SOPHIE PASSMANN AND THE ART OF LEADING YOURSELF WHILE BEING LED.
There is a moment in the conversation with Sophie Passmann when the logic of the internet is turned upside down. The satirist, author, and podcaster, a coffee in front of her – an Americano with cow’s milk, she specifies, without irony, but with the awareness that even this banal preference can become a projection surface – and explains why she does not consider herself a private person. “I have become a company,” she says. “I am the CEO of my face.”
She came to this realisation when she noticed that she “viewed American celebrities too much as people and not enough as companies.” Taylor Swift doesn’t make decisions as a simple person whose music you like, but as the CEO of a company who just happens to look exactly like her. This distinction between the private Sophie and Sophie Passmann GmbH – is more than just a clever metaphor. It is a survival strategy in a public world that simultaneously glorifies and tears women apart, empowering them only to take that power away again the next moment.
THE SADOMASOCHISM OF PUBLIC LIFE
“It’s almost like practising sadomasochism in public,” says Passmann, describing the dynamics of female visibility. “Sometimes you are led, sometimes you lead. But the sword of Damocles is constantly hanging over you.” This permanent ambivalence between subject and object, between power and powerlessness, pervades not only her new book “Wie kann sie nur?” (“How Dare She?”), which will be published in March, but also her entire existence as a public woman.
What is fascinating about Passmann’s analysis is its self-reflexivity. While she writes about the mechanisms to which women are exposed on the internet – the ascetic discipline of a Hailey Bieber, the calculated bratty attitude of Charli XCX, the neurotic perfection of Taylor Swift – she knows full well that she is part of this contradictory world. She is both observer and observed, analyst and analysed, judge and defendant.
“Any woman can become the worst woman on the internet at any time,” she writes in her book. An edited selfie, an old video clip, a trip that lasted too long, a lip that’s too plump, a lunch box – it takes so little to go from idol to hate figure.
And Passmann knows what she’s talking about. Every day, she reads “cruel things” about herself: her blonde hair, her surgery, the fact that she’s no longer single, that “today it’s all about selfies and lifestyle” – the litany of disappointments is endless.
THE THEATRICALITY OF TRANSGRESSION
Passmann has learned to deal with this certainty – not by toughening up, but through a form of strategic vulnerability. She allows herself the theatricality of being hurt, but only for one day. “Today I don’t have to be brave, today I believe what people say about me on the internet,” she confesses in a chapter in Wie kann sie nur? after seeing a video about herself explaining why she is overrated. The next day, the crisis is over. Not because the criticism has disappeared, but because she has understood that these people “don’t make informed judgments. They don’t know me; that’s why they can’t like me.”
This insight leads to a remarkable attitude: Passmann has stopped trying to convince everyone who is different from what is expected. “I used to sometimes write something back and enjoy the brief moment of shock,” she says of her reactions to hateful comments. Today, she refrains from doing so. The brief satisfaction she used to feel when critics realised she was reading their comments is no longer there. Instead, she feels a form of indifference that is not resignation, but self-protection.
The courage to be yourself even if others don’t like it.
THE DEATH OF THE EGO IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA
Passmann intuitively learned that visibility means power – faster than she realised. But this power went hand in hand with a certain death of the ego. She had to learn that her relevance does not lie in traditional mass media. Instead, she has turned to a different reality: “I live in a world where young women present themselves to one another on social media platforms.”
This world fascinates her, especially “the displayed banality” of influencers like Emma Chamberlain, who film themselves doing nothing. Passmann does not see this as a lack of content, but rather a demonstration of power: “Eight million people watch me order room service: Look what I can do, you stupid assholes!”
EXPECTATIONS AS PERFORMANCE
At the heart of Passmann’s thinking is the question of expectations. “As a woman, you always have expectations to fulfil,” she says. The expectation to be either the model feminist or the good woman: pretty enough, but not too pretty, smart, but not too smart, successful, but without making too much money – and if you do, then secretly.
Navigating these multiple, often contradictory expectations requires not only skill, but also “the chutzpah” to decide which ones you want to fulfil and thus accept that you will not fulfil others. “Perhaps with a little more indifference than currently exists on social media,” she adds.
But Passmann believes in a possible shift in the zeitgeist: that women with reach will eventually be allowed to say what is currently considered a mortal sin on the internet – that having reach is something ambivalent. “I could imagine these women saying at some point: It’s still great to have reach. I’m still grateful, but you stupid assholes, you don’t get to treat me like that.”
THE RAGE BENEATH THE SURFACE
Beneath the polished surface, beneath the ability to be self-deprecating and strategically detached, lies anger. A justified anger at the “incredibly intrusive” demands of her followers, at the “psychological pressure” she has “never experienced in my life with anything else.”
What Passmann does every day is the controlled destruction of the expectations placed on her, the shattering of the projection surfaces, the liberation from the hall of mirrors of public opinion. “I’m a mirrorball, I can change everything about me to fit in,” she quotes Taylor Swift as the motto of her book – and yet that is precisely her rejection: the refusal to endlessly adapt.
When rage becomes a powerful moment of choosing your own reality over popular ideas.
THE FREEDOM OF NONCONFORMITY
In the end, a paradoxical freedom emerges: “If you’re in the public eye enough, as a woman, you’ll eventually be canceled. And once you’ve been through that, the fun really begins.” This realisation – that shitstorms have “lost their gravitas” because not everyone can be the worst person ever every three months – is not cynicism, but resilience. Passmann has learned that, in her case, leadership does not mean climbing hierarchies or translating cultural impact into supervisory board positions. “I don’t end up getting the big gigs with private jets either”, she says soberly. But she has found another form of leadership: self-leadership. The ability to distinguish between the private Sophie and the CEO of her face gives her room to breathe in a public sphere that would otherwise suffocate her.
“I can be whatever version of me you want to see,” she writes at the end of her book – and in this statement shows both surrender and triumph. Because those who can be all versions are not bound to any one. Those who see through the performance can re-stage it. And those who understand the mechanism can break it – at least for themselves, at least for a moment.
Sophie Passmann’s extraordinary quality lies in this ability to observe herself while simultaneously asserting herself. She is not only a chronicler of her generation, but also its symptom and possible cure. Her book Wie kann sie nur? is not an answer, but a clever reversal of the question: How could she be otherwise?
All Photography by OLENA MINDRINA
SOPHIE PASSMANN’S book Wie kann sie nur? (How Dare She?) was published on March 12, 2026, by Kiepenheuer & Witsch.
With 3.9 million likes on TikTok and over 400,000 followers on Instagram, she is one of the most influential voices of her generation—and at the same time its sharpest critic.
CREDITS
Photography OLENA MINDRINA
Styling FRANKA KLAPROTH
Creative Production NINA DAHMS, JOHANNA ERDL
Set Design JOHANNA ERDL
Hair & Makeup SARAH HARTGENS
Photo Assistant ANASTEISHA DANGER
Styling Assistant FRANKA DEHMEL, HIBA FARFA
Produktionsassistentin AMINA ZEROUROU