Education Quote by Cindy Margolis

Celebrity fandom is doing two jobs at once here: it flatters the crowd and preemptively manages disappointment. Cindy Margolis frames the "10th Muse" less as a person than as a brand with lore, something already freighted with "cult following" energy. That word choice matters. "Fan base" is mainstream and measurable; "cult following" is niche, devotional, a little ironic. She’s signaling she understands the internet-adjacent intensity that can make a public figure feel like a shared project. It’s also a subtle act of respect: she’s not claiming ownership of the myth, she’s asking for entry.

The intent reads as outreach and positioning. By foregrounding how much she has "learn[ed] and read", Margolis performs diligence, the public-facing version of doing your homework before joining a franchise. That posture is defensive in a smart way: it acknowledges she’s stepping into an already-established narrative and invites fans to see her as a collaborator rather than an interloper.

The subtext is anxiety in a compliment suit. "Try to live up to the fantastic image" concedes that the "image" precedes her, and may even outsize any human who wears it. For a model, that tension between person and image is the whole job description, sharpened by late-90s/early-2000s celebrity culture where online communities could canonize, police, and rewrite your identity in real time. The quote is a soft negotiation with the crowd: keep the myth alive, but let me be the one inside it.