(RNS) — When Lovina Zook put her traditional, dark green Amish dress back on for the video that catapulted her into online fame, butterflies flooded her stomach.
“There was a sense of panic that I’m going to be trapped again,” Zook said.
Zook, now 23, had left her Iowa community of Swartzentruber Amish, one of the faith’s most conservative affiliations, just before she turned 18. Years later, in 2024, she decided to make a video following the “everyone has a backstory” trend on TikTok, where she had started posting casually after growing up in a religious tradition that forbade her from using technology.
At first, she said, she did not know what her backstory was. Then, it clicked.
In the video, Zook appears in workout clothes, mouthing the words, “I’m not just a bitch.” Then the video cuts to a shot of her in a dark green Amish dress: “I’m a bitch with a backstory.” The video has 1.2 million likes and 45 million views on the video app.
Almost immediately, users flooded her comments with questions about her former Amish life, her childhood and her dress.
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“I answered so many comments those first several days,” Zook said. “That was on a Saturday. By Tuesday, I had over 300,000 followers.”
When Zook left home in 2021, she greased the hinges on the door of her family’s house with …