Latest news with #LeeTilghman
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
She was one of the first influencers. It nearly ruined her life.
To post, or not to post? Each day across America, millions of people ask themselves this question, a once-innocuous inquiry that has morphed the casual (if occasionally tedious) tradition of sharing vacation photos, baby pictures, new boyfriend snaps and half-formed opinions with friends into an existential referendum on one's sense of self. For influencers — the backbone of an industry Goldman Sachs said was worth approximately $250 billion in 2024 and projects to grow to almost $500 billion by 2027 — the question of posting is particularly fraught. Who owes you — in money, free product or clout? And what do you owe your followers: Reliable advice? A fantasy? Your entire life? For Lee Tilghman, known online as Lee From America and one of the first women to build an empire-worthy Instagram following of more than 370,000 people as a wellness influencer, she is at last posting from a place of purity. 'Posting has been, for me, at least since October, something I'm only doing out of my own joy,' said Tilghman, 35, speaking on a bench in Brooklyn Heights on a sweltering day in late July. Tilghman, as the inventor of the viral smoothie bowl and peddler of philosophies and products that, when done together, she now admits were extreme, has been through the gamut of online women's experiences. She became a celebrity followed by many but known only to a niche audience. She received free stuff from famous millennial brands — then was paid to post about it. She invented a viral food, the aforementioned smoothie bowl. She was canceled. She logged off forever. She logged back on, revealing a crazy new haircut, and people unfollowed her. She shared her story of feeling limited by her personal brand to such an extent that it led to an eating disorder relapse. She got a normal job. She became a de-influencer. And now, what has brought Tilghman back to the internet is not a brand deal or an irresistibly pretty (and free!) vacation, but something as old school as the rotary phone: She wants you to buy her memoir. It is about her traumatic years (and they are, indeed, very traumatic) as an influencer. It is called 'If You Don't Like This, I Will Die.' (Sad emoji.) 'It's not a manifesto on whether or not you're online,' she said. Instead, Tilghman said, it's a book about seeing influencers beyond their one-dimensional personal brand. 'Most people can only handle one side of a public figure. They can't handle a whole person. I kind of describe it as a hexagon. We're all hexagons. We all have multiple sides, multiple facets,' she said, immaculately groomed in a Dôen x Gap top, a Gap skirt embroidered with sea creatures, and Tevas, a much different look than her previous wardrobe of gifted workout gear. 'But when you're an influencer, you have to be, 'What are you in one sentence? I am a wellness girl. I am a travel influencer. I do makeup in under five minutes. I do beach skin care. I do New England. I'm coastal granddaughter. I'm Rodeo Malibu Barbie influencer.' 'And that has not changed: the public's necessity to have you be your elevator-pitch person.' When a woman is canceled, Tilghman is often her first defender. 'When those women went to space,' she said, referring to Lauren Sánchez and her merry band of celebrity astronauts, 'I was like: 'Guys, I don't really care that they went to space. I'm not saying that this is the greatest thing, but why are we just so mad at women?'' Tilghman's book lays out the reality that being an influencer is a total bore. Being a person, whether private or public, is much more interesting. But can we see influencers as people? 'My first feeling reading it, I kind of got 'American Psycho' vibes,' said Sean Manning, Tilghman's editor and the publisher of Simon & Schuster. 'There's an overload of detail, one thing happening after another, the name-checking of brands, whether it's Outdoor Voices, or Free People, or Kashi. It's an accumulation of detail through brands, through consumerism — the attention to detail is such that she doesn't have to editorialize too much.' You read the running list of brands and tasks and the never-ending demands of posting — and feel empty, much as Tilghman did. Manning was interested in the question of, 'When does the character become a human being?' Tilghman studied creative writing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and, from her blog beginnings, her ability to tell a compulsively readable story was clear. Agents had approached her about book projects when she was at the peak of her Instagram powers: a recipe book, a self-care book, a self-care planner — 'Lee's Guide to Glow,' she said, 'you know, that totally could have been a book.' 'Funnily enough,' Tilghman said, 'when I stopped influencing, that's when this book came to me.' When she stopped influencing? Some of her detractors — including those on the parasocial but addictively readable Influencer Snarking subreddits — see Tilghman's memoir simply as her latest #product to #promo. 'I think of it as an evolution,' she clarified. 'I guess I am still influencing — 100 percent. I mean, that era when I was in such a routine, and it was like a channel: weekly recipes, updates, self-care tips, everything updates. I was posting on [Instagram] Stories nine times a day, every day, and then three or four times on the grid per day. 'In a lot of ways, for these brands, you're just kind of an actor. You have to act. Especially on these brand trips, where you're paid to look like you're having a good time.' The roller coaster of affirmative and negative comments constantly wore on her, but so did the grind of pretending to enjoy brand trips with other influencers, in which attendees would pose together and then go back to staring at their phones, counting their likes in silence. Tilghman's personality is not so easily boiled down. She is a weirdo — quirky, a bit manic pixie dream girl, but with the grit of a screwball heroine. Revealing more of that side has lost her followers — some 160,000 after she revealed a bowl haircut and weight gain following her eating disorder treatment in 2019. Perhaps Tilghman's realest and most relatable quality is that she loves to post. When she sold her book two years ago, she was no longer active on social media. 'Every couple of months, I would maybe post something being like, I'm alive, everything's good. But I didn't have a purpose on there, and I was fine with that.' The neat ending to the memoir would be to conclude that social media is evil and that she (and we) must never post again. 'I believe that social media isn't going anywhere. Technology is not going anywhere,' she said. Tilghman considered not using social media to promote her book. After all, she had gone viral for leaving Instagram in 2023 and was afraid that followers would criticize her for reneging on her promise to 'de-influence.' But then she realized: 'You know what? I've spent so much time on this book. I'm going to do everything I can to make this book a super success. I'm going to use my audience that gave me this book deal. They are a big part of the story. 'The biggest difference is that I don't have a manager or agent on my phone saying, 'Hey, have you posted the Stories?' … It's just on me.' The shift in algorithms from a feed ordered by the time of posts to a discovery-based algorithm that surfaces content by mysterious means has given us much more anxiety around sharing online, said Rachel Karten, a social media consultant. 'There wasn't this jet-fueled algorithm that exists today' when Tilghman was influencing. 'The algorithms now can turn anyone into an influencer overnight. 'There's a certain level of cringe to posting,' Karten continued. 'Because of the way the algorithm works, it makes it seem like you're trying to become an influencer, even if you're just innocuously posting or sharing vacation photos, because that's the way that [influencing] starts now.' It may be hard to understand how someone could have such anxiety around putting a video or picture of themselves online, but Tilghman, as she writes about in her book, was one of the first women to have the influencer economy turn on her. In 2018, Tilghman announced a three-hour workshop to her followers with 'cooking tutorials for pumpkin fat balls and creamy coconut butter adaptogenic drinks, seminars on mindful eating and Ayurvedic practices, tips on cultivating true self-love and self-care and so much more that I don't cover online,' she said in a video revealing the event. Tickets would start at $350, with a VIP option of $650. Within five minutes, the criticisms began pouring in: that this was 'ludicrous freelancer capitalism'; 'You are NOT spreading inclusivity'; 'A white girl doing a workshop inspired by matcha (Japanese) and ayurveda (Indian) and charging $350???? This workshop is for white people.' Tilghman brought on a crisis PR consultant to navigate the fallout, but the confluence of the criticism and her growing awareness that her obsession with wellness had led to an eating disorder relapse led her to leave the platform the following summer. The morning of our interview, the entrepreneur behind Outdoor Voices, Ty Haney, said that she was rejoining her brand, which helped transform chic-leggings-and-little-sexy-top workout wear into the go-to uniform for millennial women running errands. (Haney was ousted in 2020 following accusations of poor leadership.) Earlier in the summer, Audrey Gelman, who was similarly pushed out of her co-working space the Wing in 2020, reentered the fray with a small, ornately decorated inn in Upstate New York called the Six Bells. And now, Tilghman is returning with her own project. Does she feel a part of a cohort of canceled women making a comeback? 'Oh my god! I don't know, but if that's what you're saying, then that's really nice,' she said. 'Whether or not it's similar stories as theirs, and potentially it is — it's so funny, I remember, in 2020, everyone was like, 'Ty Haney is so problematic.' And then last week, when there was this buzz that she might be buying back Outdoor Voices, everyone's like, 'We want Ty back!' And again, I'm just like, 'Huh? You guys were all so mean to her and now you miss her?' Same with Audrey.' She thought for a few more minutes. 'When we see a woman get too powerful — and when it's women seeing other women get way too powerful — we can't handle it. We have to take them down, because it's like a threat to us. We don't see it as like, 'Oh wow, if they've done it, I can do it, too.' 'Because, to be honest, there are limited spots for women to gain power. It's already hard enough for people. And so it really threatens us when a woman is gaining power too. And I get it, like I was very competitive. I still am. I just don't let that competition eat me alive, because it can eat you alive.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I tried to be the perfect wellness influencer — and it almost killed me
Being a wellness influencer nearly killed Lee Tilghman. From 2014 to 2019, she shared her rainbow-hued smoothie bowls, eight-step skincare routine, #selfcare rituals and thirst-trappy fit pics on her Instagram, @LeeFromAmerica, which had more than 400,000 followers — a significant number for the time. At her height she made $300,000 a year via sponsored posts, and nearly every item in her light-filled Los Angeles apartment was gifted from a brand. Yet, behind the scenes Tilghman was not well at all. She suffered from disordered eating. She was anxious. She was lonely. A critical comment on a post could send her into a spiral of depression and paranoia. She spent 10 hours a day tethered to her iPhone 'It was soul-killing,' Tilghman, 35, told The Post, taking in the New York City skyline from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. She chronicles it all in her wild, self-aware, new memoir, 'If You Don't Like This Post, I Will Die' (Simon & Schuster, out now). Tilghman recalls growing up in suburban Connecticut, getting her first AOL username at 12 years old and downloading Instagram the summer before last year of college, in 2011. Her first photo — of herself at a flea market in London during study abroad — got zero likes. After college, she moved to Manhattan and became a 20-something party girl, documenting her exploits on Instagram. She worked as a waitress at the trendy Chalk Point Kitchen, but, for the most part, she opted for drugs over food. Then, one morning, after waking up from a cocaine bender, she opened Instagram and came across an account from an Australian named Loni Jane. This gorgeous, fit specimen had 'ombre-blonde hair,' a 'year-round tan' and a vegan, raw diet. 'I wanted that life,' Tilghman recalls in the book. She stopped drinking and began exercising. One morning, after a run, she made a smoothie with avocado, banana, coconut and kale that was so thick, she couldn't drink it from a glass. She poured it into a bowl, sprinkled some seeds on top, and posted it on the 'gram. The likes rolled in. She began posting these 'smoothie bowls' nearly every day, in every color of the rainbow, with a bounty of toppings arranged like works of art. The clothing brand Free People interviewed her about her culinary creations for its blog. 'I was like, 'Okay, this thing is popping off.'' Tilghman recalled. 'Every time I posted a smoothie bowl, my following would grow. The comments would be crazy. People had never seen them before.' She left NYC for LA, to chase Instagram stardom. The term 'influencer' had just begun bubbling, and savvy millennial brands had just started seeing pretty young women as inexpensive ambassadors for their products. Tilghman went all-in. When a follower DMed her and told her that fluoride caused 'brain damage,' she stopped using toothpaste with it — and promptly developed six cavities. When her roommate told her that bananas had a ton of sugar, Tilghman cut them from her diet. (She still made her smoothie bowls with them, since the bananas helped make the liquid thick enough to hold all the toppings; she just threw it out after snapping a picture.) Tongue-scraping, dry-brushing, double-filtered charcoal water, body oiling, fasting: Tilghman tried it all. 'I did two twenty-one-day cleanses back-to-back,' she writes in her book. 'I got rid of gluten, dairy, soy, peanuts, and sugar. I paid [a Reiki-certified healer] the first half of an $8,000 coaching package, which included breathwork, moon circles, and unlimited text support.' The more she tried — and the realer she got, posting about her struggles with PCOS (a hormonal condition that can cause bloating and irregular periods) or her past struggled with anorexia — the more followers, and brand sponsorships, she got. And the more brand sponsorships she got, the more time she had to spend posting. And the more time she spent posting, the more time she spent on the app, and the more she hated herself. She would often take 200 photos before finding one where she looked thin enough to post on the grid — often with some caption about self-acceptance and self-love. Her self-absorption and food phobias eventually alienated her from the rest of the world. She was so terrified of gluten, of soy, of sugar that she couldn't go out to eat. She once dragged her mom all over Tokyo — during a sponsored trip — in search of a green apple, because the red ones in her hotel had too much sugar. She was so obsessed with getting the perfect Instagram photo that she couldn't have a conversation. 'I put my health [and Instagram] above everything, including family and relationships,' she said. 'If your body is a temple and you treat it super well and you eat all the right foods and do all the things, but you don't have anyone close to you because you're trying to control your life so much, it's a dark place.' It all came crashing in 2018, after she announced she was hosting a wellness workshop — and charging $350 for the cheapest was accused of white privilege, and her apology post only elicited more scorn. Some sponsors pulled out. Shortly after, her apartment flooded. She looked around and noticed that with the exception of her dog, Samson, every single thing in her place — including her toothbrush — had been gifted by brands looking for promotion. 'I was a prop too—a disposable, soulless, increasingly emaciated mannequin used by companies to sell more stuff,' she writes. 'We all were—all the billions of us who thought we were using Instagram when really it was the other way around.' In 2019, she got rid of it all, deleted Instagram and went to a six-week intensive treatment center for her disordered eating. There, she had to throw out all her adaptogens and supplemental powders. 'I felt like an addict when they're so done with their drug of choice that they can't wait to throw it away,' she recalled of her first day without the app. 'It was amazing.' Though she did admit that she couldn't stop taking selfies. 'I would be at a red light and just take 15 selfies — it was weird!' During the pandemic, she moved back to New York and did social media for a couple companies, including a tech and a perfume brand. She sporadically updated her Instagram in 2021, but really came back in earnest this past year, to do promotion for her memoir. 'I've been gone for so long that I have this newfound creativity and appreciation for it,' she said of her new, goofy online persona. 'The whimsy is back.' She also has a Substack, Offline Time, and has just moved to Brooklyn Heights with Samson and her fiance, Jack, who works in finance. She says that her book feels even more timely now than when she started working on it four years ago. Despite all she's been through, she doesn't rule out influencing completely. 'I mean, listen, living is expensive,' she said. 'I'm not opposed doing a sponsored post in the future. I actually said that to my audience, a couple months ago. I was like, 'Guys, I know I just wrote a book about not influencing anymore. But, rent be renting.'' Solve the daily Crossword
New York Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
I tried to be the perfect wellness influencer — and it almost killed me
Being a wellness influencer nearly killed Lee Tilghman. From 2014 to 2019, she shared her rainbow-hued smoothie bowls, eight-step skincare routine, #selfcare rituals and thirst-trappy fit pics on her Instagram, @LeeFromAmerica, which had more than 400,000 followers — a significant number for the time. At her height she made $300,000 a year via sponsored posts, and nearly every item in her light-filled Los Angeles apartment was gifted from a brand. Yet, behind the scenes Tilghman was not well at all. Advertisement 8 In her new memoir, Lee Tilghman opens up about the toll being a wellness influencer took on her health. Olga Ginzburg for N.Y. Post She suffered from disordered eating. She was anxious. She was lonely. A critical comment on a post could send her into a spiral of depression and paranoia. She spent 10 hours a day tethered to her iPhone 'It was soul-killing,' Tilghman, 35, told The Post, taking in the New York City skyline from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Advertisement She chronicles it all in her wild, self-aware, new memoir, 'If You Don't Like This Post, I Will Die' (Simon & Schuster, out now). Tilghman recalls growing up in suburban Connecticut, getting her first AOL username at 12 years old and downloading Instagram the summer before last year of college, in 2011. Her first photo — of herself at a flea market in London during study abroad — got zero likes. After college, she moved to Manhattan and became a 20-something party girl, documenting her exploits on Instagram. She worked as a waitress at the trendy Chalk Point Kitchen, but, for the most part, she opted for drugs over food. Advertisement Then, one morning, after waking up from a cocaine bender, she opened Instagram and came across an account from an Australian named Loni Jane. This gorgeous, fit specimen had 'ombre-blonde hair,' a 'year-round tan' and a vegan, raw diet. 'I wanted that life,' Tilghman recalls in the book. 8 Tilghman was initially a party girl, posting sexy snaps of nights out to Instagram. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram She stopped drinking and began exercising. One morning, after a run, she made a smoothie with avocado, banana, coconut and kale that was so thick, she couldn't drink it from a glass. She poured it into a bowl, sprinkled some seeds on top, and posted it on the 'gram. Advertisement The likes rolled in. She began posting these 'smoothie bowls' nearly every day, in every color of the rainbow, with a bounty of toppings arranged like works of art. The clothing brand Free People interviewed her about her culinary creations for its blog. 'I was like, 'Okay, this thing is popping off.'' Tilghman recalled. 'Every time I posted a smoothie bowl, my following would grow. The comments would be crazy. People had never seen them before.' She left NYC for LA, to chase Instagram stardom. The term 'influencer' had just begun bubbling, and savvy millennial brands had just started seeing pretty young women as inexpensive ambassadors for their products. 8 Then, after a cocaine bender, she changed her ways and focused on healthy content. She started posting images of colorful smoothie bowls that quickly took off. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram Tilghman went all-in. When a follower DMed her and told her that fluoride caused 'brain damage,' she stopped using toothpaste with it — and promptly developed six cavities. When her roommate told her that bananas had a ton of sugar, Tilghman cut them from her diet. (She still made her smoothie bowls with them, since the bananas helped make the liquid thick enough to hold all the toppings; she just threw it out after snapping a picture.) Tongue-scraping, dry-brushing, double-filtered charcoal water, body oiling, fasting: Tilghman tried it all. 'I did two twenty-one-day cleanses back-to-back,' she writes in her book. 'I got rid of gluten, dairy, soy, peanuts, and sugar. I paid [a Reiki-certified healer] the first half of an $8,000 coaching package, which included breathwork, moon circles, and unlimited text support.' The more she tried — and the realer she got, posting about her struggles with PCOS (a hormonal condition that can cause bloating and irregular periods) or her past struggled with anorexia — the more followers, and brand sponsorships, she got. And the more brand sponsorships she got, the more time she had to spend posting. And the more time she spent posting, the more time she spent on the app, and the more she hated herself. Advertisement 8 Soon, she was getting attention from brands and posting smoothie bowls daily. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram She would often take 200 photos before finding one where she looked thin enough to post on the grid — often with some caption about self-acceptance and self-love. Her self-absorption and food phobias eventually alienated her from the rest of the world. She was so terrified of gluten, of soy, of sugar that she couldn't go out to eat. She once dragged her mom all over Tokyo — during a sponsored trip — in search of a green apple, because the red ones in her hotel had too much sugar. She was so obsessed with getting the perfect Instagram photo that she couldn't have a conversation. Advertisement 'I put my health [and Instagram] above everything, including family and relationships,' she said. 'If your body is a temple and you treat it super well and you eat all the right foods and do all the things, but you don't have anyone close to you because you're trying to control your life so much, it's a dark place.' 8 She left NYC for LA to pursue wellness influencing. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram It all came crashing in 2018, after she announced she was hosting a wellness workshop — and charging $350 for the cheapest was accused of white privilege, and her apology post only elicited more scorn. Some sponsors pulled out. Shortly after, her apartment flooded. She looked around and noticed that with the exception of her dog, Samson, every single thing in her place — including her toothbrush — had been gifted by brands looking for promotion. Advertisement 'I was a prop too—a disposable, soulless, increasingly emaciated mannequin used by companies to sell more stuff,' she writes. 'We all were—all the billions of us who thought we were using Instagram when really it was the other way around.' 8 Followers loved her fitness content, but behind the scenes, Tilghman was struggling. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram 8 One day, she realized that every item in her apartment, save for her dog, had been gifted by a brand. Lee Tilghman/ Instagram In 2019, she got rid of it all, deleted Instagram and went to a six-week intensive treatment center for her disordered eating. There, she had to throw out all her adaptogens and supplemental powders. Advertisement 'I felt like an addict when they're so done with their drug of choice that they can't wait to throw it away,' she recalled of her first day without the app. 'It was amazing.' Though she did admit that she couldn't stop taking selfies. 'I would be at a red light and just take 15 selfies — it was weird!' During the pandemic, she moved back to New York and did social media for a couple companies, including a tech and a perfume brand. She sporadically updated her Instagram in 2021, but really came back in earnest this past year, to do promotion for her memoir. 'I've been gone for so long that I have this newfound creativity and appreciation for it,' she said of her new, goofy online persona. 'The whimsy is back.' She also has a Substack, Offline Time, and has just moved to Brooklyn Heights with Samson and her fiance, Jack, who works in finance. 8 Tilghman is no longer an influencer, though she has used Instagram to promote her new book. And, she says, she would consider doing sponsored posts in the future. Olga Ginzburg for N.Y. Post She says that her book feels even more timely now than when she started working on it four years ago. Despite all she's been through, she doesn't rule out influencing completely. 'I mean, listen, living is expensive,' she said. 'I'm not opposed doing a sponsored post in the future. I actually said that to my audience, a couple months ago. I was like, 'Guys, I know I just wrote a book about not influencing anymore. But, rent be renting.''
