Welcome, friend! On the blog today, I am on tour with Over The River PR for Jessica Siskin’s novel, Looks Perfect. I was drawn to this book as it explores social media, identity, and the gap between how we present ourselves to the world and who we really are. Through Stella Lerner, a fashion icon whose seemingly perfect life is beginning to unravel, we get insight into what happens when the image we create becomes difficult to separate from the person we are.
I’m delighted to welcome Jessica to Armed with A Book to talk about creativity, authenticity, and finding ourselves beyond the spotlight! First, let’s take a quick look at the book synopsis.
What comes between a fashion icon’s perfect image and her genuine self? The perfect stranger—in a sharp and witty novel about identity, performance, and what it takes to make a true connection.
One million people follow Stella Lerner’s every move. And now the buzzy fashion designer is fulfilling her lifelong dream and taking her indie clothing brand global with the help of the industry’s biggest investor. Sounds perfect. Except offline, the optics aren’t so great.
Her relationship with her boyfriend, Alex, is crumbling just as the pressure to curate her image online only builds. Feeling trapped between the picture-perfect life she’s promised her followers and the messy reality she’s facing, Stella anonymously joins a new dating app. Blindr promises deep, private conversations, free from the burden of anyone’s expectations, especially her own. That’s when Stella connects with a stranger called Pineapple who’s intuitive, honest, and empathetic. Stella may be watched by millions, but this man, who’s never even laid eyes on her, makes her feel seen.
What starts as a diversion becomes a journey of radical transformation. As Stella’s search for authenticity intensifies, every chat with Pineapple takes her further down a path she never could’ve imagined.
Find the book on Goodreads.
Get to know the author: Jessica Siskin
Hi Jessica! Welcome to Armed with A Book. It is a pleasure to chat with you. Please tell me and my readers a bit about yourself.
Thank you so much for the opportunity! I’m a debut novelist living in Soho, NYC.
You’ve been a fashion executive, the creator of Mister Krisp, and now a novelist. How do you understand your creative transition across these very different fields?
When I started out in fashion after college, I always knew that one day I wanted to write a novel. What I never saw coming was that what would allow me to get there would be accidentally becoming a food artist. Working in fashion was amazing because while I was in a sales role that really spoke to my skill for storytelling and connecting with people, for the first few years I also got to sit in on design and merchandising meetings, which were stimulating for my creative side. As the business grew, I had to focus more on sales reports, so I had a lot of creative energy left over, which I channeled into taking non-credit creative writing classes and playing around with very simple Rice Krispie Treat designs when my friends came over. At the end of 2012, I had the idea to make a Rice Krispie Treat cheeseburger, which actually changed the course of my life, because a year later I started an Instagram account called @mister_krisp and its immediate success is what allowed me to leave my fashion job and enroll in an MFA creative writing program. Publishing my first book, Treat Yourself!, a Rice Krispie Treat cookbook turned out to be a very lonely experience for me and that’s where the idea for Looks Perfect was born, in the disconnect between the way I was performing my success online and the challenges I was experiencing in my life.
Your experience as a social media creator clearly informs Looks Perfect. What drew you to explore the gap between the person we present online and the person we are when nobody is watching?
In the months before Treat Yourself! was published, everywhere I went, everyone was rushing to tell me how I was killing it and how amazing my life was, and I knew I was doing really well professionally, but I also felt super overwhelmed and deeply lonely, and while it was easy for me to share all of the highlights, I knew that no part of me wanted to share my struggles. Experiencing this disconnect for myself made me curious about the influencers I followed on Instagram, and I realized that I was viewing them with so much more generosity than I gave myself. I felt uniquely positioned to explore this disconnect through writing, and while I’d studied creative nonfiction, something called me to investigate this question through fiction.
Stella has a million followers watching her life, yet Pineapple is the person who makes her feel truly seen. What interested you about putting those two kinds of attention side by side?
I think it’s very easy in today’s world to confuse exposure for connection. Stella is constantly engaging with people, and sharing so much about her life. But in learning to prioritize a curated version of herself to serve her career goals, which mean a lot to her as she lives her dream as a fashion designer, she loses sight of the meaningful relationships in her life. It’s not even that she’s become self-absorbed because she has actually become so disconnected with herself that what she’s absorbed in isn’t a real person at all. She’s really just treading water in her own life and what’s particularly sad is that so many of her dreams are coming true and she doesn’t have the tools to actually experience what that feels like for her. So when Pineapple comes in and they have the opportunity to really dive into questions that allow her to reconnect with herself, it’s the first time in a long time that she’s actually allowing herself to be vulnerable enough to be seen and not just looked at.
Stella joins Blindr because she wants conversations without the expectations attached to her public identity. What do you think allows people to be more honest with strangers than with the people who already know them?
I think so many of us, especially women, learn what others expect of us before we even really learn who we are. We become so skilled at meeting people’s expectations that in a lot of ways we mold ourselves to those expectations. So it becomes automatic to show up in conversations with those we know while negotiating a role we’ve taken on. Connecting with a stranger can allow us to override those expectations, and I know in my own experience I sometimes surprise myself by learning more about who I am when I’m talking to a stranger and feel free of an expectation or role.
Was there a particular part of Stella’s transformation that surprised you as you wrote her?
When I started writing Stella, I felt we had very little in common. When I hit the midpoint of the book and a huge turning point for Stella, I realized that we were more similar than I thought in that we were both struggling with our understanding of how to actually enact vulnerability in our lives. It became very clear to me at that point that we were on a growth journey together, and it made a lot of sense to me why I’d been struggling so much to finish the book, I needed to change in order for Stella to change. Once I made it past that transition point, the rest of the writing process was much easier.
If you could give Stella one piece of advice at the beginning of the novel, what would you tell her?
As corny as it sounds, the only thing Stella would need to know from me is that all the answers she’s looking for actually exist within her.
There is a tension throughout the story between wanting to be known and wanting to remain private. Do you think those desires are actually in conflict, or can we have both?
I definitely think we can have both, but it’s more about navigating our own boundaries. I share constantly online, but when it comes to what really matters to me, I’m very selective about who I share that with. Wanting to be known doesn’t mean that everyone has to know you!
Your writing is funny even when the themes are heavy. How do you see humor functioning within the story?
Some of my funniest memories are from the heaviest moments I’ve experienced. I’ve always felt that humor is essential in tough moments as a way to shift perspective, even for a second, allowing us to inhabit a moment in a different way, and I often discover how I truly feel about something when I make a joke. People often talk about using humor to deflect, but I like to use humor to zoom in, to linger, to make a moment more potent, and I hope readers connect to this.
You have a fascinating relationship with social media as both a creative space and something the novel examines critically. What is one thing you still genuinely love about being online?
I love so many things about being online, but my favorite is the opportunity to keep up with people from every era of my life. I think it’s amazing that I get to continue to know so many people whose lives have taken them very far away!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I hope that readers will walk away from Looks Perfect with a better understanding of the ways they’re showing up online and how the internet mediates their real-life relationships.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me!
Many thanks to Over the River PR for having me on tour for this book! Check out all stops here.
Thank you for joining us!
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