Issue 08
JEFFREE STAR
By Clint Catalyst
Some celebrities are manufactured by the system. Others beat the system and manufacture themselves.
Case in point: Jeffree Star, a 20-year-old, media-savvy kid from Orange County who transformed himself into a “web celeb” through his self-orchestrated photo shoots, mind-bending personal aesthetics, acerbic wit, and self-proclaimed status as Jeffree Star: Queen of the Beautifuls. So how exactly is a web celeb made? To the casual culture vulture peeking in on Jeffree’s MySpace page, the hundreds of thousands of “friends” may look like magic, but the reality behind this sleight of hand is sheer marketing genius and countless hours of hard work. Early in the online networking game, this barb-tongued beauty posted rants and provocative photos under the all-capped moniker “CUNT” among the ether of dial-up dinosaurs Friendster, FaceTheJury, Lipstick Party, Melodramatic.com, and LiveJournal.
After CUNT generated a steady stream of looky-loos for (his? her?) manifestos (CUNT’s image functioning as an exclamation point; the point behind the image an invocation of question marks), Jeffree decided to supplant his role as an internet personality and present an actual “product” to accompany the product he is himself: in other words, put some beats behind those mouthy opinions and make some music. Impressed that a site had popped up among the others that allowed users to launch and play songs—a free-for-all, thereby leveling the playing field between the burgeoning and the big-name bands—Star foresaw MySpace’s potential to be the next big wave to crash on mainstream shores.
He was right. Trusting his intuition, “The Star” tried a little experiment in phenomenology—namely, posting royal proclamations on all the old-school cyber friend-swappers that “CUNT is relocating as Jeffree Star on MySpace: follow me there to hear my music and see what’s going on in my life.”
The experiment is working out so well that, without having even officially released a track, Star’s online demo has had a record-breaking number of plays (an astounding seven million in the last six months alone), and he’s racking up some serious frequent flyer miles from all the global destinations he’s being flown to for modeling gigs, personal appearances, and turns on the stage. He has even teamed up on tracks with Samantha Maloney, drummer for Peaches (of “Fuck The Pain Away” fame) and Eagles of Death Metal, as well as electroclash founding father Larry Tee. Says Star, “As far as committing to any set band, producer, or record label, I’m keeping my options open.”
One of Star’s main concerns is finding the right creative team, one that isn’t afraid of going raw and raunchy on some songs, yet also has no fear of producing radio-friendly dance hits. “They don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” he explains. “Darling, I want it all.” And with guest appearances forthcoming on the CD releases of acts as diverse as Interscope Records’ latest darlings the Hollywood Undead, Relapse Records metal demigods The Dillinger Escape Plan, and hiphop homo-thug Deadlee, who’s to say Jeffree can’t—and won’t—have it all?
A case in point of the tenet that sometimes in life we do get to choose our own labels, this self-proclaimed “Head of the Makeup Mafia” and “Queen Bitch Supreme Among Internet Royalty” is a bundle of cyanidelaced contradictions that comprise the vicious, pink persona of an individual who’s a pioneer in the true sense of the word. Star shed his birth name and backstory like some played-out trend, creating a new sense of personal history through pronouncements such as “I’m not a man; I’m not a woman; I’m a mannequin”—playing with notions of gender, sexual identity, and the loss/transmogrification/“gain” of the human condition in the process.
The ultimate lash-stroke of genius? Wielding the same sharp schtick as Sara Silverman’s über-entitled whitegirl persona, Star never once breaks character. Unless it’s to raise an eyebrow, there is no wink, no clue to let us know what part is art and what’s artifice. Has he really had eight plastic surgery procedures, or is he yanking our crank? And in a society where celebrities often cop out via the “no comment” route when queried about the curious new shape their hips, lips, and/or noses have taken, what sort of statement on the elusive quest for youth would an artist who “owns” the “genuine faux” be taking?
“Not everyone’s going to get me,” sighs Star. “But that’s the point. I’m not the first person to be ahead of my time—but I don’t have time for the retirement center to catch up. They can pop Geritol and recycle the tried-and-tired; it’s more important for me to continue to evolve and expand.”
As record producers and media execs scratch their heads in predictable middle-aged, middle-American, fearbased fashion, the countless hordes of teenagers jumping aboard the Jeffree Star bandwagon don’t exactly count for nothing. Be they sweaty-palmed fans or homophobic foes, their machete-sharp gaze and relentless attention confirm the same basic fact: love him or loathe him, at the end of the day this star is rising.