This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. Listen, there are people you encounter, however briefly, and end up living rent-free in your head for years. For me, that’s Brooklyn and Bailey, whose Instagram has become a rich text right at the intersection of Christian youth culture and influencer capitalism.
Yes! I have literally been waiting for this since the minute I saw the Insta, and really appreciate the way you offer us context for influencers and how they're really just another form of advertising, with the internet allowing a divorce from the traditional celebrity machine.
A couple weeks ago they did an open Q&A and one of the questions was whether Bailey was engaged...her response was a coy "not yet", and I immediately assumed that there was something in the works, but even in my deep cynicism I didn't go to "sponsored ring".
Also have to assume that the jeweler was involved in the content, given that Bailey is actually wearing a full wedding set in all the photos. It's a very achievable and aspirational look for an outdoor, distanced wedding-and explains why everything is white, where a pink flower sitch would have played up the trendy rose gold of the ring. Interesting to consider the semiotics of this as product advertising separate from the B&B brand building; if it were just Bailey, the focus would have been purely engagement. The presence of a wedding band in the grid photos and, frankly, continuing to be worn in some stories in which the jeweler is tagged raises an eyebrow for me-because why wouldn't they try and double-down on the exposure with a wedding band reveal later on?
I was raised LDS, which meant from about the age of 11 on, every lesson focused on the idea that marriage was not optional. (We were taught that our entrance to the highest level of heaven depended on marriage to a worthy LDS man in the temple, and having children.) My teenage years were a weird blend of being desperately unhappy and depressed, while also feeling bad because being LDS was supposed to make you happy. I really don't miss that culture.
I can't stop thinking about how "cute" is the descriptor for their account and content (I take no issue with this, and completely agree!) while at the same time there's something unsettling and jarring about how young B&B look and act while also trying to appeal to consumers around their own age?
First thing I thought about the engagement photo was "how old are they, again?" and remembering they're my own age was so destabilizing. Makes me reflect on how B&B and co. have to project/perform youth and innocence while also be eternally prepared for "adult" things like marriage. I also can't help but wonder about how actual real life contrasts so much with all the imagery here, and really have a hard time picturing Bailey and Asa doing normal-people things like managing laundry, cooking, and the less photographable parts of life that are also part of marriage. This is less a criticism of them and more my own struggle to put into words how disturbing this cultural intersection is for me. What a great piece that I'll be thinking about all day.
It's both funny and possibly scary to me how much this type of backlash will only grow further obstinant and deranged the more secular, and I guess nihilist, culture becomes. I like how you frame it at the end: "naturalize the objectively bizarre parts of the status quo." Naturalization is at the heart of conservative arguments, but the more culture progresses, the more they will have to force these arbitrary truisms on us, all under the guise of "it's just the way things are." In order for things to stay the same, things will have to change.
Thank you so much for this. Purity culture is such a foreign concept to me being from and living in Denmark. To an outsider, teen sex in general in the US seem like such a delicate or vexed thing and your piece really shed light on how religion and conservatism and patriarchy all have part in how it plays out in that particular demographic.
Here only a small, mostly muslim, minority adhere to abstinence. Most parents know teens will have sex and educate them and most often the parents of older teens expect the boyfriend of girlfriend to stay the night from time to time when the kids are still living at home.
Also, thank you for your newsletters – they are always a pleasure to read.
I had a VISCERAL reaction to seeing the phrase "ring by spring" again. My conservative Christian college campus had the same expression (although we also added "or your money back).
What's interesting is that my college was a liberal arts college and in the same town there was a Bible College and the joke on our campus was that the girls that went there only went there to get married to a pastor but somehow the guys from the college were always trying to date girls from our school because there couldn't be "two pastor's in the marriage" it's all so crazily fucked up when I think about it.
I was lucky that the majority of my friends out right rejected that narrative but I definitely saw on my periphery girls who I just knew were making a huge mistake. and I just wanted to scream "JUST HAVE SEX! DON'T GET MARRIED!!!"
Purity Culture is such a shit show... and apparently, I have some deep-seated body-level healing to do from it. I figured that out a few days ago because Pastor Nadia had a podcast with Josh Harris, who wrote the 1990s PC bible, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye." That damn book not only spawned a plethora of further reading material (including his own gloating courtship & marriage follow-up), but it codified what conservative Christian women were supposed to do. I went to a conservative university, which also had lots of rituals built around getting engaged (**freshman*** year, which 40-year-old me is horrified about now and 18-year-old me thought was completely nuts) that I luckily didn't get roped into. The Podcast was amazing, particularly for the level of grace that Nadia brought to the conversation. I am putting her book Shameless on the top of my "to read" pile once the semester ends. https://nadiabolzweber.com/303-joshua-harris/ (And I WISH she'd release the IGTV follow-up she did with him on Monday. There were some INCREDIBLE gems that I need to unpack more, but fear I'll forget them too quickly. I was particularly struck about when she left the Church of Christ she became militant in social justice, using the same tools she'd learned to evangelize. She had to re-learn how to NOT use those tools as she did her social justice work.)
As a New Englander who is too old for these kids, this is entirely foreign culture to me, and as many have said, thank you for this really thorough and engaging dive into a truly American phenomenon. I've been thinking about influencers a bit lately too. One I used to follow so closely, Jessica Quirk from What I Wore, fascinated me with the way she tried to reconfigure her brand to be wellness for a while, then stepped out of the limelight almost entirely to focus on crafty things, and has been stepping back in bit by bit. Compared to another one I followed pretty closely, Sarah Vickers of Classy Girls Wear Pearls (I know I am dating myself by referring to their blogs, as this was pre-Instagram domination.) She is still 100% the face of the blog and the family clothing brand. I'm really interested in the different paths there, in what burnt out Jessica that hasn't burnt out Sarah.
The paths people are describing in the comments for how they expect B&B to split up their account going forward just sound so dystopian and Truman Show esque...
I'm also still trying to digest the recent dialogues around millennials and Gen Z and I think there is SUCH a disconnect between how people talk about gen z as being so much more aware of how curated social media is vs what we're seeing in actual mental health outcomes of exposure to this stuff. Anyway. AHP did a great job synthesizing thoughts about these things. I'm so happy to be here
Loved reading this piece! It is taking me back to being around Baylor Christian culture in a big way. This paragraph is real:
"If you think this is weird, well you have obviously not been around college-age Christians desperate to have sex and/or desperate to keep having sex but not feel bad about it!"
Even though the people I was friends with at Baylor were not the stereotype of Baylor (the stereotype being Bible-study, Wednesday night church, maybe sorority) the desperate horniness and repression remained! Nobody was having it, everybody wanted it. We scorned "ring by junior spring" and yet.
Excellent piece as always. One question I'm left with re: the twinfluencers (and all of the people who grow up in the spotlight) - how do they adapt as adults?
You highlighted the well-worn path to the domestic influencer, which seems like the obvious next step for Bailey, but how does Brooklyn fit in? They both can do "being in a wedding" content in the coming months, but after that? Where does Brooklyn go when Bailey holds up that ideological next step of "house and husband"? What happens to their brand as Brooklyn and Bailey? Really interested to see what comes next.
Spot on write up (along with its precursor). I’ve seen this same ring-by-spring photo dozens of times, usually on one of those green and gold benches.
| “I’m not saying that women in these situations don’t love their future husbands. I’m saying it can feel like a massive relief — which ultimately says less about the specific relationship and more about the way society conceives of women’s sexuality and general value, both in and outside of devout religious communities.”
My mind also jumps to the prism that there’s a lot of men seeking conformity/relief in these marriages. I think every class of BU grads has at least one ring-by-spring marriage end when the husband comes out of the closet (usually within a few years). Lots of pain for all parties, driven by this massive pressure from the evangelical establishment for people to fit into a certain mold.
Anne Helen Petersen: "higher ed’s marketing of itself as a lifestyle. (Every lifestyle needs ambassadors — it’s just that some, like NCAA athletes and the people of color recruited to be on the cover of the school magazine, don’t receive monetary compensation, and others, like Brooklyn and Bailey, get “paid partnerships.”)
Wow. I've seen that transition to higher-ed marketing by the U in my town.,as well as its ad-like display of images of non-paid students OC.
Yes! I have literally been waiting for this since the minute I saw the Insta, and really appreciate the way you offer us context for influencers and how they're really just another form of advertising, with the internet allowing a divorce from the traditional celebrity machine.
A couple weeks ago they did an open Q&A and one of the questions was whether Bailey was engaged...her response was a coy "not yet", and I immediately assumed that there was something in the works, but even in my deep cynicism I didn't go to "sponsored ring".
Also have to assume that the jeweler was involved in the content, given that Bailey is actually wearing a full wedding set in all the photos. It's a very achievable and aspirational look for an outdoor, distanced wedding-and explains why everything is white, where a pink flower sitch would have played up the trendy rose gold of the ring. Interesting to consider the semiotics of this as product advertising separate from the B&B brand building; if it were just Bailey, the focus would have been purely engagement. The presence of a wedding band in the grid photos and, frankly, continuing to be worn in some stories in which the jeweler is tagged raises an eyebrow for me-because why wouldn't they try and double-down on the exposure with a wedding band reveal later on?
I was raised LDS, which meant from about the age of 11 on, every lesson focused on the idea that marriage was not optional. (We were taught that our entrance to the highest level of heaven depended on marriage to a worthy LDS man in the temple, and having children.) My teenage years were a weird blend of being desperately unhappy and depressed, while also feeling bad because being LDS was supposed to make you happy. I really don't miss that culture.
I can't stop thinking about how "cute" is the descriptor for their account and content (I take no issue with this, and completely agree!) while at the same time there's something unsettling and jarring about how young B&B look and act while also trying to appeal to consumers around their own age?
First thing I thought about the engagement photo was "how old are they, again?" and remembering they're my own age was so destabilizing. Makes me reflect on how B&B and co. have to project/perform youth and innocence while also be eternally prepared for "adult" things like marriage. I also can't help but wonder about how actual real life contrasts so much with all the imagery here, and really have a hard time picturing Bailey and Asa doing normal-people things like managing laundry, cooking, and the less photographable parts of life that are also part of marriage. This is less a criticism of them and more my own struggle to put into words how disturbing this cultural intersection is for me. What a great piece that I'll be thinking about all day.
These two were all I could think of during the NCAA--it drives me nuts that the players aren't paid but they are.
It's both funny and possibly scary to me how much this type of backlash will only grow further obstinant and deranged the more secular, and I guess nihilist, culture becomes. I like how you frame it at the end: "naturalize the objectively bizarre parts of the status quo." Naturalization is at the heart of conservative arguments, but the more culture progresses, the more they will have to force these arbitrary truisms on us, all under the guise of "it's just the way things are." In order for things to stay the same, things will have to change.
Thank you so much for this. Purity culture is such a foreign concept to me being from and living in Denmark. To an outsider, teen sex in general in the US seem like such a delicate or vexed thing and your piece really shed light on how religion and conservatism and patriarchy all have part in how it plays out in that particular demographic.
Here only a small, mostly muslim, minority adhere to abstinence. Most parents know teens will have sex and educate them and most often the parents of older teens expect the boyfriend of girlfriend to stay the night from time to time when the kids are still living at home.
Also, thank you for your newsletters – they are always a pleasure to read.
Did Brooklyn leave her boyfriend for his better-dressed sibling, Brooks' Brother?
I want you to know I spent an hour crafting this joke.
I had a VISCERAL reaction to seeing the phrase "ring by spring" again. My conservative Christian college campus had the same expression (although we also added "or your money back).
What's interesting is that my college was a liberal arts college and in the same town there was a Bible College and the joke on our campus was that the girls that went there only went there to get married to a pastor but somehow the guys from the college were always trying to date girls from our school because there couldn't be "two pastor's in the marriage" it's all so crazily fucked up when I think about it.
I was lucky that the majority of my friends out right rejected that narrative but I definitely saw on my periphery girls who I just knew were making a huge mistake. and I just wanted to scream "JUST HAVE SEX! DON'T GET MARRIED!!!"
Purity Culture is such a shit show... and apparently, I have some deep-seated body-level healing to do from it. I figured that out a few days ago because Pastor Nadia had a podcast with Josh Harris, who wrote the 1990s PC bible, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye." That damn book not only spawned a plethora of further reading material (including his own gloating courtship & marriage follow-up), but it codified what conservative Christian women were supposed to do. I went to a conservative university, which also had lots of rituals built around getting engaged (**freshman*** year, which 40-year-old me is horrified about now and 18-year-old me thought was completely nuts) that I luckily didn't get roped into. The Podcast was amazing, particularly for the level of grace that Nadia brought to the conversation. I am putting her book Shameless on the top of my "to read" pile once the semester ends. https://nadiabolzweber.com/303-joshua-harris/ (And I WISH she'd release the IGTV follow-up she did with him on Monday. There were some INCREDIBLE gems that I need to unpack more, but fear I'll forget them too quickly. I was particularly struck about when she left the Church of Christ she became militant in social justice, using the same tools she'd learned to evangelize. She had to re-learn how to NOT use those tools as she did her social justice work.)
As a New Englander who is too old for these kids, this is entirely foreign culture to me, and as many have said, thank you for this really thorough and engaging dive into a truly American phenomenon. I've been thinking about influencers a bit lately too. One I used to follow so closely, Jessica Quirk from What I Wore, fascinated me with the way she tried to reconfigure her brand to be wellness for a while, then stepped out of the limelight almost entirely to focus on crafty things, and has been stepping back in bit by bit. Compared to another one I followed pretty closely, Sarah Vickers of Classy Girls Wear Pearls (I know I am dating myself by referring to their blogs, as this was pre-Instagram domination.) She is still 100% the face of the blog and the family clothing brand. I'm really interested in the different paths there, in what burnt out Jessica that hasn't burnt out Sarah.
The paths people are describing in the comments for how they expect B&B to split up their account going forward just sound so dystopian and Truman Show esque...
I'm also still trying to digest the recent dialogues around millennials and Gen Z and I think there is SUCH a disconnect between how people talk about gen z as being so much more aware of how curated social media is vs what we're seeing in actual mental health outcomes of exposure to this stuff. Anyway. AHP did a great job synthesizing thoughts about these things. I'm so happy to be here
Loved reading this piece! It is taking me back to being around Baylor Christian culture in a big way. This paragraph is real:
"If you think this is weird, well you have obviously not been around college-age Christians desperate to have sex and/or desperate to keep having sex but not feel bad about it!"
Even though the people I was friends with at Baylor were not the stereotype of Baylor (the stereotype being Bible-study, Wednesday night church, maybe sorority) the desperate horniness and repression remained! Nobody was having it, everybody wanted it. We scorned "ring by junior spring" and yet.
Excellent piece as always. One question I'm left with re: the twinfluencers (and all of the people who grow up in the spotlight) - how do they adapt as adults?
You highlighted the well-worn path to the domestic influencer, which seems like the obvious next step for Bailey, but how does Brooklyn fit in? They both can do "being in a wedding" content in the coming months, but after that? Where does Brooklyn go when Bailey holds up that ideological next step of "house and husband"? What happens to their brand as Brooklyn and Bailey? Really interested to see what comes next.
Spot on write up (along with its precursor). I’ve seen this same ring-by-spring photo dozens of times, usually on one of those green and gold benches.
| “I’m not saying that women in these situations don’t love their future husbands. I’m saying it can feel like a massive relief — which ultimately says less about the specific relationship and more about the way society conceives of women’s sexuality and general value, both in and outside of devout religious communities.”
My mind also jumps to the prism that there’s a lot of men seeking conformity/relief in these marriages. I think every class of BU grads has at least one ring-by-spring marriage end when the husband comes out of the closet (usually within a few years). Lots of pain for all parties, driven by this massive pressure from the evangelical establishment for people to fit into a certain mold.
Anne Helen Petersen: "higher ed’s marketing of itself as a lifestyle. (Every lifestyle needs ambassadors — it’s just that some, like NCAA athletes and the people of color recruited to be on the cover of the school magazine, don’t receive monetary compensation, and others, like Brooklyn and Bailey, get “paid partnerships.”)
Wow. I've seen that transition to higher-ed marketing by the U in my town.,as well as its ad-like display of images of non-paid students OC.
Oh I love a good influencer deep dive. Made my midafternoon tea break so much more enjoyable.
Kicker of a closing line, AHP. 👏