Where Does Confidence Come From?

Serena Kerrigan—who goes by "Serena Fucking Kerrigan" or SFK—didn't invent her persona for Instagram. She invented it as a college freshman at Duke, standing in front of a mirror, telling herself she was a bad bitch before walking into rooms where she felt insecure. The name came from a high school moment: her best friend was crying over a guy, about to miss a final, and Serena told her, "You're Delilah fucking Dorsey. Get over him. Go be a bad bitch." It worked. So she tried it on herself. "It just felt like it gave me the confidence I needed to start a new experience," she says. That mirror ritual became the foundation of a career—and a book called Let's Fucking Date—that is less about dating than about the mechanics of building confidence from the inside out.

The Persona as Armor

Kerrigan describes herself as "extremely sensitive" and an only child who "wants to be loved and wants to love." The SFK persona was armor: "That sensitivity was too much and too fragile and didn't feel safe, so I really needed a layer of protection that I was a bad bitch, and I could be funny and larger than life, and I can make a sidewalk my red carpet." The problem came when she leaned too far into the persona, especially in dating. Men couldn't get in. There was no vulnerability. "They're like, okay, if you don't need me, why are we doing this?"