The Emma Chamberlain Effect

YouTube star EMMA CHAMBERLAIN has made a name for herself by being everything SOCIAL MEDIA ISN’T: raw, real, unfiltered. She’s the antidote to PERFECTLY POLISHED influencer culture, and her MILLIONS of followers have responded with ADULATION—and RELIEF.

- Rebecca Nelson

Emma Chamberlain and I are in the bathroom after an excruciating SoulCycle class in West Hollywood, which she attends every day, and because the 18-year-old YouTube star isn’t wearing a top—just her SoulCycle-branded workout leggings and black sports bra—I have a mostly unobstructed view of her back.

As she leans into the sink to wash her face, she nods over her shoulder. “My bacne is out,” Chamberlain says in a gust, the words careening out of her mouth. She doesn’t say it self-consciously; it’s more a statement of fact. Midface wash, she reaches around and taps the breakout, almost in reverence. She dries her face with a towel, pulls her sweat-drenched hair out of her hair tie, and gives it a shake, piling it into a nest on top of her head. My face is beet red from the exertion, and I’ll feel droplets of sweat rolling down my back for the next 20 minutes. It’s the worst I’ve ever looked in front of a person I’m writing about, and yet I don’t care. Chamberlain has that effect.

She has become one of the most popular new stars on the Internet by, essentially, talking about her bacne. She’s unapologetically forthcoming about every aspect of herself, deeply skeptical, and self-deprecatingly honest. Her candor also covers, but is by no means limited to, her frequent burps and farts, her overly hairy legs, her diarrhea, the period blood dripping down her leg because she forgot a tampon. She broadcasts the minutiae of her life on YouTube, where she has over eight million subscribers. In her videos, she rarely wears makeup, and her hair is almost always tied up in a markedly unchic bun or high ponytail. For a generation that’s grown up filtering photos and curating content, Chamberlain is a much-needed antidote to the pressure to be perfect.