Bethany Mota - The Social Princess

Bethany Mota is bigger than Beyonce. Yes, Yonce is on of the most popular celebrities of our time but when it comes to YouTube, Mota has her beat by over 7 million subscribers.

- Smriti Mundhra, photographs by Ramona Rosales

Her loyal fans, who call themselves “Motavators,” tune in weekly to catch her makeup tutorials, room decor ideas, and teenage musings on music, boys, and shopping. She broadcasts to her millions of fans from her bedroom, a cozy space she invites viewers into, winning them over with her cheery personality and genuine warmth. She’s among the Internet’s first DIY celebrities, and today she’s probably the richest. Last year, she launched a collaboration with tween brand Aeropostale to design a capsule collection—a first for a fashion vlogger—and by December she’d become Google’s most-searched designer of the year.

Today, at 19, Mota represents the millennial American dream. But in 2009, just before her 13th birthday, she had hit rock boom. Always a shy kid, she sunk into depression aer discovering that her supposed best friends had created a fake MySpace profile in Mota’s name—kind of a virtual slam book—featuring pictures of Mota lamenting about her weight and looks. Though in hindsight it may seem like typical teenage mean-girl antics, at the time the betrayal cut deep. Subsequently, Mota, who was already being homeschooled, spent nearly every waking hour holed up in her bedroom, hiding from the world. She became anxious at even the mention of getting out from under the covers.