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One day in 2020, a 29-year-old woman named Christina Najjar stepped onto what felt like a conveyor belt.
Photography by Josh Stadlen.
She wasnt Christina anymore.
She had transformed, she thought.
But she kept going.
Photography by Josh Stadlen.
Tinx is no longerTikToks It girl.
Depending on what corners of the app you lurk in, that honor belongs to Alex Earle orSofia Richie.
But Najjar says she is ready for this next chapter.
I had the big TikTok moment, she says.
Now I have these new projects Im passionate about, I feel a little bit more grown-up.
I think that my community sees that and thats where I am now.
Photography by Josh Stadlen
She full-throatedly believes it is her calling.
I had no concept I could have such a connection with these women.
And I am utterly obsessed with them.
Photography by Josh Stadlen
Everything I do is for them.
And that is the most fulfilling aspect of my life, period.
Photography by Josh Stadlen.
Lets go back to the beginning, to the part where first she stepped off that conveyor belt.
Because when it was good, it was really good.
It was early 2020, and Najjar felt lost.
Shed spent nearly a decade trying to build her dream career.
After graduating from Stanford University, she tried working in fashion, then got into freelance writing.
She began to dream of becoming the millennialAndie Andersonand enrolled in graduate school in New York for fashion journalism.
I really, really enjoyed the content creation aspect, she says.
I loved the feedback.
I was just like, Ive really messed up this time, she tells me.
And Im, like, flailing.
Then the pandemic hit.
Alone and sad in her apartment, Najjar felt she had nothing to lose.
So she downloaded that app all her friends were telling her about: TikTok.
She posted her first video in April 2020.
And everything in my life had, strangely, prepared me for it….
I definitely never pretended to have all the answers, and regularly prove that to this day.
Why did Najjar get so big, so fast?
Not a perfect life, but a fulfilling one
This is really vulnerable and I appreciate it.
Thank you for sharing with the girlies, wrote one commenter.
That tiny mic thing everyone does now?
She did it first (she says she will take quiet credit for the trend.)
She knew shed found what she wanted to do, she says.
She also began writing what eventually becameThe Shift.
Photography by Josh Stadlen
Then, the cancellation.
In 2016 shed tweeted: that liberal echo chamber yall.
I hated myself and had a bad relationship with my body, she writes.
I deserve to be taken to task for that.
It was such a dark time, she says.
Like, I honestly barely remember it.
It was so bad.
I just remember feeling I had no hope.
I just wouldnt have made it if it werent for my family.
It was so, so hard.
What pulled her out of it, she says, were her followers who stuck by her.
I also got a lot of messages from my community saying, Were here for you.
like dont take this to heart, she says.
Thats what has kept her going.
Her lifes purpose, she writes.
In readingThe Shift, this is something about her that maybe stands out the clearest.
Its whats kept her moving forward in this career after so much backlash.
The first order of business isThe Shift,a manifesto to the Tinx way of living.
What Najjar is laser focused on now is this work, and it feels good.
Theres a time when you first become an influencer where its crazy, its insane, she says.
And you’ve got the option to be really fucked up in that.
And I totally was.
Id honestly been thinking of quitting the whole business altogether, she writes.
But then I realized it would mean giving up on helping people.
It would mean throwing away the only thing Id found that gave my life real purpose.
Thus far, her lifes next chapter seems to be just as fruitful as her first.
It seems the fans arent giving up on Tinx either.
I want these people to stay with me forever, hopefully, she tells me.
And I wanna add more people to the party.
- Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor atGlamourand the author of the forthcoming bookSwipe Up for More!
Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.
