Challenge Accepted!

by Celeste Barber

It’s fun. And it doesn’t stop there. I’ve been sent some pretty fantastic fabric thongs for a dog that I don’t have, and I’m still holding on to a vibrator that is anatomically impossible, because I’m not a quitter.

  But it’s a tricky game, isn’t it, my fellow fancy-for-no-real-reason influencing colleagues. Do we receive the gifts and then give a shout-out? Or do we stop looking like arseholes and no longer film ourselves opening gifts from people we will never meet, gifting us things that we and our followers can’t afford?

  Why do we do this to ourselves, you guys? Why do we torture ourselves into thinking that our followers want to see us indulge our own egos and film ourselves opening stuff?

  There are some exceptions, though—I mean, I’m not crazy! Like, if my bank calls me and says they will waive our mortgage or car payment for a month in exchange for me filming myself opening an envelope from them, then I will be filming the shit out of that and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because you’re not the boss of me. But lip kits, or $1,400 boots, or those teeny-tiny sunglasses that cost more than that necklace that old lady on the Titanic wore, people don’t need to see me opening this shit. We are smug enough as it is, running around getting free accommodations and invited to fancy lunches, all because we’re big online.

  Let’s all make a pact right here and vow that we will stop filming ourselves opening gifts on Instagram, or if we have to because we are contracted to and it’s our only talent, let’s all pinkie-swear to be better at it. Let’s have a few #sponsored wines and pretend to be shocked and surprised about a gift that we have made our manager and agent hustle for for six months.

  And while we’re on the subject, why are we getting these gifts anyway? I mean, we already have everything we need and everything that anyone wants: followers #blessed. I really think companies need to be throwing the free stuff around to people who need it, the forgotten brothers and sisters of the world, the ones who work really hard and get no credit, like Rob Kardashian or that Hilton brother.

  Anyway, babes, so good to chat. Looking forward to seeing y’all at the next event where our faces are the same and we only look at each other through a screen that our dads pay the bill for.

  Best,

  C x

  The One Where I Became an Anti-Influencer

  It seems that anyone can get paid to do anything these days. And I mean anything.

  Gone are the days when I was a kid and adults I knew would have three jobs, working as a part-time schoolteacher, weekend vet, and every other day a dental hygienist. These days you can pick some lint from your belly button, blog about it, and all of a sudden you’ve got an office and three staff members working for you because you’re the highest-paid “belly dissection guru” in the country.

  There’s a character on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills who is an accountability coach—yep, she gets paid to text “clients” to make sure they have done their daily workout or drunk enough water. She also claims to be the most real and down to earth of the housewives, something that Erika Jayne and I have a few things to say about.

  But it’s still a formula, one that I’m happy and feel obliged to break down for you.

  Step One: Be attractive.

  Step Two: Open a bank account.

  Step Three: Find different ways to hold things.

  Step Four: Get a degree in Photoshop.

  Step Five: Deposit money into newly opened bank account.

  Step Six: Repeat.

  I have posted around nine hundred #celestechallengeaccepted photos and been paid for fifteen. I’m not good at doing things that don’t feel right. I have the same approach to anal sex; it doesn’t feel right, so I don’t do it.

  I get approached by a lot of companies to promote their products. The main ones are detox tea, meal replacements, and diet pills, and I’m not interested. I’m not interested at all. I always respond with the same comment:

  “I don’t promote any products that make women think they need to look a certain way to feel a certain way.”

  Then I dance around the house naked to “Run the World” and feel like I’ve really done something good for humanity.

  The thing is, Instagram success seems to have a certain reputation to it. Insta models, influencers, they are all things that I’m not. I’m an actor and a comedian. I am so super grateful for this platform, but that’s how I see it: as a platform for my work, not as my profession.

  I’ve started hearing a lot of things about my “brand.” “Did you say no to that because it’s not in keeping with your brand?” Brand? What? No. I just think trying to sell weight-loss tablets to new mums is bullshit, and I don’t want to do it. Never mind selling out and ruining my “brand”; it’s just a mean thing to make women feel they need to look any different to be better at life.

  The internet can be a bit of a bitch at times. Not a fun Chelsea Handler type of bitch who encourages us women to support each other and keeps us accountable for our actions. It’s more of a Khloe Kardashian calling her mum Kris a whore type of bitch.

  The internet has the ability to make us feel nice about ourselves, but it seems it has more of a tendency to make us question how we parent or whether our above-knee area should be better defined.

  It has made the world a smaller place, to the extent that we know stuff that’s going on on the other side of the world instantly. Just the other day I heard that the queen was at Fashion Week. I mean, shit, you guys, if that isn’t revolutionary, I don’t know what is.

  But at the moment, Pornhub has greater success at making us feel good than bloggers do. I love that the internet has brought us closer and made doctors out of strippers. But it also allows haters to hate and feel as though we should all give a shit about what we are all saying at all times.

  I’m not a blogger—not a mommy blogger, a fashion blogger, not even a food blogger (although I think if I had to pick one, this would be the type of blogging I could really put my back into). I’m not a columnist, I don’t tweet a lot, and I try to steer clear of anything that associates me with anything other than being an actor, comedian, and writer.

  I have met a few bloggers—oh my God, do they have thick skin. “It’s part of the job,” they say. “I need to look over comments and listen to my audience.” They take on advice, then construct an articulate response that either takes into account all of what everyone is saying or polarizes everyone, thus gaining them more traction; then the cycle starts again and regains momentum.

  No thank you, I’m not at all interested in this world. I create content with the purpose of making people laugh and to maybe show how ridiculous the culture of celebrity and fame is. I’m happy that what I do sometimes starts conversations, but I don’t then scroll through the comments and respond to what people say or suggest.

  When I first started getting attention for my craft (Can you call taking your clothes off and taking funny photos of yourself all in the name of comedy a craft? Well, if Paris Hilton can plug her iPod into a speaker in Ibiza and call herself a DJ, then what I do is a craft, goddamn it!), I would read all the comments. All of them. It would be a family affair. The stepdaughters would scream out, “OMG, Sarah Hyland just started following you!” or “Paris Hilton just liked one of your photos” or “You’re not my real mum! I hate you!”

  Api started to take on a security-guard role. While we were lying in bed on our phones (romance ain’t dead in my house, girlzzz), he would mutter without taking his eyes off his screen, “Username Nutface255 commented, he wants to tap your fat arse; you should block him.” Or “Username Peacedream is really sweet and she wants to know where you got your dress from; you should let her know via a private message, babe, and maybe let her know how many colors it comes in.” My husband doesn’t do things by halves.

  Those were the early days, but now I’ve got a different attitude. I don’t read, and I don’t respond.

  If people want to look at my photos and call me fat, I mean I don’t love it, but I’ll get through it. If
people look at what I do and decide to call the people I’m parodying dumb, skinny bitches, they are TOTALLY missing the point, but I’m not their mum—they can self-regulate, and if living in a basement and being mean to people is how you go about your day, who am I to judge?

  I’m not here to tell anyone what they should think about what I do. I’m just showing you another side, a real side, hopefully the funny side. This is why I wouldn’t make a good blogger; I’m not great at interaction, and I don’t have the tools or energy to defend what I do, to explain what I do. I’m all about the doing and not the talking about the doing. As Amy Poehler says, “The talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.” I don’t want to talk about it—I want to keep doing it.

  So often I have people say to me, “You should use your platform to do THIS or THIS,” and I think, “Yep, you’re totally right, I should use my platform to bring attention to the inhumane treatment of sloths in captivity, but that’s not why I started this. I started this to make people laugh, and because I was pretty sick of feeling shit about myself for not feeling the way social media was telling me I needed to feel.”

  But then one day I decided to get a bit crazy.

  I decided to engage, and fuck me, didn’t it backfire. I did something nice, and the internet got mad. Really mad.

  I met this lady—let’s call her Charitable McCharity Face—through a charity we are both ambassadors for. McCharity Face is a blogger and “shot to fame” over years and years of writing and blogging. She wrote a hilarious post that resonated with people around the world about what it’s like to have sex with your husband in between spending time with your kids; then some online news websites got onto her and the rest is hard work and history. She also did some reality TV when she was younger, but we are all dickheads and do stupid stuff in our twenties. She’s really transparent with her community, and she looks after them as much as they look after her, it seems.

  On this particular day she was having a rough time at home with her now ex-husband, and she posted a photo of herself bawling on the floor of a hotel bathroom. This is her thing—she’s so open and honest that she allows us to see her, warts and all. She looked sad. Really sad.

  I get sadness. I’m sure there are a lot of us who do. It’s a bloody horrible, isolating place that is dark and cold. And on this day she seemed consumed by darkness and needed everyone she usually supports to know just how sad she was.

  This isn’t something that I do, but I totally understand why she and others do it. They set up a space, a community that’s safe and supportive, so when things happen to them personally they feel supported and safe within their village. I feel just as loved by my followers, but I think I have more of an audience than a village or community; I guess that’s the actor in me. Different strokes for different internet folks.

  McCharity Face is strong, seemingly fearless, brash, loud, honest, flawed, vulnerable, and above all real. Really bloody real, and now that she is in the public eye because of her realness, everyone wants a piece of her, and they will take whatever they can get, no matter the cost.

  Her community is full of misfit queens, and she has created a space where we are all OK with not being OK. So on this dark day I called on that community, her community, to help her out.

  A nice lady from McCharity Face’s community had contacted me, letting me know she had set up a GoFundMe account for McCharity Face if people wanted to throw in a few dollars so our friend could grab a bottle of wine or take herself away from the world that so frequently embraces or attacks her. Not a big deal, just what mates do. It was also a way for people to kind of give back to her, as she has been inundated with confessions from so many women that she singlehandedly talked them “off the ledge.”

  As I’m the self-proclaimed Beyoncé of the internet and thought I could get more reach, I did an impromptu Livestream letting people know what was going on and telling them if they wanted to be involved, then they could.

  Well, didn’t I prove to be a silly little internet Beyoncé.

  The abuse came thick and fast. It wasn’t the abuse of the traditional troll; there wasn’t any “you’re a dumb bitch—I’m going to cut your toes off.” It was much more sophisticated. They went straight to the heart. “My niece has a rare heart condition. You should be helping her, not getting money to buy someone wine.” Ouch.

  There were so many super-nice people who just jumped on board and either threw a few bucks at the campaign or left a nice “great idea” message. There were also people who did nothing; I like them just as much. Then there were the people who thought being rude and hurtful would get them their desired outcome.

  You know what they say about opinions.

  When McCharity Face saw what was going on, she begged me to shut it all down. This pissed me off. I had wanted to help out, and I know there was a huge number of people who wanted to do something as well. That’s the beginning, middle, and end of it. I was so annoyed that people then saw this as an opportunity to tell me who I can and can’t support. They had gone to the zoo and poked the bear, so I got all Bethenny Frankel on the internet.

  McCharity Face is incredible. She responds to people who write to her, gives crazy shout-outs, and is generally connected to her community. She makes me look as though I’m the forgotten middle redheaded cousin when it comes to raising funds. I know ambassadorship isn’t a competition. I’m not completely sure “ambassadorship” is even a word, but if it is, then she’s beating the tits off me. I know she and the charity don’t see it like this, but that’s because she’s winning. No winner sees anything as competition; it takes a loser to bring that to their attention.

  I closed the campaign, and McCharity Face and I decided to donate the money raised to Rafiki Mwema, a charity helping sexually abused children in Kenya that we are both quite heavily involved in. I did another Livestream and advised that the money was now going to a charity.

  People still weren’t happy, and unlike my fellow Rafiki ambassador, I didn’t care. I was over it.

  Ellen DeGeneres (Does she even need her last name? Would y’all know who I was talking about if I just wrote Ellen? DM me.) says that you should read the bad comments as well as the good. You can’t just take in the good.

  This is one thing I don’t agree with when it comes to Ellen DeG—oh, you know who I mean. I don’t take the good with the bad at all. I’m the boss of what I read, so if I want to read only the good, then I will. I have A LOT of honest people around me who are more than happy to jump at the opportunity to tell me when I’m shit, so I’m happy for my audience to blow smoke up my ass in the knowledge that the people closest to me—my inner circle, my lifeline—will be right by my side with a fire extinguisher to shut that shit down if it looks as though it’s getting out of hand.

  No matter what you do, there will always be people who don’t like it. I’m sure these are the same people who complain about the afternoon sun on a winter’s day being too bright or kids having too much fun at a park.

  I wish I could end this chapter with some amazing InstaQuote about rising above the haters, but I hate uninvited advice—both giving and taking it. I just think if it doesn’t involve you, don’t get involved.

  The Last One Part 1 (Celisticles)

  Twelve unknown facts about me that I’m sure you are all dying to know:

  Eight is my favorite number.

  #hothusband is nine years older than me.

  I was born and raised in Porpoise Spit (google Muriel’s Wedding for reference).

  In my sister’s speech at my wedding, we both cried over the fake dead brother we never had.

  I did three years of full-time singing lessons, and I still am pitchy AF.

  I danced as a cheerleader in two National Rugby League grand finals; Tina Turner performed the halftime entertainment and was amazing, and the Broncos girls were the bitchiest.

  I couldn’t care less about Game of Thrones.

  Friends is the greatest show
in the whole wide world, and if you don’t agree with me, you are the dumbest of all the dum-dums.

  I can’t read hashtags; I hate hashtags—all those words and letters squashed together into one long, dumb-sounding word are confusing.

  My cat’s breath smells like cat food.

  I never really got into Seinfeld.

  When I was eight my religion teacher told me if I couldn’t look at the sun for five minutes without blinking, I didn’t love Jesus.

  Four things that have been said to me as a female comedian:

  “You might be more successful if your content wasn’t so much ‘about the ladies.’”

  “Hey, I really like the jeans you wore during your set.”

  “You should get a guy to open for you—you might sell more tickets.”

  “You look great with your hair up.”

  Five things you can only say to people who are “your” people:

  “I’d trade two of my other friends to spend more time with you.”

  “I’ll come over, but I don’t want to talk. Can we just stare at the TV in the same room together?”

  “Can I borrow some undies?”

  “As soon as my husband dies, we are on!”

  “Your mum needs to cut her hair.”

  Six unofficial nicknames I’ve been called:

  Lip-Neck (as I have no chin, and I go straight from my lip to my neck)

  Fat Ricki Lee

  Gillette, “the Best a Man Can Get”

  Elephant (there is a character named Celeste in the Babar cartoon books)

  Phyllis (this is what everyone I speak to on the phone thinks my name is)

  Moleste (because it rhymes with Celeste, not because I was a super-horny teenager and was up for a dry hump any day of the week [awkward smile emoji])

  Four things that blow my mind:

  How Chris Brown is not in jail

  Cate Blanchett’s skin

  How Botox really works and doesn’t kill people

  People who can surf