How I Escaped the Diva-to-Pick-Me-Girl Pipeline

I woke up on the morning of April 22nd, 2023, with the unquellable urge to vlog. I know — that’s the most gen z sentence you’ve ever read.

I was lying in bed in a Coolum Beach share-house, alone after another post-panic-attack slumber. At the time, I lived with four boys. They were in a band, and each of them had their own careers outside of it. Me on the other hand — I had just quit my 9-to-5 design job after only three months and started working part-time as a “safety supervisor” at a high ropes course in the Australian rainforest. It was… dare I say… incredible.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in my head about what all my housemates were doing — and what I wasn’t.

I was a straight A student (or in Australian university terms, a straight HD student), aced the SATs blind, and graduated both high school and college with a near-perfect GPA. I’d been creative my entire life and received honors and rewards for my art left and right in school, and yet all of my surf-and-sun-obsessed chiller housemates seemed to be miles ahead of me in both the career and creativity department. Measures of success I had gotten used to were, as it turned out, meaningless.

A strange thing happens when you live with roommates for the first time. You suddenly start perceiving yourself — and what you do all day — from the point of view of someone watching. No one warns you how vulnerable it feels to simply ~live~ in front of other people. Maybe my hyper-awareness of the eyes on me is partly due to my OCD, but it really lit a fire under my ass to figure out better ways to fill my time.

It wasn’t all negative motivation, though. Hearing my friends jam in the garage every night after a full day’s work was one of the best feelings ever. I adored their friendship and the fact that they still wanted to collaborate on something creative when I’m sure they were exhausted from their manual labor and office jobs. It was clear that, in those moments, it didn’t feel like work to them. Beers and instruments and pedals and amps were their wind-down tools — and they just so happened to be part of their second job.

Apart from how much I genuinely loved their music, I loved watching their dynamic, too.

One night, I got home from the hospital after surgery, and the boys had set up a comfy spot on the couch in the garage for me to lay. They played me a private show while I was drugged up and barely mobile. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life and I will never forget it.

I wanted to close my eyes and enjoy the moment, but my brain went somewhere else. I wondered where my own creativity had gone. Surely it was still in there, but how had it taken me this long to realize I wasn’t doing a blessed thing with it?

I wanted to do what they had done. I wanted to build something tangible with all the creative energy I’d just let aimlessly swirl around for years.

There was only one problem: wtf should I make?

I sucked at singing, I hadn’t touched an instrument since my last piano lesson in fourth grade, I’m not patient enough to paint or draw, and honestly, I was never that good at my graphic design job either. I was a good employee — good at following directions and building efficient sales funnels (riveting) — but a particularly talented graphic designer? No.

You know how they say that if you can’t figure out what you want to do with your life, you should think back to what you loved as a kid?

Well, my sister Maddy and I used to squeeze together into our dad’s office chair, type movie scripts on the desktop computer, film with our home-video camcorder, and edit the footage in iMovie — and later, Final Cut Pro. (Yes, we asked for Final Cut Pro for Christmas at the ages of 7 and 11.)

You might be familiar with some of our work: Corn the Movie, Whipped Cream Madness, and, of course, Shnoogle — a weekly web show that never made it past the pilot.

I loved the spotlight at that age. There’s a video of Maddy interviewing me after a “concert” I put on from the living room stage (the coffee table). She says, “So Phoebe, this is your first time performing without background singers. Why do you like singing alone?”

To which I reply, “Because then the audience is ONLY looking at me.”

Double Leos gonna double Leo.

But somewhere along the way, I learned that being a “center of attention” kind of girl was not cute.

Girls in high school got shat-upon for being loud at parties or “dressing for attention” in class. I, myself, caught wind of some comments about my heavy makeup and less-than-conservative outfits freshman year. And while I am a Leo, I’m the kind that despises attention if it is even 1% negative. So from that day forward, I swore I would change my image.

Pretty dramatic response to one comment, but alas, I could not let it happen again.

I stopped wearing makeup to school, eased up on chasing boys, and became the chill friend who stayed mellow at parties and played pong with the guys while the girls giggled and took pictures. Ah yes — the classic diva-to-pick-me-girl pipeline. Our generation’s most feared overcorrection.

And the crazy thing was, it worked.

I no longer heard my name grouped in with bad high school press. I was soft and well-liked and genuinely thought of myself as an introvert. At the time, I really believed all of that change was just “maturing.”

That is, until the year 2023.

My boyfriend at the time — a member of the aforementioned band — noted that his mates all loved me and thought I was “super chill.” A comment that would have sent me to heaven when I was 16. But this time, it left a funny taste in my mouth.

The connotation of the sentiment was that their girlfriends would get soOoO mad about things that I would just laugh off. But I didn’t feel proud; I felt defensive of all the other girls who are rightfully bothered by things and get eye-rolled for it.

That seemingly insignificant comment led me to recall my image-overhaul. And it kinda terrified me. Had my incessant need to be liked completely overtaken my natural instincts? My personality? My way of being in relationships?

Lord, beer me a backbone.

So, as I lay there on the musty couch, hospital bracelet still on and live music fading into the background, I wondered if I’d be further ahead in my career if I had never stifled my own temperament. If I had let my camera-loving nature remain an innocent idiosyncrasy instead of treating it like a flaw that needed fixing.

Now, even in the moment, I knew not to spiral too far. I’m sure some of my personality changes did come from natural character development. But the day’s pondering made me want to push back against my belief that wanting to be seen is inherently obnoxious.

I never felt that way about anyone else.

I was an avid YouTube watcher and adored following along with my internet friends. In the back of my mind, I was always imagining how I would do it if I had my own channel — what I’d talk about, how I’d want to make people feel, what music I’d use, how I’d want everything to look aesthetically. I thought it would be a ball.

But in my head, it was cool when they did it and narcissistic when I wanted to.

Fast forward to the morning of the 22nd. My boyfriend was out of town, so I woke up alone. I saw my reflection in the giant paneled mirror leaning against the wall opposite my bed. Eyes barely open, I looked at my grown-out pixie cut, my puffy eyes and sunburnt cheeks, and my bunched-up pink Djerf Avenue bedding (pre-toilet scandal).

Then my eyes landed on the camera sitting on my dresser — a pretty nice Sony mirrorless I’d bought a few months prior for yet another failed side hustle.

‘I’m going to vlog today,’ I thought. And I knew I had to act quickly before I changed my mind.

I grabbed the camera, got back into bed, and filmed a clip of myself yawning and stretching. I filmed my windows, my mirror, my T-shirt, my bedhead. I took advantage of the boys being at work and brought my camera into the kitchen. I filmed myself making the smoothie bowl I had eaten every day for six years.

When it came time to talk to the camera, it took me 14 tries.

I wanted to speak, and I didn’t even think I was nervous, but it felt like someone had turned the volume down on my voice. Every take came out quiet and timid. But for some reason, that day, there was no other option. It never crossed my mind to stop filming.

After finally forcing out one complete sentence, I decided it would have to be good enough. I needed to get on with my day and keep filming.

I filmed my beach swim. I filmed myself editing photos for my dancer friends. I filmed my lunch. And by the afternoon, I was telling the camera a ten-minute-long story.

It became my journal.

From that moment forward, it was understood — at least internally — that I would be filming and posting on YouTube every single week. I had no reason to believe this wouldn’t be another short-lived idea. I hadn’t exactly proven my commitment to myself.

But somehow, there was a calm, quiet knowing that it would stick.

And it did.

I lost myself to teenage scrutiny — a sad cliché, really. But on the morning of April 22nd, 2023, I got my voice back.