The internet was waiting with bated breath for the Business Insider article that in reality had nothing to do with the melodrama unfolding in Reddit’s imagination. “I think they are super business women, but when everybody started talking about this, I thought, My goodness, she’s got to get out in front of this and turn this around and protect her business.” It just so happened that Pollack Belz was bored, and had enough experience working in public relations to know how to craft a statement. So she drafted up what she would have written for Charnas had she been hired to represent her. To be clear, Charnas had not hired her, nor had the two ever spoken. The faux statement read, “At this juncture, I am not comfortable or ready to detail the matters in question. I need some time to organize my words, focus on my platform and business—which is my livelihood. Most importantly, I will protect my three daughters from what has been, and it appears will continue to be, an extremely heartbreaking time for me, but especially for my daughters. I am a strong woman, who comes from strong parents and grandparents. My girls and I are surrounded by the most incredible supportive family, coworkers, and loved ones. Thank you for your patience as I continue to decipher the tough journey that is before me. I am no different than every other daughter, sister, mother, and professional woman with personal and professional problems. I intend to hold my head high, square my shoulders, and proceed onward with grace and dignity as well as strength and good old-fashioned hard work. Your continued support means the world to me.”
Pollack Belz shared what she wrote with the group chat. She said that she was explicit in making clear that they were her words. “I said, ‘These are my words, but this is exactly what [Arielle] needs to send out immediately.’” Within an hour and a half, someone in the chat had sent Pollack Belz’s inspired pseudo-statement to others, which was forwarded, rinsed, repeated. I myself received the statement in three group chats spanning people in four different states over the course of a few hours.
Pollack Belz’s daughter was furious with her. She told her that her other friends were sending it back to her as proof that the rumors about her were true. None of the chats mentioned that this had been written by Pollack Belz. “I said, ‘Oh, my God,’” Pollack Belz told me a week later. “I felt horrible, because obviously I certainly did not want to hurt this person in any way. I meant no malice.”
Within a few hours, Pollack Belz felt like she needed to clear the air. She created a new Instagram account so that she could clarify that it was her statement, not Charnas’s, and apologized for any unnecessary stress it may have caused the Charnas family, which DeuxMoi reposted. “This just took off,” she told me. “In our day we’d call it telephone. You’d sit in a circle like at Girl Scouts, say something in someone’s ear, and it [would be] completely different at the end. It just shows how gossip can just start these days.”
The Business Insider article dropped—at long last—on December 8, after days of speculation and extreme hype. It existed behind a paywall, meaning that everyone who wanted to read it would have to subscribe. Thousands of people signed up, according to a person familiar with the numbers, blowing the publication’s expectations out of the water. The story detailed the state of Something Navy as a brand. The company reportedly lost nearly half of its employees over the last year and failed to pay vendors, suppliers, and freelancers on time—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Business Insider. A spokesperson for the brand told the publication that at the time of the article’s fact-check, everyone had been paid back (though Insider pointed out one instance of a supplier that had been paid only after Insider reached out). Charnas had told her followers that the brand—which currently has four stores—planned to open more than 10 more locations this year, but it shelved most of those and plans to release fewer collections. Business Insider reported that Charnas was not involved in day-to-day operations (she had reportedly told followers this year that she generally worked between the hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), she appeared checked out and unwilling to wear her own merchandise, and that Scanlan had shielded her from the company’s struggles and tried to paint her a rosy picture.
The article was met with a resounding “that’s it?” online, after days of speculation. The popular daily pop culture podcast The Toast posted an episode, “Justice for Arielle Charnas,” detailing what was and was not in the story, determining that the hype cycle had actually been good for the influencer.
A spokesperson denied the allegations to a handful of publications, but Charnas never acknowledged the rumors or the article herself, continuing to post her outfits and her family. Business as usual—even if the business has changed around Charnas.
“I miss the good old days,” Pollack Belz told me. “Back when actually we didn’t know so much about the celebrities, and the celebrities were actually very talented people. You didn’t know anything about their personal lives. You just knew of them on the screen.”
