The Real Alexis Ren

The model and social media sensation opens up to her legions of followers about almost everything in her life, both good and bad. And that’s why they love her.

- Sarah Horne Grose

The light in Southern California moves from shades of straw gold to hazy peach—basically, your perfect selfie conditions. With palm trees in the background and Alexis Ren in the foreground, mooning the camera from a skateboard, you have the makings of social media magic: a single video clip, and then—bam!—5,034,764 views on Instagram.

Ren, the 20-year-old model and Instababe extraordinaire (9.4 million followers and counting), is sanguine about why she gets all those likes. “Confidence is what people tend to gravitate toward, and also, obviously, sex. I don’t consider that a bad thing, though. If a woman likes to post about her body, that doesn’t make her a slut, desperate, or dumb. It still blows my mind we are stuck in that perception of womanhood. It’s 2017. Come on, people!”

Ren grew up in the tony coastal town of Santa Monica, surfing, skateboarding, and getting plenty of second glances for that body. At the age of 13 she was scouted to model for the surf chick label Brandy Melville, and photos of her in a bikini soon went viral, laying the foundation for a mini empire that blended traditional commercial jobs with a huge social media following. Earning notoriety at such a young age was “surreal,” she says. “It’s still weird.”