In her humorous Tiktok videos, influencer Emma Wagemans (28) does not have a leaf for the mouth. The IJmuidense cuts serious subjects in its own style, such as her life as a trans woman and her eating disorder. With her new podcast she pops into the Spotify ranking. Her first episode: dating with an eating disorder.
Emma is not afraid of spitting a little bile. She hates Tiktok rows, snack trays and non-authentic makers and often feels like a strange duck in the influencer world. But that is precisely what has been running her since 2015 to make unfiltered, playful films, in which she takes on society and makes jokes about her own misery. And especially not what others already do.
“I want to be sincere and break taboos. Some people can find that extreme, but I think that is good.” This week, the IJmuidense is expanding its online empire to Spotify, where she is number 2 as a newcomer. She is overwhelmed and says herself: “I am above minute for Allah and that in Ramadan.”
The star life is heavy
The title of her podcast has the ironic name: the star life is heavy. “A podcast for and through a star,” explains Emma in the intro. With that she refers to her ‘infantile dream’: becoming famous, adorned and photographed on the street. That set ‘act’ is now its trademark. But once it was a deep -rooted wish, fed by a youth full of harassment in which she felt unseen.
“I am on the Duin and Kruidbergmavo, now the Vellesan College, pelted with bread. Then something went into me: wait, wait later.”
More followers than Chantal Janzen
In 2015 she started films on recognizable situations on Instagram. “I have a passion for entertaining. Youtube I liked, but I was too lazy for that. There is so much involved. On Instagram there was a function that made it much easier.”
Her success came rapidly. Within six months she had 80,000 followers, which grew to 150,000 – more than big names such as Chantal Janzen and Fred van Leer at the time.
The turning point in her career came when she also started to take her trans-being as a starting point for her videos. She became one of the first online trans women who threw questions about her transition on the table without embarrassment. “I talked about my sex operation and now openly tell that I had community with someone who didn’t know I was trans. My intention has never been to break taboos. But after I came out of the closet, I became more and more open.”
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Yet the star life was full of likes and followers, which she tasted, anything but saving. The reason for that was deeper. “After my sex operation I thought: now life can start, now I can start dating. But then I just had a lot of rejection. I always tried to overcompensate with that ‘biological woman’ with likes, followers, breast implants, makeup and extensions. I weighed 70 kilos with my 1.80,” she says. “But it’s never enough. That’s how I also rolled that eating disorder.”
What started with skipping meals, not eating, crash diets, Intermittent Fasting And fear of calorie -rich foods, everything to meet that input plate, has now adopted a different form: a binge eating disorder. In addition, she eats a lot in a short time. “Because I have taken everything away for myself for years, eating has become my coping mechanism for the underlying emotions.”
Clownish
Although she is still in the middle of the recovery process, this taboo topic is also extensively covered in its videos. Of course in Emma’s completely own style. “You wonder where I was? Well, then I was probably baking frikandels. I have an eating disorder,” she says in one of her videos.
That good dose of self -mockery is her way of making everything more bearable. “But I also think that people take themselves too seriously. What I have experienced is serious, but sometimes you can laugh about it better. I think life is one big clownish. And all this has shaped me.”
Pits
Her videos open cessons full of emotion and shame. “I get a lot of messages from people who indicate that they have a lot of it and no longer ashamed of their own binges. Of course that is really good for me.”
It also works for herself therapeutic. “Now I am talking about it and acknowledge it. I did the craziest things to hide it. In the supermarket I put all kinds of healthy products on the counter alongside bags and candy, so that the person behind me would think: that girl eats varied.”
She continues: “Having an eating disorder can be enormously lonely. The shame is great, but it is also liberating to say:” I feel bad and I just ate two pizzas. “You notice that people want to admit it if they can identify themselves.”
Her podcastrecorded from her bed, is an extension of what she is already doing on Tiktok: playing open card about dating with an eating disorder, social media and her traumatic sex life. Now no longer driven by being seen by the urge, but by passion. “The blood crawls where it can’t go.” Her big dream? “Oh girl, no idea. Earning a lot of money with what I am doing now,” she says laughing.