How Jemima Kirke Became The Oracle For Chronically Online Girlies

Words: Lucy Fitzgerald

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For decades many have outsourced their problems to traditional agony aunt magazine columns, but recently a singular confidant and sage mentor has emerged: Girls actress Jemima Kirke, who gifts both cutting and tender directives via Q&A sessions on her Instagram stories. As she delivers hard truths, reality checks, bon mots, and style advice, she enlightens and entertains an engaged online audience of young women with the striking clarity of her worldview. 

Crucially, her instructions, opinions, and reflections on womanhood and relationships are not platitudinal, not bull-shitting; sometimes humorous, sometimes amusingly indifferent (Q: "Are you queer?" A: "What the hell, sure") or flatly judgemental (Q: "Am I a loser for being 20 and not having a boyfriend ever????" A: "I'm afraid so"). 

Accordingly, screenshots of her responses are shared widely as memes, but, substantively, when collated, they form a repository of robust life advice for young women living largely online; providing productively cheeky constructive criticism. Many attest her perspective has jolted them into change (myself included). Kirke, powerfully urges the contemporary woman to get a fucking grip, and the masses are responsive to this blunt wake-up call.
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Kirke has become a great edifier, a savage poet, and revelatory force for many the chronically online, self-conscious (but actually just pretty self-involved) girl - see her most impactful viral post: "I think you guys are thinking about yourselves too much". Her sometimes gentle (Q: “I’m afraid I’ll never like myself from the outside and inside” A: “Rarely do they fully align. But there will be moments”), yet usually unforgiving terms encourage reflexivity. Kirke’s welcome cynicism online militates against the infantilising social media landscape of coddling affirmations. 

In recent years there has been an uptick in mass messaging that imbricates consumerist and narcissistic solutions under the banner of self-care; wanting you to self-soothe your way out of critical thinking, such bullish rhetoric and marketing valorises oppressive individualism and a lot of Kirke's advice centres on getting over yourself. This kind of hollow content is circulated as fact and internalised as dogma: emphatic and unconditional statements of reassurance that effectively say ‘You are a pure soul who has done absolutely nothing wrong and you deserve an endless abundance of good fortune. You are always trying your best and you should never feel guilty. You owe nothing to anyone and your goodness is innate. Inculpate everyone but yourself.’ It’s the hyperbolic, unqualified output of pep-talker-turned-abettor-gurus, the meaningless imprimatur of random influencers, and the sweeping generalisations, misapplied therapy speak, and bastardised spiritual proverbs of infographics (Canva is not your Shaman). 

By living out a defensive ideology that overstates subjectivity, you no longer have to take real action to better yourself, you just have to scroll and be absolved via spurious direct address, one that is notably targeted at women (the weaponised empowerment angling of some of these sentiments compounds their dishonourable form). The moral relativism of the positive-affirmation-FYP has become a toxic vehicle of self-exoneration. 

In Kirke’s posts, she does not perpetuate such useless, easy-way-out crutches. She will neither celebrate nor cleanse you, she will call you out. The signature dryness of her responses is appreciated for the funny value but more significantly for the tough-love stewarding-away from self-pity that expects validation; for clearing a way out of the weary posi-vibes malaise many have sunken into.  

Significantly, it is clear that Kirke herself doesn't strive for a perfected existence. She understands the attraction of messy behaviours (Q: “Why do I only fall for toxic guys?” A: “Because it’s fun to feel extreme highs and lows and never know when they’re gonna hit. Stable is an unsexy word”) and that true hope can be grasped from acknowledging uncertainty (Q: “How do you accept that your life may not turn out the way you had mapped in your head?” A: “Congratulate yourself for setting it up like this. Now you get to be surprised. Tell yourself you choose all of this”). 

“This amusing, light hostility doesn’t register as superior, rather, totally reasonable and refreshing, considering the feigned connection many celebrities choose to posture with fans.”

Likewise, she doesn’t endorse conservative living or an uncritical outlook. Her refreshing voice of reason encompasses both a sense of fun-loving and disillusionment. Kirke, who maintains a more reckless party girl appeal compared to her ultra-groomed, beatific industry peers generally implores grey-area living. You won't catch her flogging wellness practices; she smokes and drinks and enjoys doing it. 

Equally, she communicates a healthy level of contempt, suspicion, and self-loathing that I believe all adults should move through the world with (Q: “Pride?” A: “Not really”). Her grounded words (Q: “Partnership/marriage advice? Getting married in a few days” A: “You will fall out of love and you will drift apart. You’ve made a promise to keep coming back to them”) are free from puritanical moralising and prescriptive strain; indeed, despite the direct interface of the Q&A exchange, engaging with personal queries, she even conveys a somewhat divested interest, appearing pretty aloof, sometimes downright unbothered if you take the advice or not. This amusing, light hostility doesn’t register as superior, rather, totally reasonable and refreshing, considering the feigned connection many celebrities choose to posture with fans.

Smart, brutal, and charming, Jemima Kirke is a rare kind of celebrity commentator: she actually has something profound to say. She champions accountability in firm ways (Q: “Is it possible to love a man with a small dick?” A: “Honestly, you guys are assholes”) and fluid ones (Q: “How do you find meaning?” A: “Well, it’s a choice. It’s not hiding anywhere except your own creativity. Movies help”). As many pay attention to Kirke’s pushback on the masturbatory nonsense endemic to modern feeds; her public skewering of a dangerous rise in sheltered existences; and her candid perspective on discovering your identity as a woman (that it’s a sticky, difficult process, but one to be enjoyed figuring out), her popularity is unsurprising: people are receptive to what’s real.