Without being prompted, Amanda Lee, 32, peels off a black hoodie to display her lean waist, impossibly round butt, and a sports bra that reveals more cleavage than the average pushup. The outfit is downright modest compared to her Instagram feed: Since her first leggings-clad post in 2014, the certified personal trainer has racked up 11.7 million followers by posing in thong bikinis, booty shorts, thigh-highs and, sometimes, nearly nothing.

"Fitness is sexy," says the woman better known, at this point, as @amandaeliselee. "When I realized sexier photos got more likes, I was enticed by the attention."



Each week she poses for hundreds of snapshots, directing her mom, Olinda Fields — her primary photographer — to make the best use of angles and natural lighting. Once she's selected the most flattering shot, Lee obsesses over the details, using Facetune to erase blemishes and Instagram's Valencia filter to pump up the color of her skin before posting. Her best photos get up to 600,000 likes, while the lowest performers still wrangle more than 300,000.

Lee's success has surpassed her wildest dreams: She says she earns a salary in the high six figures from posting #ads for up to $20,000 apiece and from charging $350 per hour to train clients. But after four years of growing her following by projecting a carefully crafted, meticulously filtered, overtly sexy persona, she's drained.

"Once I got all the followers, I reevaluated things — like, is this really me?" she says. "For my mental health, I don't want to get so wrapped up in perfection. I want to be more confident in myself without trying so hard."

But while Lee aspires to be more authentic, she admits that her insecurities make it difficult to change her ways. Standing in front of a slate-colored backdrop in the Cosmopolitan.com studio, she turns until only her right side — her good side, she says — is visible through the camera lens.

"What should I do?" she asks, eyes shifting between crew members. Unsure, she freezes in one pose as the camera flashes, then skirts off set to peer at the camera's screen. "Do my eyes look weird in that one?" she asks, pointing to a photo.

The influencer has studied the art of crafting an image since childhood. "Hours would go by and we'd wonder where Amanda went, but she'd be quietly playing in her room, dressing her Barbies until their clothes were just right," says mom Olinda Fields, who describes her daughter as a perfectionist. "She's definitely too hard on herself."

Although Lee's family was wealthy when she was little — "My dad did well in the '80s with a huge mansion, a pool, a tennis court, a Bentley, and a full staff," she says — their financial status faltered when Lee entered high school. As one of four children raised in Beverly Hills, Lee's high-income community often left her feeling insufficient. "It's basically the Instagram of real life," she says of her notoriously vain hometown. "Everyone is perfect. Everyone has designer clothes and a brand-new Range Rover at age 16."

Her parents had split by then, triggering anxiety that still plagues her from time to time. Talk therapy helped her develop coping mechanisms: "I don't feel sorry for myself, but it was hard," she says.

After high school, Lee studied dance and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence with plans to become a journalist. When she graduated in 2008, she moved back in with her mom in Beverly Hills to save money, and began working out with her mother, sculpting curves that accentuated her naturally lean figure. That fall, instead of pursuing a job in journalism, Lee got her fitness certification and a part-time gig personal training at Equinox for $35 an hour.

Not long after, her Instagram was born, with the intent of using it mostly to market her services. "No one was really doing it at the time," Lee says — her friends doubted whether the scheme was worthwhile. Even her then-boyfriend tried to level with her: "He told me, 'You're not going to make any big money doing this. You're wasting your time,'" she says. "But I just knew. I just believed in it."

After six months, she'd racked up about 100,000 followers thanks to a shout-out from a high-profile client and regrams from large fitness pages like FitGirlsWorldwide. Then, a brand called MateFit Tea e-mailed Lee to offer her $300 per sponsored post with a $3,000 advance. "I was like, 'Oh my God! That's huge!'" she recalls.



Her follower count continued to soar, and so did her income. By the time Lee hit 1 million followers in 2015, paid opportunities from supplement companies and fitness clothing manufacturers were rolling in. In 2016, she began selling online workout and meal plans in response to her followers' requests for tips.

"I have no idea why my page grew so fast," she says, although she acknowledges her body played a role. Instead of the fitness focus she'd originally intended, she started defaulting to the seductive photos that have made up the majority of her feed ever since. "I always wanted to appeal to everyone," she says, "but I got seduced by people's responses and sidetracked trying to maintain this curvy physique and build a sexy brand."

Lee says she's long worked to sculpt her most notable feature: her booty. "I was obsessed with the whole butt thing before it became popular," she says. Now, she hits the gym for up to 90 minutes about five days a week, spending the majority of her time focusing on her lower body: She uses weights and resistance bands for squats, lunges, step-ups, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, and box jumps. "If I'm not sore after," she says of her butt workouts, "I feel like I didn't do anything."

Lee shoots posed exercise clips at the gym after workouts, enlisting her mom to film while she oversees creative direction. "It's funny how you can really enhance the way your butt looks with certain angles and lighting," she says. "I'll take like a hundred photos just to get the perfect one."

The process can take an hour and several clothing and hairstyle changes. "Amanda says she can't trust me because I like every single photo," her mom says. "She wants everything to look just right."

The social-media star spends about 10 minutes scrolling through options after each shoot, then up to 10 more minutes editing, filtering, and Facetuning the one photo she's decided is perfect enough to post. "Does that sound normal?" she asks. Later, she e-mails a follow-up, lest she be judged: Sometimes she only spends two minutes editing images.

"She still gets anxious," Fields says of her daughter. "There's a lot of pressure to keep up with daily posting and people tend to be critical of your looks. She gets overwhelmed. There’s a side of Amanda that no one sees."

Lee, who follows models like Abigail Ratchford, Rosanna Arkle, and Genesis Lopez on Instagram, cops to feeling like she has to measure up. "People might look at me and think, 'Your body is amazing,' but I look at other girls' pages and think, Oh my God, SHE is so perfect!" she admits.

To keep up, Lee has undergone surgical enhancements: She's had breast implants and "normal stuff like Botox." But she insists that her butt is 100 percent real.

Back on set, Lee asks a bystander, "Will you take some with mine?" handing off her phone. "I definitely stress about posting content frequently enough," she says of her strategy, which includes about three Instagrams a week. "I might not always have the greatest background or a brand-new outfit every day, and it stops me from posting as often as other girls who post booty selfies daily."

Every time she publishes a photo, nervousness ensues as she awaits likes and comments, which she monitors for about an hour after posting — a habit she knows is self-destructive. "I try not to take the negative comments to heart," she says, "but people nitpick on certain things, like, 'Her nose looks weird,' or, 'What's up with her butt?' and you kind of start to think, 'Wait, does that look bad there?' It's not necessarily the healthiest thing, and I'm still learning to cope with it."

Even the positive comments can feel backhanded: "I read them and I'm like, 'That's great, but it's about the Instagram Amanda,'" she says. "People don't know the real me."

Like many users who filter their photos and post their best angles, Lee is simultaneously a victim of and a contributor to the problem. "People might think I literally step out, click, and — done! — perfect photo," she says. "But it's not like that."

As a result of playing up her sex appeal, Lee's Instagram ad sales are booming. She receives paid offers daily and gets two to four deliveries a week of complimentary clothing and products from companies that hope to be featured on her feed. She rejects some potential sponsors, like companies selling waist trainers: "I don't believe in them and I don’t think they do anything," she says.

Despite Lee's success, her priorities are shifting. "I don't look down on Instagram modeling, but I've done that," she asserts. "I want to have a little bit more substance than posting sponsored posts for other brands."

To that end, she hopes to be seen as more of a fitness personality — she feels her gym clips are a step in that direction — but she doesn't want to be a carbon copy of Kayla Itsines or the Tone It Up Girls, two large accounts with fewer followers than Amanda.

"I really like Tammy Hebrow. Her lifestyle is something to aspire to," she says of the Instagram model with 8.2 million followers, two children, and a Women's Best sponsorship.

Ultimately it sounds like Lee just wants to create a little room for herself to be more real. "I want to post more with friends, wearing outfits that I like even if they don't photograph well," she says.

But don't expect her to cover up completely any time soon: "I'm not hanging up my bikini just yet."