As we cycled slowly over the wet white sand, employees in starched uniforms paused their raking to hold their hands together up to their chests and bow their heads slightly. I nodded and smiled in return.
The fuzziness I’d felt earlier while watching the storm from our bed was developing into a full-on headache. I lay down and poured myself a big glass of water, unlocking my phone to check my post again: 789,357 likes. I moved my thumb down the screen and saw the number refresh. 791,476. I looked over at S, who was scrolling through Twitter. Even in this exotic setting, we could not stay away from our screens. The backs of my eye sockets throbbed. I felt a distinct impulse to throw my phone into the turquoise ocean in front of us. Instead, I buried myself in the poofy white pillows.