Robert Munsch’s Stephanie, The Reluctant Influencer

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In 1996, Robert Munsch published his story, Stephanie’s Ponytail and gave life to a little girl with a mind and style of her own – and influence over the kids at her school, whether she liked it or not.

The story follows Stephanie and her various ponytail styles. She asks her mother for a nice little ponytail coming right out the back, and is greeted at school with a chorus of “ugly, ugly, very ugly”. She responds defiantly with “It’s my ponytail, and I like it.” and then the next day, those pesky classmates show up with ponytails of their own. It continues with side ponytails, top ponytails, and front ponytails – and ends dramatically when Stephanie tells her class that she’s coming the next day with a shaved head. But, instead of being a trendsetter, she tricked them all. The teacher, the boys, and girls in her class all show up bald, and Stephanie shows up with a nice little ponytail coming right out the back!

In the last year or so, I’ve read the story more times than I can count at bedtimes, nap times, and other times. It’s become ingrained in my mind. It’s reached the point where I can daydream while I’m reading it. And one of the things I’ve daydreamed about is Stephanie in the year 2020 with social media, instead of 1996 with her tag-along classmates.

I don’t mean what if the story was released in 2020 with an elementary school-aged Stephanie. I mean, what if we fast-forwarded in Stephanie’s life from 1996 to 2020, and now she’s somewhere in her early to mid-30s and still reluctantly influencing people via the internet.

Let’s say that Stephanie has Facebook that she mostly just uses to keep track of old friends and her family members. She has a Twitter account that she uses to complain about work, share her opinions on life and politics and entertainment and whatnot. And she has an Instagram account that has more followers than she could ever imagine and unintentionally keeps finding herself influencing people’s tastes in style, music, food, and drinks.

She didn’t want this. Just like when she was in elementary school and she just wanted to wear her hair back.

But it’s 2020. And that’s how things are for her now.

Stephanie finds the whole thing annoying, of course. And she also sees the infuriating irony in all of it. Just like her hairstyle experience, she gets comments like “ugly, ugly, very ugly” – and then sees those same followers showing off their vintage teapots and kitschy art, and their stories all have the same Taylor Swift songs from folklore and evermore in the background.

She didn’t ask for this. She started her Instagram pre-influencer boom, just like everyone else her age. She doesn’t overuse hashtags. She doesn’t even know how all these people found her. But here they are. And here she is, the reluctant influencer still, almost 25 years later.

And because she finds herself with somewhere north of 11,000 Instagram followers – Stephanie gets DMs from brands offering her a discount on their products if she pitches them in her posts and stories. They’ll even give her a personal referral code if she wants to make a little money. She hates it. She stopped answering them.

Is she tempted to post a selfie with a photoshopped shaved head to see what happens? Yes. But she’s a grown woman now, not a little girl. So she doesn’t do it.

Instead, she blocks people who leave crappy comments. She shouts out the cute antique stores and local businesses that she loves. She makes jokes about it all with her friends in the group chat. And once in a while, she accepts a free gift from some brand, as long as they know she’s not signing up for anything, promising to buy anything, or agreeing to promote them just because they want her exposure.

25 years later and it’s a case of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ for Stephanie.

She didn’t ask for this influence then. And she didn’t ask for it now. But for whatever reason, people want what she’s got. They want that “it” that she’s always had. And they’re both jealous and mean – and ready to drop everything to copy her for a chance to be seen as that kind of cool.

Some days you feel bad for her. Some days you envy her. And some days you remember the story someone told you about how she tricked her entire class, including the teacher, into shaving their heads back in elementary school.

You like her style and you admire her taste – but you’re not sure you trust her.

And that’s just the way she likes it.

https://youtu.be/6bvYhf0qW4s