זה לא מה שרציתי

"Let's take off our bras!"

Libby's voice is a little shrill; she's trying to balance a glass of wine in one hand while reaching with the other toward her bra clasp.

“You just want to see my boobs!” I can’t stop laughing; the rosé is about to spill out of my glass.

“Come on, take it off already! It’ll be a stunning photo! Honey, tell her it’ll be a stunning photo!”

“It’ll be a stunning photo.” A man’s voice calls out from the upper deck. “She’s always trying to get us to take our clothes off!” Shira’s perfect boobs

bounce right before my eyes.

I carefully sit down between the two of them; in front of us is nothing but the sea, and behind us are three men holding three phones and taking pictures.

“Libby, you have to stop taking pictures like this of us. Pretty much everyone who’s ever been on a yacht has posted this same photo from the deck—it’s a cliché! That’s my professional opinion.”

“Just shut up and pose!”

We go back to our bikinis and turn toward the men. “How’d it turn out!?”

We’re all on a yacht near Genoa, a picturesque Italian town full of massive, colorful stone buildings that are thousands of years old. Soon we’ll dock at the harbor where they have the most delicious affogato I’ve ever tasted. We’re drinking rosé wine from crystal glasses, nibbling on fish that were still swimming in the water this morning, and all you can hear beyond the soothing sound of the waves is upbeat pop music and our laughter.

We’re running around the yacht, taking photos on the upper deck and then on the lower deck, trying to balance the fact that we’re completely drunk with our failed attempts not to spill the rosé. The sky is a light blue that makes the photos perfect; the polished deck and the silver chrome of the railing that runs the entire length of the boat add a touch of glamour to every shot.

Even the men are smiling and taking photos; they’re pros—proud “Instagram boyfriends”—clinking glasses without complaining that this is a scene devoid of even a drop of testosterone, and that in the real world they’re supposed to be sitting there getting annoyed at having to deal with a bunch of unbearable women.

One of the crew members pulls out a bright orange inflatable slide and attaches it to the upper deck, we slide down and the men jump into the water straight from the deck; no one hears our happy screams because all around us there’s only the sea and tiny white dots—which, if we get closer, we’ll discover are more glittering yachts just like ours. They bring down three jet skis for us; the men speed off while we hug them from behind.

Tanned, happy, drunk, and carefree. A perfect scene.

My name is Money.

Like the dollar.

Yeah. I know. But when you’re one of the biggest, richest, and busiest Instagram stars in Israel, you’re totally at peace with the fact that your name is Money. My life is full of dazzling photos, flights to exotic destinations, colorful adventures, amazing clothes, luxurious hotels, launch parties, photo shoots, and a stunning home with a sea view in northern Tel Aviv.

I’m married to Jeff Kaplan. Beyond the fact that Jeff is drop-dead gorgeous, funny, loving, and generous, he’s also an extraordinary businessman, a business consultant to the largest companies in the economy, and one of Israel’s greatest couples coaches—he changes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on his TV show “Couples with Jeff,”” where he helps couples overcome crises and fall in love again with each other and with themselves.

He’s an Instagram star, too. And a TikTok star. He has a YouTube channel, and every few days he goes live on Facebook. Luckily for me, that means he supports my career, understands the importance of a good photo, and is never too lazy to take pictures of me or drive me to a remote location just because I heard there’s a perfect backdrop for a selfie there.

I wasn’t always called Mani. I was born Maria; my mom called me Mania as a nickname. I don’t know why, but around the age of thirteen, some friends heard her say “Mania” and loved it; at some point, they shortened it to “Mani,” and it’s stuck ever since. Not everyone likes this name, but with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, an agent who never stops landing me jobs, clothing and makeup shipments from every possible brand, and offers of sponsored flights abroad just for a photo, I don’t really care what people who live without a view of the sea think.

It’s not my fault I’m lucky. Besides, until I was sixteen, I was a scrawny Russian girl from Holon, with no money and no dad. I mean, until I was about ten, I had a dad who’d show up every now and then, play with me, and bring me gifts, but he was a guest star, not a regular. Gradually, the visits became less frequent, until they stopped altogether. My mom didn’t talk about him much; she just told me he had to go back to live in Russia, and when I asked why we didn’t go back with him, she’d say, “It’s better here in Israel.”

My mother, who looked like a cool Hollywood star, never really fit in with the Holon scene. In the Soviet Union, she was an electronics engineer—or at least that’s what she always said when I asked her. From what I gathered, she worked at a pioneering government agency, and she once mentioned that she’d been sworn to secrecy about her job. In Israel, she was a secretary at a clinic shared by several doctors. Unlike her, I wasn’t particularly pretty, tall, or thin, and I certainly didn’t look like those Russian women that modeling agents raved about. I was just an average girl, with brown hair that couldn’t decide whether it was straight or curly, a stomach that was never particularly flat, and eyebrows that I didn’t realize I needed to pluck for far too long.

Around the age of seventeen, I realized that my dreams were a little bigger than being a secretary or a sales clerk at the mall. I wanted to write screenplays. And I dreamed of Hollywood. I fell in love with the romantic comedies of the ’90s, where the heroine doesn’t realize she wants love, and the hero doesn’t realize that the heroine is all he needs in life. I loved spotting the patterns in the story; I enjoyed seeing love triumph against all odds—and especially against the heroes’ own wishes.

One day, my mom found a screenplay I’d written. I walked into the house and she was sitting on the couch with the screenplay in front of her, and her expression said it all. “Is this what you’re doing?” she asked me with a pitying look, “instead of studying?”

That was the moment I realized I needed to show her that I was worth it—and, above all, that I could earn money on my own. The most logical and quickest way to do that was modeling. After a crash diet and a new blonde hairstyle, I found a few agents in Tel Aviv and asked for a chance. Most of them offered to put together a “portfolio” for 8,000 shekels and said they’d see what they could do. Luckily, I had enough sense to realize they were trying to rip me off. And, more importantly, I didn’t have 8,000 shekels.