Thread by @mx_merezeh, #Carolinecalloway x #NatalieBeach: a thread. Ps: If I take several hours to [...]

#Carolinecalloway x #NatalieBeach: a thread.

Ps: If I take several hours to finish this thread, I apologise. It be like that sometimes.

I finally got to reading reading the article on The Cut after the response came out. I wanted to read it in order & I didn't even need to read the 2nd after reading the first.

How do you write a whole article victimizing yourself & still come out looking like the asshole? Lmao.

Right off the bat, my opinion after reading the article once: Natalie sounds so insecure. Classic self-imposed DUFF syndrome. My opinion after reading the article twice: Natalie Beach is a user & was 80% the asshole here.

I said 80. Not 100.

I'll explain.

1. Their Introduction. Caroline was happy/excited to meet a girl who was from the town of her (Caroline's) dream school #Yale. That's normal. We all have things that we think we may have in common with someone that drives us to strike a conversation that might lead to friendship.

Natalie Beach on the other hand, had just been told by her professor that her writing won't soon go anywhere because she and her life were a complete bore and no one wants a snoozefest written by a wallflower with no life experiences. (Harshly paraphrased lol)

So she sees this shiny girl that looks like her life is full of adventure & mess... and with condescension, judgement & ambition, she INSTANTLY latches unto her.

Low-and-behold, she got her big story from "Caroline Calloway" afterall.

According to Natalie Beach's own description of their friendship (underneath all the professional victimhood), their friendship began on 3 main foundations. a, Caroline Calloway's obsession with Yale. b, Natalie's desire for adventure to make her potentially a better writer

(like Dan Humphries did w/ Chuck Bass in #gossipgirl): a total user move. & c, Nat's instant pixie-dreamgirling of Caroline. The last 1 puts everything said & described in the article into perspective because I was confused as hell at the words she used to describe her "friend".

You can't build friendship based on the IDEA of a person. Pixie-dreamgirling your "friend" & then proceeding to stew in your envy and resentment for FIVE bloody YEARS is pathetic at best, and toxic at worst.

The question on my mind while reading the article for the 1st time was WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU STAY IN A FRIENDSHIP WHERE YOU FEEL LIKE 2ND-HAND INVISIBLE SHIT ALL THE TIME?
A: It felt worth it to her because she knew she would cash in on this friendship in the end #eyeontheprize

Natalie's motives seemed different at each point of the story, but what they all had in common was a plan to exploit their "friendship" for her career. In the beginning, knowing Caroline would give her stories worth writing about that she did not have in her own life.

In the middle: Caroline is getting success that will then be Natalie's success. From putting Caroline Calloway's name in her CVs to reaching out to Caroline with sheer desperation after she realised Car was blowing up to the potential of that book. It was all going to be huge.

And at the end: when the book deal was over, she (Natalie Beach) was going to cash in on this story one way or the other. Afterall, she didn't waste 5 years of feeling like shit in this friendship for nothing right?

It came full circle back to their NYU days, in the sense that her story was not going to be WITH Caroline, but it would be ABOUT Caroline. This was her adventure, her book/movie/fame worthy story.

This article reads more like a tale about the toxicity of an insecure friend than it does about the cruel fate of being the invisible friend standing next to a girl who is "everything [you] will never be" and painfully unaware of her own perfection.

There's a very clear Regina George - Janis Ian narrative being painted in this article. Every description associated with Caroline is Romantic, is that of a movie character, the protagonist. She is the Sun, she is Zooe Deschanel in 500 days of Summer.

Meanwhile every description associated with Natalie Beach is that of the invisible, wronged beat-down side-kick with a tragic life that only appears even more tragic next to her perfect fairy of a friend. She is not only IN Caroline's shadow, she IS Caroline's shadow.

Caroline gets free drinks, free rides, flowere, romantic gestures in European Castles. Natalie gets hackled by old men and young men alike on the streets of a foreign country, a bruised lip, called a whole, recieves offerings of quickies in disgusting public bathrooms instead.

All the boys want to woo Caroline. All the boys want to exploit & hurt Natalie. Caroline gets "whisked away" on the back of motorcycles. Natalie gets laughed at by groups of men. Caroline is the 1st person to tell her that she's beautiful. Caroline hears that everyday of her life

Caroline has a vacant New York apartment while living in Cambridge university. Natalie lives in a roach infested house and eventually has to move back in with her parents. Caroline is "the protagonist". Natalie is "the punch up writer". Etc.

But the thing about Mean Girls is that no matter how perfect Regina George's life looked and no matter how shitty Janis Ian's seemed in comparison, that didn't stop Janis from being just as much a spiteful mean bitch as Regina, with a lot more resentment and jealousy.

To combat this, Beach paints a clear but subtle picture, not only of Caroline's utter perfection in winning at life itself, but of her character. A liar, manipulator, "unreliable narrator", obsessed, oblivious, careless, thoughtless, a college girl cliché...

This is all the more apparent in her Yale Plates story. Totally unrelated to the topic of ghost-writing, but purposely placed here to convey how much of a bad friend and liar Caroline really was. Even though she still doesn't know what actually happened to those bloody plates.

According to Natalie, her "friend" told her she's beautiful, told her she's a great writer, told her she's a genius, traveled with her, encouraged her to get some dick, promised her success would be shared... but she thinks Caroline lied about some Plates so... "IT'S ALL LIES!"?

Even as she describes Caroline spending hundreds of dollars to bail her out on a trip, she still manages to emphasise and further her narrative of Caroline Calloway, the lucky, pretty princess and her, Natalie Beach, forever hapless. What kind of a person is this?

It's always the little things that add to the picture of unlikableness Beach was trying to paint here. How difficult it must've been for poor hapless Natalie to be friends for so long w/ a girl so obnoxiously unaware of the perfection & privilege w/ which she whisked through life

This article also came perfectly timed as Caroline was facing a shit storm of hate online for her tragically executed masterclass tour as well as other scandals. From Yale plates to manipulator to scammer. Caroline's shitstorm of a year must've been quite the vindication for Nat.

She begins the article painting her narrative of Caroline (w/ a total lack of self-awareness). You're not surprised she's taken an essay of yours that isn't even written yet & turned into a narrative for herself?

It's not manipulation, dear. THE ARTICLE REALLY IS ALL ABOUT HER!

The final straw: Natalie says the last draw for her was the weekend they went to Amsterdam.

Her desperation, aside, you told your tipsy/drunk friend to fuck off coz you wanted dick & she's the bad guy? You let your tipsy/drunk friend scoot off on a stranger's motorcycle...

and at no point of the night or following morning did you worry about her wellbeing. Maybe she's not answering the door coz she's hungover or maybe it's coz she never got home last night.

Like everything else, it was all about Natalie's feelings of slight.

If you stew in your own jealousy and resentment of your friend, belittle yourself to further your own narrative of protagonist & punched-up writer but lowkey the unsung hero, and then blame your friend for all your feelings of worthlessness, that makes you a toxic fucking friend.

This resentment all flooded out as she described their experience together in Cambridge.

Side note: She sounded surprised that Caroline was happy to see her. Yeah, it's almost as if her close friend just visited her from another continent!

Her blatant lack of care for Caroline's wellbeing outside the work they were doing together also became apparent. This woman is a fucking user. You visit your friend in one of the most gauntlet university in the world and she is not doing well, sis is STRUGGLING...

So you think "damn, my friend has been struggling and I had no idea"? No, of course not. Ms Natalie instead hyperfocuses and almost revels in the truth before her: this girl she has envied for YEARS does not infact have her life together. She sees Caroline as a fake mess.

Ewww

But keeping with the theme of Natalie's own self-obsession, she instantly flings herself into the role saviour, hero; a role many of us will simply call "being a good friend", but no Natalie needs a title to emphasise the weight of her importance in Caroline's life.

She was either the side-kick or the photographer or the "the personal assistant to Ms Calloway" or a sleep-deprived collaborator or the supporting character to Caroline's story or the hero.

With friends like these, truly, who needs a enemies?

The worst part of this article was as she used that same self-obsession to complete erase Caroline's MENTAL ILLNESS coz it didn't fit her narrative, despite describing (in the most judgemental condescending hurtful way possible) her many citings of pills in Caroline's possession.

From Beach's essay, you might guess, mostly with common sense, that Caroline has a "drug abuse problem". You might guess from the email she sent to a mutual friend (which Natalie made all about herself) that she was struggling. Maybe with school, maybe with life... who knows?

TW: addiction, depression suicide

But you would never know from Beach's essay that the girl she's been describing all this while is

1. A real human being with problems of her own.
2. A young girl struggling with depression and addiction.

You would never guess that this same girl's father who had also been struggling with mental illness had JUST killed himself around the time this article was released.

You would think that the girl Natalie writes about in this article has never felt pain a day in her life.

You would think this girl has never been hurt or mistreated by a guy or had a bad sexual experience or anything. She's just a perfect pixie put on this earth to both torment Ms Natalie Beach and be her golden ticket to NYT best-seller list all at the same time.

That's what happens when you're a self-obsessed "underdog". You only see your pain and anyone else's is just an inconvenience to your perfectly crafted narrative.

People like this are toxic. Friends like this are toxic. Her own insecurity made her self-absorbed and toxic.

If being in her shadow was taking its toll, why didn't Natalie say so earlier? If being a ghostwriter was so emotionally hard, why didn't she say so? If she thought Caroline's girly clothes &accessories were her strengths, why didn't she ask to borrow them? (we'd know if she did)

Don't get me wrong. Caroline was definitely an asshole the other 20%. Asking your friend to essentially be your maid for your Airbnb rental is objectively an asshole move whether you thought she needed the money or not.

Promising some1 a piece of your publishing pie & then backing out without talking to them, after they put in months of work into ur book is objectively an asshole move whether or not it was for ur authenticity. Other people's time & hardwork was in this, they deserved a heads-up.

But being an asshole who's careless w/ people's feelings and being a toxic friend & a user are worlds apart.

Through the years, she went from being a 20 year old college student to a mid 20s adult who still didn't have great career prospects. Understandably frustrating.

But no one with half a heart will have these reactions after finding out that their friend was
1. Struggling, like a lot.
2. Suffering from addiction& other mental illness
3. Talking about suicide

She seemed more concerned about the fucking book than her friend's life.

Wtf?

LMAO. Try not to sound like a dick in your own essay.
She pixie dreamgirled, envied, dehumanised & used this girl for so many yrs that realising her "friend" was an actual human being was like "is this the bitch I've immortalised & wanted to be for so long? Ew, boring, moving on"

READ IT AGAIN! LET IT SINK IN!

"I had held on to the fantasy that she... was busy with the grand plans that would change my life.

I had built my whole career around my commitment to her persona — crafting it, caring for it, and trying my hardest to copy it...

...But in Cambridge I didn’t see someone I wanted to be but a girl living with one fork, no friends, and multiple copies of Prozac Nation. Now I saw Caroline for what she was —"

I don't even know what to say here. These lines speak for themselves.
Natalie Beach sucks!
The end.

She was so red-hot DESPERATE and thirsty. She wanted to be Caroline so fucking badly, she would've killed her and wore her skin if that was at all feasible.

This is the stuff of horror movie plots. Damn.

Side-eye bitches like these or don't have them in your life at all.

Caroline was right. Natalie defo had issues to sort out.

Even as she ends the essay, she remind us that she still has a shitty job. Just to drive it home the real take away from this article: her life sucks because Caroline Calloway ruined it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: