Why Alec Baldwin’s wife is ruining my life

Here is what I should be thinking about this week: the stimulus bill, especially with its groundbreaking child tax credit; women in Afghanistan as peace negotiations continue in Qatar; the unprecedented number of unaccompanied children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border; and last — but certainly not least — how to throw both of my sons’ birthday parties this weekend, pandemic-style, again.

But here’s what I can’t stop thinking about: Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria Baldwin, doing leg lifts while playing with her new baby in the Hamptons. How she managed to welcome a newborn when the last baby she had is only 6 months old remains a mystery.

The reason I can’t stop thinking about Ms. Baldwin is thanks to Jessica Grose’s brilliant write-up in The New York Times, where I originally turned to understand the stimulus bill (really, I did). In “Hilaria Baldwin and the Strange Allure of Celebrity Fertility,” Grose points out that the reason I can’t look away from Hilaria stems from “America’s cultural obsession with celebrity pregnancy, and the way that social media helps perpetuate unrealistic ideals of motherhood — that you can build your business, raise a passel of kids without breaking a sweat, and have a ‘bikini body’ immediately postpartum, too.”

There were no social media feeds regarding postpartum bikini bottoms on my end, let me assure you. Somehow I managed to gain weight after giving birth to my 9-pound firstborn. Like, I weighed more two weeks after the baby was out.

So down the rabbit hole I went, as Greenwich’s public school system relocates students due to a collapsed ceiling while GCDS works through phase two of its multimillion-dollar expansion construction. Meanwhile, vaccine lines lengthen all over Connecticut, only to face yet another variant, while we all face still one more leg of our yearlong global pandemic.

Because, let me just tell you, something messed up is going down.

Not only is Hilaria doing leg lifts with babies that defy the human birthcycle, but 911K followers are watching via her Instagram feed. Baldwin’s feed offers a series of perfectly “Facetune” filtered photographs/videos of pandemic dance-parties, with all six children (and her very tired-looking husband) in what appears to be a house decorated predominantly in whiteand-cream, complete with hand-hewn (yet polished) floors that have no crayons, Legos or devices on them. Like, zero.

And so, as I scroll through Hilaria’s feed, I notice that she has numerous posts apologizing for being Spanish — which confuses me, so I googlesearch “why is Hilaria complaining she is Spanish.” Then I find myself entrenched in a raging controversy about whether she engaged in “a decadelong grift where Hilaria impersonates a Spanish person.”

Where have I been all this time?!

As I scan through these tantalizing links, wondering where Hilaria got the bright-red sweatshirt that says “Self-Love,” I come across a term we hear a lot these days: Influencers.

That’s when the rabbithole turned into the Sarlacc Pit from “Star Wars.”

OK, let me break this down for you, ye few — ye happy few who know not that-of-which-I-speak. An “influencer” is someone who creates carefully orchestrated feeds on social media where everything about their life looks amazing, often offering discreet links to buy all the stuff that makes their life look amazing — all so that your life, naturally, can look amazing too. The buzz word here is “authentic,” or the “bravery to show up as your authentic self,” share your “authentic life” — and then sell it.

This is modern-day advertising. We no longer look at a magazine ads — instead we turn to social media and look at people who have lifestyles we wish we had — and then we buy our very own facsimile. Influencers make commissions through this transaction via platforms such as RewardStyle and LIKETOKNOWIT, which is an invitation-only content-monetization platform that has been called “The Harvard of Influencing.”

Some of these influencers are pulling in sevenfigure salaries, so if you are laughing, it’s time to stop laughing. Last year LIKETOKNOWIT surpassed $1 billion in influencer-driven sales, showing a 75 percent year-overyear increase from Oct 13 to Dec 8, 2020, a period during which the app saw $230 million in sales.

So who are these people? Well, a disproportionate number of them live in Byron Bay, Australia, where they lay claim to houses that look like a “scene out of Little House on the Trust-Fund Prairie,” writes Carina Chocano in her article, “The Coast of Utopia” in Vanity Fair (7/2/19), alongside their swarms of adorable, Kombucha-drinking children with “names that sound dreamed up for a GOOP collaboration with Lemony Snicket” — Juniper, Clementine, Koa, Zephr, Dali. Their husbands are “supportive, handsome scruffy men of purpose,” Chocano continues. These mother-influencers all surf, all are skinny, all make me want to kill myself. “They have their own brands,” Chocano writes, “they are their own brands.”

And just as I started to feel stranded in this deeply disturbing world of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), my phone’s I-knoweverything-about-you algorithm directs me to GOMI (Get Off My Internets), otherwise known as a blog/message board dedicated to people who feel lifestyle bloggers have ruined their lives.

And that’s when the Sarlacc Pit turned into “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Never have you felt more authentic than when you connect to other authentic people who can bond through making fun of authentic influencers who monetize their authentic selves. You can spend hours reading about how some of these influencers have driven women to anti-depressants, eating disorders, divorce — all the D’s. It’s a productive way to spend your time; it gives you the strength to show up as your authentic self.

None of this stuff is new; GOMI was created in 2008, and influencers have been medicating the world-over for years. But somehow the pandemic offers its own singularly “authentic” twist.

And so, on this particular day, when my life was all-but-consumed by my various screens and their life-sucking holes, I consciously chose to shut it all down. I looked off in the distance, took a long, deep authentic breath, and then tried a few leg lifts — until our bulldog Beverly started humping me.

Now, how’s that for authentic?