How Vanity Fair’s Instagram Mommy Murfer Celebrates Traditional Living By Melissa Langsam Braunstein for The Federalist
What’s perhaps most countercultural about Courtney Adamo, an heiress who can afford to live as she pleases, is how much she reflects traditionally conservative ideals about family life.
Growing up, it was all about fiction for me. I loved vicariously visiting new places and gaining insight into how others live and might think. These days, I don’t have time for novels, but I do have Vanity Fair profiles.
VF’s recent profile of Instagram influencer Courtney Adamo and her murfer (a.k.a. surfer mom) friends in Byron Bay, Australia, caught my attention. At first, I marveled at how different Adamo’s life is from my own.
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After all, Adamo’s Instagram feed looks like a photo shoot for Ethan Allen’s beach houses, populated by J. Crew and Ralph Lauren models. You know, everything is tasteful and curated, and everyone is bronzed, but ever so slightly mussed. Adamo’s vibe is very much Park Slope visits the shore. And, well, I’m a conservative who lives in North America’s most famous swamp.
But the more I read this meticulously detailed piece about Adamo, the more I thought about her quarter-million Instagram followers and why they follow her. VF chalks up Adamo’s appeal to the long-time search for Utopia:
Some people follow the dream to distant lands, secure compounds, or intentional communities. Others just follow people on social media and live vicariously through them. Byron Bay, which has long been an actual hippie-surfer-wellness alterna-lifestyle destination, has lately emerged as a kind of virtual utopia as well — thanks, in part, to all the ethical, organic, sustainable, conscious fashion labels to come out of there in recent years. Also, Chris Hemsworth lives there. Also, influencers.
The American-born Adamo is clearly one of those highly successful influencers. It’s why the ever-chic Vanity Fair wanted to profile her. But amidst an absurd amount of linen and earth tones, what are viewers actually seeing?
