Lil Miquela, with her freckles, big hazel eyes, and bee-stung lips, appeared in Instagram for the first time just eight months ago. She wasn’t famous and nobody had heard of her, but her photos quickly started attracting attention. She now has more than 127,000 followers. Some of her posts get more likes than those of TV stars and mainstream celebrities.
Her very first post was of a furry pink crop top, as if she was just another fashiongrammer starting out.
She often posts motivational girl-power comments like, ‘Be a slut. Do whatever you want’.
But she’s not just another cute girl posting photos of her feet in a pair of white Converse.
Not just another Paris Hilton fan joking, ‘my mom in high school’.
Not just another hot girl showing off her hot guy friends.
Lil Miquela isn’t just another Instagram girl for the simple reason that... nobody is sure if she’s a real person or not.
Look at her features.
And not just at the way she views the world.
Like any other Instagirl, Miquela caught Pokemon fever.
She fell in love with Millie Brown, the young actress who plays Eleven in Stranger Things.
And she dresses up to go the club because her girl says Leonardo DiCaprio is there.
Miquela’s account is packed with comments from thousands of adoring fans who can’t decide if she – this girl with a CGI face but weirdly realistic hands – exists in real life.
She’s a real person but she digitally edits her face
100% CGI and you need your eyes testing if you can’t tell!
It’s not real. Her skin doesn’t match her features
She’s a graphic designer and alters her photos as an artistic statement
She’s a videogame designer. She does it on purpose. One rumour: she’s doing it for SIMS 5
I can’t decide if she’s real or not. She should upload a video of herself
Lil Miquela hasn’t revealed her secret yet. And in the meantime, not only has she captured the attention of thousands of Instagram followers, but even mainstream media such as the BBC have been wondering who she could be.
Some suggest that Miquela is a practical joke, a satire on social media – a world in which images often blur the thin line separating reality and make-believe.
To say what’s true and what isn’t in the virtual world – where reality can be tweaked – is tricky. Is there a real girl behind the obviously manipulated images we see of Lili? Or is she simply a computer-generated avatar? Filters or digital creation?
Her appearance is confusing, but it’s bringing something very real to the table. For model Rebecca Pearson, Miquela’s account could be trying to draw attention to the image manipulations carried out by fashion magazines in their photo editorials. Could it be a comment on this distorted reality which is slowly becoming the new normal?
Filters blur reality. Everything considered unattractive is concealed: the face’s imperfections, the bags under the eyes. Naturalness is forsaken to project the image of the person we wish we could be.
Because, even though they blur the truth, these images nonetheless attract and seduce us.
Lil Miquela could be, as some have speculated, a publicity stunt for the new edition of The Sims videogame, a brilliant marketing scheme. But even if that’s true, this new Instagram star with fake features reveals some very real, human truths.