Today we’d like to introduce you to Mandy Berkheimer.
Hi Mandy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
How it started is a pretty simple story objectively; It was around 2019 when TikTok was a huge thing on the internet and everyone was falling victim to downloading it. My best friend at the time hated the app, so in spiteful fun I downloaded it as a joke to send him videos that I created. One day when I was mindlessly making videos, one of my videos “blew up” and started becoming a trend on TikTok. I gained thousands of followers overnight and had no idea what to do at that point. I decided to see where it takes me and I started taking part in making acting “POV” videos and participating in the cosplay community of TikTok. The truth is, it was a very weird experience or transition getting so much attention from one place. I was a transfer student at the time who changed schools due to severe harassment; a part of my life I want to eventually be transparent about with my audience but even now 5-6 years after the incident, I can’t get my thoughts and opinions together on everything that happened.
I was in a very weird mental state and the healing process was definitely an active thing going on in my life. It was very overwhelming but emotional, getting hundreds of DMs from people who watched my videos telling me how I’ve affected their lives with my creativity and confidence; I had people describing how I inspired them or how I was changing their life even though I was still healing in mine… and that was definitely the point I knew I wanted to keep being a social media influencer.
Since then, I’ve started Twitch streaming to get closer with my audience, continued a little bit of animating on my small middle school YouTube channel, taking my childhood hobby of cosplay to a more serious level, and after a sensitive point in my life I grew in touch with my own confidence and began modeling and growing my Instagram page with creative photos.
If you told 6th grade me about the life I’m living now I know I would be so happy, this is all I’ve ever wanted and more than I expected I could achieve. If you’re reading this as a supporter, I thank you for helping me find myself and get to the place I’m at now. I know the little, damaged, and sad middle school me who ate her lunch in the office and who was proud of 100 subscribers on YouTube would be so thrilled to meet you all. Even though I couldn’t be any more proud of myself and grateful for what has happened, I definitely feel a sense of community in my audience and this wouldn’t be what it is without them. So this is our story, not just mine.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I had many struggles with being labeled as an “influencer”. Identity has always been an extremely difficult concept for me, and even now I have my struggles with it… I was a writer, an actor, a singer, a cheerleader, a dancer, a performer, an artist, I tried so many titles and so many things, and I still do! But the one consistent part of my character is my love for entertainment, if it wasn’t on stage, it was in class, performing or sharing stories to my peers for a laugh. Now I have thousands to millions of people viewing me and my quirkiness, I feel like I’ve been given a platform to finally express myself, create and talk. But I do struggle with understanding why I have this platform; And as a person with so many interests who am I meant to be and what am I meant to create? I fear my inconsistencies may disappoint my audience and this platform that is made to create feeds into my need to please the people who watch me. The fear of disappointing or losing the people who support me is a real struggle I now think any influencer goes through. Having a presence on the internet, especially as a teenage girl has its downsides. I believe people weren’t made to be perceived by so many people at once, especially not the still emotionally developing brain, there are times I feel exposed or constantly judged from so many vulnerable angles, and in some ways, I am. I am constantly being viewed by strangers and they’re not all going to like me or my ideas. Being bullied at school and getting hundreds of hate comments can definitely feel very similar. I feel the internet definitely does group together their opinions easily and come in waves, everything I do, every little habit, weird facial features, the look of my body or personality traits might get dissected right in front of me. I had to learn to shake off these opinions from people who are only just people covered behind a screen, but that’s not always easy.
I always struggled with body confidence and loving myself even before the internet. I still remember my mom sticking post-it notes all over my mirror with positive comments about myself such as “my eyes are pretty”, “my smile is beautiful”, etc and her asking me to read them out loud to myself. She was the one to witness the point of my life where I was cripplingly insecure, and she was the one to witness my inability to read them all to myself because I felt it was a lie. It’s strange to think I’ve transitioned from that person who couldn’t read those post-its and constantly hid my body even in heat with jeans and sweatshirts to posting cute bikini pictures of myself like every normal teenage girl does and going as far as modeling.
But it still can get to me, having blown up for just the sake of shaming my body, sometimes my weight, or people making fun of the way my face looks can throw me back. There’s times I look at my views and compare myself to the other influencers. I do my best to turn my own jealousy into inspiration, but I’m still just a teenage girl. Especially when these insecurities have already been rooted in me, it can feel like all the hate are just people who agree with the way you negatively feel about yourself. Validating your own self-deprecation can be a scary hole to fall into, but I have had the luxury to meet these creators and realize now it’s not just effortless beauty, it’s aesthetics, makeup, lighting, filters, and confidence. I believe the way someone is viewed is completely constructed on how they carry themselves, if you saw the version of me who didn’t take care of herself due to being depressed, I’m sure it wouldn’t have the same reaction as how I treat myself now. I treat myself like I am a girl to be looked at because I know I am beautiful because I decided I’m beautiful. But thinking that way isn’t always easy.
In a slightly twisted way, I feel performing for people constantly builds this wall of being able to bounce off the mean comments, and all the encouraging ones helped me break out of my box and show my confidence more than I ever had before in my life. This platform is the reason I am the way I am and have received the opportunities that I have. I’ve become mutuals with so many fellow influencers online with similar experiences, been in all these projects that helped me get in touch with creative sides of myself I couldn’t have reached alone, visited places in this world I didn’t think I’d go or even have reason to go to at this age, found so many hobbies I couldn’t of without the audience I have, and been given the surreal opportunity to interact with so many people I looked up to or saw as untouchable. It made me realize how close and real all us influencers really are. We all struggle, we get insecure, we get affected by comments, we give ourselves unreasonable expectations, we get uncomfortable with sides of the internet we can’t control and we all just try our best to make our audience happy.
We push ourselves to please and can neglect certain parts of our own lives because we are entertainers. There’s so many things I’ve gone through behind the screen and I still will try to do my best to entertain and keep up with my audience.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am an influencer and a creator of content on social media. I model and share the adventures of my life in hopes to inspire other young teens in confidence and adventurousness. The topics of my modeling include cosplay, fashion, and makeup, all things I share in hopes to inspire others with my creativity and aesthetics. I love to share my own emotional ideas and views of the world, but I also just create silly videos and streams in hopes to bring some laughs into people’s personal lives and to entertain. I believe I have a strong sense of creativity and pride myself in my own emotional intelligence, so I love talking about mental health and how people are feeling and I hope to introduce to people a world where you live in confidence and pride of who you are and what you represent. I want to find myself and explore my own world in order to inspire other young people to find their own interests and who they are.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I think the biggest role of good luck is my first video that blew up and started it all. It really felt like the universe randomly gave me an opportunity and asked me what I wanted to do with it. I had always had a weird attraction towards people who were also struggling, and a lot of my life was spent trying to help them. In time I learned not everyone wants to accept the help or understand your point of view of life. That’s why I truly love being an internet figure. I am so lucky that now If anything, I have thousands of people to give advice to, influence, share to, laugh with and they don’t even HAVE to hear it, they genuinely want to. It’s the perfect place to find the people who I look to interact with and are meant to interact with me. I am so lucky to have such a supportive fan base. Beyond where I came from, there’s a lot I can’t decide if it belongs to luck or work, or even both as for the opportunities I’m given. I currently work for a talent agency named Vali Management Services. Working for them has opened so many doors and experiences I feel beyond lucky to have and them even finding me in the first place feels like a role of luck. Constantly there’s new things knocking at my door every day.
I can string luck to so many parts of this whole phase of my life, but I have to credit a lot of my work too. I don’t even think this luck could’ve come if I didn’t keep building on what I got. A mix of luck and spending my time creating and representing myself bring forth almost everything that applies to the life I’m currently living. I believe the universe will keep giving you what you deserve as long as you empty out the negativity and make room to accept the things that will fill that part of your life. I am proud of all the lucky things that have come to me and will work hard to open myself for what’s to come. It is all just luck, putting yourself out there, being open to these opportunities and hard work.
Contact Info:
- Email: mandygirl1942@gmail.com
- Website: https://taplink.cc/smol.mandy
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smol.mandy/?hl=en
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@smol.mandy
Image Credits
-Nicholas’s portraits and Landscape
-Avalos Photography
-Hextor Photography
