We should probably let this meme die and drink more tap water.
For many social media users, the highlight of the 2019 Golden Globes was the woman dubbed “Fiji Girl” on Twitter, for drawing attention while handing out Fiji brand bottled water on the red carpet.
At Sunday’s Golden Globes, Fiji Water seems to have hired model Kelleth Cuthbert — identified later through Instagram sleuthing — to distribute its product on the red carpet. When asked by a friend if she knew the photos of her were going viral, she replied, “It’s calculated.” Indeed, the viral photos of her were taken by a professional working for Fiji Water. Wearing a glamorous blue dress, Cuthbert stood directly behind celebrities, bearing a tray of bottled water and often staring cannily into the camera. Fiji Water has not responded to a request from Vox for comment.
Though Cuthbert further told the LA Times that her pose was “strategic,” the magic of social media did much of the work for her, serving up instant virality for her photobombs — and her trays of water.
This made for some interesting and slightly eerie photo moments.
Many social media users were quick to embrace Cuthbert, a.k.a. Fiji Girl, as a new style icon, implacable expression and all.
“Thank you Fiji Girl for just, like, giving people water,” BuzzFeed gushed .
But what’s really behind the Fiji Girl meme isn’t something we should be grateful for at all. In fact, her stone-faced presence on the red carpet really was ominous — but not because she looked creepy in many of her photos. It’s because she’s the current face of an industry that is wasteful and hurts the environment.
Fiji Water is owned by the Wonderful company, which also makes and distributes Pom pomegranate juice and other food products. Founded in 1995, the brand gained its foothold over the economy in its namesake country and over the international global bottled water industry in part due to spending the first 13 years’ of its existence enjoying what was essentially a tax-exempt status among businesses in Fiji.
In the process, it built a facility for extracting water from an underground aquifer that, according to Fast Company, was entirely run on diesel-fueled generators, creating the crystalline imagery that defines its marketing amid a cloud of real-world pollution.
Despite this, the company enjoyed positive relationships with local Fiji citizens, and many praised the company for bringing higher wages and economic growth and investment to the country. It has anecdotally been known to distribute free water and provide financial support during past local emergencies, and to invest in local infrastructure, education, and other benefits to the island nation. Many of these anecdotes come from the scholarship of sociology professor Jessica Schad, who traveled to the country to interview Fijian residents about their relationship to the town while pursuing her masters degree.
“I conducted my research in FIJI just over 10 years ago on how the extraction and bottling of water by an American owned multinational corporation was shaping the lives of people living nearby the plant economically, culturally, and socially,” Schad told Vox in an email. “While some Fijians were benefiting from jobs at the plant, and some nearby communities were receiving support from the company, I found many of the financial effects to be quite superficial and not long-lasting, that it was creating a dependency relationship on the industry, and that the extraction of the water was changing local views on the commodification of water and natural resources.
