Tefi Pessoa on TikTok, pop culture, and performing womanhood

Walking with Estefanía “Tefi” Pessoa feels a lot like being a kite tugged expertly through the air. I know I’m safe, tethered to the ground in some way, but it still feels like she is leading me, alongside whatever other flurries of nature aid her. Other people pass by us in a blur, glancing up to see what she’s laughing at or where she’s headed. It could be by virtue of the heels she’s wearing — her stride is remarkably long for 5’7″ — or her ability to project her voice with the ideal decibel, but Pessoa is a force.

When a fan pulled out an AirPod and said, “I love your stuff,” to her as we passed by, her legs kept moving at breakneck speed, but her torso twisted mid-stride, leaping toward the fan to thank them. It seemed important to her to not only give me all of her attention, but also do the same for the fan, who was already walking away before they finished their compliment.

It’s that kind of desire to be in two places at once that’s so transparent with Pessoa. She has an advice column for The Cut aptly called Ask Tefiand a pop culture podcast, Tefi Talks, for Vox Media. She’s been working on a book of essays for years. (“I am on chapter two,” she laughs. “I’m moving at a glacial pace, but don’t worry, every week I get a text from my literary agent, and I look at my assistant and I’m like, ‘When can I do it?’ They’re like, ‘Between 1:00 and 3:00 on Thursday.'”) 

She posts anywhere from one to six videos on TikTok a day, ranging from fit checks (usually to Yo Gotti’s “Down In the DM”) to pop culture explainers. She somehow finds the time to watch Rush Hour 2, love both Cardi B and Nicki Minaj in equal measure, and interview celebrities on red carpets. 

Pessoa seems to want to do it all and do it all well. Her intense creative drive and curiosity have helped her build a community of nearly two million followers on TikTok.

It might seem like Pessoa is always performing, and, in a way, she is. As we walked down Park Ave in Manhattan, we talk about the performance of womanhood, and she repeats the quote often attributed to Simone de Beauvoir: “To be a woman is to perform.” It’s perhaps a paraphrase of Beauvoir’s well-known theory, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” or maybe of Judith Butler’s theory that gender is performative. Either way, the philosophers certainly didn’t have TikTok in mind when they coined their concepts, but it still stands true.

Pessoa doesn’t livestream, but she will make videos while she’s eating cereal, videos with her hair in a towel and a mask on her face, and videos lying in bed. When I ask her when she feels like she isn’t performing, she lets out a groan so guttural, it’s hard to translate to text. But then she thinks about it and tells me it’s when she’s at her Thanksgiving table with her family, just after the meal, unbuttoning her pants.

Tefi Pessoa
Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

If you follow Pessoa online, you know she’s close with her mom, sister, and brother. She grew up the oldest of three in Miami, where her family still lives.

“They are probably the most fun siblings ever. Everything was silly goose time. Everything was make-believe time. A lot of play,” she says. But, at the same time, they were also “big movie people, big TV people.” That early immersion in pop culture helped turn Pessoa into the encyclopedia of 2000s nostalgia she is today. Name a movie, a TV show, a pop star, and Pessoa can tell you their star sign and their lore. 

It’s one of those magnificent days in New York City — a high of 78 degrees and a low of 63 — when summer is beginning to fizzle out and fall is rising up for its turn, when Pessoa and I take a walk through the Union Square Greenmarket, along with approximately one million other people. She’s wearing a blue sweater, a blazer, and jeans, and her hair looks effortlessly wavy (she tells me she had it done that morning while she got in a fight with her mom, who is visiting, over baby bangs and bleached eyebrows.) 

Tefi Pessoa
Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

As we step onto the cobblestones and take in the tents of food, groceries, and flowers, we both gasp so loud that multiple people turn around to stare. She grips my arm with her hand full of multi-colored rings. In front of us are half a dozen heads of sunflowers for sale, dried out and ready to be harvested for their seeds. We rush toward them.

She turns to someone next to her and says, “Have you seen that?!” before realizing it’s a stranger and their child and not, as she expected, her assistant. She quickly apologizes and tips her head back in a full-bodied laugh just as her assistant catches up to us. 

“What is that?” her Gen Z assistant asks. 

“That’s how sunflower seeds are made,” Pessoa says and, after a beat of silence, asks: “How did you think they were made?”

“I never thought about it,” her assistant says.

Tefi Pessoa
Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

“This is why I moved from Miami to New York,” Pessoa jokes, turning her attention back to me. “Because New York opens your horizons.” Her assistant laughs, too, and we keep walking through the market, stopping to investigate a small basket of very small strawberries (“Tiny, tiny, tiny,” Pessoa squeaks) and bouquets of beautifully arranged flowers (“Farmer’s markets are where dreams are made,” she says).

This, if you can believe it, is pretty much exactly what Pessoa does online for her millions of followers. She finds something long-forgotten or buried in the churn of social media gossip and explains it in a way that feels like she’s learning alongside you, not lecturing. Pessoa talks about the early aughts and its influence on culture today with the same enthusiasm and excitement that she has explaining to her assistant how sunflower seeds are harvested.

Like how she tells me that iconic photo of Nicole Kidman walking with her arms outstretched — the one long believed to capture her pure, post-divorce relief — is actually just a still from a movie. The news devastates me. She immediately apologizes for being the messenger and pulls me in for a hug. 

Tefi Pessoa
Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

She taught the entire internet about the dissolution of Fleetwood Mac, brought them through a multi-part series of Amy Winehouse’s life that rivals the actual documentary, and, of course, talks about Britney Spears (Pessoa is a “die-hard” fan) as much as she can without pushing the pop star’s own boundaries. She’s been telling stories, one way or another, since at least 2019, when she hosted a YouTube talk show that was later dissolved because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, she also co-hosted Prime Video’s Influenced, a talk show hosted by a panel of content creators including Pessoa, Achieng Agutu, Eyal Booker, Taryn Delanie Smith, and Cyrus Veyssi,  and interviewed everyone from Jeff Goldblum at the Met Gala to Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet at the Dune premiere.

When I spoke to one of Pessoa’s friends, fellow creator Eric Sedeño, for a story in 2023, Pessoa told me he was “someone who is exactly who he is online,” and said she was “not surprised so many people have gravitated toward him because he really is the kind of friend you pray for as a kid. And he kills it in a wig, bitch.” When I asked her what she thought Sedeño would say about her for this article, she giggled and said, “She is so busy.” When I did reach out to Sedeño, he chose to instead comment on her “palpable” energy and spirit that makes everyone “feel seen.”

“I still remember the first time I met her,” he told Mashable over email. “She walked in with her huge heels, long hair, and big Latina laugh and took over the entire room (in the best way). She was just such a star and still spent so much time getting to know me. She makes everyone feel like they’re part of her family, and that’s why everyone loves her.”

As for the wig? Sedeño loves cosplaying her (“He could easily take my identity — easily,” Pessoa laughs) because, as he put it, “I get to be the friendliest diva on the planet.”

“Something about having big Latina hair is so powerful, and I think that’s why Tefi is going to take over the world one day,” Sedeño said.

Tefi Pessoa
Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

These friendships — ones borne of honesty, respect, love, and maybe most importantly, humor — are foundational to Pessoa’s success.

“There is a delicate balance,” she says. “There is a fine line between being a really good friend and a kind friend. A nice friend is someone that’s like, ‘Oh my god, no, no, you look great.’ And you have a friend who will tell you that you have lipstick on your teeth.”

For the record: Pessoa is the kind of friend who will tell you if you have lipstick on your teeth.