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when i don't want my thoughts to be Perceived but they don't fit in the tags
i had thoughts. i slept on them. i have more. and listen, if you haven't already caught onto the vibe on my blog, i'm mostly concerned with looking at the strategy behind things and trying to figure out what goals they're serving, not necessarily guessing or judging. louis knows the most about how he's handling his life and his closet. though i'm low key judging quite a bit even the choice to have someone this young involved but i'll wait and see where this goes.
so like, ... ... why?
systematically: real? lol no. i love louis but he and some random normal girl "model" with 14k instagram followers aren't getting followed by paps. this isn't 1D days. he's simply not famous enough and people don't care enough for him to get papped like that. and you don't hard launch your 22 year old girlfriend you don't even follow on instagram with a pap walk. especially not when you typically keep your private life pretty under wraps. and in basically matching outfits. honestly, the vibes were immaculate, yes, but also immaculately styled lol. promo? honestly pretty doubtful. louis has his upcoming tour and the documentary to promote. if it turned out this girl was someone with a following of her own, even if it was niche or primarily foreign, i'd say sure, maybe he's looking to expand his fanbase and get more people interested and buying tickets. but nope. no one knew who she was. weirdly enough, not even she is really promoting anything - she seems like a baby model/influencer, no real ads on her instagram and she doesn't post that often. and frankly, the gp doesn't care who louis is dating - they didn't care when he broke up with eleanor, no one outside of the fanbase picked up on it happening, they won't care that louis is dating someone new that no one has ever heard of. this functionally gets him zero promo outside of his existing fanbase. gay bad/closeting? look i've said it before and i'll say it again: the vast majority of the gp don't think louis is gay. there are functionally zero rumors about his closet other than larry, and he and harry haven't publicly interacted in years. i think people can get fandom goggles on this point and be like, at any point if they're not proven straight people will think larry is real! louis mentioned harry was at his concerts! he said they talk! harry said louis' name for the first time in years at the brits! and like... yeah, people who aren't following every minute of their public lives breathlessly don't fucking know any of that. louis' closet is not put at risk by being single. fwiw, i have a good friend who has been a big 1D fan since the beginning, she even thinks harry is queer and closeted! but when i asked her about louis she honestly thought he and eleanor had gotten married and that f was their kid. no joke. when i reminded her that f wasn't eleanor's she was like oh RIGHT i remember all that drama now, but like... it was 7 years ago and life is busy and it's easy to kind of jumble the pieces and be like, kid, long term relationship, whatever. louis is THAT under the radar for most of the gp. he doesn't need a girlfriend to maintain his closet - and i don't mean that in an 'i'm judging louis because i've decided he's doing this to have a new beard and i think it's unnecessary' way, i mean that in an 'i'm assuming he and his team aren't fucking idiots and know this already, so this is probably not the point of this' way.
which still leaves us with why, and suggests the why is something that we don't yet know. total unknowns aside (because life is full of surprises), i tend to think this means something is going to happen that's gonna look real gay and he wants a plausible girlfriend for it. all things considered i kind of lean towards something re: bg, if only because i truly don't know what else would threaten louis' closet (maybe harry and louis actually interacting in person but like, i'm not quite THAT down to clown). people keep floating the idea he'd come out as bi in the documentary, i'm simply not there and in any event i don't think dating a girl helps with that story. just stay single or find a nice nobody model 22 year old man to get papped with if you want to come out without implicating larry. so, we're back to bg. (and the end of elounor also makes me more inclined to think this is about bg, eleanor has always seemed to have a hard boundary when it comes to f/bg)
(entering the realm of informed but total speculation: i got two thoughts. one - it's ending soon, and having a hot 22 yr old blonde model girlfriend would help negate the 'those crazy bg fans were right all along and this was a vast conspiracy' of it all, which like... if you think they're gonna end it by revealing everything, babes, i have a bridge to sell you. two - a 22 yr old blonde in LA seems pretty tailored to incite the kind of 'you'll never be my baby's mama' kind of bullshit we saw with douis. she's in LA, so available to be around f, and also.... 22, so... infuriating. honestly if this were all somehow real and i were b, i'd also be kind of like, 'you want your 22 year old girlfriend of a month to spend significant time with our child? no fucking way dude.' will it all make louis look kind of shitty? yeah. did i think there was any way louis was coming out of this looking like a saint? not a chance in hell. again, if you thought b's family was going to be like, ok guess we'll just quietly let you make us all look like total scammers and you're just the poor sad saint who loves his kid and got taken advantage of... i have a bridge in alaska for sale.)
assorted other thoughts: it's very much giving rush job vibes. if this was launching a new long term beard, i'd think 1) she'd have been better prepared. some time for a more natural transition of her instagram to the aesthetic she showed in the pap photos. maybe get some sponcon set up so she can capitalize on all the new followers she's getting, 2) we wouldn't have seen the pap photos hard launch. i do think the lack of an instagram follow is to give them flexibility with timelines, but if this was something long term you'd start there, maybe a deuxmoi sunday spotted or an email submission or something, get people speculating - it also would get more gp attention (and have more promo value) that way (honestly. spotted: louis tomlinson on what looks like a date with a cute blonde. you get people speculating about who it is, guessing people who are more famous than this girl ended up being, it gets attention, it gets chatter, you get people being like oh maybe it's not a date maybe she's an opener for his upcoming tour, maybe she's working on his documentary, etc etc. waaayyy more valuable for promo). but that all takes time to do organically, and if you don't have time? pap walk it is. and honestly, louis should have had plenty of time, he's ostensibly been in LA since he got back from mexico. kiiinnddd of makes me think whatever this girl has been hired to do, it's something that was hard to find someone to agree to do. which means messy. which again makes me think bg, i think there's a reason eleanor didn't want to be involved in whatever's coming.
sure, maybe i'm all wrong and actually this is just incompetence on someone's part. and all the stuff where i've said something doesn't make sense is because it doesn't and the people in charge of it were just idiots (like thinking this would actually be effective promo). but... i don't tend to jump to incompetence as an explanation for things. especially not when there's the multiple layers of incompetence that would be required for that to be the explanation here.
and of course, i hate that this girl is 22. i'm louis' age, so to me, i see a 22 year old and i think... oh, so, a child. but like i said, i don't think this is real, and like, as distasteful as this is to me personally, i don't think the gp is gonna get up in arms about it. i mean, liam got some flack but basically got a pass for his actual teenage girlfriend. same with jesse rutherford dating billie eilish. and like, i'm sorry, we as a society talked about dane cook (a FIFTY year old) getting ENGAGED to a 23-year old he met when she was like FIFTEEN for like... a week before we moved on. i think it's gross, but i also don't think there's going to be some huge gp backlash against louis.
anyway, as always, be nice to this girl. she's not inherently a bad person for participating in whatever this is, and being misogynistic about it isn't kind or helpful.