PillowTalk with Ines Helene, Part I

An Exclusive Super-Id Interview with InstaFamous Ines Helene

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The Preamble

[intense_dropcap color=”#ffffff” font_color=”#000000″]T[/intense_dropcap]here exists a natural dichotomy with all things Ines Helene. You either love (lust, perhaps?) her or hate her. You hate to love her or you love to hate her. You’re a fan. You’re a hater. You think she’s fake. You don’t care if she’s fake. Either way, the girl has your attention, if not your affection. And that attention has lead the Super-Id to conduct this interview with Ines Helene. 

This interview is not my first dance with Ines Helene. We were supposed to do an interview months ago after she became a fan of The Super-Id after she discovered a post we wrote about her where we dubbed her the Swedish Unicorn, and loved it. We got in contact via Instagram DM and picked a day and time. And nothing. She flaked. She forgot. She apologized. She reschedule. And she did it to us again. Fool me once. Fool me twice. We’d be gotdamn if I allowed anyone to fool us thrice. Lesson learned: never trust a big butt and a smile. The interview request became ether in the atmosphere. We don’t chase. Fuck that. 

Still pissy from getting fronted on, we DM’d Miss Helene an Instagram of some delicious Nutella ice cream sundaes we’re procured from Carvel, knowing she has a crippling addiction to that sweet, sweet hazelnut spread. Yes, we’re on some petty shit when you screw with us and we wanted to throw a passive-aggressive shot across her bow. She messaged back that she was still interested in doing the interview. Our eyes rolled so far back, we almost passed out. Shit got kinda real when she gave us her phone number and we moved our conversation from DMs to WhatsApp texts (it got shady when she hit us with a different phone number a week later).  We looked at this like getting to 2nd base with Ines Helene. That was 5 weeks ago… and we completed this interview two weeks ago. You do the math. Our call was scheduled for 1pm EST. It didn’t happen until almost three hours later (more suspect behavior). You do the math. We’ve been hit with speed bumps, detours, and roadblocks at various stages of this process, but stuck with it because we understood the mystery surrounding the Instagram “It” girl, Ines Helene and wanted to bring her into focus.

 

[Editor’s Note: the cumulative time spent interviewing Ines Helene is well over two hours conducted on May 14, 2015 via Skype video and May 20, 2015 via WhatsApp voice texts. This interview has been condensed and edited. For the sake of the user experience, the interview will be posted in parts, because who the hell wants to read 8000+ words in one post even if it is on a subject you are interested in – Ines Helene.]

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Typically, The Super-Id finds these generic profile questions to be insipid, but because everything Ines Helene is a complete mystery we felt the need to help paint her picture for the fiends out there.

The Ines Helene Profile

Name: Ines Helene

Ethnicity: Serbian/Bosnian

Residence: Sweden

Height: 5’ 6”

Weight: 143lbs

Measurements: At the time of publication, we were still waiting for Ines to take her measurements.

Bra Size: 38DD/F

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Brown

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Food You Can Eat Everyday: Pizza

Musical Genre of Choice: Soul and Jazz

Favorite Movie: Schindler’s List

Favorite Book: Tiger’s Wife by Margaret Atwood or Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Adult Beverage of Choice: Red Wine (as long as it’s red)

Favorite Sport: Football (soccer)

Home Team: Inter Milan

Favorite Designer: Elie Saab

Go-To Perfume: L’imperatrice

Favorite TV Show: Game of Thrones (She read the books as well.)

Favorite Color: Black

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The Interview

The Super-Id: How are you doing?
Ines Helene: I’m good. I’m tired. I just had dinner with my parents. But I’m good. How are you?
S-Id: I’m good. I’m glad I’m not seeing an eggplant. I’m thankful there’s no eggplant. You’re actually real. [Ines and The Super-Id had a running joke that if she ever FaceTime’d or Skyped us, we would either see a big hairy dude in a A-frame T-shirt with a million tattoos or a 13-year old kid wearing a baseball cap backwards, with either one of them displaying penis prominently. Eggplant is the emoji to symbolize penis.] 
IH: (Laughing) I am. A lot of people say I look much kinder in real life. I don’t look as bitchy.
S-Id: I can actually confirm you are a real person.
IH: (Laughing) I am a real person.

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S-Id: You’re in Sweden and your family is in Sweden? 
IH: My family lives in Sweden and I lived in Sweden. I’m back in Sweden now, but I will return to London.
S-Id: So now you’re living full-time in Sweden?
IH: After my breakup, yeah. I’m living full-time in Sweden; it was recent. So I moved home to sort some stuff out, when everything is sorted, I’m gong to move back to London.
S-Id: Weren’t you going to school?
IH: Yes, I went to uni, but I took a year off. Mostly I wanted to travel. I wanted to focus on my Instagram. I’ve been in school all my life. I took a year off, I don’t know… I might take two years off. I don’t know. Everything happened so quickly now with Instagram and all the recent Instafame. I want to make money off of it. I enjoy it.

 

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[intense_blockquote color=”primary” font_color=”#000000″ width=”100%”]There was one retweet on a photo on Twitter with me sitting on a dresser and it got like 5000 retweets and that’s when everything started going nuts. [/intense_blockquote]

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S-Id: Let’s start with the basics. What is your name?
IH: Ines. I call myself Ines Helen, but my real name is Ines [redacted]. It’s very long.
S-Id: How old are you?
IH: I’m 23. I turned 23 in February. 
S-Id: You were born and raised in Sweden, you lived in London, now you’re back in Sweden, correct?
IH: No. Actually, I was born in Bosnia, during the war. I’m Serbian and Bosnian. We moved as refugees to Sweden. I see Sweden as my home, of course, because I was raised in Sweden.
S-Id: English is what, your second or third language?
IH: Yeah, my third language.
S-Id: You speak Bosnian and Swedish?
IH: Yes, and Spanish too.
S-Id: How the hell you learn Spanish? They got Spanish people in Bosnia?
IH: I went to an international program in Sweden. The main focus was languages, so I studied Spanish intently, and we had to go Spain and work there. And when I came to Uni, I did Spanish as a separate module. And my first boyfriend was Spanish.
S-Id: From Spain?
IH: No, from America.
S-Id: You’re a full-time student currently on break?
IH: Yes, but I work also. I’ve worked all my life. I started working in nursing homes with elderly people. When I was little, I used to help my dad work selling newspapers and stuff like that. And I started from a very young age.
S-Id: You’re studying what?
IH: Business. Finance. I studied. I’m not doing it now. 
S-Id: What’s the career goal? What are you trying to do when it comes to finance and your studies?
IH: It’s changed so much. I really wanted to be a financial analyst when I started out, but I really wanted to be in investment banking, but I think my perspective has changed now. Of course I would want to finish my degree and continue on with business. But I just don’t know right now. It’s good that I took a break because I don’t know what to do. I just know that at some point I will resume, but what I want to be, I don’t know. 
S-Id: You don’t know because what has happened in your life now?
IH: No. Because I’ve changed enormously as a person since I started studying. Mostly I studied because I wanted to make my parents proud as any other kid. I wanted to tell my mom I finished uni. I don’t know. Life changed for me.
S-Id: What changed?
IH: What changed is after my first breakup, it was a very tough situation for me. So I think it’s partly that. I was very put off. I just didn’t know what to do. Everything changed. And then I got Instagram…
S-Id: Before we go there, let me go over a couple of other basic things. The only other thing online about is your Instagram photos or the hate that people have for you for whatever reasons. I want to paint a picture of who you are. 

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S-Id: Let’s talk about Instagram. When did you join?
IH: Last year when I broke up with my [previous] ex-boyfriend.
S-Id: Is this the same ex-boyfriend that you were talking about earlier?
IH: Yeah. I remember, I was like “I’ll show you.” (Laughing). [Editor’s Note: This portion of the interview was condensed. The ex-boyfriend referred to was the boyfriend before the last boyfriend, thus the ex, ex-boyfriend. We apologize for any confusion, regret the lack of clarity and are punishing ourselves appropriately for the mistake.]
S-Id: You did Instagram to get back at him?
IH: No, no. Not really to get back at him. It was just like…“Yeah, you know, I’m independent. I can do this. You know” It was a fun thing really. It wasn’t really anything like particular like “I’m going to show you.”
S-Id: Were you on social media prior to Instagram?
IH: No. Nothing like this. I didn’t even have Twitter. I was on Facebook for my friends. That was it. 
S-Id: You start the Instagram account and what, you’re posting selfies?
IH: Yeah. I started posting selfies in a really messy room. 
S-Id: Yeah. Everyone noticed that. 
IH: (Laughing) You know when you’re changing outfits, you’re going out, you don’t know what to wear…

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At this point, the Skype connection dropped and it took a minute or two to reconnect.

IH: I did my selfies in my messy room. It was all just fun. Never did I imagine it would be like this. There was one retweet on a photo on Twitter with me sitting on a dresser and it got like 5000 retweets and that’s when everything started going nuts. 
S-Id: You didn’t expect that type of reaction when you started posting?
IH: No. I was very much more conservative when I started posting. Even posting in a dress made me uncomfortable. Then I just go more comfortable with myself. I don’t see a point in shaming yourself. I’m not doing anything wrong. 
S-Id: The reaction you got online, do you get that in real life, like in Uni, walking around?
IH: Yeah. At Uni I would mostly go in sweats, no makeup, hoodie. But if I go out, if I’m at a club, someone would want to take a photo of me. That makes me much more uncomfortable, rather than the Instagram, because it just feels surreal in real life. 
S-Id: So wait… you’re uncomfortable with the attention?
IH: No, I’m not uncomfortable, but if someone says… well, yeah, I mean… it’s… I don’t know. It’s yes and no. I mean… I enjoy it, of course, but sometimes you just want to be private. 
S-Id: I’m trying to reconcile… it’s always interesting when girls who are shy and want maintain a degree of privacy, but then they obviously take these pictures and post them on Instagarm that they know are attention getters that are going to get guys all riled up and ask them out on a date and talking them about and generating all this public interest in who they are, so for me it’s always difficult to balance the two things.
IH: Yeah. It’s not just you. It’s for myself. It’s hard for me to balance it. When I started I didn’t want to do any interviews, nothing,  because I wanted to keep a pretty low profile, but I’m getting much more comfortable by the day. I’m still getting used to it. I’m not going from zero to a hundred. (Laughing) I’m trying to get used to everything. 
S-Id: Do you get recognized on the street?
IH: I was at Heathrow, this guy approached me and he was like “are you Ines Helene?” I was like “Uhhh… I have to go now. My flight…” So yeah… I get recognized.
S-Id: How does that make you feel?
IH: I don’t know. Nothing has happened to me in a bad way. It’s just fun, I guess.
S-Id: It seems like most of your photos are selfies. But there are some photos that someone else takes a picture of.
IH: Yeah.
S-Id: Who is the person taking the picture of you when it’s not you taking a selfie?
IH: That was my sister. At the pool. Those were my sister. It’s been mostly friends or my sister. 
S-Id: You sister lives with you now in Sweden?
IH: No. She has her own place. She lived in London as well. She decided to move back to Sweden. She lives in another city here.
S-Id: How often, and we mention this earlier, the whole catfish. With the comments to your Instagram, how frequent was it that people thought you were a catfish?
IH: All the time. I remember in the beginning, people wouldn’t leave me alone on Twitter. They would be constantly harassing me “Yes, you are a catfish. You don’t exist. Blah Blah Blah.” I got to the point where I was so tired of it. Even if I make a photo with my name on it, they would say it’s Photoshopped. I just stopped. I just got tired of proving myself.
S-Id: Do you know of any instances of people using your photos?
IH: Yes. A lot. I actually had some celebrities contacting me, saying “Oh, it’s you. I talked to you before.” And I was like, “No. It’s not me, it’s someone who’s catfished you.” 
S-Id: Who’s hit you up? What celebrities have hit you up?
IH: No, I can’t really go into that. (Laughing) I’m just saying in general, people use my photos to… you know…
S-Id: So you can confirm that celebrities have hit you on DMs, hitting you up and trying to get in contact with you?
IH: No, not necessarily. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying people have…
S-Id: I’m asking you has it happened. You can say yes or no. Has it happened? 
IH: (Reluctantly) Yes. 
S-Id: Do you respond?
IH: I haven’t dated a celebrity. I’m a private person. I’m a private person. I’ve been in relationships, so I haven’t really been single.
S-Id: One of the rumors… as far as Drake and The Weeknd.
IH: Nah, I’m not going to go into anything, but… what’s said about that is a complete lie.
S-Id: So you’ve never met either one of them?
IH: No, I’m not saying that.
S-Id: You have met them?
IH: (Stammering) I haven’t been in contact with them in any way, or form. That’s all I can say. Like I haven’t… Let me rephrase that. What’s said is absolutely untrue. 
S-Id: The rumor of you dating The Weeknd is not true?
IH: Yes, it’s not true.
S-Id: (Laughing) How about this? 
IH: Do we really have to go into that? (Laughing)
S-Id: Here’s the thing – I think there is a general curiosity, obviously. Guys want to date you. They see you. They’re attracted to you. They want to date you. Celebrities are just like any other guy, they just have more fame than the average person, and often times more money. And it’s an easier opportunity for them to make a connection with a girl who looks like you who has the fame that you do. So there’s a curiosity on the guy side, but there’s also a curiosity on the females’ side, knowing who you’re dating. Or who’s tried.
IH: Yeah… I have no comment.
S-Id: How about this… how about this… Have you met him? Have you met Drake?
IH: I have no comment. 
S-Id: Have you met The Weeknd?
IH: No comment.
S-Id: Ok. And that’s fine… I can ride with ‘no comment.’ I just want to let you know that the no comment, it always comes off as being kinda guilty, you know…?
IH: I can only say that it’s friendship. That’s all.
S-Id: So you know them?
IH: (Silence)
S-Id: There’s no harm in knowing them. Obviously they’re popular individuals who know a lot of people. 
IH: Yeah. It’s friendship. It’s only friendship. That’s all.
S-Id: So did they both slide up in your DMs? Was it one and then you met the other…
IH: (Interrupting) I’m not commenting on that at all. (Laughing)
S-Id: I read it online that you went to the concert. That is true then?
IH: Was I at the…? Yes, I was. 
S-Id: Ok. Is there anything else you want to say about that particular topic?
IH: (Laughing) No. No… Not at all.
S-Id: Are you embarrassed by it?
IH: No. I just don’t want to give people the wrong image that I some kind of… I don’t know. I’m not embarrassed by it, but it’s not… celebrities are people like everyone else. That’s it, basically.
S-Id: Has there been any other celebrities besides those two guys?
IH: I can’t comment on that. It’s… (Laughing) I don’t want to comment.
S-Id: How about this? The idea of dating a celebrity – how do you feel about that?
IH: I think it’s something that you definitely have to be in that world to be able to cope with that. I’m definitely… I’m just on instagram. I’m not in that world. I just don’t see that happening. Really. Just not now… anyway. If I meet a nice person and he happens to be a celebrity, okay, I would rather just… I don’t know…
S-Id: So you’re not – the term people use not particularly with you – you’re not a star fucker then?
IH: Yes. Exactly.
S-Id: There celebrity means nothing to you then?
IH: No, it doesn’t. They’re people like everyone else… and that’s it.
S-Id: Do you feel like you’re a celebrity now because of your Instafame?
IH: No. It’s only social media. I only have 400K (followers). People who have 1.5 (million followers) don’t call themselves celebrities, so no, I don’t see myself as a celebrity.

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S-Id: In my research of you, I’ve compiled what would be the most frequently asked questions people have surrounding you. So we can dig into that and then get into what’s been aired about you and your relationships.
There’s a website that you are familiar with (website named redacted) that seems to have some sort of fixation on you, because they write a lot of stuff about you. Do you know the people who run that site?
IH: I know about (name redacted), but I know he isn’t personally responsible for what’s written. I know that there has been one person who’s been frequently emailing me asking me if I’m an escort and the emails have been long and very harassing and basically what I’ve replied that I don’t want anything to do with this, the person who’s been writing the emails and telling me I’m an immoral person, blah blah blah, [I can tell] it’s the same person by the stuff written. It’s the same person that’s been posting on [the website], so I know there’s one person who is very fixated. It’s almost harassment now. It’s a bit uncomfortable when they start trying to dig up things about my family. I have Instagram. My dad doesn’t. My mom doesn’t. Leave them out of it. You don’t have to try to find anything about my family. My family, they’re good decent people. Always worked hard. They came to Sweden from zero. This stuff that’s written about them, it’s hurtful to me, at the same time, as they say, if they don’t know you personally, don’t take it personal.
S-Id: Why do you think this person is fixated on you?
IH: I don’t know. (Exacerbated) When I read the emails, they were very – I can send you some of them [she has and they are long and creepy] – they were very… it’s such bizarre things like, why didn’t your family spend money on your sister, very bizarre-like speculations about who I am and what I do and stuff like that. I don’t know, I think some people there just, people who become obsessed with you. They hate love you.
S-Id: Is your family aware of your Instafame?
IH: Yes. 
S-Id: How did they find out?
IH: I told my family about [it], because they would eventually find out by themselves, so I’ll tell them, because my family is always supportive of me no matter what I do. They might be conservative, at the same time, I’m their daughter and they love and they’re proud of me.
S-Id: How does that conversation work? Mom and Dad, I’m famous on social media.
IH: They don’t really grasp the whole social media thing. They’re barely on Facebook. Basically, I showed them my Instagram and my dad was like, why are you doing this?
S-Id: He saw how you were dressed?
IH: (Laughing) Yeah. I’m not doing anything wrong. I posted a few bikini photos. I don’t think it’s shameful to post bikini photos. At the end of the day, I’m not posting nudity, pornography, or anything. I’m just proud of who I am, my body…
S-Id: You segued into that. Let’s talk about that. Your body is bananas. It’s crazy.
IH: Thank you. 
S-Id: In 2015, plastic surgery is so pervasive. You have some people who openly admit it – #TeamPlastic – and some people who appear to have it but deny they’ve gotten it done. For you, are you all natural or have you had work done?
IH: No matter what I say people will speculate. Even if I say I’m all-natural, people will say no, she’s fake, she has implants…
[Skype video interrupted and our scratch disk used to save the video was at capacity, so we needed a quick recess.]

Ines Helene may not consider herself a celebrity, but she is getting the celebrity treatment with a multi-part interview. We wanted to condense the interview into a palatable single post, but between the length and range of our interview, the mystery surrounding her, and the public’s desire for all things Ines Helene, The Super-Id decide to run the majority of the interview into pieces. Stay tuned for Part II of PillowTalk with Ines Helene.

[intense_alert font_color=”#000000″]UPDATE: Click HERE for Part II of PillowTalk with Ines Helene. [/intense_alert]