“There should be a law against this,” I said at first, sitting on my mom’s couch, hunched, scrolling. She stood over my shoulder, hands shoved into the pouch of her giant hoodie, and squinted at the screen. “Absolutely,” she said, then something about teen depression, on the rise since Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat started promoting impossible ideals. “Texas State has a good law program,” she said and wandered into the kitchen. I heard cabinets open, close. She wanted me to do a year at Houston Community College, then transfer. “Maybe you’ll grow up and write that law.”

Maybe. But the longer I looked, the more I wondered if image alteration might actually be empowering. For women, so often robbed of agency, was there some freedom in controlling how the world saw our bodies, consumed our bodies? My final project for that Photoshop course was my own image, edited every which way. A smile where there’d been a frown. Smooth skin where there’d been acne scars. Absence where there’d been fat and flesh. Fat and flesh where there’d been absence. Yeah, it was empowering to decide which version I preferred.

NOW, IN LOS Angeles, I added footage of my nightly walk to an edited version of my body—legs angled to hide my hairless bush, arms shaved down and wrapped around myself, showing a small side of breast; my face glossed and contoured and just a glint of brighter, whiter teeth—and tagged the post “Hollywood,” and shared it. And slept. In the late morning, I woke, reached right for my phone. Sometime in the night, a verified Instagram user had DMed me. His name was Jake Alton and he liked my account. Would I want to meet? The message read like it was dashed off. Like maybe Jake Alton wrote a lot of messages like it. I put my hand over my mouth. “Omg,” I yelled through the muffle. I went to Jake’s grid and scrolled: Jake Alton riding a surfboard; Jake Alton paragliding, cave jumping, BMX bike riding; Jake Alton with this or that recognizable, powerful man. I scrolled back to the top: “Jake Alton, content creator, manager, a simple man with complex tastes,” and a blue check mark, 1.1 million followers. Jake Alton, a simple, complex, careful algorithm, worth so many followers, so much love.

The curtains in my room were thin. The sun cut through them the way it cut the morning marine layer, the smoke and evening smog: like a blade. I rolled onto my back, held my phone high as I replied to Jake. Yes, I would love to meet a star like him. Yes, I used the word love. I used the word star.

3.