The Watching

I spent hours scrolling through blogs in the early 2000s. There were these women - photographers, models, fashion writers - and I’d move from page to page the way you do when you have nothing better to do and some quiet pull keeps you looking.

Lea Rieck from Munich had this whole philosophy about pale being a color. She ran a fashion blog about it, wrote about fashion like it mattered. Teresa Bücker, red hair, writing essays about living in Berlin. Jessie-Lynne from Chicago just posted nude photos for money, which was at least honest about the transaction.

Everyone performed - the filtered photos, the careful captions, the selection of what to show. We all knew the other side was watching. That was just how it worked.

I don’t think about those blogs anymore, but I remember the particular texture of looking - scrolling through pages, reading captions, seeing someone’s carefully composed photographs, with the knowledge that we were all performing for each other and nobody ever said it directly. Everyone watching, everyone watched.