In Defense of Addison Rae (and All the Other “Weird Girls”)
Being “weird” online is always a performance...so what?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what people are calling “performative weirdness” lately. It’s the idea that people portray themselves as “weird” or alternative in an insincere way. Lately, people on social media have been calling others out and labeling them as posers, and quite frankly, I think everyone needs to shut up.
Addison Rae has been hit the hardest by the weirdness police—yeah, I’m calling them that. We all got to know Addison back in 2020 when she blew up on TikTok. Her dance videos got her into The Hype House, where she and Charli D’Amelio basically took over the culture. At the time, Addison wasn’t involved in music or fashion, so when she showed up at the Met Gala in 2021, people laughed. But soon after, her street style started gaining traction. Paparazzi were constantly snapping pics of her quirkily accessorized, Y2K-inspired outfits—and a good chunk of people online were eating it up. Me included.
Then in 2023, she released her EP AR. The idea of her releasing music—good music—was ridiculous. Or so we thought. Even with a Charli XCX feature on “2 die 4,” people still weren’t convinced. But I’ll say it: I loved that EP from the moment it dropped. I’ve been a hard Addi supporter since day one.
Flash forward: a Free People collab, a Saint Laurent campaign, another Met v invite, a Vogue France cover—and in 2025, Addison released her debut album, Addison. By then, her cultural relevance had the haters spiraling. People called her undeserving of working with icons like Arca and A.G. Cook, or creatives like Miss Claire Sullivan and Interview Magazine editor Mel Ottenberg (who directed the “Diet Pepsi” video). Her obscure Instagram feed had people side-eyeing, saying it was all fake—like she was just hopping on trends.
But what seals the deal for me is that her stylist is Dara Allen. Dara’s the fashion editor at Interview, and based on her track record, she’s going to go down as one of the greatest stylists of our generation. Her work is funky, classic, and totally camp. I don’t believe for a second that Dara would work with someone who’s not truly in it.
The other thing? Addison knows her references. Every interview I’ve listened to, she’s dropping red carpet moments, designer names, album titles, concert stories—you name it. She has a fabulous understanding of culture that people who are only here to “perform” wouldn’t have.
And while Addison’s taken the most heat, tons of other influencers, celebs, and regular people have been caught in it too—Kitty Lever being another big one.
I get the frustration, to a degree. A lot of us like to gatekeep. I’ll admit it—I do, too, sometimes. It’s easy to feel like someone else is cashing in on something you’ve loved for a long time. But if I’m being honest, a lot of this hate looks like jealousy. It’s this sense of “they don’t get it like I do, so it should be me instead.” And I’ve felt that way before, too. And yeah, there are definitely people out there who I don’t think are genuine. But Addison Rae isn’t one of them.
When it comes to performativity, maybe it’s not about being fake. Maybe it’s just about self-expression—and self-expression is always a performance, isn’t it? We all put on a bit of a show every day. I know I do. We curate our identities every day—through clothes, posts, and even music. But that doesn’t make them fake. It just means we care. I wake up in the morning and think about what I want to wear to perform as the person I want to be. But that doesn’t make how I show up any less real. It’s still me. And it’s still you. And it’s still Addison Rae.