I’m doing autumn edows. Down below you can find some information about her.
Autumn Edows:
Autumn Edows started put her pictures on the internet because no one was talking to her when she was Jessica. When she became Autumn Edows everyone started to comment positive things about her. I personally think that what she did is wrong because the only reason she did this was because no one was talking to her and no one likes to be a loner and everyone likes a good comment. She was being her real self on the internet. When her parents found out about Jessica they sat behind her and made her delete all of her pictures. I think what they did is wrong because making her delete her pictures was like making her delete her own self. She started to put a lot of dark makeup on her pictures. Most people are themselves on the internet. She was also called the “Goth Girl”. Down below you can find her interview from a website (http://pbs.gen.in/wgbh/pages/frontline//kidsonline/inside/publicprivate.html).
AUTUMN EDOWS
Artist and model
When did you start creating your own online images?
When I was about 13, that’s when I started getting more into photography. I started out with self-portraits, and I kind of trained myself. And after a while, when I was about 14, that’s when I started doing like photo shoots, and my friend Justin, who I actually met off of the Internet and I dated for some time, he was the first person to take pictures of me, actual photographs, and they turned out really nice. I was very surprised. …
What kind of pictures were they? Where did you put them?
They were pretty much simple, self-portrait-type shots. That was when I started getting into makeup a little bit. So I [would] buy purple eye shadow or something drastic and just take a bunch of photographs and make like a mini-collage, and I’d just upload them on a free Web site. And then I’d send the link to my friends so they could see it, and then that’s when I got a bit more praise for it. And I think that that’s when people really started to become interested in it a bit more.
People you knew?
Some, yes. Others, mostly people I didn’t know, but it was still encouragement, so it still felt good. It felt like I already knew them, and I felt like I didn’t need people from the small town to be the ones who cared. As long as someone out there said one good thing, that was enough for me. That made me feel good enough at that point in my life, because … my self-esteem was pretty much non-existent at that point.
How did they find you?
All over the place. I mean, mostly chat rooms; yeah, I was a chat room junky, just trying to look for someone, anyone. Didn’t really care who. Just as long as it wasn’t a pervert, obviously, but just somebody to talk to. …
How many were there?
Oh, god, there were hundreds of people. Literally hundreds, because I was on so many different vanity Web sites that I would attract maybe like 50 people per site. There were people that would read my LiveJournal, and that’s where I got a lot of fans from. And then of course I would link on each Web site like, “Here’s my journal,” which had pictures and my writing and my poetry and all sorts of things.
So that’s when it like really got big. I mean, it got to the point where I was on the computer literally all day replying. Like, I would hit the refresh button and there would be 10 more comments. It was crazy, it was so crazy, but I loved it. … To have somebody support you and not even actually know you was a very empowering feeling.
Being famous, was that something you’d thought about before this, something that you wanted? …
I just I wanted to be well-known. I guess that really is fame.
