Programming note: This newsletter will be off after Saturday, Dec. 21, and return on Monday, Jan. 6. It’s an unnerving feeling when an 11-year-old is better at applying makeup than you. As a millennial, I didn’t grow up with TikTok, so I missed the boat on “get ready with me” culture. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to document young girls who innately possess the self-branding skill set that I lack. We are a society obsessed with youth, but the young are ironically embracing beauty practices that put themselves on par with adults. That’s the reality I hoped to capture in my Op-Doc “Christmas, Every Day,” which features Peyton and Lyla, two preteen sisters and influencers on Instagram and YouTube. As I watched them hawk products to tens of thousands of online fans, I was struck by how playful the nature of their influence work is — and in some ways, how childlike it felt. They’d unbox various outfits, audition them for the camera and dance in front of a ring light to TikTok tunes. (This reminded me of lip-syncing to the Spice Girls at slumber parties in my youth, recording with a clunky VHS camcorder.) It was remarkable how seamlessly consumerist tendencies meshed with childhood fun. But making content is also real work. Every morning before school, Peyton and Lyla wake up an hour earlier so they can film and photograph their outfits, showcasing the free clothing they have received from brands. Social media content often has an almost manically rapid pace, with tempo-driven music and quick editing techniques designed for our shrunken attention spans. But the process of making it can be slow, repetitive and mundane. The girls often had to repeat monologues several times to get the right take, which requires restraint and patience not common in children. I affixed my camera to a tripod and forced viewers to sit through still, long takes — to endure in real time the banality that we often don’t see onscreen. By documenting the everyday reality of influence, I seek to examine cultural practices under contemporary capitalism that we perceive as normal. If ads for Botox and fillers are as commonplace as those for yoga, how does that trickle down to our youth? In the consumer-driven internet climate and economy we occupy, it’s no surprise that kid influencers exist. But as children spend more time online at increasingly younger ages — whether as creators or consumers — childhood itself is changing.
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