She's known as the 'Queen of Confidence.' Stripped down, she's still a 'very sensitive person.'
It Figures is Yahoo Life's body image series, delving into the journeys of influential and inspiring figures as they explore what body confidence, body neutrality and self-love mean to them.
Influencer Serena Kerrigan, 29, is the self-dubbed "Queen of Confidence" — which makes sense considering that she's currently starring on billboards, in the buff.
Still, it's a persona she crafted back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed everyone her age onto social media, as a sort of Millennial version of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones. She completed the character with the NSFW moniker Serena F***ing Kerrigan — aka SFK — and used it to dish out blunt dating advice, speak unapologetically about sex and even create a card game called Let's F***ing Date, for couples, or potential couples, to get to know one another better.
Dating and sex is a natural topic for the New York City native. She grew up in a household where there wasn’t any shame around sex. Yet Kerrigan was aware that outside her own family and the "bubble" of progressive NYC, conversations surrounding sex and pleasure were seen as "taboo” in what she calls the “very puritanical” United States.
On social media, Kerrigan acts like a friend who will give it to you straight, while also hyping you up and reminding you that you actually are better than that guy who ghosted you. She encourages her audience (mostly Millennial and Gen Z women) to go after what they want, in and out of the bedroom, and reminds them that they are the prize. (Or, in Kerrigan’s words, the f***ing prize.)
"I've been masturbating since [I was very young]," she shares, for example. "I was very embarrassed about it — like, I loved masturbating. I didn't know which one of my friends had, but that wasn't a conversation that we had."
Kerrigan knows she can be over the top online, but notes that SFK isn’t exactly who she is IRL. The Queen of Confidence, she reminds people, is a crafted persona — one that not only empowers other women online but also, in a way, herself.
Still, she says, her audience is also eager for more vulnerable moments — which she delivers. She recently documented her egg-freezing journey, hormone shots included. Her caption on one of her videos: “When I have to inject myself with hormones 10 days in a row just so I don’t have to settle down with a guy who wears a drawstring backpack.”
She chose to reveal that journey with her audience, she explains, because "I really wanted to empower women to do that, to have the information and the tools."
But no matter how vulnerable she gets with her followers, Kerrigan is still all about doing it “for the plot” — her longtime mantra. In essence, she means caring a whole lot less about what others think of you and your actions, and more about what makes you happy.
In Kerrigan’s world, the plot occasionally calls for getting naked. Kerrigan’s latest campaign with coffee shop Joe and the Juice involves her stripping down in ads for her “For the Plot” shake — a nod to her belief that “you’re the main character of your life and your story, so you might as well do what makes you feel good.”
Though Kerrigan's more likely to be done-up on social media, where she regularly posts glam makeup looks and red carpet shots, there was a specific reason why she decided to bare it all in the new ads (yes, it was her idea).
“I definitely feel more confident when I’m wearing clothes — I love fashion, and I think it’s a great way to express your personality, your mood, your emotions,” says Kerrigan. “But I felt if we’re doing this shake, For the Plot, that felt very on brand for this specific messaging … We always talk about getting the perfect summer body, but what if this is a response to that? Do it for the f***ing plot. Get naked, go skinny dipping, get comfortable in everything you want to wear — or not wear.”
She also tosses out the notion that the only way to be truly confident is to also accept and love your body as is. “You can be confident about yourself," she says — as well as "have moments of insecurity.” In those cases, she shows herself grace by talking to herself like a good friend would.
“I won't say to myself in the mirror, ‘You're f***ing disgusting and ugly,’” she says. “I actually go in front of the mirror and I say, ‘It's OK if you're not having the best day ever, or you don't see yourself the way I see it but you are beautiful and you are amazing,’ because that's what I would say to my best friend.”
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