Inventing Anna: “How could she have been so stupid?”

Over the last couple of days, I’ve become enthralled with Netflix’s Inventing Anna. This series explores Jessica Pressler’s report on Anna Delvey (aka Anna Sorokin)—the Instagram heiress and con-woman who swindled money from many of NYC’s elite men and banks. If you can get past Julia Garner’s ‘Anna Delvey’ accent, it’s well worth the watch.

Since finishing the series, I’ve found myself loathing Rachel Williams’ character (played by Katie Lowes). She was cast to be the perfectly unlikable character. Williams’ character’s conscious effort to appear with the right people, at the right place, dressed in the right outfit is all too obvious. She was the perfect victim-turned-villain in Delvey’s story because Williams’ was equally hungry for the appearance of fame and fortune. While Delvey drove the yacht, Williams was pleased to be along for the ride.

In reality, Williams lost about £45,000 ($62,000 USD) in Anna’s con. When Delvey and Williams went to Morocco, Delvey promised Williams an all-expenses paid vacation. When Delvey’s credit cards stopped working, Williams offered to put her credit card down on hold while Delvey ‘sorted out her funds’ with her bank. To make a long story short, Williams charged both personal and work credit cards to fund this luxurious vacation. Williams ended up paying for this vacation even though she never intended her cards to be charged.

You get the idea.

But the best—and perhaps worst—part of Williams is how painfully unlikeable she is as a character in the show. Her unquenchable thirst for the taste of wealth. Her obvious desire to acquaint herself with luxury; to show her Instagram followers that she, Rachel Williams, frequents the same luxurious resorts as the Kardashians.

This version of Williams that I describe is, of course, fictitious. It's based on Williams' character in Inventing Anna. But Lowe’s portrayal of this highly irksome character captures a kind of person that we (the audience) have become all too familiar through Instagram culture. But as we know, Instagram is a lie. It’s a highlight reel. The bags. The coats. The shoes. The lifestyle. It’s all a ploy to convince us (the audience) that this person—this individual/influencer/icon—has defied the odds. But in reality, this whole Instagram- lifestyle is on loan.

This is the goal of Williams’ character: Lowe illuminates the way in which we (the audience) allow ourselves to be duped by shiny, luxurious images, of shiny, luxurious things, to feed our wanting desire for more. The desire to be someone, or something, whom we are not.

Inventing Anna debuted on Netflix just weeks after the release of The Tinder Swindler. I’ll spare you the details on The Tinder Swindler and instead focus on the victims of the con. In The Tinder Swindler, several women were conned by Simon Leviev (aka Shimon Hayut). In Inventing Anna, several high-profile businessmen were conned—in addition to Williams. Yet the conversations surrounding the female victims of Leviev’s fraud follow a similar pattern:

“How could those women have been so stupid?”

“I would have never fallen for it.”

“If my boyfriend told me that his enemies were after him, I’d be like: ‘You ok babe?’”

Williams’ character elicits a similar kind of criticism:

“Why did she put her credit card down if she couldn’t afford it?”

“She is so annoying.”

“How could she have been so stupid?”

But the men who fell victim to Delvey’s con do not garner the same kind of criticism. These men—these powerful men—were not belittled in the media or in internet memes. These men were not trending in popular culture. These men were in the same embarrassment-ridden boat as Williams, yet these ‘smart’ men were not trivialised for participating in Delvey’s multi-million-dollar deception.

These men were conned by a woman with a fraction of their educational and professional experiences. But who’s asking how these men could have been stupid enough to fall for Delvey’s scheme? No one.

The men are not blamed in this storyline. They never were. They never have been. The public’s gaze fixates on women. It blames women. It wants to blame women. Indeed, Rachel Williams made an entire career out of taping into society’s desire to blame women. The book deal. The HBO deal. The Vanity Fair article. Media companies paid Williams hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell her story. Together, they profited off of our society’s sick desire to blame women.

When will we start holding the men in Delvey's story accountable? When will we start doubting these men? When do we start asking: How could these men have been so stupid?