Dear My VSCO-haters...

Hi, my name is Bellamy (my friends call me Liz or Lizzy for short), and I am a VSCO girl. “What’s VSCO?” you ask. It is just the best app everrr!!! I use it to lay out all my pictures in this aesthetic theme using filters and editing tools. I think my favorite filters are B3 and G6 cuz they make me look like I have sun-kissed skin. Let me take you through my process. Honestly, it’s so simple. It takes me only an hour to get my desired picture. It never changes because I have this, like, lavish, dreamy periwinkle theme that apparently Ariana Grande has too. I bet she viewed my Insta feed and had the inspo to steal it.

Anyway, the first step is to find the perfect picture. This takes up most of the editing time because I take about 100 to 150 pictures, and I have to scroll through all of them on my iPhone 11 Pro. My daddy pre-ordered it for me, but when I opened the box, it was this ugly red color. I don’t even understand why he didn’t get me the purple one, because then it would literally match my periwinkle theme. I yelled at him, “Why red??!!!!” and he had, like, the audacity to give me some BS answer about wanting to help fight AIDS or something as if, like, contributing to AIDS is more important than my phone color. Also, did he not realize that there’s an iPhone 11 Pro Max?! He literally makes 10 figures, and he wasn’t willing to pay just $399 more. Whatever, tho, because my daddy apologized and said he would get it for me.

When I don’t take pictures with my iPhone 11 (ew), I take all my pictures with the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 film cameras that I got for my birthday. I barely have, like, all of the Fuji film cameras. Haha, but, like, I don’t even think I’m that rich though, lol. Anyway, you need to check out my VSCO feed. The link is in my Insta bio, obviously. Don’t forget to follow me there, too. But, like, don’t expect a follow back because I really gotta break past my 1000:1 followers to following ratio, sorry, but I post these super inspirational pastel-colored Tumblr quotes and sunset pics!

Anyway, this past June, I finally turned 13, but I was forced into spending all of summer break at my four-story beach house in the Hamptons. Ugh. This summer was still a little special, though: my parents took off parental restrictions on my App Store. I could finally switch from Musical.ly to TikTok. No more lip-syncing to songs that I’d have to stop singing along to when a bad word came on and all my friends calling me a cat.

Joining TikTok was almost like my second bat mitzvah. After just one week of filming myself hitting the woah to “Panini” by Nas and “Ransom” by A Boogie, I decided to throw away all my PINK sweatshirts and sweatpants. I changed my Insta from private to public and set my business label to “Just for Fun” ‘cause I’m just for fun. I took a little bit (only $8000) out of my Vanguard trust fund and Uber Blacked to Urban Outfitters to buy some XL black T-shirts with yellow smiley faces on them and a few other shirts with these big, red Kylie Jenner-looking (omg, I love her) lips and tongues sticking out. I’ve been thinking about getting more because I’m really not sure if they’ll look cute with my biker shorts, even though the shirts are, like, so long that people will probably think I don’t even have pants on. I am so upset. My Amazon Prime only let me get three pink hydroflasksksksksks, two environmentally-sustainable baby blue Kanken backpacks, 14 shell necklaces and anklets, and 50 shades of scrunchies. I barely even have hair, but I still like to keep a couple on each arm as jewelry. I have to replace my Lokai bracelets, friendship bracelets, and Silly Bandz with the scrunchies, and I’m still not sure if I have enough to cover both of my forearms completely. I even had to steal seven pairs of my father’s Birkenstocks. Ug(gs)h, they don’t even have that, like, really, really beachy smell. Now I’m really upset, like Drake upset.

But do you know what’s even more terrible? Fricking plastic straws. That’s right, every day 40,000 species of turtles go extinct every half an hour just because of, like, dumb, uncultured spinach-turds throwing away their plastic straws, not knowing that the cute turtles mistake it for, like, food and eat it. Ugh, we really need to save the turtles. Cuz of this, whenever my personal chef makes me boba, I always make sure to bring two big metal straws: one for sipping and one for Snapchat. I need to let my friends know I’m environmentally friendly like that.

But right now, I really feel like there is, like, a really terrible stigma toward us VSCO people. Just because we only write in calligraphy with Mildliner highlighters and won’t stop saying “anna oop, anna oop, anna oop, anna oop, anna oop, anna oop, anna oop, anna oop” doesn’t mean we’re any lower than anyone else. In fact, it’s just our lifestyle. Haters can keep hating, but they’re my motivators. Like, I’m sorry you can’t afford to buy a $70 thermos and an $80 backpack that you can’t even fit folders in—not to mention if you lose your bag, it’s hard to find because half the school owns one. It’s honestly not even expensive! Instead of going out for lunch at Whole Foods and spending $35, stay indoors for just two days, and you’ll have your money to twin with me! I love who I am, and even though I might not have enough checkered Vans slip-ons, clumpy mascara, spray-painted penny boards, fairy lights over my headboard, mini trampolines, and Mario Badescu Facial Spray, it doesn’t mean that I’m not someone of substance.