Chuck Palahniuk said that in gyms they line the walls with mirrors because, if you don’t see yourself and others at all times, why lift weights? Something similar happens with wealth. Georgina Rodríguez (Buenos Aires, 28 years old) is not satisfied with being rich: she also wants others to see it. Very in keeping with the era, being rich in money and attention. But there is always someone looking at her, be it one of her friends, one of her 33.7 million followers on Instagram (it may already be 34 depending on when you read this, no other Spanish woman comes close to that number) or, now, viewers of I’m Georgina on Netflix.
The evolution of the audience’s relationship with the program since its premiere on January 27 can be summed up as curiosity, stupor and surrender. The public has finally been able to meet the woman behind Instagram and has essentially found itself with an Instagram account on the move. But also to an inexhaustible factory of phrases that build the theoretical framework of an entire philosophy towards life. Georgian philosophy.
“I have gone from selling luxury to showing it off on red carpets”
Georgina summarizes her story as soon as the program begins so that the viewer is not distracted. She knows what you are thinking, she has also read those stories. And since yours is a universal story that has taken different forms over the centuries (Pygmalion, Cinderella), repeats reformulations so that the audience does not forget the scale of the story they are seeing: “I arrived by bus and left in a Bugatti” (regarding her first days of dating Cristiano Ronaldo, when she was still working as a sales assistant at Gucci) ; “Before I used to stay looking at the shop windows of the golden mile and now I come to buy” (a nod to Breakfast with diamonds); or “As a child I could only see this restaurant from the other side of the glass” (directly Dickens).
These narrative pills demonstrate two aspects of Georgina: that she has always been obsessed with luxury (material, visual and aesthetic), to the point of feeling destined to achieve it, and that she is an exceptional storyteller. She has a gift for creating powerful images (the girl/adolescent/young man looking from the outside at the symbols of luxury she yearns for), which also take the viewer back to easily identifiable folktales.
The anecdote of the day that Georgina, exhausted from working non-stop upon her arrival in Madrid (as a shop assistant and waitress), knocked on her neighbor Carmen’s door to introduce herself first and ask her for a plate of rice with egg afterwards is still a version from the match girl adapted to job insecurity in post-crisis Spain. The image of Georgina, with her makeup and hair done on her sofa, waiting for Cristiano Ronaldo to send her a message evokes the princess who sighs in her tower for the arrival of her prince, only instead of in a tower this princess lived in a down on Cartagena street and in the happy ending (“suddenly, I heard the noise of the engine”), instead of hearing the ride of a white horse, you hear a high-end car.
“I love Hermès, I love Gucci, I love Prada, I love Louis Vuitton, I love the Inditex group, I love Decathlon, I love Nike, I love Mayoral.”
This statement captures three key aspects of Georgina: that she is obsessed with showing off more than luxury itself; that she wants to make it clear that she continues to consume products low cost; and that he has an inexplicable aversion to saying the word “Zara”.
Georgina follows the logic of the falling tree in the forest: if you’re carrying a Louis Vuitton bag but it doesn’t have the emblem stamped on it, do you really have it? If you post a photo on Instagram wearing a Birkin and it doesn’t take up 20% of the frame, what do you want it for? “It’s not so much because of the bag,” she explains in front of her multiple Birkins, “as because of how hard it is to get.” And that honesty is commendable. They have all thought it, she has said it.
“I can’t show my ass”
This phrase does not matter so much for what it says as for where it says it. It’s in Roberto Cavalli’s shop. Georgina has seen my fair lady (or at least beautiful woman) and is familiar with how comical it is always to put a neighborhood girl in a fancy situation. Hence the summary of her resume: “I was a waitress, I was a cleaner, I was a clerk and now I’m the fucking mistress.” And hence her manifesto “I like jewelry with the tracksuit, whoever doesn’t understand it will already understand it”, in which, far from being ashamed of her nouveau riche status, she raises it because it allows her not to depend on the opinion of others. others.
“Four euros for half a cucumber!”, She protests scandalized while giving her a massage in the most expensive hotel in Cannes, hours before walking the red carpet of the festival. In an almost subversive gesture, Georgina decides to eat the slices that are left over after putting a couple of them in her eyes.
“And I saw myself there, surrounded by royalty and bureaucracy”
The confusion between “bureaucracy” and “aristocracy” occurs at the end of the reality show, after a video call conversation with J Balvin that for some reason someone decided to broadcast in its entirety, as part of a series of “outtakes”. The quotation marks are due to the fact that the broadcast of those moments has been approved by Rodríguez, who appears in the credits as “Content Director” in what is probably the detail of I’m Georgina that best defines his character.
Georgina’s eloquence has been one of the most talked about aspects of the show. Every time Spain has become obsessed with a woman (Isabel Preysler, Marta Chávarri, Mar Flores) it has been through their visual symbols: everyone remembers images of those women, but few remember the phrases they uttered. Georgina comes from that status. For the majority of the population, she is an image, a concept and, at best, an archetypal story. None of those women before her had a reality show in which he spoke for four hours. That’s why, just like when Ninotchka (1939) was promoted with “Garbo laughs!”, one of the claims of I’m Georgina was listening to her.
Given that she interacts every day with people from different countries, Georgina’s accent is surprising because it is a mix of all of them at the same time. After all, she defines herself, in her passion for her catchphrases, as “a citizen of the world.” But once that hybrid diction is assimilated, the most shocking thing about her speech is not what she says but how she says it: she seems to be reading a teleprompter at all times. That might be the case in the on-camera totals, but when he chats with other human beings he also communicates as if he had memorized the words beforehand. And often what he has memorized is an enumeration. Like the next.
“Fashion is art, creation, illusion, femininity, masculinity, beauty”
The only thing Georgina likes more than a brand is a string of words. Which Maria Esteve in The Other Side of the Bed (2004), Georgina Rodríguez communicates by accumulation: “Dance is discipline, sacrifice, effort, friendship, companionship”; “I love emeralds, diamonds, sapphire, rubies.” But of course, why keep one jewel when you can have them all? Therein lies the key. Georgina doesn’t list because she doesn’t know what to say, she lists because she doesn’t want to be left with just one thing. Her philosophy is “give me more of everything”.
“I’m going to take all the secallonas”
Throughout the six episodes that the program lasts, Georgina shows that you love Iberians can be a personality.
“I’m going to buy lottery”
Not surprisingly, Georgina believes in magical thinking. If all her dreams have come true, why wasn’t she going to win the EuroMillion? She has already won the metaphorical lottery and now she keeps scratching to see if she wins the literal one. “Besides”, comments one of her friends with whom she shares a coupon every week, “when you play we always get centimillos”. She, how pleased Georgina is with those centimillos makes it clear that, apart from living with all kinds of luxury and comforts, what she really likes is winning.
“I did not expect that there would be ‘paparazzi’ in Jaca”
In the chapter in which she goes through her past, from Jaca (where she grew up) to Graus (where she worked for a while), Georgina walks through the streets of those towns with a crowd following her everywhere while she records it with her mobile. The picture again goes back to another universal image: that of the prophets followed by her disciples. In a certain way, Georgina is a prophet, who with her own experience returns to announce that “with passion, illusion and desire you will achieve everything you set your mind to”. The viewer experiences this triumphant return vicariously: who wouldn’t want to return to her neighborhood a millionaire?
But that visit to Jaca, in addition to including reunions from four meters away with old classmates, offers the true climax of I’m Georgina: the visit with her sister to the best restaurant in town, so expensive that they could never afford it. That Georgina does not go to her childhood home, or to her relatives, or to her school, but does go to the restaurant that separated the rich from the poor in her first perception of the world is, essentially, the central theme of I’m Georgina. Georgina does not return to Jaca to feel nostalgia for the childhood she lived, but to make up for the childhood she could not live.
“We are like any family”
From the philosophical point of view, I’m Georgina it functions as a treatise on normality. What is normal? She, just in case, repeats the word constantly: “Cristiano is supernormal. He is more normal than normal people.” For her, normality is a value. Being normal has a lot of merit. And she wants to be recognized.
The truth is that there is some tedium in his day to day. Yeah, he’s got Armani furniture so big it needs to be sold through a apps especially for people with big houses (“I can’t sell this on Wallapop,” he clarifies without batting an eyelid). Yes, she pronounces the phrase “it took me six months to move around the house without getting lost” without a hint of irony. But aside from those superficial details, her daily life is effectively like anyone else’s.
At one point, she surprises her friends with an impromptu trip to the Cristiano yacht anchored in Monaco (“Do you want to do something crazy?”), on board of which they have the same daily conversations as any group of friends who have reached that state of pleasure. to talk only about the little things of the day to day. And when Georgina, grateful for her company, serves them their favorite coffee (the soluble one), the great mystery is solved, which has hooked so many viewers: those lives, deep down, are just as mundane as the others.
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