For her more than two million social-media followers, Tinx is the arbiter of all that is worthy: boyfriend behavior, bachelorette destinations, where to order shrimp cocktails and Martinis in many a metropolis. She is what “Dear Abby” would be if Abby knew her angles and had been president of her sorority—a benevolent big sister to women trying to figure out who they are and what they want.
Christina Najjar, a thirty-two-year-old former freelance writer, is the woman behind Tinx. (She adopted the moniker as an alter ego when she was a teen-ager.) Three years ago, as the pandemic set in, she joined TikTok and started posting videos that satirized rich moms in various regions (Beverly Hills, Aspen, the Upper East Side). People liked and followed. Sponsors sought her out. As her flock grew, Najjar instituted twice-weekly “Ask Me Anything” sessions on Instagram, which led to a podcast and a live SiriusXM broadcast in which followers call to ask such things as why the guy they vibed with didn’t text them back.
Najjar’s empire has grown to encompass merchandise (her “Rich Mom” sweatshirts routinely sell out), salad dressing (a collaboration with Tabasco), and “The Shift,” a book coming this week from Simon & Schuster and billed as “a guide to dating, self worth, and becoming the main character of your life.”
Unlike “The Rules,” the draconian dating Bible of the nineties, “The Shift” is not about “capturing the heart of Mr. Right.” “Dating is not a means to an end,” Najjar notes, in the introduction. “The goal is to know yourself, completely. And by that metric, I’m wise as fuck.” She acknowledges her privileged perspective as a straight, cisgendered woman, and writes that because she would “never want to speak from an unqualified place,” she chose to “focus on dating dynamics between heterosexual men and women.” “However,” she adds, “my main message comes down to self-worth and prioritizing your own happiness,” and she invites anyone seeking more of that to take off their coat and stay awhile.
A week before the release of her book, I met Najjar to discuss why she feels qualified to dole out advice, how becoming famous has affected her ability to date (she is single), and what it felt like to almost be cancelled. We met on the leafy patio of Mauro’s, a restaurant in West Hollywood. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.
Your book is like the new “Rules.”
Let us pray, from your lips to God’s ears.
But you don’t have to be in search of a relationship to have it apply to you.
I wanted it to be that way. Obviously, it’s dating-heavy, but, really, it’s a guide book for self-esteem, and that affects every area of your life. Even if you’re in a relationship, you should still have your own life, you should have strong self-esteem and really safeguard the things that make you happy so that you can continue to have a great relationship.
I think about your section about D.M. do’s and don’ts. (Bad: “I think you’re hot. Just wondering if you’d like to meet for drinks sometime?” Good: “You’re hot. Want to meet for drinks sometime?”) “Just” is pretty much my safe word. On e-mail, I always say, “Just wanted to check in.”
“Just checking on that; I just wanted to see if”—yeah, it’s insane. I try to catch myself. You sound so much cooler without it, you know? “You know” is my safe word that I’m trying to cut out. It’s really hard, I add it to the end of every sentence. I fill space and I’m always speaking up until the last minute so that people can start their sentence, but I am desperately trying to stop it.
There’s something about women and people-pleasing. This necessity, whenever we say something, to make sure that we’re not offending anyone, that we’re not talking too loud, that we’re coming off in the “right way,” whatever that means. It’s really hard to deprogram yourself.
It’s massively hard to deprogram. I think it’s all connected: the sense of not feeling valid unless you have a boyfriend, worrying that you won’t be happy until you’re in a pair, body image, body dysmorphia, making yourself small, wanting to conform, using the word “just”—it’s all connected. I feel like we’re in a paradigm shift right now. We’re at the beginning of it. We’ve got a long road.
I wrote this book for everyone, but I really, really want younger girls to read it. I really want to give back time that I wasted in my twenties, when I was so desperate to have a boyfriend. Desperate not because I was craving love or because I’d met anyone who was worthy but because I craved legitimacy, and I thought that having a boyfriend is what would make me legitimate. Then you go into all the, you know, the behavior that I accepted. . . . I don’t want girls to waste six weeks on a guy who doesn’t even remember their last name.
There’s an idea that you discuss in the book, that men date like stockbrokers and women date like venture capitalists—women see potential. Women have a sense of, “Gosh, if anyone is interested in me, then I owe it—”
“I can workshop them. I can ride it out. Oh, well, you know, my friend’s cousin, she waited around for this guy, and after two years of treating her like trash he finally married her.” And it’s, like, “Is that what we’re going for?” No. In that sense, we need to really be more focussed on the power of now. Is this guy making me feel good now? Is he good for me now? Is he improving my life now? This is not to say that if he’s wearing, like, ugly dad shoes, he’s not viable. Ugly dad shoes you can change. But if a guy is a dud, he’s probably gonna stay a dud, and it’s not your job. You’re not a mommy or a therapist.
Right. Although, I don’t know if you’ve ever observed other people’s relationships where it seems like one person does want to be the mommy or the therapist, and maybe the couple is happy like that.
That’s totally fine. I really encourage everyone who reads the book to know themselves. Know what you need. For someone, that might be a very comfortable role to play, but then actively choose it—be, like, “I love to have a fixer-upper. That feeds me.” Where I get sad is when women elevate these guys they’re dating to a higher status than themselves—like, “I need to rehabilitate him, I can fix him up, I can get him to stop smoking weed, I can get him to get a job.” And it’s, like, “Do you need this? You already have a job. You already have friends. You already have a hobby. You don’t need to do this. There are a lot of fully actualized great men out there, and you should be dating them.”
