When the creative team behind last year’s indie breakout film Eighth Grade was selecting a YouTube makeup tutorial for socially awkward Kayla (played skillfully by Elsie Fisher) to watch at the film’s start—one that would both inspire and destroy her, simultaneously—it makes sense that they picked an Olivia Jade makeup tutorial video. Olivia Jade is the exact sort of young woman who would elicit worship from someone like Kayla: she’s a shiny gemstone of a person who seems to, without having to exert any effort, get everything one could want. She isn’t snarky or mean, nor overly cheery and peppy. Her videos don’t give the whole picture of her life—clearly, we know now, there were key elements missing—but watching her is easy and oddly pleasurable, like laying on an inflatable raft in a lazy river on a 78 degree day. You’re not doing anything productive, but the time sort of just slips away.

Known to her fans and, at this point, the world, as simply “Olivia Jade,” 19-year-old Olivia Jade Giannulli has become the face of the college-admissions-cheating scandal that continues to captivate the nation. Jade’s mother, Full House star Lori Loughlin (a.k.a. “Aunt Becky”), was one of the 50 people indicted by the F.B.I. in the sting—which went by the code name “Operation Varsity Blues.” Loughlin and her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid $500,000 to ensure that both of their daughters, Bella and Olivia Jade, would gain admission to U.S.C. Part of the alleged scheme involved organizing a photo shoot where Bella and Olivia Jade sat on rowing machines, positioning them to get recruited for the crew team, even though the two did not participate in crew. (When reached last week, a representative for Loughlin declined to comment on the allegations.)

Before Loughlin was taken into custody by the F.B.I., Olivia Jade was reportedly on the yacht of the chairman of U.S.C.’s board of trustees. (This will make a great opening scene for Sofia Coppola when she decides to adapt this.) According to TMZ and other outlets, Olivia Jade and her sister have decided to leave U.S.C. as they weather out the immediate fallout of the scandal, and reportedly will not be returning. Neither has been seen in public since the scandal broke last week.

By the time she went to college, Olivia Jade was already a prolific vlogger. She has accumulated close to 2 million YouTube followers (and 1.4 million Instagram followers). In most of her videos, she does her makeup for the camera and casually discusses her personal life, everything from who she’s dating to her famous parents to her plans for the evening. It is easy to understand what drove Olivia Jade’s popularity—she has an easy-going, appealing blandness to her delivery. She manages to communicate with the friendly conversational banter of Lauren Conrad or even Kim Kardashian. She’s very watchable.

Her Web presence led to lucrative brand partnerships as well. She had a makeup line with Sephora, and brand-endorsement deals with Estée Lauder, Marc Jacobs Beauty, and more. In one vlog that was widely circulated after the indictments, Olivia Jade shows off the products in her dorm room, all of which had been procured via some sort of sponsorship deal with Amazon Prime. (Many have pointed out that this monetization of her college existence is insult added to the injury of her alleged fraudulent admission to the university.) In the wake of the scandal, Sephora and Estée Lauder have severed ties with Olivia Jade, and it seems highly improbable she’ll, at least in the near future, be able to win them back.


It makes a lot of sense that Olivia Jade has become a face of the scandal. She is a telegenic young woman who is also an influencer and who also has famous parents who it turns out may be criminals. Given her wide swath of videos and content—which is still live, though Olivia Jade has turned off the commenting function—there is a treasure trove of material to excavate. (Intriguingly, this means Olivia Jade is presumably making money off the new added interest in her content.) Over the past week, each day has seen a new headline gleaned from a throwaway line in an Olivia Jade vlog. Us Weekly has been churning ‘em out factory-style: “Lori Loughlin’s Daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli Once Joked She ‘Literally Never’ Went to High School,” “Lori Loughlin Jokes About Paying ‘All This Money’ for Olivia Jade’s Education in Resurfaced Video Amid College Bribe Scam,” and so on. Some are even trying to capitalize on their associations to Olivia Jade: a vlogger who had briefly attended Olivia Jade’s high school has already earned more than 3 million views on a vlog in which she claims she is not surprised that something was amiss with Olivia Jade’s admission to U.S.C.

As others have pointed out, Olivia Jade’s emergent career as a vlogger and influencer applies a layer of irony to all of this as it would not, it seems, necessitate a college degree in any way. Olivia Jade herself, in many of her videos, does not seem particularly enthused about the academic opportunities college will provide. Infamously, she says in one video that she is excited for the “partying” and “game days.” To Olivia Jade, college seemed mostly an opportunity to further influence, to leverage the college experience for chances to enhance her brand.This is someone who missed the first week of classes freshman year of college to go to Fiji with a group of YouTubers, after all. Admissions is usually a zero-sum game, so it’s probable she took a spot from someone who might have “deserved” it more. That said, we can never know what the internal dynamics of the family are, no matter how many vlogs we watch.

In one of her videos, her roommate—Trudy Buck (daughter of sportscaster Joe Buck)—joins her on camera, and, the two apply their makeup as they share their first impressions of each other, it is easy to imagine an alternate timeline in which the two had never attended college and instead starred on a Hills-esque reality show, the sardonic Trudy serving as the Lo Bosworth to Olivia’s L.C. It’s the kind of show you could imagine the next generation of Kaylas watching over and over.

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