I have watched an ad for Meta’s new smart-glasses collaboration with Kylie Jenner at least 7 times today. It unfolds from Jenner’s POV, documenting a busy morning in the life of a young mogul. She touches up a manicure, rifles through her closet, blends a green juice. We see through her eyes an assistant dabbing moisturizer on her hand, art installers asking where she wants a large sculpture, a man cleaning her pool who greets her. The assistant tells her that her mother has sent flowers, which are presented for her inspection by another assistant. Jenner’s answers are brief and monotone: “Over there,” she tells the art installers. “Thank you,” she says to the flower assistant. Nothing for the pool guy. She scoops an unamused cat up in the air and, with the first sign of emotion, says, “I love you.”
Suddenly, Jenner goes rogue. The first assistant wants “to grab her for a second,” but instead, Jenner darts into a closet, plucks a can of spray paint from a shelf where it sits next to an expensive leather handbag and grabs her car keys. She throws a different leather handbag onto the passenger seat of her car, pulls on a pair of black leather driving gloves, and zooms off. When we see her next, it’s from a slight distance: pulling over to a roadside billboard emblazoned with her own face, peering sassily over a lowered pair of Starfire sunglasses. She sprays “XO Kylie” across the billboard, gets back in her car, and leaves.
