Caroline Calloway, Natalie Beach and the sidekick as villain
The pitfalls of a main character/sidekick friendship
Hey! Since my last newsletter I got to talk to Stephen and Celine of Cult Hackers about growing up a Witness, fighting my way to a college degree, becoming a writer, and my recent essay for Electric Literature, which they discussed on a previous episode. It was my first, and hopefully not last, podcast interview, so don’t tell me if I said anything stupid. I’m a delicate flower.
While taking with a YouTuber who covers extreme beliefs about a potential interview on his channel (coming soon) he asked me if I consider myself an activist, and I was surprisingly stumped for an answer. I don’t really call myself an activist, mostly because I think some ex-cult activism does more harm than good by antagonizing ordinary members rather than going after the system of control, and I’m not taking any real action against Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization either. I’m only telling the truth about living inside the organization. If telling your story is activism, then I guess I am, but I’ll always consider myself a writer first. More on the downfalls and potential of activism in the future.
Rebecca
Caroline Calloway, Natalie Beach and the sidekick as villain
When I was a teenager I had a friend who had everything I wanted: confidence, a car, a boyfriend, musical talent, and parents who would pay for her to go to college. An isolated only child with absolutely no social or financial capital, tagging along with her was the closest I could get to a life better than mine, and I was happy to do it.
One afternoon she was trying to teach me the backup vocals to a song she’d written and she called me “a great sidekick.” I didn’t even think to be offended. Being a sidekick meant at least one person wanted to spend time with me, and that felt like an upgrade. I took it—gag me with a spoon—as a compliment to be her sidekick.
So when I saw Natalie Beach, of Caroline Calloway sidekick fame, was publishing her first collection of essays this summer, I felt a swell of pride for sidekicks everywhere. Sure, she didn’t have the charisma of her problematic former friend, and whatever fame she achieved was entirely dependent on Calloway’s original notoriety, but she was publishing a book—a finished book—something her one-time employer couldn’t seem to do despite an eye-watering book deal and six-figure advance.
I got a galley copy of Adult Drama and prepared to come to Natalie’s defense. The writing was competent and confident. And what her stories lacked in starry-eyed sparkle, they made up for in insight and charm.
But of course, Calloway wasn’t going to allow Beach her chance at the spotlight. As Natalie’s pub date approached, Caroline started posting on her Instagram that her long-awaited self-published memoir was finally finished—for real this time! And just as Natalie’s PR team was negotiating an excerpt placement in The Cut, where Beach first claimed to be the real Caroline, Calloway was urging her supporters to pre-order a $65 luxury first edition of her “day book” Scammer, which she was hand packing, complete with Italian marbled end papers, to ship to media contacts.
It wasn’t hard to get the glamorous media treatment. Lili Anolik, biographer of similarly difficult Eve Babitz, wrote a compelling feature to accompany a full Vanity Fair photo spread. Rolling Stone depicted her as an Ophelia of the digital age. Glamour led with her claim that she’s finally “undoing a lot of the damage Natalie’s done in [her] life."
Natalie, meanwhile, was lucky if her coverage included her modest headshot at all, rather than opting for a blurry snap of her and Caroline together in their younger days.
For a recovering sidekick, it was all very difficult to watch. Of course the prettier one gets the photoshoot! Our society values style over substance! Let’s keep rewarding people for their bad behavior! Why would we start celebrating actual achievement when we could just help another vapid personality fail up!
Of course the real world complicates any simple us vs. them, black vs. white, sidekick vs. main character thinking. I haven’t read Caroline’s memoir, because I’m not going to give $65 to a person notorious for not delivering, but I have listened to roughly 100 podcasts about it, so I’ve done the research. (I recommend both episodes of Celebrity Memoir Book Club, who have had their own run-ins with Calloway.)
And even if the reviews have been generally positive, Scammer isn’t selling Calloway’s likeability. In the author interviews I’ve listened to, the hosts are compelled to confront Calloway about her claim that she was secretly in love with Beach, in particular, a passage in which she describes her desire for her friend igniting in the immediate, traumatic aftermath of Beach’s rape. It is undeniably gross to be turned on by a recently assaulted friend.
And yet, Natalie isn’t much easier to defend.
According to Calloway, Natalie got her first job as book critic at O magazine because her aunt was editor in chief there, which is surprising when it’s Caroline who gives off the odor of nepo baby, but certainly not a crime. But then she did, shortly after Caroline’s father’s suicide, try to convince Caroline to sell her life rights in a deal that allegedly would give Beach $1M and Calloway $19K if they both signed over their story for film.
Of course, Beach could only make the deal if the main character signed on. Alone, Natalie’s tale of sidekick-dom was worth something more like $100K.
Even a former sidekick would struggle to take a disloyal sidekick’s…side. But I can still relate. My friend ( let’s call her Sarah) was a few years older than me, and infinitely more independent by circumstance, if not character. She graduated college years before I would finally finish a part-time bachelor’s degree while working multiple jobs, including a night janitor gig. (Sarah’s parents didn’t want her to work at all during the school year so she could focus on her studies.)
She moved out of state, where she had her own apartment and even bought her first condo while I was still living in my parent’s house. I was jealous, but it was an opportunity to take a vacation to visit her, the only trips I could afford for years.
Did she frequently tell me I should drop out of college, because she wouldn’t have bothered to get a degree if her parents weren’t paying for it, without ever having had to work a minimum wage job herself? Yes. Did she passive-aggressively scold me not refilling her Brita filter once? Also yes. But did I forget to refill her Brita filter and ask her to drive me to the airport at 6am? Yes and yes. And did I look at photos of her world travels and various boyfriends and think only of what I lacked? Always.
I cringe when I think of our friendship, because all I can see is my bitterness and jealousy oozing out of my every pore. But then, she had cast herself as the main character in my life, as if throwing her circumstances into relief with mine made her feel better about herself.
I was going through an excruciating heartbreak, she left me a voicemail to tell me she had gotten engaged. I didn’t call her back. I dodged her phone calls until they stopped. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t at her wedding because I just couldn’t stand watching her get one more thing I couldn’t.
Years later we briefly reconnected on Instagram, never speaking of the years between. She had her first baby, which I didn’t envy at all. I moved to New York City, finally achieving a lifelong goal. Sarah told once that she had been offered two jobs upon graduating, and often regretted not taking the one in upstate New York, which would have put her close to the city. I took a little thrill in knowing she wanted something I had.
In 2017 I got a job at the same large tech firm she had recently quit or been laid off from, proving that a first-generation college grad with student loans and a less prestigious degree could land in the same place she did, even if I would quit that terrible job within the year.
Meanwhile, Sarah had another baby and moved to one of the Carolinas. Somewhere along the way, she unfollowed me on Instagram, and I didn’t mind. I knew I would have unfollowed her years ago if Instagram had existed when I was a bitter little sidekick.
We should all be the main characters of our own lives. We’re our worst selves when we’re not.
Reading
The Great Risk Shift by Jacob S. Hacker
I don’t know about you, but the last few years have turned me into something of a socialist, and I’ve been reading about alternative business models like stakeholder capitalism. This book covers all the reasons we need more secure employment models: declining wages, the loss of pensions in favor of much higher-risk 401ks, and the cost of healthcare chief among them. Hacker’s argument is that our current employment norms have pushed most of the risk of doing business off of the company and onto the employee. This really hit home right now, while my partner and I are both laid off at the same time. Me because my company lost client business and laid off 10% of staff to make up the difference, him because his company was sold and gutted.
The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner
I listened to this on audiobook, a medium I’ve really been embracing lately, and kind of wished I hadn’t. Kushner weaves masterful stories in these essays on topics from motorcycle races to Italian film. I want to spend more times with the words, so I bought a physical copy too.
Listening
Chick Habit by April March
One of my fave records, finally back on Spotify after a long, unexplained absence.
Ruined the podcast
A fun horror movie podcast by two brilliant comedians. In one recent episode Halle described pregnancy as “making a little guy out of the stuff you eat” and I’m still laughing about it.
Recommendations
This LA Times column about how we’re watching AI take our writing jobs, and why it looks different than we imagined it would.
A succinct explanation why our boomer parents are such a nightmare.
This gorgeous Laurel Canyon house I need to live in. NEED.
Some of the most beautiful and extravagant hats you’ll ever find, collected on this Instagram account.
And finally: therapeutic wishlist making, a new hobby I’ve gotten into where I make lengthy wishlists of all the things I want and can’t buy for myself until I find a job. It’s as depressing as it sounds.