Jen Selter is what the modern era refers to as an “instagram model”. Within that sentence tense I’ve hopefully distanced myself from the act of following Selter on Instagram for the past several years to leer at her incredible ass pictures. Me and twelve million other men willing to let her refer to her photos as empowering without so much as a giggle. Even as we tend to self-maintenance of the kind the Brothers at the priory assured us would make us blind.
As a teenaged Long Island girl and self-described fitness instructor, Selter dove early and often into the goldmine that was workout photo selfies combined with fat injections into the posterior to produce an accentuated rear end in yoga pants showstopper. The Internet is for porn. Social media is for half-naked women producing secretive boners in parts of the world where wood can earn you a prison sentence. Even young ladies with nice breasts and asses who want to be film stars have to read a few lines and massage a fat old producer’s gunny sack in the shower. The Instagram model can achieve near similar fame and fortune now without ever leaving her beach-front condo. Maybe this is empowering after all.
Jen Selter wasn’t a mainstream newsworthy character, until she took it upon herself to be the latest person thrown off of a U.S. airline, complete with cellphone video of heavy-handed flight attendants and cops. There’s something about the shaky cellphone video that makes every story seem like an embedded Iraq war frontline siege. As a matter of practice, TMZ cameraman shake their cameras and lower the light levels when trailing celebrities or tracking unfolding events to appear to be capturing extremely dangerous and super real moments. The general viewer is more likely to believe in the candidness of a capture if the picture isn’t clear or professionally shot. TMZ didn’t get to be TMZ by applying rigid journalistic standards. And good for them.
Current situation @AmericanAir .. insane. pic.twitter.com/kIOh3VysnU
— Jen Selter (@JenSelter) January 28, 2018
Based on reports, Selter would have none of a flight attendant’s order to remain seated while her flight from Miami to LaGuardia remained in a two hour delay for takeoff parked out near the runways. The flight attendant was male, which implies gay, an important note in so much as Selter would provide unquestioned testimony that the flight attendant had something personally against her. Is it the fact she’s having sex with New York Knicks young phenom Kristaps Porzingis? Selter did not elaborate. If I was gay I’d be jealous.
The male flight attendant and Selter proceeded to verbally joust over regulations, essentially a battle between somebody with limited knowledge of the law and somebody with no knowledge of the law but with an incredibly nice ass. At some point, the flight attendant asked Selter if she’d like to get off the plane as a resolution. Selter said, “Yeah”, though insists her tone was so overtly sarcastic, everybody on God’s green earth knew she was tongue in cheek. Though not the peeved flight attendant who informed the captain an unruly passenger wanted off the plane.
Just like that, 5 cops coming at me. Worst experience American Air ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/1LY1NrAQ3k
— Jen Selter (@JenSelter) January 28, 2018
Miami’s finest were next to show up as Selter made additional short-form viral magic with her oppression phone. You can only imagine the suffering of incredibly sexy Instagram sexy models. Their days can be described best as Kafkaesque.
According to Selter, a Millennial who can only express herself in terms of self-centric victimhood:
“It was humiliating. They made me feel like a terrible person, and I did nothing wrong,”
Therein lies your problem. The Millennial generation belief in the right to self-expression and the world being forced to give a shit. Not all 20-somethings, but statistically speaking, most. Consider it a gift of the public education system and dad-less or neutered dad parenting that conspired to suddenly tell children their voice mattered. A six year old doesn’t understand their role in the vast cosmos is but a speck of dust on the head of a discarded pin. If you tell them their feelings amount to something magnificent, they’re inclined to believe you. Similar to how generations past children were told to be seen, not heard, and the gym teacher chucked the ball at their head if they had a comment to make. That produced a difference sense of the importance of self.
A generation and an Instagram model whose first instinct is to guard their God given self-esteem with the almighty principles of cell-phone videos and social media rants couldn’t fathom the basic chain of airline rules that perhaps slightly older people understand.
First, airline travel is a shitty experience. Unless you’re paying well over four figures for your ticket, it’s neither glamorous, luxurious, or comforting in any manner. It’s a Greyhound bus with wings. It gets you from point A to point B even fast than the imaginary bullet trains of the California Governor’s lunatic fringe grey matter. You’re able to return from bikini shoots in Miami to your NBA boyfriend in Manhattan in a few hours. Those of us who’ve driven Miami to New York could not imagine a world without even super shitty airline travel as an option.
Second, nobody you come into contact with on the plane makes the rules. The FAA makes every single lousy rule imposed on commercial airline travel. The airlines couldn’t give a shit if you have on your seat belts, drink too much, smoke like a demon, and fuck like rabbits in the seats. As evidence of this, look to airline travel before the 1980’s. That’s what it was. Now, airlines are deathly scared of violating FAA regulations because they risk losing millions in brutal punishments. Same reason radio stations still won’t let guests say “fuck” on the air. They’re not moralists, they’re pragmatists who don’t want to pay fifty grand for the privilege.
Finally, third, and this only sort of applies since the annoying passenger in question is a woman almost all men would badly want to have sex with, nobody on the plane cares about you as a person. They simply want to forget how horrible airline travel and delays are and get to where they’re going. Even Ghandi would be screaming for you to sit down and shut up, lest you delay the takeoff even longer. Nobody cares about your grand civil rights sparring match with the overtly neatly groomed flight attendant. We have no illusions about him. We know he’s on a power trip. Also, he probably hates pretty women with moneymaking asses. We don’t care. Listen to Ghandi in 18B and sit the fuck down.
The modern understanding that belief in self is tantamount to accomplishments by self is fairly unique to members of Jen Selter’s Instagram video capturing generation. Again, not all, but many. Many multiples more than in previous generation. In the past people might say, hey, that’s a war hero, let’s buy him a drink and give him the good seat. Now everybody believes the inalienable right to be heard is as brave an exercise as diving onto a live grenade to save your foxhole mates. You might pull a theory out of your esteem-driven educational background to prove why this is just, but practically you’d be creating a world where everybody is equally deserving, regardless of merit. It’s an impossibly doomed form of civil rule wherein feudal violence and burning of witches would take place within months.
When righteous outrage is applied to every single personal instance of feeling violated, righteous outrage loses all meaning. It’s importance comes from its selective application. Millennials believe that framing this same normal course of human endeavor sucky moments as civil rights violations somehow elevate their importance. They don’t. You’re merely the constantly complaining person at the office nobody likes. Don’t believe because guys leering at your Spandex clad bottom have your back that anybody feels your pain. This isn’t your Selma.
Photo credit: Instagram / Twitter
