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Woman Crush

Skai Jennings always knew what she wanted. At five years old, she determined that she could act better than any of the characters she saw on tv, so she famously took one children's acting class and auditioned for the lead role in what would become the highest grossing children's television show in history. When she was eight, she became the youngest Latina to ever be on the cover of Vogue. At 23, she'd already won three Tonys, two Oscars, a Grammy, four Golden Globes and countless other awards ranging from Woman of the Year all the way to Humanitarian of the Year. 

Her personal motto was to always go further than the competition, no matter the cost. But that wasn't what she told the press. Oh no, that was too off-brand. Instead, the general public knew her as the humble beauty who simply was following the path the Lord Almighty gave her to walk. Catholic grandmothers loved her and preteens wished they could be here. All around the country, billboards, commercials, magazines and even bags of chips had her face on it. She was more than America's Sweetheart. She represented all that was best about America. Or so they thought, at least.

Direct and focused were words often used to describe the supernova that was Skai Jennings. Rumours of her being always on time, considerably kind almost to a fault and much more beautiful in person floated around all of LA. Who didn't want to work with her? Even small independent movie houses wanted her face in her film and begged her daily to do them a favour and cut her fee generously. Sometimes she said yes. "In the name of art," she would say to those requests and go home to bask in a tub of worldly validation that she was indeed, "the greatest entertainer alive since MJ".

One day a radio host called her a "breath of fresh air". That metaphor alone gave her a 2.1 million dollar advertising deal with SuperMint, a second-rate mouthwash brand looking for a come-up. Her face alone on the bottle raised profits by ten percent in the first quarter. 

Skai was revolutionizing the industry and the entire counter was on her side. Well, that was until the day some bimbo recorded her having the most explosive fight with a bartender over the amount of mint in her mojito and posted it online. The gossip new cycles ate it up like models snorting cocaine at a New Year's Eve party. Headlines calling her words she'd never been associated with like diva and bitch seemed to jump off the page and land in the hands of every human being on the western side of the planet. Not to mention, the faux woke article, "The Real Problem with Skai Jennings: A Reverse Madonna-Whore Complex", caused a storm of reactions online. Everything came into question, her charity work, her mentorship with young girls in low-income areas, her donations to the LA Shelter for Disabled Animals, and she didn't know how to deal with any of it.

She was devastated. In a rage, she hired and fired three publicists, refused to talk to the press for a month and most importantly scorned the way Kelly Hastings used her five seconds of fame to launch her Instagram modelling career. How dare she, thought Skai, use the misfortune of one woman to boost her own platform. Gloria Steinem would be so disappointed. At first, her agency thought it would die down, that's how gossip goes after all. Soon as another celebrity scandal breaks out, no one would remember Skai Jennings throwing an alcoholic beverage on a young bartender studying at UCLA who was working to support his little sister who has Lupus.

But it never did.

Three months pass and Skai Jennings face was still plastered all over the continental USA, the church called for her condemnation and spoke of how believers must be wary of wolves in sheep clothing. Other fellow celebrities tweeted the nastiest things about the superstar, calling her irresponsible and a stain on all the good progress women in the industry have made. Even the school she funded in Cambodia distanced themselves from her and petitioned that her name be removed from the school's board of directors.

Kelly Hasting's ruined Skai Jennings' life with a forty-seven-second video uploaded to Twitter on July 10, 2018. By November, Skai was done. She was ready to pack up everything and move to Switzerland when she met Lucille, publicist extraordinaire. 

Lucille was a woman of action. Her brown eyes and long pitch black here commanded attention while her voice demanded respect. She never used her last name on documents nor in person. "I'm a brand, an LLC, and my first name is enough," she told Skai on that first day they met. Girl boss, this woman is going to save my life, she thought to herself as she shook the hand of her soon to be saviour. 

"First, we file a defamation lawsuit against every gossip mill that even so much as scribbled your name on a piece of paper and published it. Journalists nowadays are sloppy and underestimate the value of qualifying words. "

"Huh," Ski was puzzled, "It's not defamation if its true...I really did call that bartender the most useless thing since the invention of the walking sleep bag."

"Doesn't matter. The video quality was mediocre at best, I've already found a body double with such an uncanny resemblance to you, I damn near scared myself," she chuckled at the memory. "She's already signed an affidavit saying it was her in the video."

"That's perjury!"

"No honey, that's business." Lucille's calm demeanour brought chills down Skai's spine and a smile to her lips. "She cashed in her ten thousand dollar cheque yesterday right after signing the NDA."

Lucille was cunning. Her family wanted her to become a lawyer but she knew from the moment she picked up her first copy of We Weekly that there was much more money- and creativity- in Public Relations. Curating a brand was such a delicate process. Every photo op, tweet, Facebook post or Instagram like was another puzzle piece that either tied the entire thing together or destroyed it. Every second was a Jenga piece, if one wasn't careful, years of careful building could all come crashing down.

Celebrities were fickle people who barely knew what they really wanted and also seemed incapable of consistently making good choices. This made for a market that she was designed to strive in. Being a natural control freak, micromanaging both her and another's life brought nothing but joy t her life. Not to mention, her six-figure salary also meant she could take care of her parents. Indian parents didn't see value or honour in her career path but they gave her the space to grow and branch out, and also offered her a couch to crash on during those hard first years. 

She was good at her job, really good. And she was born ready to restore Skai Jennings back to her rightful spot of "greatest entertainer since MJ".