The TikTok star on motherhood and social media

Perched facing each other on wooden stools, there’s a moment during my chat with Indy Clinton when it starts to feel like a job interview. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I ask, before quickly apologising for the question that sounds like it’s come straight from the HR department.

“I wouldn’t even know what a job interview is like – I’ve never had one!” Clinton says, letting out a raspy laugh.

“Really?” I ask, not entirely sure if she’s being serious.

“I’ve never had a regular job,” she says, before correcting herself: “I did once. I worked at a gelato store for six weeks as a teenager. But I’ve never had a nine-to-five job. I’ve never had a work Christmas party. I’ve never had a CV – which is crazy!”

If the 26-year-old did have a CV, her job title could be anything from Social Media Personality to Content Creator, TikToker to Influencer. As a mother who documents her life online with her three young children (Navy, 3, Bambi, 19 months, and Soul, five months) once upon a time she would have been called a Mummy Blogger.

It’s a career that began for Clinton at just age 13 when she first joined Facebook. She quickly grew a large following by posting photos of herself – all blonde, tanned, and bikini-clad – embracing her enviable beach lifestyle.

Within a few years, Clinton had graduated from Facebook to Instagram, which was beginning to explode in popularity. By the time she was in year 10 she was “Insta famous”, having amassed more than 10,000 followers.

Along with a large, engaged audience came commercial opportunities. She recalls the first time a brand wanted to work with her – a skateboard company sent her a free board. But Clinton’s mother insisted she send it back. “She said to me, ‘There’s nothing free in this world’.”

Offers from other brands came hard and fast. Seeing the potential to cash in on her online fame, Clinton enlisted her business-savvy father to help draw up contracts and began charging $50 a post. By the time she’d finished school, she had more than 50,000 followers and was pulling a sizable income. Today she has 623,000 followers on the Meta-owned social media platform.

Clinton grew up in Sydney’s northern beaches as the youngest of five children in a large Catholic family. While given free rein to enjoy an outdoorsy lifestyle – surfing and skating featured heavily – her parents kept a tight leash on the Clinton children. They weren’t allowed sleepovers or junk food, and young India (her birth name and what her family still calls her) wasn’t allowed to have her ears pierced until she was 18.

After finishing high school, she tried her hand at a university degree, studying media marketing, before dropping out after two years. “They were teaching from an outdated textbook while marketing was changing so quickly,” says Clinton, who was already on the front line of a rapidly evolving industry.

“I wanted to show this is what parenthood is like: it’s messy and it’s chaotic. Some days you’ll hate your kids, but you’ll also love them.”

INDY CLINTON

It could be argued that her “canon event” (online slang for a key life moment) was getting together with her now-husband, Ben “Big Ed” Azar, in 2019. In 2020, the couple were married and that same year had their first child, a son named Navy. Clinton says this is when the “chaos” started, but it’s also when her online profile began to skyrocket.

At the time, social media was awash with Byron Bay earth mamas and well-behaved children in white linen jumpsuits playing with handcrafted wooden toys. This portrayal of a picture-perfect existence may have been aspirational, but it was a million dirty nappies away from reality. It was making “regular” mums feel bad about their own messy lives, argues Clinton.

“I was like, ‘This is not reality. I just want to show reality’,” she recalls. “I wanted to show this is what parenthood is like: it’s messy and it’s chaotic. Some days you’ll hate your kids, but you’ll also love them, and it is the most rewarding – and unrewarding – job there is.”

A friend suggested to Clinton that she document her day in the life as a mum on the short-form video app, TikTok. At first she couldn’t believe anyone would be interested in watching her take the then-15-month-old Navy to the park, cleaning up after him, and the general mayhem of wrangling a toddler.

But her TikTok audience grew quickly. Today she boasts 1.8 million followers and she’s had one post reach 37.6 million views (a heartwarming clip of Navy untucking Bambi’s skirt from her nappy). Clinton prefers the platform over other social media as video allows for a more honest, unfiltered portrayal of daily life. She often presents herself online wearing her pyjamas, Ugg boots, a make-up-free face and untamed hair.

However, with her bronzed skin, Colgate commercial-worthy smile and bright eyes (even after endless nights of broken sleep), Clinton doesn’t look like most worn-out mothers. How does she remain relatable despite her model looks? “I’m a crude mum who talks about her haemorrhoids that pop out of her arse” is how she explains it.

Unlike the mummy bloggers of early social media, who mostly spoke to an audience of fellow mothers, Clinton’s audience is wide and varied. It was my own teenage daughter who introduced me to her content.

“The younger audience loves my kids,” says Clinton, explaining her large teen fanbase. “Then I’ve got the mums who can relate to me. And I’ve got the grandmas who’ve got daughters my age. I kind of hit every age bracket for different reasons. I’ve also got really young ones, like the eight-year-olds and 10-year-olds, because they love the kids. They love that Navy is crazy.”

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A scroll through Clinton’s TikTok feed reveals that her children’s “crazy” behaviour is a core element of her content, but she’s quick to put it into context. “They’re wild in a way, but they are respectful,” she explains. “They’re wild in the way that they will give everything a go. Navy loves fishing and surfing and jumping off rocks into the water. He has no fear. It’s terrifying because I’m like, ‘Okay, what is under that rock? Is there a shark?’”

Being a young mother appears to be a large part of Clinton’s appeal. She first gave birth at 23, which puts her well under the average age of first time mothers in this country, which is currently 29.7 years. “It’s so much fun being a young mum,” she says. “I feel like I can definitely grow up with my kids and relive my childhood. It is fun to watch the world through their eyes, and take Navy surfing and go surfing with him. I’ll take Bambi to the park, and I’m that mum that goes down the slide and gets really involved.”

Bambi was only five months old when Clinton fell pregnant with her second daughter, Soul. Her audience was shocked when she announced her third pregnancy so soon after having her second baby, but no one was more surprised than Clinton herself. “I did not know you could get pregnant while breastfeeding, and I hadn’t even had my period again.”

“I always wanted a third. I just wanted to have a bigger age gap. But now I look at it and it’s manageable. I mean, it’s hard.”

INDY CLINTON

While having her two youngest just 14 months apart was not part of her family plan, she has no regrets. “I always wanted a third. I just wanted to have a bigger age gap. But now I look at it and it’s manageable. I mean, it’s hard. I feel like I don’t have enough eyes to watch my kids and Bambi is constantly trying to give Soul yoghurt or a cookie. But it’s so beautiful to watch that interaction. There’s nothing more precious than watching a sibling relationship – and they love each other. All of them.”

However, Clinton’s warts-and-all depiction of life with three kids under four does come with challenges. It opens up an opportunity for people to share their thoughts on her parenting – and it’s not always flattering. She is often criticised for the chaotic home-life scenes she uploads, while others feel they have the right to voice their disapproval of her children’s unconventional names.

“I’m pretty used to it,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t really read the negative stuff. I don’t have time. I wish I had time because I want to clap back. But I think on social media you just learn to have a thick skin, so it doesn’t really affect me at all.”

She adds that the trolls out there are in the minority. “I get so much love,” she says. “The positive outweighs it. I get so many messages saying I changed people’s lives and the way they parent. Anxious mums tell me I’ve let them be more carefree. So I think that’s really cool to be able to do that because I think kids really pick up on anxiety and uptight parenting.”

Surely there are times Clinton herself feels strung-out juggling three small children and her business ventures? She’s had management in the past, but prefers to deal with her clients directly these days. It gives her more control but also a bigger workload.

“I put my boundaries up so I can manage it,” she explains. “I do my emails in the afternoon when Ben gets back from work. I’ll schedule calls when the kids are napping.”

Life has only become busier since Clinton was announced as TikTok Creator of the Year at the 2023 TikTok Australia Awards held in December last year – only days before she was due to give birth. “I didn’t think they were going to get a nine-month pregnant whale up on stage,” she says, in her signature self-deprecating style.

“But that’s definitely opened up so many doorways for me, which has been super cool,” she says. “I remember Kat Clark [TikTok Creator of the Year in 2022] saying this will open up opportunities and I didn’t understand what she really meant. Then there are things that I never thought would happen, like being on the front cover of Sunday Life. And huge brands reaching out to me and wanting to create my own food label. I’m like, ‘What? This is so bizarre’.”

One of her latest projects has been her Sleep Deprived with Indy Clinton podcast, which topped the Spotify charts when it launched in March this year. In the series she talks about everything from motherhood to relationships and career ambitions. Which naturally leads to that clichéd question: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

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Even without any job interview experience, Clinton answers with confidence. “I want to create my own brand where it’s just me,” she says. “I want to phase my kids out. That’s always been my goal from day one. Obviously, they’re a huge part of my life but they’re going to have their own personalities and interests, and I don’t want them in front of the camera if they don’t want to be.

“I think I’m going to continue with my podcast and maybe launch a brand of some sort. I love health and fitness and I love motherhood. I love supporting mums. So I hope I can combine all of that somehow to make mums feel good.”

And yes, she hints that there may be more babies. “I love kids. They definitely give my life a purpose, so I don’t think I’m ready to close this chapter of my life. But I want to enjoy these three for now,” she says, before adding: “But when they all start primary school, I might pop out a few more!”

Fashion editor, Penny McCarthy; Hair, Darren Summors using Oribe; Make-up, Aimie Fiebig using Rare Beauty at Sephora; Fashion assistant, La La Ryan; Production assistant, Ivory Heidenreich.

STOCKISTS Acler; Bed Threads; Camilla and Marc; Faithfull; Nature Baby; Sense

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