5 Things I Learned From Watching Jenna Marbles
In case you’ve been living under some form of rock over the past decade, I’ll be generous and explain. Jenna Marbles is a YouTuber/entertainer who is something of a long runner of the channel, known for her whimsical humour and weird content. Or at least, she was.
Last week, Jenna Marbles released a video entitled “A Message”, announcing that she was retiring — perhaps permanently — from YouTube, thanks to allegations over her past videos being problematic.
Like many, I was very upset by the news. Jenna Marbles is a figure who has been held up numerous times as being a kind, wholesome person who has spent many years making us laugh and generously granting us a glimpse into her life with her boyfriend, Julian and her four dogs, Marbles, Kermit, Peach and Bunny. Watching her emotional apology and farewell was a punch to the gut. Losing Jenna is inconceivable — it’s like losing a best friend who doesn’t know you exist. YouTube simply wouldn’t be the same without her comedy or kind spirit.
So in light of that, I’ve decided to write a list dedicated to what I’ve personally gained from watching Jenna for so many years and what my hopes are for the future.
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1) Don’t be afraid to try new things
Jenna is known for making off-the-wall content. She’ll often take inspiration from other challenges and put her own spin on it (like her “100 layers challenge” video) or taking suggestions from her fans.
These videos, aside from being hilarious, capture a whimsical attitude of “why not?” that’s easy to forget about in this day and age. There’s such a novelty in doing things for the sheer fun of it. If you want to find out if it’s possible to blow bubbles with your hair or what happens if you glue rhinestones to your face, Jenna’s your girl. She never worries about looking ridiculous or her ‘experiments’ not working out, because that’s part of the fun of it. It’s not just about entertaining her audience, it’s also about answering questions that some might think as silly or pointless but deserve to have someone answering them anyway. As someone who spent their teens and early twenties being perpetually self-conscious, this is a valuable takeaway — there’s nothing wrong with doing things for the fun of it. If you’re not hurting anyone and want to have a good time with it, then go for it!
2) Don’t be ashamed to enjoy things
This probably seems like an obvious lesson, one I surely didn’t need a YouTuber to tell me, but allow me to explain myself a little bit.
Jenna uploaded a video called “I Give Myself a Claire’s Makeover”, which is exactly what it says on the tin — Jenna bought a bunch of things from Claire’s Accessories (which, if you don’t know, is aimed at pre-teen to teenage girls) and tries them on, while reminiscing about how much she liked this sort of thing as a kid. And in turn it made me remember how much I loved blowing my pocket money on a sparkly notebook or cute jewellery, trying them on with my friends, a joy that gradually got shamed out of me in my later teens. We all go through a phase as we navigate our way through that strange time called puberty where we aggressively shun all the things we liked as children in an attempt to see more mature. Ironically, it’s learning to enjoy those things as an adult that’s the real indicator you’re grown up now.
So watching Jenna and Julian having the time of their lives together trying on cutesy items meant for tweens, prancing around in scrunchies, glittery hairclips and see-through backpacks and talking about how fun and joyful the accessories are, it made me think, “Yeah, that was so much fun!”
I bought some fluffy, pastel-coloured snap bracelets the next day. Maybe that just means I am very suggestible when it comes to people I like, but wearing them is some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a bracelet. Even my friends at work got a kick out of trying them on, I think they couldn’t resist the throwback to the nineties. To this day I still sometimes wear them if I want to feel cute. My fashion choices have become more adventurous as a result and I’m more confident about unapologetically liking things, no matter how “cringe” some might find them. Thanks, Jenna.
3) It’s perfectly normal not to know what you want to do with your life
Whenever I watch a movie with people around my parent’s age or older, they always reminisce their twenties are the best time ever, it’s all fun and games with no responsibility, and I’m always totally baffled. Is it nostalgia speaking or did boomers have a far different youth from ours?
I never have enough money, constantly lie awake panicking over my mortality, my friends keep moving away and/or having babies (which amounts to the same thing) and I feel extremely down on myself for not being a self-made millionaire by now. There is so much pressure for people in their twenties to be successful that I legitimately feel stressed out if I don’t have any accomplishments I can think of per month. Sometimes even per week.
But even if she herself is a very successful YouTuber now, Jenna taught me that it’s okay to be lost.
During Jenna’s “Draw My Life” video, she talks about moving away from home and not knowing what she wanted to do or who she was. She only discovered YouTube quite by accident, made a few videos for fun and the rest is history. She’s one of the very few YouTubers I started following when I first joined the website that I still follow to this day — she doesn’t know me and most likely never will, yet I feel like she’s been on a journey with us this entire time. I’ll admit it, I cried at the end of that video.
But hearing someone well-known and influential admit that actually, they didn’t know they’d be a success and they’re mostly still winging it a lot of the time, is surprisingly very reassuring to me, especially given I keep watching biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Rocketman” full of geniuses who made it big. Jenna’s video gives me hope that I’ll one day stumble upon my purpose, too.
4) The smallest things can mean a lot to someone
Jenna’s content isn’t what you’d really call particularly challenging or deep, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Up until right now, if you wanted any kind of drama or scandal, Jenna was the last person you’d look to (and really, her choice to withdraw from YouTube isn’t a scandal either, more a personal choice made by someone much beloved on the internet). You watch Jenna’s videos for wholesome, often weird content, whether that’s taking her dogs to the beach or painting herself to look like a chair. Yes, that is a thing that actually happened.
Watching Jenna’s channel is kind of like eating a hot, comforting meal after coming home from a stressful, freezing cold day. You get a little glimpse into the life of Jenna and Julian and their dogs, who have big enough personalities that they’re basically their own starring roles. Sometimes in a world full of doom and gloom or constant dramas blowing up in every industry you can think of, a friendly face and yell of, “Oh hell yeah!” is exactly what you need.
5) Sometimes, you just need to take a break.
Like many, I was devastated by Jenna’s decision to take a hiatus from her channel, especially given she was vague about how long she’d be gone — the words ‘or maybe forever’ struck a chord of fear into me. I can only remain hopeful that she may return once she feels strong enough to do so again.
I was also saddened by her decision to hide much of her older content. I grew up watching Jenna’s videos and a lot of them served as in-jokes between me and friends. I’d even sometimes ask people if they’d heard of Jenna Marbles as icebreakers when I first started university and was still trying to break out of my shell. I understand why she chose to do this — some of her videos were accused of being hurtful/insensitive (if not intentionally) and the content was not representative of who she is as a person anymore. I won’t go into it because it’s not what this article is about. But I get it, I do, even if I miss some of the videos for the comedy elements or the time where Jenna was still starting out in her career and wasn’t yet something of a celebrity as she is now.
But Jenna’s mental health is ultimately more important and her decision to leave now was probably for the best. I’d noticed she seemed a little down in her recent videos leading up to the one announcing her hiatus and sometimes, there are battles you can’t yet fight because you’re not ready, be it emotionally, mentally or physically. It’s been a difficult year for everyone, and Jenna Marbles is no exception, so all her fans can do at present is continuing to support Jenna and her decisions, no matter how much we might miss her. With time, she may feel strong enough to come back.
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And finally…
While I’m still processing the lack of Jenna Marbles content on YouTube, I do think that her departure might hopefully serve as a warning.
While Jenna herself stated in her goodbye video that she was uncomfortable being held up as an “unproblematic” person and said that she is human and has done things in the past she isn’t proud of, same as everyone else, it occurred to me that there’s something else to be taken away from this. Cancel culture is a fundamentally flawed, toxic approach to dealing with scandals. I don’t know if Jenna choosing to withdraw from YouTube herself would be counted as “cancelling” her, but there’s no denying that Jenna was being harassed quite a bit on platforms like Twitter prior to this video. I have no doubt her apology was genuine and one she felt she really needed to make, but I got the feeling there are some people out there who owe her an apology as well.
But the thing is, if people are not allowed to be forgiven for past mistakes and grow as people, then we are holding both them and ourselves to a standard that is inherently harmful because it leaves no room for error, and to err is human. If a YouTuber like Jenna Marbles can be bullied off her platform even though they have apologised, made every effort to improve themselves and devoted their channel to providing joy to people, then eventually the only people left will be the ones who don’t care about any of that and are only in it to make money. Not naming names, but I know a few popped into your head just then.
So with that in mind, I can only hope that it’s when, not if, Jenna returns, the online world she’s returning to makes an effort to improve itself, as well. Because that’s the kind of content I think we’d all like to see.