My Social Media #girlcrush on Anna Kendrick
Two things you may not know about me that I will share as shamelessly as I possibly can:
- I’ve read all the Twilight books and paid to see all the Twilight movies in theaters.
- I sang in a cappella groups for 8 years of my young-ish adult life.
Based on these two things, which might surprise you, it probably will be less of a surprise that I’m a huge fan of Anna Kendrick. You might have heard her name in 2009 when she starred alongside George Clooney in Up in the Air. But I know her better as Bella Swan’s friend in the Twilight movies, and I know her best as Beca, the leader of the underdog a cappella group, The Barden Bellas, in Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2.
Even by the standards of Hollywood, where reinvention happens on a regular basis with a little makeup, imagination, and a rolling camera, Anna Kendrick has done something magical: she could have been one of those actresses who occupy a supporting role in a major franchise and become locked in media consciousness as the sidekick. Instead, she’s built a legitimate career as a leading lady — I doubt most people remember that she was even in Twilight because she’s so successfully developed her persona outside of it.
I’d argue that Kendrick’s Twitter page has been one of her greatest assets in establishing her professional identity. She expresses her voice on the page in a way that’s eminently personable despite her level of social following, 5.42M strong.
Anna Kendrick isn’t insufferably self-promotional or attention-seeking like the Kardashian-Jenners. She isn’t overly tied to promoting a product like Jennifer Aniston, who for me has become practically synonymous with smartwater, Aveeno, and Living Proof. Kendrick doesn’t “humblebrag” like Taylor Swift, all of whose pictures on Instagram make me feel inadequate as a human being and might as well be captioned, “Look at my #squad of models and famous friends doing fun things. In case you needed the reminder, my life is better than yours.” And unlike Swift, who comes off as trying — and trying hard — to be relatable, Kendrick simply is relatable.
Kendrick is consistently thoughtful and witty in her tweets: she strikes the right balance of sharing enough to make you feel like you know her without sharing to the point of making you feel uncomfortable. Her funniest posts articulate what many female millennials are thinking but aren’t saying, as in the examples below:
A friend of mine at business school and I recently got into conversation about how we’re perceived among our classmates. I’ll never forget that the first word out of her mouth to describe me was “serious.” “Not in a bad way,” she added, but given that my primary intention in business school was to take myself less seriously, this was a hard piece of feedback to receive.
The thing I admire most about Anna Kendrick on Twitter is this: for a serious actress, she rarely takes herself seriously. I’d go so far as to argue reasons she’s become successful because she doesn’t take herself so seriously.
As such, I’ve started to take some of Kendrick’s style into my own approach on Twitter, sharing critical and comic perspectives on the tech business. It’s all part of not taking myself so seriously in an industry in which I expect to build my career but that tends to take itself too seriously:
Anna Kendrick’s social media persona is the girl next door who happens to be famous. I hope mine will become the girl next door who happens to run a world-changing company in tech. Online and offline, I can’t help but root for Kendrick and I hope, when the time comes for me to really start something, others can’t help but root for me, too.
Curious about the implications of social media for “business” in my final semester of my MBA, I decided to enroll in a class called “Social Media Management.” This is the eighth of ten posts I am writing as a part of this course analyzing the past, present, and future of social media.
