The Side-Effects of Being Pretty

Neda Jouliet

"One of my fake profiles is posting pictures of your dog."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, she's posting them like its her dog, just FYI."

"That bitch."

This conversation took place very recently in my best friend Christine Marsden's (whose true identity she has chosen to share for this piece) living room, we were swapping stories about our dogs (because dogs) when she suddenly dropped this piece of info on me. I was only fairly surprised, mostly because this person was using my dog's pics, but other than that, nothing really surprised or shocked me about the topic as a whole. Unfortunately, the reality for us is that Christine has always had numerous fake profiles using her pictures and assumptions of her life pop up on every social media site, and by association, I've popped up in a few of them too.

Christine is gorgeous; she's a long blonde haired, blue eyed little mermaid with a tiny waist and a smile to kill. She used to model in college, has popped up in a few music videos and has been on dates with one or two celebrities. These are the facts, not the fiction, so you might see how the people in the social media world might react a little differently than the normal "like" and scroll. It all started on Facebook in 2010 with a girl using the name "Christine Brown" and a handful of Christine's own Facebook pictures to create a fake profile. She even went as far as to point out how much she loves sloths (like Christine) and to post pictures of Christine's mother and Nana as her own.

Now there's really no mistaking Christine, so as soon as the fake profile got enough circulation, it came to the attentions of several friends, who then alerted her to the fake profile. And so began a very long list of profiles that would eventually pop up depicting "Christine Brown" "Christina Ime", "Hannah Alonso", etc. all using the real Christine's pictures, pretending to have her life, and more often than not, saying bad things about her. After the first profile (Christine Brown) was discovered by friends, Christine messaged said girl to ask her to stop. The answer was an immediate block of Christine and any and all people associated closely with her. After word of that particular profile died down, another popped up two years later when a guy from Europe reached out to Christine to tell her he had been in an online relationship with a girl named "Hana Alonso" for two years, had sent her money and everything. Problem was, it was Christine's pictures she had been using.

In retaliation, Christine posted her profile on her own Instagram, reaching out to anyone who knew anything to help shut her down. Well apparently that worked at least a little bit, because the profile disappeared. Whether it was shut down or she deleted it herself remains to be seen. Finally, Christina Imes showed up just this year with the same pictures, although some updated, with a Tinder, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Christine has messaged her on Facebook but she has yet to read it. So here we are.

Because of how she looks, Christine has always had and made enemies, often for no apparent reason at all. Truly, she could walk into a room where absolutely no one knows her, and have about six female enemies in the time it would take a normal person to say "hello." We used to joke around that I was the neutralizer, because no matter how nasty the environment was, when we were together it was always neutralized. I got used to the side effects of Christine's beauty a long time ago; always a little protective of her, I was always overly aware of what was going on around us, and rightfully so because just like Gigi Hadid, Christine could (and WAS on a few occasions) easily picked up and thrown over a random guy's shoulders.

Unfortunately (and sometimes fortunately) for me, she was also extremely feisty, so when that one guy called her a "bitch" that one time because she didn't answer his catcall, I got to hold her back so she wouldn't go all Charlize Theron from Hancock on the guy and we could move on peacefully with the rest of our night. From kicking a girl in the shins in 4th grade to physically carrying her away from a fight, I have been right next to this blonde through it all, so the fake profiles were just another side effect to add to the label as far as I was concerned.

Nev Schulman and Max Joseph from the MTV tv show Catfish recently contacted Christine in regards to "Christina Imes." I was shocked when she told me that, mostly because it made the news "new" again, in a sense; after years of friends and family texting me about the fake profiles they found of Christine and finding her pictures posted everywhere from band pages to blogs, a person got used to the news. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to help to bring the catfishes to justice because without a phone number, or more information they can't get her. They did at least find the real Christine.

There are always going to be people who will follow, stalk and want to steal the kind of pretty that Christine is, its just the reality of the situation. There will also be the friends who will help bring the funny into the situation, brush off the dirt, and add it to the side-effects label. In the end, the main side effects of being pretty are a whole bunch of haters, and a sarcastic-ass friend or two that know how to flex their middle fingers, pour a glass of wine and put the bitch on blast.