I’m Still Trying to Figure Out How I Feel About Emma

Rhiju Chakraborty (he/they)

It was a hot summer day with the temperature around 92°, and the sun glaring through my window was making staying in my room unbearable. So I hopped out of bed, pulled down the blinds, turned the fan on full blast, and climbed back onto my mattress. This was not how my summer was supposed to be going. Lying in bed fatigued at three in the afternoon, listening to sad pop songs, and slurping the Starbucks that my mom had judiciously left outside my door. 

COVID had definitely not been in my plans for the summer, and yet after two years of successfully avoiding it, it had found me on a plane ride from New York back home to Michigan. It had been bad at first, and giving it to the rest of my family was definitely not something I took pride in, but after a week of being locked in my room with no end in sight, I was running out of things to entertain myself with. Days had flown by with me scrolling through my phone in misery watching friends do quintessential summer things like going to concerts or backpacking through Europe. 

While the only reminder I had that time was passing were the three knocks on my bedroom door left by my mom, once in the morning, afternoon, and night, reminding me she'd left food by the door. Regardless, it was on that hot July summer day when I was on my daily routine of mindlessly scrolling that I found a video of Emma Chamberlain's on my suggested page on YouTube. I had never watched any of Emma's videos before, but I just knew I wouldn't enjoy watching them.

Maybe it was because I had always thought of her as a clickbaity influencer type, who lacked original thoughts, or because the only YouTubers I'd ever known growing up in a home with strict rules on technology use were James Charles and Charlie D'Amelio. Let's just say that I didn't have a positive view of them. Still desperate for entertainment I clicked on the video titled "COOKING", bracing for the worst. 

But what I got was the complete opposite. From her first video, she drew me in with her candor and unhealthy coffee addiction. Watching her I realized something very quickly: she was normal. She was just another human being, who also struggled with life everyday. Her problems with getting out of bed, and sleeping in all day, were all things that I never knew I was allowed to struggle with.

But watching Emma tell me that I was allowed to sleep in all day and not feel bad about it was something that I took into my own life. Watching Emma open up about her anxiety, and talk about how she thought there was something fundamentally wrong with her brain during a panic attack was something that I had also experienced countless times, but never had the words for. That is until Emma came into my life. 

Emma with her morning coffee routines, Emma burping carelessly in front of the camera, Emma with her impeccable wardrobe choices, Emma with her IBS, helped me unlearn so many ideas of what I thought I was allowed to be. Slowly Emma grew to be more than a friend but a significant presence in my life - is that embarrassing? That someone who did not know who I was and who I shared with her eleven million subscribers felt almost as intimate as a friend?- With Emma by my side, those early days with COVID flew by faster, and by the end of it I came out having gained not just a new companion, but also a new belief system.

I started doing things that I used to think I wasn't allowed to do. I slept in later, drank coffee daily, ran around the house burping (much to my family's irritation), and let myself lay in bed for hours without reason. My goal wasn't to try to be a nuisance, but it was in lack of better words, to let my guard down and remove the pressure of productivity that I had put on myself for so long. And much to my surprise, removing the pressure didn't mean I fell behind everyone, it only made the relationships in my life much stronger. 

Days became weeks, and my relationship with Emma had never been better until one day when I stumbled across a picture of Emma on the Internet at the Met Gala. Wanting to learn more about her look, I pressed the post only to find an angry caption and angry comments buzzing about Emma wearing a diamond choker that had originally belonged to an Emperor in India. 

Curious to learn more, but unwilling to trust Instagram, I googled “Emma Chamberlain necklace”, and was met by a flood of news articles with pictures of Emma's face side-to-side with what I assumed was a picture of the Emperor also wearing the choker. Pressing on a news article with a bright bold neon lettered headline, I started piecing it together. 

Apparently the choker had been made by Cartier for the Emperor of Patiala, into an heirloom with one of the largest diamonds in the world, the "De beers" diamond as its centerpiece. But in 1948, the choker went missing from the royal treasury, and nobody heard of it until four decades later when only the diamond resurfaced in an auction in London. Cartier then bought the diamond and mysteriously found and bought the rest of the parts of the choker from a London pawn shop in 1998. 

Ever since then it's stayed with Cartier, and is now part of the Al Thani collection in Qatar. The outcry of Emma wearing it was about whether she should have chosen to wear it given the murky history of the necklace and the company, Cartier, that loaned it out to her. Many news articles criticized her for wearing it, calling it insensitive, and disrespectful for not honoring the brutal legacy that colonialism had in India.

Overwhelmed by the information, I sat on my bed to try and process the thoughts that were swirling in my head. I tried to see it from her perspective. Maybe she hadn't worn the choker knowing the history behind it. I almost felt guilty internally for taking Emma's side. As if siding with her made me a bad Indian. Finally annoyed with myself I slammed my computer shut and tossed it across the room. I spent the next few days trying not to think about it, but nonetheless processing the information started to change the way I saw Emma. 

Listening to her podcast while unloading the dishes, I started noticing her avoidance of certain issues that had slipped past me previously. In a way, the same whiteness that had helped me break free from certain immigrant values was also the same thing that now left me feeling alienated from her. As life went on, I never figured out how to get back to how I once felt about her. 

But I'll always love Emma. I mean, after all, this is the same Emma whose YouTube videos I turn to in difficult moments for comfort. The same Emma who's the reason I now have a coffee addiction. The same Emma that pushed me to explore different styles that made me feel more like me. Emma will always be a part of my life. It's just that our relationship is now a little more complicated.