The Intimacy Issue: Quen Blackwell
This sort of vulnerability with the self is exactly what inspired our May digital cover—the Intimacy issue. In thinking about what being intimate—both with others and with yourself—means during such strange times, we of course wanted to explore dildos, orgasms, and Chaturbate culture. It is office, after all.
But we also wanted to move beyond that. What do our current conditions mean in terms of being intimate in all facets of the word—being intimate with your thoughts? With abstraction? With objects or ideas? Do you cringe at your overgrown hair when looking in the mirror and the Snapchat camera? How has isolation played a part in your want or need to be intimate? Have you developed any new intimate relationships while in quarantine?
We asked 13 subjects to explore these ideas in a series of remotely-shot portraits and videos. We also asked each subject to write a diary entry with this vulnerability in mind.
We introduce to you the Tik Tok queen, Quen.
There is perhaps no one in our Intimacy cast who has been more intimate and vulnerable with people, and on such a consistent basis, than Quen Blackwell. The 19-year-old Dallas, Texas native first gained online fame when she was just fourteen, posting unfiltered videos from her room on the 6-second video app Vine. These videos ranged from her riding on a hoverboard and crashing into the wall, playing the acoustic guitar with her braids, choking on candies. For someone who has intense social anxiety, she tells us, posting these videos acted as a form of self-expression and release. But they also inadvertently turned her into a Gen Z comedic icon at an age where, up until very recently, most people would just be getting their very first phone.
Vine was killed in 2016, but thankfully it wasn't the structure of the platform that helped elevate Quen to such success—it was all her. Since then, she effortlessly transcended the "15 minutes of fame" curse and has managed to dominate any and every social media platform that she's graced with her presence. Her short-form videos on Twitter garnered millions of views and followers. Then, along came Tik Tok.
Quen was made for the culture-defining video app, onto which she has once again seamlessly and forcefully planted her presence—thus far, she has over 1.6M followers on Tik Tok. And, if I were to say how or why she is able to translate her massive following wherever on the internet she chooses, it would be two things: 1) she is relatable, and 2) she has always given viewers an intimate and raw look into her life and thoughts—however mundane or chaotic they may be. She tells us that when quarantine started, her followers were mocking her, saying that this wouldn't be anything new for her since she's always been isolated making videos from the same spot in her room. Quen is a trailblazer for this kind of Gen Z social media star who becomes a star out of turning an isolated setting into a colorful, vibrant world of their own imagination. And with super special projects in the works, it seems that Quen is only getting started.
Watch this video, as well as all the other Intimacy videos, on .show, the new interactive video camera and shoppable video marketplace.
