He should have bent his knees a little to get the height right, too. (via Instagram)
Meet 17-year-old New Zealander Liam Martin. He has an insanely popular Instagram account featuring pictures of himself painstakingly recreating pictures of famous women. They're pretty good.
Good enough to get him 1.5 million followers. No complaints here: he's got a gimmick, he executes it well, and he posts new stuff all the time. In my book, that's doing a damn fine job.
Liam told BuzzFeed that he started doing this because it was "something completely different from the norm." Happily, he's inspiring a lot of people to feel comfortable in their own bodies by providing them with an example of someone being different while also being happy and appreciated. "I get people telling me that I teach them to not be afraid to do something different," said Martin.
Less happily, he's received a lot of hate mail from people who are unaware that it is 2014, "so many people can't embrace difference," explained the teen.
He's also done great work speaking out on bullying, self-harm and suicide. Thanks, Liam. You're a good kid.
Now, I don't mean to be a total effing schmuck, but how are we still getting our minds blown by this? This is clearly more about funny pictures than breaking new ground in gender identity.
Look, I think this guy has a great Instagram. Quality. I'd give it a solid A-. I guess the way he dresses up as these women technically constitutes drag, but this is the Internet: re-creating photos of famous people is its own genre in my book, separate from the world of drag and genderfluidity. I'm not saying we as an Internet culture don't need to keep fighting for inclusion and tolerance wherever possible. I'm just saying that I'm disappointed in humanity that this is still seen as odd.
If you like doing stuff like this, don't let anyone tell you you're weird or different. If it's 2014 and they don't know that making pictures like this in order to gain popularity online isn't the most normal thing in the entire universe...they are the weird ones, and you should pity them.
Keep up the good work Liam. I hope you're eventually so successful that all your haters realize that you are almost (almost) boringly normal.
I mean, if he was really a weird 17-year-old from New Zealand, why aren't there conspiracy theories saying that he's actually 34? Sounds like he's pretty boring to me.
Dress however you want to dress, people. The only thing that can make you a disgusting freak these days are offensively retrograde opinions. The rest of us are just normal weirdos competing for fake Internet points.
Ok, maybe he's a little weirder. But in a good way.
(by Johnny McNulty)