How Influencer Emily Fauver Handles Online Criticism (Exclusive)

Emily Fauver is the CEO of piggies and bunnies.

Despite what the moniker might suggest, this doesn’t mean that she is solely in charge of all things involving pigs and rabbits.

Instead, Emily’s self-proclaimed C-suite title refers to a question that the content creator asks her daughter, Ella, while doing her hair each morning. The question, “Piggies or bunnies?” is the mom’s way of asking Ella if she wants her hair done in pigtails or two little buns on the top of her head.

In 2021, Emily started asking her then 2-year-old daughter the question on camera, capturing the tot’s adorable responses in her now recognizable raspy voice. The videos blew up on social media, with many comparing the young Ella to the classic TV show character Michelle Tanner from Full House.

Over the years, viewers have watched Ella, Emily’s platform and their family grow (Emily recently gave birth to her and her husband Dylan’s second child, Nash).

Now Ella is 6, and has recently started kindergarten, but piggies and bunnies lives on as a tradition beloved by Emily’s 4.8 million TikTok followers and 1.4 million on Instagram. Sometimes there’s a twist — Nash recently appeared in a video with his father, where he was asked “Combed or curled?” — that perhaps signals a new era for the series.

In advance of the release of her new collection with the woman’s clothing boutique Pink Lily, the mom of two caught up with PEOPLE to chat about all things relating to the collection, motherhood and her recent move to Nashville.

For Emily, running around after two children has meant that she needs versatile clothing pieces in order to keep up, which is what she tried to emulate in her collaboration with the boutique (if you watch just one of her videos with Ella, you’ll know why).

Online, Emily has also been open about her childhood, something that she says has informed the way she designed the collection.

When Emily was born, she tested positive for methamphetamines and fetal alcohol syndrome. Originally from Oregon, both of her parents were struggling with addiction, and as a child, Emily and her sister were placed into foster care, after she says police found them home alone at the ages of 1 and 2.

Growing up in the foster care system, Emily says that she and her sister were abused. At the age of 8 she was adopted to a home where she “finally felt safe,” she says in one TikTok video.

“I grew up with not a lot, and paid my way through college,” the influencer tells PEOPLE. “I needed staple items that I could wear with everything, not just wear one time. That was my vision.”

Emily says she thought about things that people could wear in multiple scenarios and that they could mix and match.

The pieces also give off a certain Western flair — inspired, she notes, by the family’s recent move to Nashville. Much of Emily’s online content is also marked by Dylan’s experience as a military pilot in the Air Force. The family has certainly seen their fair share of moving.

“It’s crazy because we weren’t even in our home for the first two months, but we felt like we were home,” Emily says, explaining that the family had been in a rental for the first two months. “It feels so good to be where we want to be for the first time in 12 years — my husband was military — so we never got to choose where we wanted to live.”

The couple’s two children have taken to Nashville as well, and while Nash is mostly just “along for the ride,” Ella is curious about everything.

“She knows that there’s so much fun to be had here, whereas we were stationed in all the tiniest towns the military had to offer, so we had to just make the fun,” Emily says.

Like much of her life, the transition has been well-documented on social media. Emily first got her start online around 2012, when she captured her journey getting in shape for her wedding, doing Insanity workouts and showing her transformation in real-time online.

Her content slowly transitioned into addressing her struggles with infertility, with the influencer sharing that she struggled for four years before eventually having Ella.

A few of these posts went viral, and her following and online community continued to grow. Around 2020 is when Emily first got on TikTok, posting videos of everything from twinning moments with her daughter to hair tutorials and baking videos. Soon she had hit 1 million followers.

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However, piggies and bunnies was mostly an accident, Emily admits.

“I feel like so many people when they start social media, I’m going to do this, or they try to do what other people are doing hoping it works,” she says. “No, it’s the thing that you least expect to work that’s going to blow up.”

Ella, who has her own star quality, knows that she has a community rallied around her online.

“We talk about it often, and I’m always like, ‘Do you still like this?’ ” Emily says. “And she’s like, ‘Yes, I love it.’ ”

Recently at church, Emily says that someone stopped the pair for a picture, and after obliging, Ella turned to her mom and said, matter-of-fact, “I had a feeling that that was going to happen.”

“I try to remind her that it’s such a blessing to get to have the life that we do,” Emily says. “It’s because of the people that support us online … she loves it. She wants to start a YouTube channel. And I just think it’s so cool. Like you are going to just be set for life.”

Social media is even more personal for Emily, who reveals that as a result of growing up in foster care, she doesn’t have many baby pictures or videos of herself. 

“That’s kind of why I love taking videos and photos of my kids,” she explains. “I want them to have that forever.”

Being able to provide her kids with a different life as a result of social media has been “surreal.”

“I was in a few foster homes before I was ever adopted, and so there were three or four other chances that I had to end up somewhere else,” she says. “It’s also a great testament that every little decision you make in your life leads to exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Despite the hardships of Emily’s childhood, it isn’t something that she is choosing to leave in the past. Every year around Christmastime, the influencer takes care of a few group and foster homes, making sure that kids’ wishlists are filled. 

“Getting exactly what I wanted for Christmas as a foster kid was unheard of, and I remember one year I did get it,” she says. ”I was like, Santa’s real, this is the best Christmas ever! I want every kid in the system to feel like that at some point.”

As with anyone who chooses to share their life online, Emily has faced criticism, especially when it comes to her parenting. 

“I used to be a lot more sensitive to things, and I’ve been through quite a few things on social media that have really made me question myself and my parenting,” she says.

She recalls a conversation she had one day with her mother-in-law after feeling as though she wanted to quit social media for good.

“She was like, ‘Emily, are your intentions good?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ She goes, ‘That’s all that matters.’ “

It’s what she keeps in mind whenever she gets negative comments or questions about why she chooses to put her children online.

“My intentions are so pure,” she says. “This is strictly just for the fun that we have in our lives.”

Social media has also helped her husband be able to retire from the military after 12 years of service. 

“He just likes to be with the kids all the time like I do. And social media is what’s allowed for that to happen,” she says. 

Continuing on, the influencer said, “I don’t feel like this should be my life, and so I don’t take it lightly.”