Talking Jars, Gender Politics, Copper IUDs, And Financial Independence With TikTok Star Eli Rallo, Journalism '21

Upper West Side NY

12 November, 2021

10:26 AM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY ISABELLA FARFAN NOVEMBER 11, 2021 Eli Rallo, Journalism '21, made $35,000 last month on social media and owes part of this success to a glass jar. Rallo lives with celiac disease, and throughout her childhood, her parents sought to find creative ways to make Rallo feel "normal" when it came to food. Their solution was a big glass jar filled with a mix of gluten-free snacks. In an era of pandemic-induced boredom, Rallo made a TikTok about the jar for a friend—and accidentally uploaded the video when she tried to save it to her camera roll. When she woke up the next morning, she discovered that the video had "blown up." Rallo continued to make variations of the jar, experimenting with different snack foods and themes. With help from the jar, Rallo has cultivated a following of 342,800 on her TikTok account @thejarr and 25,100 on Instagram. She also expanded her platform to include a podcast, "Miss Congeniality with Eli Rallo," a newsletter, "Salt and the City," and a YouTube channel. Rallo's focus is no longer just the jar, and she now finds herself cycling through different "eras" of lifestyle content. Despite changing the subjects of her content frequently, Rallo employs a level of refreshing candidness that fosters mutual trust between her and her following. Now, she finds herself in her "rules" era. Inspired by TikToker Louis Levanti, Rallo started making videos about semi-satirical rules for every day of the week. This series went viral, helping her grow her platform beyond just the jar. After graduating from Columbia School of Journalism last spring, Rallo got a job as a finance journalist. Even though this job paid her $48,000 a year after taxes, Rallo found herself working three full-time jobs to pay her $1,600 per month New York City rent. On top of the stress of juggling three jobs, Rallo found the climate at her journalism job to be inhospitable. Rallo made it clear that nothing ever escalated to abuse at her job, but the company's male-dominated work environment felt toxic. Rallo decided to leave the position to become a full-time content creator. Her decision was not just fueled by the toxicity of her day job, but by her ultimate goal of becoming a creative writer and getting a book deal. After leaving her job, Rallo was hired by Barstool Sports to bring a feminist lens to the platform. She found herself with a difficult decision: work for a well-known brand, or take a leap of faith and build her own. "They wanted me, like this geeky theater kid feminist, to come in and talk about vaginas. … It's also the biggest media conglomerate in the country so it's hard to say no … but I had to lay out my options and I had to think about what I want to do with my future," Rallo said. Rallo declined her job offer at Barstool Sports but recognizes the immense privilege of being able to make a living off social media. She acknowledges an unsaid truth of the TikTok world that the algorithm appears to favor promoting the content of white women over women of color. Rallo does not just acknowledge her white privilege; she makes a concerted effort to keep the door open for those without the same algorithmic privilege. "I'm going to grab all my creator friends who are smaller than me … who don't have the same opportunities and say, 'Come with me.' … I don't walk through doors and shut them behind me. I don't believe in that," Rallo said. When Rallo shifted her content focus from jars to lifestyle content, she expanded her target audience from middle school and high school girls to 18- to 26-year-olds. This demographic change presented an opportunity for Rallo to talk about sex and feminism. Rallo used her TikTok platform to discuss her positive experiences with her copper IUD, countering the many horror stories on the internet about contraception. She extends this candor to her podcast where she discusses issues like orgasms, booty calls, relationships, texting significant others, and disordered eating. Discussing these topics as a woman, however, involves gender politics and an inevitable stream of criticism, as experienced by Rallo when she left her "real" job. In her newsletter "Salt and the City," Rallo explained that women are often under a "warm spotlight," under which they are expected to over-explain their life choices—to constantly explain their "why." "A lot of people talk about gender roles, but I like to look at it as gender scripts. … It's not so much as your role, but it's a script that we have that we automatically read off of, and then we start playing the part, and then we start playing the role," Rallo said. After announcing her career change from financial journalist to content creator, Rallo received aggressive comments, questioning why she would become a full-time content creator after graduating with a master's degree from an Ivy League university. She also received comments about her "daddy's money" upbringing. Rallo stressed that privileged men do not experience the same harassment. Rallo acknowledged that "[she's] going to be perceived and treated in a certain way because of certain things," and in accepting that, she is emboldened to recognize her own privilege in the content creation space and work on trailblazing for others. "For me, it's a lot of recognizing that I can say, 'Woe is me,' and complain, and clap back for people coming at me in a gendered way—or I can realize I do have privileges in this space and I am going to use them to help other people, and I'm not going to complain about it," Rallo said. Instead, Rallo tries to "listen to listen instead of listening to respond" to her fellow creators to learn in ways she cannot from "listening to respond." Rallo's eccentric internet brand has earned her a great deal of personal financial independence. It has also sparked conversations about taboo topics across various platforms in a way that tests the boundaries of what society considers acceptable to post on the internet. By sharing her personal experiences, Rallo hopes to alleviate some pain from her followers. "If I can spare people the specific brand of pain that I was in, many times in my life, whether it was because of a breakup, or because of some kind of body issue, because of self-confidence or because of friends. If I can spare someone those little troubles, that to me is making someone's day better," Rallo noted. Rallo is grateful for her platform and understands that she is not everyone's "cup of tea" but encourages people to be nice to her and others on the internet. "I always say, when you're being nice to others and being nice to yourself, and you're doing your best work and working hard—you're doing nothing wrong. You're doing everything you can do," Rallo said. She encourages this behavior from both her audience and anyone thinking about starting content creation. How Rallo manages her platform reveals something not seen on the "For You" page: the collaboration of women creators on the app behind the scenes. Rallo continues to have conversations with other popular TikTokers like @cedonifrancis and @justine_snacks, who appear on her podcast, and has reported learning a great deal from these women. The collaboration of women with different identities and platform niches that Rallo describes is a promising sign that creators are "holding the door open" for one another. Rallo transformed her differences—her celiac disease and her gluten-free jar—into a salary, reminding the world of the randomness of social media. Ultimately, it was Rallo's ability to sustain the inertia from her viral jar video that turned a simple glass object into a substantive platform that continues to encourage her followers to think a little bit harder about the gender politics of women in media. Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter and like Spectator on Facebook. Staff writer Isabella Farfan can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.