Cory Kennedy
The internet made her and unmade her.
By Brock Colyar
CORY KENNEDY has a hard time looking at the photos that made her famous—the shots in which she’s a tipsy teenager at parties with the Olsens and Lindsay Lohan and Steve Aoki. There’s one that is particularly well known among those who remember who she is in which she’s squatting on the sidewalk, looking elfin and disheveled, smoking a cigarette. When I bring it up recently, she declares, “That’s not the person I am today,” balling one of her hands up in a fist and struggling through a sudden-onset stutter. “It’s me screaming out for safety. It’s not just an image of me partying. It’s me looking for the ground. A pose I became famous for, ironically.”
Kennedy might have been the internet’s first “It” girl. She rocketed from teenage anonymity to virality after becoming a muse of sorts to the party photographer Mark Hunter, a.k.a. the Cobrasnake, at the time only her second serious boyfriend. But unlike the influencers who followed in her wake, she never really felt she was in charge of her own image and never really cashed in on it either.
This story is from the April 24 - May 07, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 24 - May 07, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
LIFE AS A MILLENNIAL STAGE MOM
A journey into the CUTTHROAT and ADORABLE world of professional CHILD ACTORS.
THE NEXT DRUG EPIDEMIC IS BLUE RASPBERRY FLAVORED
When the Amor brothers started selling tanks of flavored nitrous oxide at their chain of head shops, they didn't realize their brand would become synonymous with the country's burgeoning addiction to gas.
Two Texans in Williamsburg
David Nuss and Sarah Martin-Nuss tried to decorate their house on their own— until they realized they needed help: Like, how do we not just go to Pottery Barn?”
ADRIEN BRODY FOUND THE PART
The Brutalist is the best, most personal work he's done since The Pianist.
Art, Basil
Manuela is a farm-to-table gallery for hungry collectors.
'Sometimes a Single Word Is Enough to Open a Door'
How George C. Wolfein collaboration with Audra McDonald-subtly, indelibly reimagined musical theater's most domineering stage mother.
Rolling the Dice on Bird Flu
Denial, resilience, déjà vu.
The Most Dangerous Game
Fifty years on, Dungeons & Dragons has only grown more popular. But it continues to be misunderstood.
88 MINUTES WITH...Andy Kim
The new senator from New Jersey has vowed to shake up the political Establishment, a difficult task in Trump's Washington.
Apex Stomps In
The $44.6 million mega-Stegosaurus goes on view (for a while) at the American Museum of Natural History.