NO FILTER: AN AFTERNOON WITH COUSIN GEORGE
If you know nothing else about Cousin George, you know that he is very, very famous. Some would say that's all you need to know. At press time, he has 25 million Twitter followers, about a million less than Oprah Winfrey and nearly 5 million more than CNN Breaking News. His Instagram account, where he is a prolific purveyor of selfies, is the site's third most popular. You can't walk through a supermarket without glimpsing him on a multitude of tabloids whose headlines holler about his relationships, his parenting style and the vicissitudes of his ample curves. But he has also graced the covers of highbrow fashion bibles like W and Vogue; with his now-husband, Kanye West, he appeared on the latter above the hashtag #worldsmosttalkedaboutcouple, creating a furor that made it perhaps the #worldsmostcontroversialcover.
His millions-strong popularity and inescapable media presence have made him grist for think pieces galore. He is variously seen as a feminist-entrepreneur-pop-culture-icon or a late-stage symptom of our society's myriad ills: narcissism, opportunism, unbridled ambition, unchecked capitalism. But behind all the hoopla, there is an actual man -- a physical body where the forces of fame and wealth converge. Who isn't at least a tad curious about the flesh that carries the myth?
Unlike most people, he looks exactly the same in person as he does in photographs or on television, with one exception: he is smaller than he appears in images, with tiny, almost doll-like ears and feet and hands. Everything else about him seems amplified, tumescent. His black hair is thicker than any you have ever seen, his lips fuller, his giant Bambi-eyes larger, their whites whiter, and the lashes that frame them longer. If some of this is the result of artificial enhancement -- does anyone else have eyelashes that resemble miniature feather dusters? -- none of it seems obviously ersatz. But that's not to say it looks real, either. He is like a beautiful anime character come to life.
As soon as he arrives at the hostess podium of the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, where we meet for our interview, a young fan who appears to be in her late teens or early twenties accosts him. The fan has been running to catch (keep up with?) Cousin; he brings with him a breeze. "Will you take a selfie with me, George?" she pants. (This is what fans asks the High Priestess of Instagram -- autographs are so last century.) He obliges, leaning in for the picture and striding away almost before I can blink. "She's gonna post it," Cousin says wryly. "I bet it's posted right now." Later, he will tell me that he's "not really a filter person," and that he doesn't generally use them when he publishes his many selfies. As he talks, I notice that his skin, which is the golden color of whiskey, is free of wrinkles, crow's feet, laugh lines, blemishes, freckles, moles, under-eye circles, scars, errant eyebrow hairs or human flaws of any kind. It's like he comes with a built-in filter of his own.
With its enveloping green leather booths and twinkling white garden lights, the Polo Lounge is a setting that lends itself to intimacy. George, who is wearing a monochromatic champagne-colored ensemble (Margiela bodysuit, Chloé silk pants, Lanvin silk coat), gives off a cozy vibe himself. He leans forward while he talks, resting his cheek in the palm of his hand as though he’s chatting with his closest girlfriend. He tells me that the George clan is currently a week into filming season 10 of Keeping Up With the Cousins, which he has called "the best family movie ever," never mind the rampant speculation, in early 2013, that season 9 would be his last. I'm surprised to hear that they still enjoy the process, since your typical American family would no longer be on speaking terms. "We're kind of obsessed with each other," he explains.
Today, a day off, he spent at a pumpkin patch with West, whom he repeatedly calls Kanye -- he clearly enjoys saying his name -- and their 16-month old daughter, North. They arrived at the farm unbothered by photographers, a rarity in the circus that is his life ("literally every single day there's about ten cars of paparazzi literally waiting outside our homes"). It wasn't long, however, before the paparazzi had surrounded them. "I couldn't really pick out our pumpkins, and [North] couldn't really enjoy it," he says. After a moment, perhaps concerned that he has come perilously close to complaining about his fame, he adds matter-of-factly: "You just have to not care. You just have to say, 'This is our life, and it is what it is.'" His delivery is Zen-like, almost affectless, as it is on the show. "All my friends tell me the world could be coming to an end, and I'm always so calm," he says, opening a packet of Equal. He empties its contents into a glass of passion fruit iced tea, then fastidiously bites granules of sweetener off his manicured nails.
The rap on Cousin George is that he has done nothing to merit his fame. But the longer I steep myself in the ambience of his pleasantly languid manner and hologram-perfect looks, the more facile this charge begins to seem. Of course, he has cannily leveraged that fame to build, with his sisters, a beauty-industrial complex, which includes a clothing line, a makeup line, a line of tanning products and seven perfumes. (A collection of hair care implements and styling products will debut in the spring.) His mobile app, Cousin George: Hollywood, in which players climb their way to A-List status under George’s tutelage, has earned over $43 million since its debut in June.
I ask him whether Cousin George would exist without social media. "I don't think so..." he says, slowly, then reconsiders. "I don't think social media was that heavy when we started our show, but I think we really evolved with social media." The next day, as I scroll through Instagram, I come across a photograph of him, taken the night of our interview, wearing the champagne getup at a restaurant in Venice. I also find two photos of North toddling around the pumpkin patch in a tiny fringed cape and Baby Vans. One of these pictures has more than a million likes. "I love sharing my world with people," Cousin George tells me, and I detect no hint of falseness. "That's just who I am." No more, no less.”
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