Sometimes a Vine so perfect appears that watching it feels like walking through a wall -- like you're witnessing the perfect alignment of atoms coming together to accomplish the seemingly impossible. "who is she" by chloe lmao, aka 16-year-old Chloe Woodard, is one of those Vines. There's not much to the clip: tiny sunglasses, tie dye, a large ponytail, shimmying shoulders, braces, and the intro to A-ha's 1984 synthpop hit "Take On Me." But all together, it creates the kind of simple, indescribable magic that has accumulated over 60 million views. We talked to the auteur behind this Internet masterpiece on her last day of summer before going back to high school.
Can you walk me through the moments before you made this? Who filmed this?
It was actually my younger sister. We were playing outside and messing around with the water balloons outside. My friend gave me the glasses and I was just playing around with them. I was like, "Wait this would be funny" and I had her film it for me. I was like, "Did you like this?" and she was like, "Yeah, well maybe you could put music to it." And I always put "Take on Me" by a-ha to my Vines. So I was like, "Alright I guess we'll put that one." And I don't know, I guess everyone liked it!
The song really makes it! Like, the exact timing. Why do you like that song so much?
I just always liked it. I remember I saw a commercial that used the song once and my mom was like, "You should come listen to the full song. It's actually really good." And I fell in love with it and have really liked it ever since. Every time I hear it on the radio I get really excited. It's just a fun song.
How did you figure out you could do this motion with your hair?
I've always had really big hair. My hair's naturally very curly, so it naturally has that weird bounce to it. The way I moved my shoulders made it bounce like that. It's funny, I didn't really notice before I watched it that I could do that.
I initially thought you were a doll. It seems unreal.
A lot of people said they thought it was going to be a mannequin head or something. They were surprised.
Your friend gave you the sunglasses?
Yeah, my best friend who's actually my cousin. That's how we've known each other our whole lives. She had them probably from like a doll or something. She took this really funny picture of her wearing the glasses and I thought it was like the best picture ever. So next time I went over to her house she was like, "Oh here are the glasses from that picture." And I was like, "Can I have these?! I think they would be fun to make Vines with." And she was like, "Yeah, sure, go ahead!" So that's where I got the glasses from.
That's so nice of her.
I know! I thanked her so much.
Did you take multiple takes of this? Or your sister got it in one try?
That was only the second take of it. The first time the zooming was weird and she agreed. So we did it one more time and it was perfect.
I noticed you're wearing braces in this Vine, but then in your later Vines you're not. Did you get them taken off or were those prop braces?
I got my braces off 5 days after I made that Vine. I didn't know prop braces existed until after when people started asking me if I had them!
Has anyone recognized you in public from this? You really did transform yourself from normal person to this specific look!
It's really crazy how people do recognize me! I was in Chicago like the downtown area for two days and both days someone recognized me from Vine. And I think one of the days it was because of my hair. And this boy walked up to me and was like "Is this you?" and he showed me my Vine and I was like, "Yeah, it is." And I'm almost positive it was because I had my hair down and it looked flouncy from afar. It was so weird because Chicago is a big city. Like, of all the people you could recognize? I'm getting used to that, too. Because it happens a lot more now. But I appreciate it so much.
How quickly did this become such a hit?
It was pretty much overnight. I posted it on July 2nd and then by July 3rd it had over 100,000 views. Then I remember waking up on July 4th and it had over a million views already. I was so surprised.
You were like, 'wow God Bless America!'
Yes!
So you're going back to school tomorrow. Do you think people are going to bring this up?
I have talked to a lot of my school friends. They probably will. Before this even happened, people would bring up my Vines to me at school because I guess they really liked them. I don't know, I think it's probably gonna be so weird. I haven't really thought much about it. I'm kind of excited to see how it turns out.
Do you think you'll keep making Vines for the foreseeable future?
Yeah, as long as I have material, I guess. My material right now is not as good as it could be. Like, I'm pretty young. I'm 16. My sense of humor hasn't come into its own. I need time to experience more and have my sense of humor mature. I think by then I could make pretty good content. Whether Vine will be around by then or not, I don't know.