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Yes, Girl Online is awful. But Zoella deserves a pat on the back Leave Zoella alone. She's much better than this book
(about 11 hours later)
‘Every time you post something online, you have a choice”, writes Penny, the heroine of Zoella’s first novel, Girl Online, after people post nasty comments about her. “You can either make it something that adds to the happiness levels in the world – or you can make it something that takes away from them.”‘Every time you post something online, you have a choice”, writes Penny, the heroine of Zoella’s first novel, Girl Online, after people post nasty comments about her. “You can either make it something that adds to the happiness levels in the world – or you can make it something that takes away from them.”
It may reassure young fans who don’t want to believe that Girl Online is, almost exclusively, the work of a ghost writer, Siobhan Curham, that an identical thought came to Zoella, a while back, after people posted nasty comments about her. “Every time you post something online, you have a choice,” Zoella both tweeted and blogged. “You can make people happy or take away their happiness. Just a thought.”It may reassure young fans who don’t want to believe that Girl Online is, almost exclusively, the work of a ghost writer, Siobhan Curham, that an identical thought came to Zoella, a while back, after people posted nasty comments about her. “Every time you post something online, you have a choice,” Zoella both tweeted and blogged. “You can make people happy or take away their happiness. Just a thought.”
So was that a Zoella thought in the first place, subsequently adapted by Curham? Or vice versa? Or is the inside of Zoella’s head, stage by spooky stage, starting to resemble the inside of Curham’s? Whoever’s behind it, the happiness exhortation has had little impact on the Girl Online Amazon page, where disappointment still afflicts all too many of the readers who thought that Girl Online, by 24-year-old Zoe Sugg, should have been her own unaided work. “What a shame,” writes one. “You only get one chance to make a first impression, and taking the credit for a novel which has been ghost-written isn’t the way to do it.”So was that a Zoella thought in the first place, subsequently adapted by Curham? Or vice versa? Or is the inside of Zoella’s head, stage by spooky stage, starting to resemble the inside of Curham’s? Whoever’s behind it, the happiness exhortation has had little impact on the Girl Online Amazon page, where disappointment still afflicts all too many of the readers who thought that Girl Online, by 24-year-old Zoe Sugg, should have been her own unaided work. “What a shame,” writes one. “You only get one chance to make a first impression, and taking the credit for a novel which has been ghost-written isn’t the way to do it.”
Some literary professionals have also appeared upset by Zoella/Curham, to a degree, given ghosting’s long – if fairly undistinguished– provenance, that might look disproportionate to the offence. But as Jennie Erdal says in her wonderful memoir, Ghosting, A Double Life (widely believed to depict her labours for Naim Attallah), ghost writers are aptly named.Some literary professionals have also appeared upset by Zoella/Curham, to a degree, given ghosting’s long – if fairly undistinguished– provenance, that might look disproportionate to the offence. But as Jennie Erdal says in her wonderful memoir, Ghosting, A Double Life (widely believed to depict her labours for Naim Attallah), ghost writers are aptly named.
“They upset those who are in the world, reminding them of things they would rather ignore. They spoil the party, they can appear at inconvenient moments, and their energy lingers for a long time,” she writes. Even so, personalities ranging from Kerry Katona and Katie Price to, it is sometimes rumoured, Stella Rimington, have been forgiven similar offences.“They upset those who are in the world, reminding them of things they would rather ignore. They spoil the party, they can appear at inconvenient moments, and their energy lingers for a long time,” she writes. Even so, personalities ranging from Kerry Katona and Katie Price to, it is sometimes rumoured, Stella Rimington, have been forgiven similar offences.
Preternaturally low expectations may have helped with that. Zoella writes for a living. Moreover, she writes for children, whose innocent trust, according to some traditionalists, merits only genuine, certifiably celebrity-authored tripe. And it’s true that Zoella’s vlogging brand is all about authenticity. She delivers natural-looking bulletins, face to face, to zillions of pubescent and adolescent fans. How can they ever believe her blogs about doing flicky eyes or picking nail-polish, or a really quite useful one about deep cleaning her make-up brushes, when their author is not even capable, it emerges, of lines such as: “I feel like I’m in a fairy tale”?Preternaturally low expectations may have helped with that. Zoella writes for a living. Moreover, she writes for children, whose innocent trust, according to some traditionalists, merits only genuine, certifiably celebrity-authored tripe. And it’s true that Zoella’s vlogging brand is all about authenticity. She delivers natural-looking bulletins, face to face, to zillions of pubescent and adolescent fans. How can they ever believe her blogs about doing flicky eyes or picking nail-polish, or a really quite useful one about deep cleaning her make-up brushes, when their author is not even capable, it emerges, of lines such as: “I feel like I’m in a fairy tale”?
Would it have been so difficult for Zoella to pick up a pen and write, like her professional ghost: “I feel even more like Cinderella”, or – as events take a darker turn for Penny, the stricken teen: “I feel as if I have a ball of sorrow growing inside me like a tumour”?Would it have been so difficult for Zoella to pick up a pen and write, like her professional ghost: “I feel even more like Cinderella”, or – as events take a darker turn for Penny, the stricken teen: “I feel as if I have a ball of sorrow growing inside me like a tumour”?
But for anyone who truly respects Zoella for the extraordinary success of her online self, it is surely a great relief, on taking in the full idiocy of – ostensibly – her first work of fiction, to discover that she had nothing to do with it. She’s better than this.But for anyone who truly respects Zoella for the extraordinary success of her online self, it is surely a great relief, on taking in the full idiocy of – ostensibly – her first work of fiction, to discover that she had nothing to do with it. She’s better than this.
At the risk of not adding to happiness levels in the world, other than at Penguin, naturally, where any publicity about this beady enterprise will be joyously received, Girl Online seems designed to reassure modern girlhood that, whatever it may have recently heard to the contrary, fulfilment still depends on bewitching a handsome prince. In short, its message is the exact opposite of Zoella’s career, the latter having relied on neither abnormal loveliness nor male supervision.At the risk of not adding to happiness levels in the world, other than at Penguin, naturally, where any publicity about this beady enterprise will be joyously received, Girl Online seems designed to reassure modern girlhood that, whatever it may have recently heard to the contrary, fulfilment still depends on bewitching a handsome prince. In short, its message is the exact opposite of Zoella’s career, the latter having relied on neither abnormal loveliness nor male supervision.
For continuity purposes, the prince is updated in Girl Online into an internationally famous American singer, albeit one just not-famous-enough to be known to Penny, the schoolgirl blogger from Brighton. Courtesy of some deft ghost-work, our 15-year-old finds herself plonked in New York at Christmas, where a chance meeting with the male figment leads to all her troubles being over (a three-year age gap and much business with dolls and picnics just about finesse this potentially illegal union into something less old-school Top of the Pops). “The Glass Slipper Moment”, Penny calls it in her blog. Admittedly, a few dollops of Mean Girls (gay best friend, school bitch, etc), will leave Girl Online readers in no doubt that they have moved on, emotionally, since Zoe the Tooth Fairy. But, in a notable departure from the vogue for darker teen fiction, its most obvious debts are to the vintage, Cartlandesque genre in which a shy wallflower overtakes all rivals to bag an alpha male.For continuity purposes, the prince is updated in Girl Online into an internationally famous American singer, albeit one just not-famous-enough to be known to Penny, the schoolgirl blogger from Brighton. Courtesy of some deft ghost-work, our 15-year-old finds herself plonked in New York at Christmas, where a chance meeting with the male figment leads to all her troubles being over (a three-year age gap and much business with dolls and picnics just about finesse this potentially illegal union into something less old-school Top of the Pops). “The Glass Slipper Moment”, Penny calls it in her blog. Admittedly, a few dollops of Mean Girls (gay best friend, school bitch, etc), will leave Girl Online readers in no doubt that they have moved on, emotionally, since Zoe the Tooth Fairy. But, in a notable departure from the vogue for darker teen fiction, its most obvious debts are to the vintage, Cartlandesque genre in which a shy wallflower overtakes all rivals to bag an alpha male.
As its exhumer-in-chief, Siobhan Curham has now stressed that Girl Online also features “real and serious issues such as cyber-bullying, homophobia and anxiety”. It’s not all fairy lights, chiselled cheekbones and admiring allusions to a (real) Brighton destination called Choccywoccydoodah. “I [also] saw the opportunity to get important and empowering messages across to her incredibly huge fanbase”, she says. “Messages about self-belief, anxiety and – oh the irony – online hate.”As its exhumer-in-chief, Siobhan Curham has now stressed that Girl Online also features “real and serious issues such as cyber-bullying, homophobia and anxiety”. It’s not all fairy lights, chiselled cheekbones and admiring allusions to a (real) Brighton destination called Choccywoccydoodah. “I [also] saw the opportunity to get important and empowering messages across to her incredibly huge fanbase”, she says. “Messages about self-belief, anxiety and – oh the irony – online hate.”
But while there’s no reason why a cupcake-infested fantasy for ages 11 and up couldn’t be a great place to debate mental health issues, or show how a 15-year-old’s panic attacks really can be cured virtually overnight by an attentive and chiselled rock-star, in this case fairy-tale preoccupations repeatedly eclipse Curham’s empowering messages. Once again, what’s objectionable about Girl Online is not that it’s ghost-written, but, in a reversal of the usual process, that the result is distinctly less impressive than the non-ghosted Zoella. It’s as if Kerry Katona ghost-wrote Naomi Campbell. Having said that, the procedure is not without precedent. Think of Madonna’s Mr Peabody’s Apples.But while there’s no reason why a cupcake-infested fantasy for ages 11 and up couldn’t be a great place to debate mental health issues, or show how a 15-year-old’s panic attacks really can be cured virtually overnight by an attentive and chiselled rock-star, in this case fairy-tale preoccupations repeatedly eclipse Curham’s empowering messages. Once again, what’s objectionable about Girl Online is not that it’s ghost-written, but, in a reversal of the usual process, that the result is distinctly less impressive than the non-ghosted Zoella. It’s as if Kerry Katona ghost-wrote Naomi Campbell. Having said that, the procedure is not without precedent. Think of Madonna’s Mr Peabody’s Apples.
Contrary to much recent commentary, in which even Zoella’s champions have reduced her status to “make-up vlogger”, her appeal to young girls is not confined to eyeliner, and shit-girls-say sort of statements such as: “I can’t believe that it is actually December!” Over the last few years, similar bleatings have been interspersed with influential videos about her disabling anxiety and panic attacks, viewed millions of times by fans who often leave comments for others: “Speak to a doctor for help and maybe ask for medication.”Contrary to much recent commentary, in which even Zoella’s champions have reduced her status to “make-up vlogger”, her appeal to young girls is not confined to eyeliner, and shit-girls-say sort of statements such as: “I can’t believe that it is actually December!” Over the last few years, similar bleatings have been interspersed with influential videos about her disabling anxiety and panic attacks, viewed millions of times by fans who often leave comments for others: “Speak to a doctor for help and maybe ask for medication.”
Whatever progress is now being made in openness about young people’s mental health disorders, Zoella deserves at least some of the credit. When he recruited her, last month, as a “digital ambassador” for Mind, that charity’s chief executive, Paul Farmer, described Zoella as “an inspiration to many”. It is not, thanks to Penguin and its dismally low ambitions for girls’ fiction, something one could honestly say of her novel. No wonder I feel as if I have a ball of sorrow growing inside me like a tumour.Whatever progress is now being made in openness about young people’s mental health disorders, Zoella deserves at least some of the credit. When he recruited her, last month, as a “digital ambassador” for Mind, that charity’s chief executive, Paul Farmer, described Zoella as “an inspiration to many”. It is not, thanks to Penguin and its dismally low ambitions for girls’ fiction, something one could honestly say of her novel. No wonder I feel as if I have a ball of sorrow growing inside me like a tumour.