Caroline Calloway Part II: Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Flower Crown

Missing Pages S01E05 

Caroline Calloway Pt. 2: Heavy is the Head that Wears the Flower Crown: Part II of the Caroline Calloway Story

Bethanne Patrick: Welcome back! In our last episode we unpacked Caroline Calloway’s humble beginnings.

Video Clip - Ask Sunny Show: I grew up reading books like Harry Potter and Artemis fowl.

Bethanne Patrick: From an adored Millennial Instagram influencer…  

Video Clip - Huff Post: It is the most fairytale ice cream cone that has ever been eaten.

Bethanne Patrick: To Twitter’s main character, and not in a good way.

Constance Grady: At the time she has 500,000 Instagram followers.

Bethanne Patrick: Her high-profile book deal gone wrong appeared to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Constance Grady: By 2017 she is saying that she is not going to be able to actually write this book and that she is going to have to pay back some of her advance.

Bethanne Patrick: By early 2020, Miss Calloway, still a conventionally attractive twenty-something living in New York, had a name synonymous with the pitfalls of internet celebrity.

Gabrielle Bluestone: Caroline Calloway is a one woman fyre festival.

Bethanne Patrick: But, as you may recall, 2020 also coincided with events way out of any influencer’s control.

TV News Clip: Chinese health authorities are still working to identify the virus behind a pneumonia outbreak in the central city of Wuhan.

TV News Clip: Tonight U.S. airports on high alert, screening passengers for symptoms of a deadly new virus. 

Bethanne Patrick: With a global pandemic forcing us all indoors and now, extra online….

TV Clip - NBC News: Stay at home. Stay home. Stay safe. Quite simply: stay at home.

Bethanne Patrick: For Caroline, who was already gifted at leading an online life divorced from reality, 2020 pulled her in a new direction.

TV Clip - 60 Minutes: OnlyFans began 5 years ago. But it really took off last year during Covid lockdowns when the number of people posting skyrocketed from 120,000 to more than a million worldwide. 

Bethanne Patrick: Oh boy. 

Video Clip - Cambridge Union: It’s quickly becoming the most lucrative thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

Bethanne Patrick: Miss Calloway certainly keeps things interesting. Stick around. In this episode of Missing Pages, “Heavy Is the Head that Wears whe Flower Crown: Part II of the Caroline Calloway Story,” we look into our crystal ball emojis. What might the future hold for our emerging author?

Chapter 1: The Long Goodbye

Music Clip - LCD Soundsystem, New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down - Kermit the Frog Edition

Bethanne Patrick: Leaving New York to “just get away from it all and write” – ah, it’s an act of privilege older than time. Writers from Joan Didion to Patty Smith to The Onion have all waxed poetic about saying goodbye to the Big Apple.

Brock Colyar: So, in my time there, which were during these farewell parties, they kind of always went the same in which you arrive. And there is a dinner of some sorts, or maybe an activity that you do, a puzzle that you put together. And she staggers when guests are going to arrive. So, there might be a more intimate part of the evening, and then a bunch of other people join later when it becomes a party.

Bethanne Patrick: That’s Brock Colyar reflecting on Caroline’s high profile departure from her West Village Apartment.

Brock Colyar: But during that nine, ten days of partying at her apartment, it was a lot of monologue. It was a lot of Caroline talking about the time that she'd spent in New York, why she was leaving, what she was leaving to go do, and quite literally going around the circle and asking people to talk about what they thought of her, essentially going around and saying, “How much are you going to miss me? And what do you like about me?”

Bethanne Patrick: Brock writes a nightlife column for NY Magazine, cheekily titled “Are U Coming?” where they offer a spicy dip into what happens in the city after dark. Some of their takes have included…

Brock Colyar (Montage): Three cosmos as a poodle dance with Candace Bushnell… And just like that, she tried to Irish exit… Everyone is drinking Budweiser UN-ironically… I want you to know your chipped nails are so vibes… A Miami girl whose DJ ex-boyfriend our friends like to refer to as a drugstore Diplo… As soon as we arrived, she sniffed, “I’ve never seen this much Zara in one room…” Who let the hogs out, only march madness could make grown men squeal like this…

Bethanne Patrick: And if you’ve been online in the past few months, you probably spotted Brock’s piece on Vox’s real estate vertical, Curbed. The whimsical write-up chronicled an evening at one of Caroline’s farewell parties as the social media personality packed up and set off to Florida, where she plans to write her memoir with fewer distractions. Here’s Brock, telling us more about those sordid affairs:

Brock Colyar: I think everyone was there to just see the shit show. Everyone wanted to be able to tell the story of going to Caroline Calloway’s apartment of ten years. I don't know, you walk in and it’s like being inside of a terrarium. It's very much a fairy princess’ apartment. It's covered in plants, it's covered in flowers and actual terrariums. And it's also covered in the potting soil and flower petals and all of the things that, you know, go into making all of those things.

But there's shit everywhere. I mean, you walk in and it's a studio apartment, and in the, kind of, living area is an altar. In the middle of the floor are candles and plants and animal skulls and match boxes that have her name inscribed onto them, and paper and pens and books and magazines, I mean, a ton of shit in the middle of the floor.

And, you know, people have this familiarity with her apartment, of her painting the floors, like, a while back.

Bethanne Patrick: A week or two after this night Brock describes, images of Caroline’s trashed apartment went viral back in March 2022.

Video Clip - Swell Entertainment: Caroline has these beautiful – had – had these beautiful hardwood floors in her studio apartment. Guess what she did. She painted the walls white and then she painted the floors white. She didn’t move her piles of stuff, her piles of clothes, all of it - she just painted around it.

Bethanne Patrick: Yikes. This might be the first time I’ve felt sorry for a New York City landlord!

Hold the phone! Wait a second, here, let’s rewind. What has Caroline been up to during these bleak pandemic years?

As of the past two years, which we’ll call Caroline Calloway’s “Embracing Her Baddie Era,” our flawed heroine has been monetizing her personal brand in, I guess, a more authentic way. It seemed like whatever she could capitalize on, she was going to capitalize on. 

With the creativity workshops flopping and Natalie Beach’s article putting the final nail in the coffin in September 2019, Caroline's flower crowns wilted and she dropped off the internet for a hot, steaming second. This “going dark stunt” is very much inspired by T.Swift, who before dropping the big Reputation album, also went dark on Instagram. 

I’ll hand it to Caroline. She does know how to retrofit celebrity marketing tactics to her own advantage. Nobody’s buying what she’s selling, so she starts selling something else.

Video Clip - Cambridge Union: So, I needed a way to make money, and OnlyFans, I just felt like no one thought I'd actually do it. And there's nothing that makes me want to do something more than being underestimated. And so I signed up for OnlyFans.

Bethanne Patrick: Her OnlyFans account launches in early 2020, and by the spring time she was claiming earnings over $130,000.

Video Clip - Cambridge Union: It's quickly becoming the most lucrative thing I've ever done in my entire life. Like, it's actually demoralizing, like, how much people are paying to see me naked.

Bethanne Patrick: Ever the controversial character, Caroline says all the money she made from teasing paying customers on OnlyFans went toward paying back Flatiron Books its six-figure advance.

As a reminder, this was Spring 2020, AKA the height of the pandemic. OnlyFans was a godsend for real sex workers who could no longer safely practice their craft in person. But it was also a platform quickly turning into a profitable celebrity playground.

Video Clip - Clevver News: Over the past few months, we’ve seen more and more celebs creating OnlyFans pages. Some are using it for, well, you know. And some have found other uses for the site.

Bethanne Patrick: Stars like Bella Thorne, Cardi B, and even Eric Andre were joining up and getting accused of stealing the spotlight from real sex workers.

Video Clip - OnlyFans: Eric Andre here; comedian, actor, whatever. A lot of you have been looking for, like, a more direct way to connect with me, so I thought “Why not an onlyfans?”

Video Clip - Cambridge Union: But yeah, I really like it. I think its so fucked up that people are like, “Oh you shouldn’t be on OnlyFans because you like, you should save the money to be made by the other sex workers.” That is the most fucked up communist bullshit I have ever heard in my entire life. Like, name another profession where you’d be like, “Oh no, don’t enter that profession because other people who aren’t you need to succeed at the profession.”

Bethanne Patrick: So, Caroline seemed to fall in with this oft-criticized cohort of OnlyFans celebs. And without the ability to galavant around town as an New York City influencer, OnlyFans may have filled a void for Caroline.

Then, in the summer of 2021, further capitalizing on her pseudo-ironic persona as a scammer, she launches her skincare product Snake Oil.

Podcast Clip - Eyewitness Beauty: Apparently, influencer Caroline Calloway has released her own skin care line. It’s called Snake Oil.

Bethanne Patrick: With beauty brand launches and a lucrative OnlyFans account in the mix, there’s one burning question that I still have: does Caroline Calloway even want to write a book? Well, our New York Mag nightlife insider, Brock, thinks so. 

Bethanne Patrick to Brock Coylar: Do you think from your interactions with her, which were really about scenes and nightlife, do you think Caroline wants to be a writer?

Brock Colyar: Yes. And her moving away from New York is, to me, her trying to choose writing over being “it girl, party girl in downtown New York.” When she was leaving, she kept saying, “You know, my days as an ‘it girl’ are over. And the thing is she was never much of an it girl as much as she was this bizarre attraction that you went to see, or maybe ran into in New York.

Bethanne Patrick: Huh. But was Caroline a downtown New York City “it girl?” In the lead up to her dramatic exit from the city, Brock gave us a window into what Caroline’s social life looked like.

Brock Colyar: I think in the last year, in the post pandemic party season, Caroline was chasing an elusive downtown scene. So, in the middle of the pandemic, the Times wrote this piece about “Dimes Square,” and this new downtown kid newspaper, the Drunken Canal, and suddenly “Dimes Square” and this Drunken Canal publication kind of became the white hot center of this creative downtown party world in New York.

Bethanne Patrick: Here, Brock is referring to a New York Times article from March 2021 by Ben Smith. Ben, a forty-something year-old journalist (or as my daughters might call him, “an old”), tried to name this very Gen Z scene bubbling up on Manhattan’s lower east side.

Brock Coylar: If you were of a certain age in New York, then that scene suddenly became the scene, and the places that they hung out were the places that you wanted to be, if you wanted to be a part of this. Part of the reason that this became a scene is that a lot of the participants were clearly having fun on social media when other people weren't doing that yet. And Caroline was actually quoted in this piece, or referenced in this piece.

Bethanne Patrick: Brock is referring again to that article in the Times, which named all the characters, including Caroline, as part of this new nexus of cool.

Brock Colyar: She had been in this Drunken Canal newspaper, and it's funny because she likes to say before this piece, she had never actually been to Dimes Square. She had never been to this little corner of the lower east side that had become the place to be. So, the places that Caroline Calloway was going in the last year were the places that this scene were hanging out.

Bethanne Patrick: Hmm, so did Caroline’s presence make this scene relevant? Or did she identify the trendiest people and places to associate with, then wiggle her way in? It seems like this wasn’t the first time Caroline followed along with the curators of cool. She’d been doing this for a while on social media. And, why not? Being “on trend” is how social media influencers gain traction and remain relevant. 

Video Clip - NBC News: The time right now is 6:22, and we’re talking about what’s trending on Twitter this morning…

Bethanne Patrick: Plus, this “follow the pack” mentality, well, it’s not an accident. It’s a primal survival instinct older than time.

Video Clip - Mind Twister: Wolves live in packs. They hunt, play, and even howl together. A pack can consist of all different ages and can be from anywhere from three to forty individuals.

Bethanne Patrick: But for humans, this “pack mentality,” or an earnest desire to fit in with the “it crowd,” well, isn’t it more of a high school thing?

Movie Clip - Mean Girls: 

Gretchen: Okay, you should just know that we don’t do this a lot. So, this is like a really huge deal. We want to invite you to have lunch with us everyday for the rest of the week. 

Cady: Oh it’s okay –
Gretchen: Coolness. So we’ll see you tomorrow. 

Karen: On Wednesdays we wear pink.

Bethanne Patrick: From what Brock told us, it seemed like Caroline was chasing a sense of belonging with this younger “it” crowd.

Bethanne to Brock: Wasn't she older than this group? Was she chasing a kind of relevancy? 

Brock Colyar: Yes. I mean, Caroline, when I first met her, was 29, when I first followed, and again, the fact that she hosted this party at the Russian Samar with the Drunken Canal. And that was the night I met her and she was 29 and something, that didn't make it into that piece, but one of the first things that struck me about her, was she seemed really young. You know, she was hanging around these 20 – 21 year old internet and TikTok kids and she seemed like one of them. And that was really shocking to me. She just blended in so well with people who were a decade younger than her.

Bethanne Patrick: But in her attempts to find a sense of belonging as an “it girl,” did Caroline only further cement herself as a kind of New York City spectacle?

Brock Colyar: When she was leaving, she kept saying, “You know, my days as an ‘it girl’ are over,” and the thing was, she was never much of an it girl as much as she was this bizarre attraction that you went to see, or maybe ran into in New York.

Bethanne Patrick: Like the Statue of Liberty or the Naked Cowboy, was Caroline Calloway another New York City attraction?

Video Clip - BuzzFeedVideo: I’m the Naked Cowboy, you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Bethanne Patrick: Eh, eh, eh, don’t be so quick to write her off! Stay with us. After the break, we’re going to take Caroline Calloway seriously as a writer!

Chapter 2: Starting Over

Video Clip - Huff Post: You just sort of like, overwhelm them with your enthusiasm, and at this point, they’re just too polite to be like, “This has been a huge misunderstanding, we never want to hang out with you.” And now we’re best friends.

Bethanne Patrick: Her well-documented ability to charm and captivate all different kinds of people makes Caroline Calloway a lot like some of the other personalities we’ve covered this season. Here’s Brock again, talking about what it’s like to be in the influencer’s presence.

Brock Colyar: Something I've long said about Caroline is that from the first time I went to a party with her, she was an incredible subject in the nightlife context because everyone around her is really excited to be around her. And she's really excited to be around everyone else too. 

It's rare that I have a subject like that. Either they're bitching about how the night's going and how the party isn't quite good enough. Caroline doesn't do that. If you're around her, then there's this sense that she feels like you're important in some way in the New York scene. And so there is a lot of boosting you up, you know. She'd pull me to the side and say, “You're writing is so important. You're going to do something great one day.” And I watched her do that to other writers and artists in the apartment, even TikTokers and influencers. “You’re going to be really big.”

Bethanne Patrick: But there’s also something else to her brilliance that’s intriguing. She’s been able to read the tea leaves and capitalize on social media trends early. Our scammer expert from part one, Gabrielle Bluestone, mentioned this special skill:
 

Gabrielle Bluestone: Caroline’s content tended to hue carefully to what was popular at the moment. So, if you compare what she’s been posting recently to what she started with, it is truly night and day.

Bethanne Patrick: Caroline even recognizes this superpower in herself. Here she is talking about it in that Eyewitness Beauty podcast interview from summer 2021.

Podcast Clip - Eyewitness Beauty: I truly did see the potential for influencer marketing before the concept existed.

Bethanne Patrick: There’s certainly a marketing business savvy that we can’t quite ignore. I mean, we’re still talking about her, aren’t we? But what about Caroline “the writer”?

Brock Colyar: Caroline once lost her cat at KGB bar. And she loves saying, “I once lost my cat at KGB bar,” and she would say that, and then she'd say, “Isn't that a great line? Like, I can't wait to write that line,” which said everything. Like, her goal really is writing, but even that line itself and the way that she saw that as like an important sceney kind of thing, even though it really wasn't.

Bethanne Patrick: Hmm. While Caroline dreamt up great lines for her manuscript, it still seemed like she hadn’t done any actual writing that could be published. But were there other reasons why she may not have been able to sit down and write?

In the years since the Natalie Beach article came out, Caroline has spoken openly about her adderall addiction. 

Podcast Clip - Eyewitness Beauty: This is the roundabout story of how I started snake oil. It truly began as me just looking like fucking father time after I came out of my amphetimine addiction.

Bethanne Patrick: Now, lots of people use ADHD medication everyday without adverse side effects, myself included, but Caroline learned there are dangers to overdoing it with amphetamines like adderall. The high was too enticing and this spiraled into a very real addiction. According to Caroline herself, she stopped using the meds all together as of 2017.

Now, as of 2022, Caroline has left New York City to finally write that darn memoir. Here’s Brock talking about Caroline’s departure from NYC.

Brock Colyar: She very much thought of leaving New York as leaving this kind of “it girl” status behind. I do think she wants to be a writer because her references are not Nico. They're not, you know, one of Andy's girls, they're not Edie Sedwick, you know? Her references are women writers through the ages, from the first women memoirist in the world who, I can't remember who that is, to the memoirs of Catherine the Great, to Zelda Fitzgerald, to Joan Didion, Jeannette Walls, Elizabeth Wurtzel Like, she wants to be in a grand tradition – Patricia Lockwood – of women who are memoirists writing about their lives. 

And more specifically, I think she wants to be in this tradition of hot mess, addict women writing about their lives. Cat Marnell and Elizabeth Wurtzel especially, she sees herself in league with them.

Bethanne Patrick: For each episode of this show, it’s really easy to fall down a rabbit hole and get lost in the confusion of a subject’s behavior. Here’s where we had to pause and remember the point of the show: books! 

We’re a podcast about books and the business of book publishing. For Caroline Calloway, who, love her or hate her, is only thirty years old and could very well write the damn memoir, we wanted to imagine what that might look like. Here’s where we needed to talk to someone who understands how to get shit done.

Zibby Owens: Hi, I’m Zibby Owens. I am the founder of Zibby Owens Media, which includes my daily podcast, 365 days a year, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, and I am also the co-founder of a publishing house called Zibby Books and the founder of the ‘Moms Don’t Have Time To’ brand.

Bethanne Patrick: That’s Zibby. She’s one of the hardest working people in book publishing. Along with releasing an interview episode of Zibby Media’s flagship podcast every friggin day, she’s a literary agent and runs a book imprint. And she’s an author herself.

Zibby Owens: I am an author myself. I have a children's book called Princess Charming with the second Princess Charming book on the way. And my memoir is Bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, which is my life's work in a book.

Bethanne Patrick: We wanted to talk to Zibby for a few reasons. First, she understands a thing or two about hustle and grind and structure – skills that may hold the key for helping Caroline Calloway get that book over the finish line. 

Zibby Owens: I work all the time and it never feels like work, well, some of the emails I guess feel like work, but I work constantly and I'm very invested. I'm not just kicking back on the couch and saying, “Let me see where life takes me.” But I think you can work your hardest and still not ultimately control the direction, whether good or bad. We never know where things will ultimately take us. Losses come into play. Great things that you weren't expecting come into play.

Bethanne Patrick: Knowing that you can work and work and work and still, even if you’re whip smart and savvy like Zibby or Caroline, it’s still unlikely in this industry to nail the landing with your first book. Here’s Zibby’s advice.

Zibby Owens: I think that your first novel is not going to be the novel that ultimately sells. I cannot explain how many authors I’ve spoken to who all said their third novel is the one that sold. And they felt bad that the first two didn’t, or they knew that they weren’t that good so they kept them in a drawer. But it is okay to have one or two practice novels and you have to actually write the whole novel. And that’s okay, and it doesn't make you a bad writer, it’s just that’s just what you have to do.

Bethanne Patrick: But we also wanted to hear Zibby talk about vulnerability and authenticity, which feel important to this latest stage of Caroline Calloway’s journey as a creator.

Zibby Owens: So, I think we've now swung the pendulum over to, “Let's talk about what life is really like.” Right? That's how we connect. That's what social media is, should be for. Like, Let's share what it's like so we know we're not going crazy off on our own. So, I think it's a reaction to that over-curated perfection that social media used to give us constantly. And we just don't really want that anymore. We want to hear it like it is, I think. I do.

Bethanne Patrick: What I love about Zibby, and to be frank, about Caroline, is that here are two women who look at the world and see space for something new or different, then, with varying degrees of success, make it happen. 

The difference here might be that Zibby has more life experience. And, remember, context is everything. Zibby’s Gen X generation versus the demands of the always-online social networking Millennials – those are two different atmospheres. 

But is the pressure that all women face to show up and be perfect versions of themselves something new?

Zibby Owens:  My first article I published in Seventeen Magazine was when I was 16 years old, but I wrote it when I was 14 about how it felt to gain a bunch of weight after my parents got divorced and I was a freshman in a new schoo, and the effects I felt like that had on me. And even at that time, people were like, “Wow, you're so brave. Why would you, how could you write this?” And I'm like, “I don't know. It’s just, this is what I do. This is how I write and think.” And so I've always been able to share myself on the page and hope that it helps other people

Bethanne Patrick: Whether it’s a Snapchat filter hinting that you’d be hotter with lip fillers or stick thin models suggesting an ideal body type, it seems like women have always been held to one impossible standard after another. 

Zibby Owens: People, especially girls I think, have this natural, innate instinct to compare themselves to other people. I actually did my whole senior thesis on social comparison theory. This is an innate thing that we do. We compare ourselves to other people. And my eight year old daughter, and this happened, I think, last year, I was starting to notice that some of her little friends had different bodies. And they, some were taller, you know, and just noticing these and her saying things like, “Well, why am I short?” And I'm like, “I'm 5’2,” you're never going to be that tall, you know. But there's nothing wrong with that.” 

And I remember we were in a cab, and I live in New York City, and we were driving up Park Avenue, this is sounding like a very, you know, movie-like scene, but there were all these tulips  right in the flower beds. And I was like, “Look at all those flowers. They don't all, they're not all the same height. They're not all the same width, like, but they're all, like, in the same flower bed. Like, it's okay. You might not be the tallest flower, but who cares? You’re not supposed to be. There’s a lot of differences and that’s okay.”

Bethanne Patrick: And those unrealistic standards that most women feel from an early age? Well, they might feel even more insurmountable for Women of Color, including those in the publishing industry. Here’s the award-winning writer, Deesha Philyaw, who you’ll remember from the first part of this episode:

Deesha Philyaw: There are so many “no’s” before you get that “yes.” And it’s very easy when, you know that publishing is white, and you know there’s bias in the industry, it’s like, “Hmm, let me not make any waves, let me just go with the flow.” And that can be to our peril. That could lead us to write something other than the story that we want to tell. That could lead us to make the kind of compromises that we really don’t want to make, and frankly, white authors aren’t asked to make.

And then the other challenge, frankly, is money. That #PublishingPaidMe showed that, you know, Black authors are paid less than white writers.

Bethanne Patrick: Everything Deesha is saying is true. In June 2020, the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe exposed some of these economic disparities between black and non-black authors. 

Video Clip: So, the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe has been trending on Twitter over the past last weeks. Basically authors of different races have been disclosing their advanced payments.

Bethanne Patrick: The Young Adult author L.L. McKinney started the hashtag to generate a conversation around the pay gap in book advances. 

Video Clip - The Blerd Girl: The hashtag came out of, like, my frustration, like you said. I was like, “Y'all need a hashtag here. Start giving numbers.”

Bethanne Patrick: True to social media’s ephemeral nature, the story blew up in the moment. Big publishers responded, vowing to bridge the pay gap. 

Video Clip - The Blerd Girl: What’s wild to me is that for a while, publishing likes to tell this lie to itself: “We’re just following the market,” and like, “We’re just trying to make money. It’s about money, it’s about money.” And I’m like, “Well, for years now, studies have shown that the highest reading demographic is black women and girls, so if you were actually trying to chase the market, what you’re offering would look very different.”

Bethanne Patrick: But it’s worth continuing to name this inequity, and to point it out over and over again. 

In terms of Caroline Calloway’s public failure to deliver a manuscript, well it’s a prime example of these messed up double-standards in publishing.

Deesh Philyaw: The thing is, she'll she'll land on her feet. She'll get a second chance, you know. But we, as Black folks, like, we can't count on that. You know, we cannot count on that happening. We have to overdeliver, you know, we have to overdeliver. So, first of all, yeah, don't try that at home. And, you know, it tracks, it's definitely on brand that, you know, the ease that people talk about with, “Oh, well because of social media, it's so easy to, you know, to get whatever, get these endorsement deals and all of that. But, you know, we know it's not equitable. I would say to young Black women, don’t try that, because they will come after your ass.

Bethanne Patrick: Trying to live up to unrealistic standards, whether on social media or in everyday life where the goal posts constantly seem to be moving, what is true is that so much of how you handle it all likely comes from your foundation or what you learned at home. 

Recognizing and appreciating the difference, wasn’t that a lovely lesson that Zibby shared with her daughter? It got me thinking about the kinds of examples Caroline may or may not have had growing up. In an interview on the podcast Daddy Issues from December 2020, Caroline describes her family dynamic in more detail.

Podcast Clip - Daddy Issues: My dad, I mean, he was alive until last September, and I've been on the internet for the past seven years, some would argue, you know, seeking public validation to very varying degrees of success. But like, I, during those seven years, I mean I've been doing it for eight years, but during the seven which I did it and during which he was alive, like he didn't get it. Like, he didn't – the same thing that kept him from like, answering questions in a normal amount of time kept him from seeing any value in like, public adoration of me, which was also a blessing because he never really cared when people, he was as oblivious to people disliking me as he was to people liking me.

Bethanne Patrick: The conversation goes into detail about her father’s sudden death by suicide, which social media found some awful way to attack given its close proximity to the release of the 2019 Natalie Beach article in The Cut.

Podcast Clip - Daddy Issues: I think it's very important to clarify that, like, he killed himself a week before Natalie's article came out. Like, I think a lot of people project their own parents' feelings of shame about their success onto like, my dad. And it's very easy for that story to get mixed up as like, he killed himself, you know, because of the shaming of that article, which is so far from the truth. Like, he couldn't have cared less. He didn't understand that sort of public validation.

Bethanne Patrick: What we can gather from this tragic loss and the knowledge of Caroline’s family dynamics is this: of course she was primed to crave external validation and attention. As we know in this business of books, oftentimes the cover doesn’t match the contents. But Caroline worked with what she had, which fortunately and unfortunately carried mass appeal. She was the young, stylish, effervescent – the manic pixie dream girl letting you inside her secret world through the screen.

But the manic pixie dream girl is just that: a dream. Caroline could look the part of the muse but she wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual and an artist. And it’s on this note where we have to pause to remember that Caroline, our flawed scammer goddess, is thirty years old. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning Caroline for her long history of questionable business practices as a symptom of youth. That’s unfair to the twenty-two year old CEO’s out there. Being young does not equal being shifty and underhanded and an unreliable narrator. What I am saying, though, is life is short, but life is long. And it’s far too soon for book publishing to dismiss Caroline Calloway. 

In Brock’s article about Caroline’s departure from New York, they write that our would-be author hopes that there will be a plaque outside of her former West Village apartment one day that reads, “This is where Caroline Calloway lived.” 

The jury’s still out on whether the word “writer” will be etched into Caroline’s biography, but now that we’ve gotten to know her a little bit better, I understand why she craves this symbol of credibility so much. 

A privileged white woman’s reign on Instagram is temporary, like a story that disappears after twenty-four hours. But an author’s shiny brass plaque? That’s forever. Everyone reaches that point in their life as a creative where they have something to say and they have to say it. And I hope that’s what Caroline is up to down in Florida, like all the greats who have fled the city that have come before her.

Can’t get enough of stories written by and for flawed heroines? Or notoriously controversial women? Well, here are a few titles that you simply must read, then BookTok and Instagram about ASAP.

Before there were influencers, there was Eve Babitz. Try her Slow Days, Fast Company.

Not only did Lena Dunham get a book deal, she actually published a book! Not That Kind of Girl is great.

What would Caroline have done in the age before Instagram, Twitter, and OnlyFans? How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell offers some clues.

Missing Pages is a Podglomerate Original, and is written and produced by a small army. 

Showrunner: Caila Litman

Producer, Researcher, and Writer: Jordan Aaron 

Producer: Matt Keeley 

Production, Mixing and Mastering by Chris Boniello 

Production Assistance by Court Deans. 

Marketing by Joni Deutsch, Morgan Swift, and Madison Richards

Social Media by Sylvia Bueltel

Art by Tom Grillo

Production and Hosting by me, Bethanne Patrick 

Executive Produced by Jeff Umbro and the Podglomerate

Fact Checking by Doug Weissman and Kathleen Hennrikus

Legal Review by Alexia Bedat and Louise Carron at Klaris Law

Special thanks to Dan Christo, The Eyewitness Beauty Podcast, The Daddy Issues Podcast, Constance Grady, Brock Colyar, Deesha Philyaw, Zibby Owens, Gabrielle Bluestone, Lupita Aquino, Leslie Bennetts, Lena Dunham, and the especially chatty waitstaff at Minetta Tavern. 

You can learn more about Missing Pages at thepodglomerate dot com, on twitter @misspagespod and on Instagram @missingpagespod, or you can email us at missing pages at the podglomerate dot com. 

If you liked what you heard today, please let your friends and family know and suggest an episode for them to listen to. I’m Bethanne Patrick, and we’ll be back next week with another episode.