What I wrote

I interviewed John Searles about his new book, Single Girls.

I spoke to the showrunners, costume designer and music supervisor for the Prime Video Legally Blonde prequel series Elle about how they transported Elle Woods back to 1990s grunge-era Seattle. [IndieWire]

On the topic of revisiting 2000s girl culture, I went long on a phenomenon I’m calling the new age of feminine nostalgia. Move over superhoroes and Star Wars, it’s our time to shine! [The New World]

Elsewhere

But then along came Christopher Nolan with The Odyssey, just like he cast his spectre over Barbie three years ago…

“I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.” Go off, Emily Wilson! [The London Review of Books]

“Christopher Nolan’s genius ends when a woman enters the frame.” Angelica Jade Bastién spitting straight facts. [The Sam Sanders Show]

The same argument from Harper’s Bazaar.

That said, his Circe is the best-written character in the film—or any Nolan film, for that matter—Bastién writes. [Vulture]

“Does Matt Damon Look Greek? No. So Stop Complaining About Lupita Nyong’o.” [The New York Times]

“Black people were not as uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world as Nolan’s critics seem to imagine. But even if they had been, color-blind casting makes sense as an artistic choice for portraying the classics precisely because race as it exists today did not exist when The Odyssey was written.” [The Atlantic]

Could Christopher Nolan be making a point about trans people with the inclusion of Elliot Page as Sinon in The Odyssey? [The Pivot Club]

The PIVOT Club

Actually, Nolan IS kind of making a point about trans people

Massive 3000-year-old spoilers ahead (and some newer ones too…

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a month ago · 2601 likes · 103 comments · Flint Del Sol

“Classical culture is a lot of things including, literally, rape culture.” [Lit Hub]

Here’s how The Odyssey could (probably will) make it to the Oscars. [Vulture]

July 4th marked the 250th birthday of the experiment known as the United States of America. The Washington Post compiled 25 texts that defined the past 25 decades, from Levi’s jeans to Lemonade to the Kardashians.

“The Goonification of Love Island.” [Playboy]

Prime Video is the surprising streaming taking up the teen soap mantle from The CW. [AV Club]

From Backrooms to If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, “film is finally giving therapists their moment on the couch.” [The Guardian]

Lizzo has been sentenced to the Khia asylum. It’s what she deserves after allegedly sexually harassing her backup dancers. [The Atlantic]

Watch Paris Hilton’s partnership with Laurie Segall to find and take down Mr Deepfakes. [TikTok]

Speaking of, the Provo Canyon School where Hilton said she was abused as a teenager has been shut down. [The Cut]

Netflix’s sophomore slump. [The AV Club, Slate]

“A lot of actors think that it’s less humiliating to pretend to be a Beatle than it is to pretend to be in love.” Now who could romance novelist Emily Henry be talking about? Surely not Harris Dickinson, who did Babygirl and Where the Crawdads Sing, or Paul Mescal, who was the picture of romantic angst in Normal People, as well as All of Us Strangers and Hamnet. That leaves Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan, the latter of whom can’t catch a break with Sabrina Carpenter making a whole breakup album about him and now this. [Bloomberg]

90% of the UK bestselling novels feature a woman being murdered. [The Guardian]

The U.S.’s war on reproductive rights has come for pregnant people entering the country. [Mother Jones]

“Why Does Every Adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie Forget That She’s Fat?” [Pajiba]

The rise of anti-facial recognition fashion. [The Guardian]

A professor of Arabic literature—ironically at the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania, named after Law & Order creator Dick Wolf—became the topic of an episode of the show. [The Los Angeles Review of Books]

Broadway is in its flop era. [Pajiba]

TV

Survival of the Thickest S3 [Netflix]

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation S9 [Paramount+]

Ted Lasso S4 [screeners; on Apple TV from 5th August]

Furious. This is my favourite show of the year. Bleak, gritty, dark female characters played with aplomb by Emmy Rossum, Lola Petticrew and Quincy Tyler Bernstine. A show hasn't fucked me up so much since early Orange is the New Black, which is my favourite show of all time, that I actually watched this twice, something I never do! I may go for a third round yet! [screeners; currently airing on Disney+ until 31st August]

WWE Unreal S3 [Netflix]

The Vampire Lestat S1 (Interview with the Vampire S3) [AMC+]

The Shards [screeners; on Disney+ from 5th August]

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Movies

John Tucker Must Die [Disney+]

Saccharine [screener; in theatres]

Strung [Peacock]

I Love Boosters [VOD]

Keeper [Stan]

Relationship Goals. If I had known this was based on a religious book I never would have watched it. Kelly Rowland and Method Man’s beautiful faces almost distracted me from it. Their acting did not. [Prime Video]

Natchez/Exposing the Myth of Southern Charm [PBS]

Suffs [PBS]

Stop! That! Train! [VOD]

Glitter [Prime Video]

The First Wives Club [Stan]

The Invite. My favourite movie of the year. [in theatres]

Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma. I wanted to love this so bad especially because I loved I Saw the TV Glow and I think Jane Schoenbrun, who I’ve interviewed previously here, is exploring some really interesting themes in their work, including their upcoming novel, included below in my roundup of books I read this month. But I didn’t have a fun time at camp. It was very expository and what is with the gummy candy product placement?! [preview screening; in theatres from 6th August]

Books

The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere by Courtney Brannon Donoghue, who I interviewed for my feminine nostalgia piece and had a great time chatting to! (reread)

The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything by Kathryn Jezer-Morton

Queenie is Working on It by Candice Carty-Williams

We Were Forbidden by Jacqueline Harpman

Nerve Damage by Annakeara Stinson

Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power by Lucianne Tonti

Hollow Bones. Baby’s first Jodi Picoult!

Why Hulk Hogan Matters by David Shoemaker. I’ll be reviewing this for The New World.

The Power of No: A Celebration by Anna Holmes

Bad Boy for Life: The Rise & Fall of Sean Combs by Cheyenne Roundtree

Buzzard by Inez Ray

Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty by Anna Louie Sussman

Galinda: A Charmed Childhood by Gregory Maguire

Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun. I think this did a better job at conveying some of the same motifs as Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma.

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Why is a man writing a novel about Helen Gurley Brown’s editorship of Cosmopolitan in the 1960s? That’s the first question I had when I saw that John Searles was publishing a fictionalisation of that time, entitled Single Girls.

I still kind of have that question, but Searles happened to work alongside Brown at Cosmo, so I asked him about his experiences, why now is the time to write this novel (coming on the heels of The Devil Wears Prada 2 when women’s magazines are in the zeitgeist once again) and, of course, why a man was the one to tell this story.

What was your relationship with Helen Gurley Brown like?

I was hired to open packages in the Books Department back in the ’90s when Helen was Editor-in-Chief. I met her on my very first day. If you’d asked me then, I would’ve said we had nothing in common. It turned out we had quite a lot.

We both came from humble beginnings, shared a love of language and ambitious, go-getter women, and carried a certain grief about our less-than-glamorous upbringings. We also shared a “make something better of yourself” spirit. Helen was always curious about me being the first person in my family to graduate from college and about my dream of becoming a writer. She was incredibly supportive.

Over my desk, I have a framed letter on her pink stationery that she sent me when I sold my first book. She was so happy for me. She also always told me I had good posture—which reminds me I’m slouching right now and need to sit up straight!

What inspired you to write this book?

During my more than two decades at the magazine, so many late nights I’d be waiting to sign off on what we called “finals” before an issue went to the printer. I’d pull old issues from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s off the shelf. Looking at those outrageous Scavullo covers and provocative and kooky cover lines, I’d think, Someone should write a novel about this world. Eventually that became, I want to write a novel about this world!

My previous books have all been darker, character-driven suspense novels. But the world feels dark enough on its own right now without my adding to it. I wanted to give readers something joyful and hopeful that offered an escape, in this case back to the world of women’s magazines in the 1960s. And as a gay man, I’ve always loved smart, funny, interesting women, so I wanted to write a novel that celebrated them.

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Why did you decide to set it in the 1960s and editorialise on the lives of Gurley Brown and the other fictional characters instead of the time when you knew her?

Helen and I would sometimes talk about those early years after she took over the magazine, and I was always fascinated. The ’60s were so electric given the fashion and women’s changing roles in society, and Helen was right at the centre of it. She was also incredibly controversial! On my Instagram, I’ve been sharing all these old TV interviews she did and it’s interesting to see how condescending the men were to her and how she handled it all so skillfully.

But the book is not just set in the 1960’s. It moves through time, going back to her childhood in the South, her father’s tragic death, and her years in 1950s Los Angeles, where she cycled through 17 secretarial jobs before becoming the highest-paid female copywriter on the West Coast. Add in the men she dated, meeting and marrying David Brown, and writing Sex and the Single Girl, and it’s an extraordinary life.

Finally, the novel tells more than just Helen’s story. It also follows the team of editors who work with her. I like to say Helen is the sun, and the editors are the planets orbiting her. Through their stories, you see what life was like for women at the time and just how powerful Helen’s influence really was.

Why was now the time to write this novel?

Partly because the world already felt dark enough, and I wanted to write something uplifting and fun. But I also wanted to write a love letter to magazines, which once held such an important place in our culture but no longer do.

Near the end of the novel, Helen and her editors wonder what people in the future will make of their work. We revisit old books, movies, and TV shows, but we rarely revisit old magazines. They belong to a moment, and then the moment passes.

I remember we’d spend so much time and energy creating an issue, and then I’d pick it up around the office a few months later and, somehow, it already felt dated. It made me wonder: What does that mean for those of us who devoted our lives to making magazines? Was all that work simply forgotten?

Now that magazines have faded from the center of our culture and there’s a growing nostalgia for them, those are the questions that drove me while writing Single Girls.

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Did you feel any trepidation over writing about (Sex & the) Single Girls as a man?

I was an editor at Cosmo for 23 years, hired by Helen Gurley Brown and we formed a sweet friendship until her death in 2012, which I write about it in the Author’s Note at the end of the book. That said, I know better than to write a novel about women without having an army of women read it and tell me what they really think! Thankfully, my closest friends are all women, and they were happy to do exactly that.

My connection to women goes back to childhood. My dad was a cross-country truck driver and was always away, and I spent most of my time in our tiny house with my mom and sisters. As a gay kid, I was ostracised and teased by the boys, so my friends were almost all girls. Then I spent decades working in an office full of smart, funny women at the magazine. So, I’ve always connected with women. Now, if you asked me to write a novel centred on a group of men, I’d feel way more trepidatious! Like many of the women in my life, I’m often baffled by men.

What I wrote

The new guard of filmmakers is exactly the same as the old one, actually. [The New World]

I caught up with Caroline Kepnes about her latest book in the You series, a Joe Goldberg prequel set in immediate post-9/11 New York where Joe’s coming of age has parallels with the manosphere and male loneliness epidemic. [TIME]

I interviewed Lex Wood, costume designer for The Vampire Lestat. [The Set Set]

Can you believe it’s been 30 years since the Spice Girls debuted?!

Season three of America’s Sweethearts premiered and there’s drama!

I interviewed Sam Beckbessinger about her novel Femme Feral.

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Elsewhere

Lotssss of links this month. Maybe I have to start making this a weekly thing instead…?!

So now we’re supposed to put errors in our writing so that it doesn’t look like AI wrote it? I hate that competency is now suspicious. The irony is that the more people use AI the more incompetent they will become… [The Atlantic]

When men are lonely, it’s a crisis; when women are lonely, it’s an opportunity to create content. [The Cut]

I love a good pan: Will Leitch contends that Backrooms and Obsession are made by extremely young filmmakers—and it shows. [The Will Leitch Newsletter]

The Will Leitch Newsletter

Volume 6, Issue 27: Boyhood

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it…

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3 months ago · 62 likes · 24 comments · Will Leitch

Obsession cleaned up at the box office on a $750,000 budget, which obviously means its crew were sorely underpaid. And now the crewmember who spoke up is being threatened with being blackballed from the industry. [The Tab, Instagram]

Speaking of, Nikki “is precisely how men have written women in horror for decades… [Director Curry] Barker has no interest in shining some light on Nikki when keeping his woebegone protagonist in the dark is scarier.” [Salon]

Backrooms, which can be read as an anti-AI allegory and its director Kane Parsons is vocally against it, became A24’s highest-grossing film yet they decide to partner with Google AI? Sure Jan. [Gizmodo]

Film criticism is dead; long live film criticism? [Roger Ebert]

We need to talk about Scary Movie’s Doofy. [The Film Maven]

“No, I Don’t Want to Watch Your Straight Hockey Show.” [Wired]

“The Quiet Pro-Life Narratives of Today’s Horror.” [Little White Lies]

The spinsters of Widow’s Bay. [The AV Club]

An interview with Homeric translator Emily Wilson, whose translations Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is said to be based on. “It’s made-up controversy. Nobody’s seen this movie. It’s just the usual triggers about race and gender, and I just find it very tedious.” [Vulture]

“Suddenly film looks like the place where big swings are happening, while TV looks stale and predictable.” [The Ankler]

It’s not TV, it’s HBO IP. [The Ringer]

“Feeling Mournful After Michael? It Might Be ‘Michosis.’” Yeah, I bet Michael Jackson’s accusers and survivors of child sexual abuse are feeling mournful at everyone fawning over this movie, too. [The New York Times]

The Wrap contends that GLAAD’s queer media representation report from last November didn’t take into account many current season shows that have ended or said goodbye to queer characters, such as Hacks and Grey’s Anatomy. Similarly, it didn’t take into account the success of shows like Heated Rivalry and even Pluribus, whose lead character is queer. There may be hope yet…

The box office is doing so well that cinema concert simulcasts for such performers as Paris Hilton, Bebe Rexha, Maren Morris and Kim Petras have been postponed in favour of, you know, actual movies. [Variety]

Meanwhile in the music video world, Madonna released a short film ahead of her album Confessions II, continuing the tradition of Julia Garner playing Madonna in everything except the damn biopic! “Somehow [the word] video seems cheap. It was good when it was just MTV and me,” she said.

Apparently the biopic fell apart due to budget issues, which Madonna talks about in this cover interview with Interview. “I want to do what people are not doing, which is thinking and wearing clothes.”

The “soft power” of the World Cup might just save America’s reputation yet… [Vox]

… But then again World Cup players and attendees are not surprisingly being treated like shit upon entry to the U.S.—if they’re allowed in at all. Doesn’t bode well for the Olympics in 2028… [Unexpected Delirium]

Unexpected Delirium

The True Host of the 2026 World Cup is Dystopia

Perhaps it’s entirely appropriate that a World Cup being held at this particular point in history should be unfolding in this way. The decision of American border patrol to turn away Omar Artan, one of Africa’s very best referees, because of spuriously unconfirmed “vetting concerns”, should bring shame upon both the co-hosting country and the governing …

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2 months ago · 13 likes · 3 comments · Ian King

The costumes of the Octagon girls for Trump’s birthday UFC fight violated the flag code because of course they did. [The Daily Beast]

Zohran Mamdani is the manly man the Democrats have been looking for. [Vox]

Fiction (I include film and especially TV in that) refuses to meaningfully engage with the pandemic. [Current Affairs]

Book of the Month is 100! [Publishers Weekly]

AI momfluencers—they’re not AI bots themselves, but they are using LLMs as co-parents. [Wired]

In praise of “nonna-maxxing,” or living a less-optimised, more-joyful life. [The Financial Diet]

An ode to the dumb home… [Architectural Digest]

… which is the antidote to the increasing problems smart appliances can cause. [Engadget]

I thought the “millennial career crisis” was supposed to be at the beginning of our careers circa 2008 financial crash, but apparently it’s still going/never ended. [Market Watch]

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“Readers can be moved to buy books because they dedicate some of their leisure time to hating the same woman as their friends.” [Attention Economy]

Attention Economy

the year literary publishing learned the power of fandom

The first public online community was created in Leopold’s Records, in Berkeley, California, in 1973, eleven years before I was born. The project was called Community Memory and it was a digital bulletin board, twenty years before Craigslist, hosted on a computer terminal inside the record store…

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2 months ago · 107 likes · 39 comments · Leigh Stein

TV

It’s been a great month for TV—or at least the screeners I watched this month were thoroughly enjoyable, including a contender (Furious) for my favourite show of the year.

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation S9 [Paramount+]

Not Suitable for Work S1 [Disney+]

Elle S1 [screeners; on Prime Video from 1st July]

America’s Sweethearts S3 [Netflix]

Ride or Die S1 [screeners; on Prime Video from 15th July]

Furious S1 [screeners; on Hulu/Disney+ from 27th July]

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed S1 [screeners; currently airing on Apple TV]

Movies

Scary Movie. I was hoping Melissa Barrera would turn up in this. They should have got her for the Scream 6 parody opening. This review pretty much sums up my thoughts on it, referencing the obvious “elevated horror” send up I was hoping the movie would tackle (and which I pitched a piece on but no dice). [in theatres]

Office Romance. What a strange movie. As Caroline Seide called it in her newsletter Girl Culture, this was written as a raunch comedy, directed as a romantic comedy, and acted by Lopez as a girlboss empowerment comedy. [Netflix]

Girl Culture

‘Office Romance,’ I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you!

Welcome to Girl Culture, the newsletter where Caroline Siede examines pop culture, feminism, and more. This post is free but to get the full Girl Culture experience—including my rom-com column and my Disney princess series—you can become a paid subscriber…

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3 months ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Caroline Siede

Is God Is. Favourite movie of the year. Sterling K. Brown is so good. [VOD]

Toy Story 5. It’s a period piece. [in theatres]

Voicemails for Isabelle. I think this was the perfect mix of light raunch and female empowerment Office Romance was trying to strike. Who knew a grief rom-com could be so fun and sexy? [Netflix]

Supergirl. I fell asleep. [in theatres]

Maternal Instinct [Netflix]

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Books

A couple of contenders for favourite book of the year here too!

Sex & the City by Candace Bushnell

Marion by Leah Rowan

Marilyn & Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe by Gail Crowther

I Wanna Be Loved by You: Marilyn Monroe—A Life in 100 Takes by Andrew Wilson

Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery. I love a curmudgeonly protagonist.

The Frenzy by Joyce Carol Oates

Cat Love by Tomás Q. Morín

The Animal Room by Lauren Acampora. Loved this! Very affecting writing.

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

Cash Cow: How the Maternal Body Became a Global Commodity—And the Hidden Costs for Women by Alev Scott

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn. So evocative of the era, even though indie rock wasn’t my scene at all. I miss 2016.

How to Score in Hollywood: Secrets to Success in the Movie Business by Kevin Goetz

Single Girls by John Searles

Ravenous by Sara Cooper

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Every generation has a moment in history they remember exactly where they were for. JFK’s assassination. The moon landing. Princess Diana’s death. 9/11. The Spice Girls’ debut.

I recall the latter clearly: I was watching Video Hits, Australia’s weekend music video program, on the Sunday before going back to school after break.

The clip for “Wannabe,” the Spice Girls’ first song, came on and I was immediately transfixed by the zany, carefree attitude of the five women we would soon come to know as “Sporty Spice” Melanie Chisholm, “Scary Spice” Melanie Brown, “Ginger Spice” Geri Halliwell-Horner, “Baby Spice” Emma Bunton and “Posh Spice” Victoria Beckham nee Adams.

The video is indelible but in case you haven’t had occasion to watch it in the 30 years today since the song premiered, it follows the riff raff-coded Spice Girls as they sneak into London’s elite St Pancras Grand Hotel, affronting the high-class clientele therein by gatecrashing a feast and dancing on tables. Watching it back now, the Spice Girls’ lip syncing is wildly off, their costumes are ill-fitting and it has a guerilla quality that quickly disappeared from the band’s highly-produced look in subsequent videos, such as their follow up “Say You’ll Be There” and, indeed, most girl group videos from then on.

It perfectly established their archetypal personalities from the get go, not only in the lyrics (“Easy V doesn’t come for free, she’s a real lady”), but in their appearances. Sporty is in her trademark Adidas trackpants, Baby is in a shift dress and Posh already has her mannerisms and hand movements down pat. Scary and Ginger jostle their respective main character energies as leaders of the group and, certainly, this video clip. Defining each Spice Girl by certain personality types and even refining them down to a seasoning allowed their young fans to easily identify with them and influenced the way we categorise groups of women in pop culture today, such as Sex & the City, Girls and the Kardashian sisters.

The Spice Girls quickly secured world domination and a slew of promotional materials, from potent peach Chupa Chup lollipops to Impulse body spray to a mockumentary, the camp classic Spice World, followed quickly in their wake.

It’s hard to believe that Halliwell-Horner left the group less than two years after the release of “Wannabe” and though the band continued on without her for a couple of years, they were never able to capture that echelon again.

Even still, the Spice Girls are the biggest-selling girl group of all time. They helped rejuvenate the girl band phenomenon, with groups such as Girls Aloud, the Sugababes, Little Mix, Fifth Harmony sharing a clear lineage with the Spice Girls, though none were really able to hit in the same way. Those that approached their level of success, such as Destiny’s Child or the Pussycat Dolls, served as a glorified backing band for the main star (sorry Kelly and Michelle) rather than functioning as a unit as we headed into the era of the singular pop megastar, with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and the other blonde songstresses the media would pit against them (*cough* Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore *cough*) arriving on the heels of the Spice Girls’ breakup. Instead of celebrating the collective and the unit of the girl group (“if you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends”) that the Spice Girls espoused with their “girl power” ethos, the new millennium was about positioning women against each other, as The Atlantic writer Sophie Gilbert writes in her 2025 book Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Though the Spice Girls were women and when Britney et al debuted they were decidedly girls (being sexualised like grown women), there was an inherent girlishness in the way the Spice Girls were being marketed. Yes, Posh wore “little Gucci dresses” so short you could sometimes see her underwear and Ginger was often dressed in cleavage-bearing corsets and little else, but it wasn’t necessarily sexy; it was more cartoonish in a way that approached drag or, as Gilbert writes, they “behaved like toddlers at a wedding: grabbing things at random, spinning round and round and round, throwing food on the floor.” She could just as easily be describing the “Wannabe” video. So perhaps the Spice Girls linger in a way other girl groups or even some of the solo acts I’ve mentioned here because they provided an antidote to the hypersexualised pop music that came next for a generation of girls who clung to their (Spice Girls-branded) dolls a little too long. Or clung to their primary school Spice Girls tribute band a little too long after Geri left… (it’s me).

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While we’re in an era of renewed interest in girl groups, such as Blackpink and Katseye (already following in the Spice Girls’ footsteps with the departure of Manon Bannerman, though obviously for different reasons), it’s actually the solo pop girlies who are carrying on the Spice Girls’ ethos: Sabrina Carpenter plays with youth and innocence in the same way Baby Spice did. Olivia Rodrigo has clear Ginger energy. Chappell Roan’s penchant for experimentation and speaking up for the causes she believes in gives Scary vibes, while Tate McCrae’s focus on physicality is clearly reminiscent of Sporty Spice. Dua Lipa holds it down for the Posh cohort, what with her recent celebrity wedding and interest in fashion. Charli XCX’s experimental career hits on aspects of each Spice Girl, and her The Moment mockumentary encompasses Spice World’s winking metatext.

But where the Spice Girls arguably endure the strongest is not in their limited discography but in the capitalistic conglomerate around them (see: the aforementioned merchandise). It’s no coincidence that Posh Spice was quoted as saying “we want to be a household name. We want to be a Fairy Liquid or Ajax”—products—as opposed to feminist activists or political leaders like oh, I don’t know, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who the band likened to “the first Spice Girl.” They burst onto the scene in the wake of the riot grrrl movement spearheaded by early 1990s alternative girl groups like Bikini Kill and brought the most rudimentary third wave feminist ideas to the mainstream in their palatable “girl power” messaging. This can subsequently be seen in the rise of the girlboss—a corporatised feminism that prioritised individual choice and success (often at the expense of other, more disadvantaged women) perpetrated by—you guessed it—millennial women raised on the Spice Girls. “Girl Power was packaging, bright bubble letters that suggested power was as simple as putting on a t-shirt proclaiming ‘Girls Kick Ass’ and going dancing with your friends,” writes feminist magazine Bitch co-founder Andi Zeisler in her 2016 book We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CovergirlⓇ, the Buying & Selling of a Political Movement.

The reign of the girlboss lasted a little longer than Spice Girls supremacy but ultimately crashed and burned as we hurtle towards end-stage capitalism. Girl power has been replaced by tradwives and the safe sex messaging espoused in “2 Become 1” feels quaint in the shadow of the dismantling of Roe V. Wade.

Now, with multiple wars, looming fascism the climate crisis on our doorstep, it feels like there’s a shift happening away from the grind and back to community and mutual aid. Maybe the Spice Girls were right this whole time: “you gotta get with my friends.”

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This article contains spoilers for season three of America’s Sweethearts.

America’s Sweethearts, the Netflix docuseries following the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, dropped its third season yesterday, the first to follow dancers trying out for the squad since it popped off in 2024.

The divide between the veterans, who toughed it out working regular jobs before last season’s landmark pay raise, and the rookies, some of whom were already influencers in their own right, such as Aussie “Flexi” Faith Ward, is hinted at in the sixth episode of the season. Fifth year veteran Kleine Powell expresses concern that some contenders aren’t there “for the right reasons,” the age-old reality TV motivation. She also acknowledges how much the job has changed since she tried out in 2020, with many team members, both past and present, turning to influencing to pay the bills. One of last season’s main protagonists Jada McClean says she does social media full time now. Even coaches Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammell concede that creating content is a more lucrative and flexible gig than the cheerleaders having full-time office jobs on top of their team commitments.

A crevice that is more keenly felt is between what the cheerleaders thought the job would be pre-America’s Sweethearts and what it is after the success of the show made them all into overnight international stars. The football team they cheer for, once branded “America’s Team,” has fallen from grace, failing to secure a Super Bowl victory in 30 years, while America’s Sweethearts is routinely among Netflix’s most-watched shows worldwide when a new season premieres. Arguably the cheerleaders are a bigger, more global brand that the Cowboys themselves. As one fan says in the season three finale, “The footballers are gonna break your heart. The cheerleaders are gonna leave you with a smile.”

This increased exposure has resulted in a parasocial relationship that doesn’t often result in the fans returning the favour to the cheerleaders. Many team members have struggled with abuse on social media, with armchair judges critiquing the dancers’ skill and appearance on TikTok and Reddit, some even before they’ve made the team, as with Faith.

Some such criticisms from social media that the cheerleaders read out in the show, à la Jimmy Kimmel’s Celebrities Read Mean Tweets:

“I’m sorry but she needed to retire. No need for a fifth year. This is not the technique or the stage presence of a fifth-time veteran.”

“Seems like the weakest link. I wish she would have waited until she graduated college so she would have grown up a bit, as maturity over all was an issue.”

“She doesn’t have great precision like the others. Looks like poor traiting/a bad style match.”

“She only made the team because she was a sob story on TV.”

“She didn’t know what DCC even was before she saw it on Netflix.”

“No one on the team likes Anna Kate.”

The person this seems to affect the most, in addition to Anna Kate, is Reece Weaver, breakout star of season one, showing how adulation can affect someone just as much as negativity. That’s the whole problem with stan culture, right?

If some dancers are portrayed as wanting to be on the team for the “wrong reasons,” Reece is the picture of pure intentions. She says multiple times that her body is a vessel for god and dance is the way he communicates through her. It’s not really a surprise then that she struggles with her newfound fame and pressure to be a role model the most, then. Her uncertainty manifests in her own version of the “twisties,” or the yips, and she twists her ankle, causing her to miss some games and, ultimately, she decides to leave the team at the end of this season, which definitely won’t go over well with the armchair critics. The good news for them is that they have a whole batch of new cheerleaders to abuse in the name of love this season. America’s Sweethearts, indeed.

When I first heard about Sam Beckbessinger’s novel Femme Feral, about a menopausal woman who turns into a werewolf, I was struck by how singular that notion was. We’re well familiar with male werewolves, in all manner of pop culture from Teen Wolf to An American Werewolf in Paris; Oz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jacob in The Twilight Saga. On the rare occasion we get a girl experiencing lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty. Seldom, if ever, have I seen it in comparison to menopause. But it makes perfect sense: like puberty—and, indeed, pregnancy and postpartum for which turning into a dog serves as an allegory in another body horror story, Nightbitch—menopause can make one feel out of control and like their body isn’t their own. So the premise of Femme Feral seems kind of genius, actually!

I spoke to author Beckbessinger about her new book.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What struck me about this book right off the bat was that werewolves in fiction are often associated with men, particularly pubescent boys such as in Teen Wolf, An American Werewolf in London, Jacob from Twilight, or on the rare occasion pubescent girls, like in the iconic Ginger Snaps, but you liken menopause to lycanthropy which is actually genius and something that I haven’t really seen done before. So I wanted to start by asking you about what inspired that connection.

Yessss! I’m so jazzed you asked this question. You’re spot-on: for most of the twentieth century, the werewolf was almost always a dude. Subverting the male-coded werewolf was definitely a very deliberate part of the project.

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What I wrote

I got involved with the millennial feminism and Lena Dunham discourse. [Kill Your Darlings]

I liveblogged the Met Gala red carpet for the third year in a row! [BBC]

One of my pieces for Bitch magazine from a few years ago about postpartum psychosis in fiction was republished by The Flytrap, now with updates about Die My Love.

I spoke to Mai Nguyen about a similar topic that the author wrestles with in her second novel, Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead. I also interviewed Nguyen for her debut three years ago for Shondaland!

Elsewhere

Lauren Weisberger is writing about The Devil Wears Prada for Vogue in the year of our lord 2026: time truly does heal all wounds. [Vogue]

“I’d rather watch something about the dream of how things could be for working people, than let all serious depictions of employment be taken over by the people trying to fire us.” Wesley Morris is the first person I’ve heard mention Mack, Andy’s colleague in The Devil Wears Prada 2 at the newspaper they’re laid off from at the beginning of the film and whom she brings with her to Runway as a freelancer. He’s the quintessential worker in a Hollywood movie that used to be full of them: his faded navy Yankees cap and, as Morris notes, pocket full of blue pens, are the closest signifiers of a blue-collar worker in today’s Hollywood. [Cannonball]

The Costume Institute might no longer need the Met Gala—sooner than we think! [The New York Times]

“In our world, you’ve got Gisèle Pelicot, a feminist idol. On Motherless [the “sleep” site where users post about drugging and assaulting women], it’s Dominique Pelicot who is the idol. They see him as some kind of god to revere and to emulate.” [The Meteor]

“Claiming that the menstrual cycle is mystical and powerful might sound feminist… [But] denigrating hormonal birth control when access to abortion is restricted could leave more women with unwanted pregnancies; it dovetails with some pronatalists’ argument that women should dedicate themselves to motherhood and the conservative push for women to embrace traditional gender roles.” [The Atlantic]

This breakdown of the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni case that was settled shortly before heading to court seems weirdly biased against Lively. [Vulture]

“Despite the real celebration of body diversity in ‘Costume Art,’ it is diminishing in our real lives.” [Soft Power]

Soft Power by Marisa Meltzer

Bodies at the Met

Before press, or Met Gala attendees, or the general public were allowed to see “Costume Art” the latest exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, journalists were treated to s…

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4 months ago · 16 likes · 2 comments · Marisa Meltzer

“The Girlbossification of AI.” [The Cut]

Weddings from hell in pop culture are reflecting our cultural malaise for the institution. [TIME]

Michael Patrick King on the end of The Comeback: “When we started season one, the threat of reality TV was going to annihilate narrative television. Since then, we’ve had the whole second golden age of television. So in our happy ending—our gray happy ending—there’s a chance there could be one type of AI TV, the way reality is now, and the other type, where people work with humans, could continue.” [Vulture]

The moral outrage surrounding Olivia Rodrigo’s babydoll dress. [The Cut]

The politics of museum wall labels. [The New York Times]

Shein bought Everlane. RIP millennial sustainability. [Vogue Business]

Looksmaxxing, hair transplants, micropenis fears: “[Men are] being objectified how women have been so objectified so candidly and openly for so long, and it doesn’t sit well with them.” Welcome to our world, boys. [Intelligencer]

Thanks, I hate it: updating YA to include modern references. [The New York Times]

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TV

The Four Seasons S1-2 [Netflix]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

Euphoria S3 [HBO Max]

The Boys S5 [Prime Video]

Elsbeth S3 [Paramount+]

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation S9 [Paramount+]

Adolescence [Netflix]

For All Mankind S5 [Apple TV]

The Vampire Lestat S1/(Interview with the Vampire S3) [screeners; on AMC from 7th June]

Kylie [Netflix]

Scarpetta S1 [Prime Video]

Bait S1 [Prime Video]

His & Hers S1 [Netflix

America’s Sweethearts S3 [screeners; airing from 16th June on Netflix]

Movies

Remarkably Bright Creatures [Netflix]

Mother Mary [in theatres and on VOD]

Obsession [in theatres]

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere [Netflix]

The Christophers [in theatres and on VOD]

Ask E. Jean (why she’s being investigated by the Department of Justice) [screener]

Pretty Lethal [Prime Video]

Backrooms [in theatres]

Over Your Dead Body [screener; on Prime Video from 10th June]

Books

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer

For Better & Worse: The Complicated Past & Challenging Future of Marriage by Stephanie Coontz

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

Accumulation by Aimee Pokwatka

Murderland: Crime & Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

On Michael Jackson by Margo Jefferson

But Won’t I Miss Me by Tiffany Tsao

Entomology of the Pin-Up Girl by Lauren Osborn

Self-Worth by Emma Tholozan, Emma Ramadan (trans.)

Decomposition Book by Sara van Os

Honey by Imani Thompson

The Lamb by Lucy Rose

Verity by Colleen Hoover

Helpless by Jessica Knoll

Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body by Erin Maglaque

Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection by Samantha Paige Rosen

Culture

5ive

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This article contains mention of pregnancy loss.

When I interviewed Mai Nguyen for her debut novel, Sunshine Nails, back in 2023, I ended the interview by asking what she was working on next. She told me she was writing about pregnancy/infant loss. That book is Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead, published in April, but I had no idea at the time that it is based on her own experience with infant loss.

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I knew April was going to be an intense month for culture: we have The Devil Wears Prada 2, Euphoria season three, The Drama, the Michael Jackson biopic, Lena Dunham’s memoir, Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Mother Mary, which doesn’t come out here until next month so I’m trying to avoid reading too much about it, just to name a few! The discourse around these pop cultural products—The Drama, Euphoria and Michael especially (I imagine there will be more to come about Prada in May as it has A Lot to say about the current state of media—and so do I!)—hasn’t disappointed.

“The Drama is the latest example of a familiar impulse in Hollywood: Studios continue to make casting decisions that amount to superficial attempts to attract Black audiences with Black actors—often without grappling with what race might mean within the story… The Drama takes a laz[y] route: Emma is deracialized altogether, leaving little sense of Black interiority—of how Emma understands or processes the racial dynamics shaping her life.” [Bloomberg]

Doreen St. Félix agrees, writing: “it can often feel as if Zendaya has been added to a preexisting story.” [The New Yorker]

“It would actually have been far ‘edgier’ to build a movie around a woman learning that her white American fiancé once thought about committing a school shooting.” [AV Club]

Euphoria is not a smart enough show to portray sex work in a nuanced way—or interested enough in sex workers to do so. [Vulture]

“Unless you understand that Michael’s innocent, we can’t have you [involved in the biopic].” Mark Binelli went long on this in-depth piece on how the Michael movie got made that’s well worth your while. [The New York Times Magazine]

“What must it be like to see your abuser lionized anew and larger than life on a screen towering over your head?” [Ministry of Pop Culture]

Ministry of Pop Culture

Smooth Criminal

Do we really need to do this all over again? I guess we do, so here goes…

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4 months ago · 39 likes · 14 comments · Saul Austerlitz

“[Michael Jackson’s] artistry is inherently incomplete without also weighing what Leaving Neverland has to say about our culture’s willingness to grant carte blanche to genius to behave however it sees fit.” [AV Club]

“I learned Michael Jackson fucked little boys.” Leaving Neverland’s director on the burying of his documentary. [The Hollywood Reporter]

“Nobody seems to care that [directors] have signed on to do movies that are basically authorised by the guy they’re making the movie about. But I think that’s a deadly trend.” [The Guardian]

The queer backlash. [The Atlantic]

On lip filler accent. [Defector]

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Celebrating ugliness as an antidote to looksmaxxing. [Vox]

“Imperfect Women, then, is the latest evidence of the slow decline of what could be called ‘the messy-mom thriller’—in which violence and mystery pierce the suburban ennui felt by female protagonists of a certain age.” [The Atlantic]

“A kid’s book, a magic wand, even the idea of joy itself can be a tool used to club a kid back into the closet.” [Defector]

“Are we surprised that Trump’s pick-me girls are getting unpicked?” [The Cut]

It’s time we confront the role COVID plays in premature deaths—and the recent spate of celebrity deaths can draw attention to that. [The Canary]

“Why MAGA Men Actually Loathe Tradwives.” [Salon]

If we can’t get the Madonna-directed biopic starring Julia Garner, the next best thing is The Studio spoofing it, with both Madonna and Garner in guest roles. [IGN]

Move over Chris Evans’ fisherman sweater in Knives Out. The internet’s boyfriend Ryan Gosling’s vintage sweater pattern from Project Hail Mary is all the rage. [Wall Street Journal]

“They weren’t interested in buying it until they see how these other Black rom-coms do”: the obstacles Black filmmakers come up against in Hollywood. [The Wrap]

Issa Rae agrees that we’re backsliding with regards to diversity. [Deadline]

How John Farnham became the centre of a freedom of speech debate in Queensland. [ABC]

“Audiences need to create space for ugly characters to be written and portrayed as more than two-dimensional villains, or likeable, well-intentioned characters who also have ugly traits. That’s life and that’s what The Pitt is trying to capture.” [Nina Watches Everything]

Reese Witherspoon continued her inexplicable shilling of AI and got absolutely reamed in her comments. [Instagram]

The Wayback Machine is in peril. [Wired]

There have been a spate of men killing their partners and, in some instances, their children in the U.S. this past month, the deadliest of which was the largest mass shooting in two years. Brittany Cooper writes that this can’t just be chalked up to “mental illness”:

“Men who kill their wives and children are not just bad apples who needed a free month of BetterHelp. These killings are the natural outcome of a country enamored with patriarchy and determined to make sure that men can freely dominate women. That country, our country, has decided that a patriarchal reset, in which men are heads of household and women and children are their willing and devoted subordinates, will help ‘make America great again.’ That country, our country, has also decided that any woman who does not get onboard should pay with her life.” [The Cut]

Unfortunately, many of these high profile intimate partner murders have been of Black women, who are two-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered by men. [Ms. Magazine, Capital B News]

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What I wrote

In addition to being a sex work show, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a wrestling show so of course I had to write about it! I spoke to Nick Offerman, Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Jon H. Epstein about bringing Jinx and the wrestling to life. Unfortunately I didn't get to speak to Nicole Kidman who also wrestles in the show (!), but Elle Fanning did like my Instagram post promoting my article! [IndieWire]

I wrote about the matriarchs of Bridgerton and how the season’s most important moments took place in the liminal space of the staircase. [Shondaland]

I reviewed The Testaments and Netflix’s new Hulk Hogan documentary. [The Daily Beast]

I interviewed The Miniature Wife showrunners. [TIME]

In honour/horror of Stephanie McMahon’s induction into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, I republished a chapter on her from my book, A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler.

I liked The Devil Wears Prada 2 a lot, especially its commentary on the state of media today.

Movies

Ella McCay. I finally watched this and had to turn it off half way through. I can count the number of times I’ve done that with movies/TV shows on one hand. [Disney+]

Undertone [in theatres and VOD]

Michael. As a fan of Michael Jackson’s music who was utterly torn up for months when he died and as someone who was cognisant of the multiple child sexual abuse accusations against him and was utterly torn up for months after watching Leaving Neverland in 2019, I was momentarily duped by the medley of his songs and the note perfect mimicry of Michael’s nephew Jaafar Jackson playing his uncle. But that’s literally all this movie is: a recreation of Jackson’s most famous performances which we can watch on Youtube. We don’t need a movie that lines the pockets of his estate and family, many of whom were producers on this. Not Janet (or Randy or Rebbie), though, who curiously don’t exist in the biopic. [in theatres]

The Devil Wears Prada [Disney+]

The Devil Wears Prada 2 x2 [in theatres]

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TV

XO Kitty S3 [Netflix]

The Boys S5 [Prime Video]

Running Point S2 [Netflix]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

Abbott Elementary S5 [Disney+]

The Pitt S2 [HBO Max]

Beef S2 [Netflix]

The Miniature Wife [Stan/Peacock]

Hacks S5 [screeners; HBO Max]

Sabrina Carpenter Coachella [Youtube]

Euphoria S3 [HBO Max]

Elsbeth S3 [screeners; Paramount+]

Hulk Hogan: Real American [Netflix]

Big Mood S2 [Stan]

For All Mankind S5 [screeners; currently airing on Apple TV+]

Widow’s Bay [screeners; currently airing on Apple TV+]

Books

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

The Last Supper by Wendy J. Fox. One of my favourite books of the year so far!

Hexes of the Deadwood Forest by Agnieszka Szpila, Scotia Gilroy (trans.)

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

The Take by Kelly Yang

The Left & the Lucky by Willy Vlautin

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert [reread]

Famesick by Lena Dunham

The Face: A Cultural History by Fay Bound-Alberti

The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil

Underlake by Erin L. McCoy

Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves Into a State of Emergency by Megan Garber

Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents by Valerie Fridland. Fascinating!

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks

You First by Caroline Kepnes

All Flesh by Ananda Devi, Jeffrey Zimmerman (trans.)

Molka by Monika Kim

Culture

Bendigo Easter Fair

“Did anyone besides culture writers click on the story?” Meryl Streep in her return to one of her most iconic roles, Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada 2, out this week, asks Anne Hathaway, also reprising her role as Andy Sachs. Andy, who works as an investigative reporter at The New York Vanguard, which guts the entire editorial team just as Andy wins an award for her journalism in the opening scene of The Devil Wears Prada 2, returns to Runway as the new features editor after her speech at the ceremony decrying the disappearance of journalistic integrity goes viral. In her new role, she wants to bring hard-hitting news stories back to the fashion bible, alongside the latest couture spreads and advertorials. Her first article takes accountability for an editorial misstep in a glowing profile, published prior to Andy’s re-hiring, of a fast fashion brand using sweatshop labor. (As if the company name SpeedFash didn’t give it away. But I digress.) The article is met with positivity online but, as Miranda says, did it move the needle on Runway’s reputation in a dying media landscape? “Runway stopped being a magazine years ago,” Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) laments of its digital-first strategy. By the same token, would the original fast fashion piece have made a blip beyond that same bubble?

Top advertisers are worried, though, such as Christian Dior, now helmed by Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), and they threaten to pull their ad buys from Runway in the face of the controversy. “Remember when magazines were a thing,” Emily chortles, echoing Nigel’s sentiment. In a delightful turning of the tables that Miranda used to throw her coats on each morning for Andy and Emily to hang, Miranda now has to grovel at Emily’s feet.

When the first trailer dropped, much was made of Miranda’s apparent doddering demeanour, feigning ignorance to Andy and Emily’s time as “the Emily’s,” her first and second assistants. “Where was I?” she ponders. Not to worry: Miranda doesn’t have dementia. But she has softened in the 20 years since her infamous “cerulean blue” screed. Now, instead of punching down to unstylish college grads (there’s a funny running gag about how she can no longer say the kinds of insults she used to hurl at her underlings. She even has to hang her own coats. The indignity!), she’s just trying to keep her head above water as the doyenne of the last vestiges of luxury fashion media.

Whereas the first movie was a character study of Miranda Priestly and an intimate story of one young woman’s first job—that “a million girls would kill for”— that celebrated the last golden age of magazines, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a commentary on how late stage capitalism did away with all that. (Somebody tell them that private cars were a casualty of the 2008 financial crisis, though.)

It makes sense, then, that Miranda would be less barbed than she was back then. One thing that struck me was the mutedness of her costumes in particular. She’s mostly in grey for the first half of the movie, while Andy favours navy blue. This really allows Simone Ashley as Amari, Miranda’s assistant, to shine in some truly divine outfits that she pays for with a face card that never declines. It also serves the character, who Andy grows continuously frustrated with as she seems to give up on preventing Runway from being gutted and sold for parts to private equity amidst a restructuring of its publisher, Elias-Clarke. I won’t give it away here, but there are several characters who are clear stand-ins for Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez-Bezos and MacKenzie Scott, the former two of whom are attempting to ingratiate/buy themselves into fashion publishing by sponsoring and honorary co-chairing this year’s Met Gala, which takes place just days after The Devil Wears Prada 2’s premiere.

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It’s not until a meeting with a group of corporate suits, to which Miranda wears a Dries Van Noten Fall Winter 2025 pastel tassel jacket that signifies her come to Jesus moment (she’ll have another under the actual Last Supper during the team’s extended sojourn to Milan Fashion Week), that she really snaps out of her ennui and joins Andy in her attempt to save Runway and, indeed, journalism. (There’s another great scene where Miranda walks through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a feat of artistry lit up with facades of the luxury brands that hawk their wares there, after sitting through a diatribe from the Bezos-esque character about how human progress is just chopping up and regurgitating things as we hurtle towards our demise exacerbated by said “progress”.) Where once fashion magazines weren’t seen as serious media (and let’s be real, they still aren’t), in The Devil Wears Prada 2 they’re our last hope for the written word.

Another thing that’s changed is Vogue’s endorsement of this franchise. The original, based on former Vogue staffer Lauren Weisberger’s time as an assistant for Anna Wintour, was kryptonite for the fashion industry. Vogue distanced itself from it and many designers refused to lend the movie clothes lest they incur Wintour’s wrath. Now, Wintour hobnobs with Streep at Milan Fashion Week where scenes for the movie were shot and is on the cover of Vogue with her. There’s a subplot in which Andy has the opportunity to write a biography of Miranda (as if she wouldn’t have already done so, à la Weisberger, or at the very least have already published a book in a landscape where pretty much every culture writer I know has done so) but, like in the original, Andy feels an outsized loyalty to her. This time around, Miranda would give Andy her blessing. Just as Vogue has done with this movie.

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I appreciate that while Andy struggled to balance work and her love life with the “real villain,” Nate, back then, she—and more importantly, the movie—is unconcerned with romance this time around. We don’t even get a sense that she’s even interested in dating until at least halfway through the movie when Aussie Patrick Brammal shows up. Lily (Tracie Thoms) is a mainstay as her bestie, though, because we all know friendships are our lifelong relationships.

I do worry though that The Devil Wears Prada 2 may suffer from the reverse of the Michael effect: whereas critics have rightly panned the Michael Jackson biopic as a garish recreation of all his most enduring performances while being legally prohibited from addressing the child abuse charges against him, audiences have eaten it up (“you’re a vegetable”) to the tune of $217.6 million at the time of writing less than a week after it landed in theatres. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a smart, if at times heavy-handed examination by screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna of publishing that risks being a beacon for the culture critics that Miranda identifies at the beginning of this review who see themselves in the precariously employed Andy and co (we should all be so lucky as to turn virality into a department head position, buy a luxury condo and get a $350,000 book deal). Will regular theatre-goers appreciate the social commentary, or do they just want the filmic equivalent of Andy’s makeover montage?

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February 2015 was a big month for gender equality.

Patricia Arquette, upon winning the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in Boyhood, gave the following speech:

“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.

“It’s time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of colour that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now,” she continued in the press room after her win.

While on the surface this speech was a rallying cry for feminism, it ignored several things. First-wave feminism was largely a racist movement that was built on white women getting the right to vote and excluding women of color for fear that it would convolute the message. Social justice movements such as Stonewall and #BlackLivesMatter were started and supported by queer people of color and black women, with little support from the presumably straight, cisgender, white women Arquette meant when she called for pay parity. Intersectionality, the term coined by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw that posits that oppressed people exist at the intersections of many identities (ie. person of color, woman, disabled, queer, etc.) amd thus experience many different kinds of discrimination, wasn’t present in Arquette’s speech. If it were, she perhaps would have mentioned that the pay gap experienced by women of colour in service jobs far outpaces that of successful white women in Hollywood such as Arquette and men in the industry, whom she was presumably talking about. Also, not everyone who gives birth is a woman.

But it certainly piqued the interest of Stephanie McMahon, Chief Brand Officer of World Wrestling Entertainment.

She tweeted a meme of Arquette’s speech and praised the actress for “having the courage to fight for #WomensRights on such a grand platform.” “#UseYourVoice,” she ended the tweet.

This, in turn, rankled AJ Lee, who appears elsewhere throughout this book. She replied to McMahon’s tweet with two of her own (these were the days when Twitter was still offering only 180 characters per tweet): “Your female wrestlers have record selling merchandise & have starred in the highest rated segment of the show several times, [a]nd yet they receive a fraction of the wages & screen time of the majority of the male roster,” Lee wrote across the two tweets, finishing with the same #UseYourVoice hashtag.

McMahon curtly replied in a standalone tweet, thanking Lee for her opinion.

Like Arquette, McMahon probably wasn’t expecting to get called out for seemingly innocuously supporting wage equality by both Lee and an increasingly vocal fanbase.

Because women’s wrestling fans had recently realized the power of their collective voice that same day with the hashtag #GiveDivasAChance, which I wrote about earlier in this book, that urged WWE to invest more time (and, it would suggest, more money) in the women’s roster.

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It illustrates the hypocrisy of Stephanie McMahon as the figurehead of the women’s wrestling evolution: if McMahon was so moved by the fight for gender equality, why didn’t she push for Paige, Emma and the Bella Twins to get more than 30 seconds of airtime that very same day?

I understand that overhauling a division that had been subjugated for the better part of a decade—and, if we look back over the events discussed throughout this book, since women’s wrestling began—takes more than a day. In fact, for WWE it would take five months for the company to instigate their Divas Revolution™.

McMahon was at the forefront of this marketing plan, “set[ting] the table of opportunity” for some of the existing women on WWE’s main roster (Paige, the Bellas, Alicia Fox, Naomi and Tamina) and the fresh faces of Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch, who were catapulted onto the scene.

The three teams that these nine women were divided into—Team Bella consisting of the Bellas and Fox; Team PCB (formerly the Submission Sorority before someone realized the faction shared its name with a porn series), which stood for the first initials of Paige, Charlotte and Becky; and Team B.A.D., which was made up of the Beautiful And Dangerous Naomi, Tamina and Banks—competed in different formations for several months, but they never really reached the expectations #GiveDivasAChance and the resulting Divas Revolution had set out for them.

There was a clear disconnect between NXT, WWE’s developmental brand where Banks, Flair and Lynch came from and where Paige and Emma tore it up for twenty minutes in one of the nascent moments of the women’s wrestling evolution in 2013.

This was none more evident than during SummerSlam weekend, the August pay-per-view that is second only to WrestleMania in terms of the size and influence. 2015 marked the first time NXT held a marquee event, entitled NXT Takeover: Brooklyn I, outside of its Florida base camp, and it was also the first of a four-year residency for the event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

That year, NXT Takeover: Brooklyn I hosted the NXT women’s championship match between Banks, in one of her last matches NXT matches before she graduated to the main roster for good, and Bayley in an instant classic that is considered one of the best wrestling matches ever.

The following night at SummerSlam proper, Banks was set to face off with her Team B.A.D. members against Team PCB and Team Bellas in a three-team elimination match. We all thought, after Banks’ hell of a performance the previous evening, that she would be a MVP of the match, however she and the rest of her team were eliminated first in a lacklustre match that illustrated the disconnect between the organic evolution of women’s wrestling on NXT and the convoluted marketing scheme of the main roster.

Perhaps in an attempt to get the rub from NXT’s game changing division, McMahon was there before the women’s championship match to introduce it (though, curiously, she did not make the same appearance before the match that she put together as an on-screen authority figure the following night on SummerSlam) and was met with a lukewarm reaction from the notoriously fickle New York crowd.

“We are all making history, right here, right now,” she said. “And speaking of making history, a few weeks ago on Raw I said that I wanted a Divas revolution. But make no mistake about it, that Divas revolution started right here in NXT with some extraordinary women who give it their all and leave everything in this ring night after night. Triple H said earlier today that he doesn’t just put them in the main event, they are the main event. So it is my honor to introduce to you tonight’s first main event for the NXT women’s championship.”

The fans were right to be skeptical of McMahon’s involvement, as her empty words about the match being the main event (which has traditionally been the last match of the night; this was the second-last) were indicative of how WWE’s flagship brands, Raw and SmackDown, had fumbled women’s wrestling rather than the grassroots evolution of NXT.

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More likely, McMahon was there to support her husband, the previously mentioned Triple H (real name Paul Levesque).

Some backstory on the woman who became known as “The Billion Dollar Princess” and “Daddy’s Little Girl”.

Stephanie McMahon was born to Vince and Linda McMahon in 1976. Vince, who I’ve written about in previous chapters, took over what was then known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation from his father, Vince McMahon Snr., in 1983 and turned it into the conglomerate better known as World Wrestling Entertainment (and, before losing a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund, World Wrestling Federation). Linda, whom Vince married in 1966, became WWE’s president and CEO as well as an on-screen presence as—you guessed it!—Vince’s wife, before pursuing a career in politics. Linda became the head of the Small Business Administration (because a $3b company that bought out most of its competition and crippled the territories and, then, the independent wrestling scene in many areas is definitely a small business) in the Donald Trump cabinet, which she left in 2019 to run the super PAC for Trump’s reelection that promised to spend $18.5 million in Florida in exchange for WWE’s workers there to be able to perform during the COVID-19 pandemic.

McMahon’s older brother Shane is also involved in WWE, as a wrestler, on-screen authority figure and behind-the-scenes executive.

McMahon herself began working for WWE in secretarial and modelling work as a teen while she completed her communications degree at Boston University. She then graduated to an on-screen role, playing the undead bride to The Undertaker, an innocent bride to Test, and an unconscious one to her future on-screen and real-life husband (with whom she has three daughters), the abovementioned Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who revealed that he was actually already married to “Daddy’s Little Girl” in a non-consensual drive-through Las Vegas union. (I will write about these and other wrestling weddings in a forthcoming chapter.)

As Triple H and Vince feuded over the love of McMahon, she revealed herself to be in on Triple H’s surreptitious marriage and subsequently “turned heel”, a role that she has largely occupied ever since through developments such as the storyline owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW, an independent company that WWE purchased in its takeover of the industry), the general manager of both Raw and SmackDown, and figurehead of the women’s wrestling evolution.

McMahon was perhaps one of the first women who proved she could go toe-to-toe with men on the mic and for that she was rewarded with her first and only women’s championship in 2000. This was rumored to be not only a gift from her father, but the reason the women’s division continued at all as, if you’ll remember from earlier chapters, this was in the bane of the Attitude Era. The esteem the women’s title was held in at the time was reflected in McMahon’s gear for the match: bike shorts, a white t-shirt and trainers, as if she was off for a morning stroll not a competitive championship match.

Behind the scenes, McMahon worked her way up the ranks, becoming WWE’s Chief Brand Officer in 2013, while Triple H has worn many executive hats and is responsible for turning WWE’s training facility into the third brand of WWE known as NXT.

Of her dual role, frequent foe, wrestler Chris Jericho said, “she does a great job of the duality of what a WWE Superstar has to do and what a WWE top executive has to do.”

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McMahon and AJ Lee’s on-screen interactions were few and far between, but when they did encounter one another, it was in a meta exploration of their apparent personal issues. For example, in a 2013 promo, Stephanie told Lee that she didn’t “get why you’d rather perpetuate stereotypes about women. That we’re vicious, conniving, manipulative, that we’d rather tear each other down than build each other up.” (Perhaps someone saw an early draft of Lee’s memoir, but I digress.)

“Instead of dating Superstars, maybe I should marry one,” Lee shot back. “And let’s not get started on your daddy issues, now that’s a whole other can of worms.

“You’re not disappointed in me… because I am you,” she continued. “Except younger.”

While Lee was clearly the heel here, McMahon shifted into a lawful evil gear, reminding Lee that “if I want to, I can’t take [your Divas championship] away from you. If I want to, you won’t have a job anymore.”

McMahon exploited this threat in her biggest feud and her first match in more than a decade against Brie Bella in their 2014 conflict.

McMahon and Triple H, in their faction The Authority, had an ongoing vendetta against Bella’s husband Daniel Bryan. The two wielded their power over the Bryan-Bella family by forcing Bryan to relinquish his world title, firing Bella and turning her twin sister Nikki against her.

By 2018, the women’s wrestling evolution was well underway and McMahon had cemented herself as its spokesperson. She was always going on about how MMA star Ronda Rousey had proved that women could be a draw in UFC and thus helped the women’s evolution along. In real life, McMahon was close with Rousey and most people thought it was only a matter of time before she appeared in WWE.

As I write more about in a future chapter, that time had come and you can be damn sure the fictional McMahon was going to take credit for it just as she had the women’s evolution, leading to Rousey’s debut match with fellow Olympian Kurt Angle against McMahon and Triple H at WrestleMania 34.

The following year, in an attempt to capitalize on Becky Lynch’s surging popularity and recreate the Attitude era dynamic between Vince’s corrupt boss and the beleaguered everyman Stone Cold Steve Austin, Stephanie and Triple H, as well as Vince, inserted themselves into Lynch’s storyline as obstacles in her way to Rousey and the main event of WrestleMania 35.

Latoya Ferguson writes in An Encyclopedia of Women’s Wrestling: 100 Profiles of the Best in the Sport that much of McMahon’s storylines, especially her involvement with The Authority, “represent[ed] what wrestling fans already felt about the McMahons and their particular corporate choices,” a major element of WWE’s 2010s Reality era, as these storylines will attest.

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To his credit, Triple H has done a lot in NXT to help change the perception of women’s wrestling within WWE as a whole.

“My husband started recruiting elite-level athletes from all over the world and he started training the women the same as the men,” McMahon said on Lilian Garcia’s Chasing Glory podcast. “He started giving them the same match times, the same opportunities within the show so they had the same opportunities to get the same number of rep[etitions] as the men. As we all know, repetition and practice is how you learn. That’s how you grow. If you’re not ever given that opportunity you’re not going to learn and grow at the same rate.”

McMahon has also been a big proponent of women’s wrestling according to women behind the scenes.

“There would have been no career, there would have been no opportunity, there would have been no revamping of the women’s division if Stephanie wasn’t behind it all,” legendary women’s wrestler Trish Stratus said, lending credence to the aforementioned rumor. “She is always supportive of showcasing a strong, powerful woman. There would have been no division and none of the women would have got the push that we needed or the encouragement we needed without her.”

But where it gets trickier is on the main roster, where McMahon primarily works and which is ruled with the iron fist, circa 2002 SmackDown, of her father. No matter how many progressive ideas or writers are hired to make a more inclusive and representative product, the elder McMahon has the final say and will often rewrite storylines the day of and during the show!

As the CBO, then, she should know better than to write verbal checks that her ass can’t catch.

Which brings us back to AJ Lee and the disconnect between what McMahon says and what actually eventuates.

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McMahon is a mouthpiece for the women’s wrestling evolution in WWE. She rarely strays from the company line, repeating things such as “first ever” and “history-making” as well as the fabled story of WWE’s first match in the Middle East.

As I wrote in an earlier chapter, WWE held their first women’s match between Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss in Abu Dhabi in late 2017. McMahon has repeated numerous times in the mainstream media that the crowd chanted “this is hope” in response, when only a few people could be heard chanting that.

She also said in mid-2016 that WWE would begin incorporating queer storylines into the product. At the time of writing there have only been two: WWE’s first out lesbian wrestler Sonya Deville sabotaging her best friend and tag team partner Mandy Rose’s heterosexual love life, out of jealousy because what other emotions to women, particularly queer women, have, and Liv Morgan crashing Lana’s (straight) wedding to Bobby Lashley because Morgan was in love with Lana.

Wrestling critic and host of the Nobodies Watching Wrestling YouTube show Eric Shorey tweeted that WWE’s hollow progressivism is “a perpetual rhetorical catch 22 of pretending to be progressive by hiring and featuring diverse talent but also as a company actively supporting politicians who are working towards the elimination of the civil rights of those same performers. It manifests symptomatically in moments like last night’s already-infamous promo in which a star can discuss ‘breaking barriers’ while strategically not mentioning which barriers and for who: because doing so would inevitably call attention to the company’s conservatism.”

McMahon’s silence when AJ Lee called her out for not practicing the gender equality she preached was stark.

As I mentioned before, this was the same day as #GiveDivasAChance was hatched which, again, McMahon failed to acknowledge on social media.

What she did boost on Twitter was the renaming of the Fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal to the WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal (as I wrote about at the outset of this book) which McMahon made sure included the SEO terms “historic” and #WomensEvolution.

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As CBO, McMahon committed the rare faux pas when she, in 2015, tweeted a quote attributed to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, “philanthropy is the future of marketing, it’s the way r [sic] going 2 [sic] win.” Not unlike her Patricia Arquette tweet, it drew controversy as it positioned WWE’s copious charity endeavors as cynical marketing opportunities. Also similar to the pay equality tweet, this one was sent out on the same day as WrestleMania weekend’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony where the first ever Warrior Award (named in honor of the homophobic Ultimate Warrior, who passed away just days after his own induction the year prior, but awarded to the family of Connor Michalek, who inspired WWE’s pedeatric cancer charity Connor’s Cure after succumbing to the disease) would be presented. McMahon did not express her own feelings towards the quote (retweets are not endorsements etc.).

Another questionable charitable partnership is that between WWE and Susan G. Komen, which reaches a candy-colored sugar high during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Komen has courted controversy for pulling (and then reinstating) funding to Planned Parenthood because they provide abortions, and for its contributions to breast cancer research remaining the same despite a surge in donations and revenue. Like the marketplace feminism I wrote about in the previous chapter, Komen is one of the main perpetrators and beneficiaries of “pinkvertising”: brandishing everything from fracking equipment to products that contain known carcinogens to wrestling ring ropes. Every October WWE and other male dominated industries such as the NFL (who only donate 5% of proceeds from its breast cancer branded merchandise towards finding a cure) come out with all manner of pinkwashed paraphernalia in an attempt to raise awareness of the second most common cancer in women, which I personally think we’re plenty aware of. And because breasts (and breast cancer) equal women, WWE puts a particular focus on women during this time. For example, the first all-women pay-per-view Evolution occurred during October in 2018, and a WWE Fan Council (a collective of fans who are surveyed on their opinions about WWE) questionnaire about the event included half of the questions about Komen. And the range of Rise Above Breast Cancer merchandise has far more in women’s sizes than it does in men’s, a rare occurrence.

Viewed with the hindsight of everything I’ve written about in this chapter and, indeed, the rest of this book, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that the company and the people who run it might see charity work as good press and nothing more. On the other hand, does it matter if WWE has ulterior motives if those in need of charity are benefiting from it? I can imagine McMahon’s answer to that question.

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I’ve been hard on AJ Lee throughout this book, but by using her proverbial voice in an attempt to enact change goes a way to undo some of the damaging rhetoric she spewed towards her female colleagues.

Lee wrote in her book Crazy is My Superpower that she had tried to get more merchandise for women wrestlers, so it’s obviously a sore point for her.

“I tried to pitch for my own merchandise, [but I was told] that ‘women don’t sell’,” she wrote, confirming that she was indeed the first woman wrestler to get her own merchandise since at least Trish Stratus back in the mid-2000s. “When they had considered giving a girl a hat as merchandise a few years earlier, the other women on the roster had complained so much, they scrapped the idea,” which is symptomatic of the desire for the division as a whole wanting more: more opportunities, more money-making ventures, more exposure which they received with the advent of Total Divas and the several fashion and beauty lines many women wrestlers are involved with now. “Since then they hadn’t wanted the trouble and didn’t think it was worth the backlash. Because ‘women don’t sell’.”

Indicative of the “there can only be one” mentality that governed wrestling, and many other male-dominated industries, until recently, of course those starving for opportunity are going to fight over the scraps thrown to them. Thanks in part to Lee, now most women on the roster have their own merchandise but there are still problems such as limited sizing, lack of range at live and international shows, unimaginative designs and opaque production policies.

Lee’s tweet was one of her parting shots to the company, as she left WWE less than two months later, having achieved all that she could at that point, before the #DivasRevolution, and due to personal issues. She said she wanted to leave WWE having made it better for the women who came after her.

“It was widely thought that not only did women not sell, but they couldn’t get ratings either,” Lee continued in her book.

Lee bucked that apparent trend, with her segments with Kaitlyn gaining some of the highest ratings in years. Nowadays, as traditional television ratings trend down as more people watch on demand after the live broadcast, online and on the WWE Network, women’s wrestling segments routinely get millions of views on YouTube.

Given the monopoly her character held over the women’s division during her tenure, the women’s wrestling evolution arguably couldn’t have begun with her still there.

But that wasn’t necessarily Lee’s fault, as merely a player in the game run by McMahon’s family. Lee, along with sportswomen such as Ronda Rousey, Serena Williams and the U.S women’s soccer team, showed WWE that women could indeed sell.

Wrestling is built not on the natural athleticism of its sportspeople but on implementing all the tools at the disposal of a juggernaut such as WWE to catapult them to superstardom. Roman Reigns, John Cena and even The Rock are prime examples of this: WWE wanted them to be the face of their company throughout varying eras so that’s what they were going to be whether the fans liked it or not.

With this in mind, WWE shouldn’t have needed a women’s wrestling evolution or a women’s sports evolution more broadly to invest in female performers: if they really wanted to, they could have made it a priority from the get go.

Which is why it’s so frustrating when McMahon says things like, “we’re pushing for Evolution 2”. Who’s we? The people who run the company, of which you are one? Great, then make it happen.

She’s also said things like, “I’m rooting for you [to be the champion] all the way” to Naomi in season two of Total Divas when it would take her another two years to become women’s champion. It’s not about rooting for someone, it’s about using the power you have to make the thing you want happen to that person.

Film and television critic Angelica Jade Bastién wrote that corporate feminism like that exhibited by McMahon “isn’t so much feminism but a shield that women of privilege use to hold on to the power they’ve garnered—even if it means undermining other women’s concerns... to retain that power.” Though McMahon wields far more power than her one-time foils and stars of Total Divas, they seem to subscribe to similar schools of feminism such as marketplace and individual feminism which I will write about in another chapter.

But maybe it goes back to the ultimate power monger, McMahon’s father, calling the shots at the end of the day.

McMahon said in a 2016 promo upon the return of Shane after a seven-year absence from WWE that he was able to step in where he left off because he was a man, ignoring all the hard work that she had put in while he was away. Shane had talked about how his sons were the heirs to the family business, and McMahon reminded him that her three daughters whom she frequently extolls the virtues of the women’s wrestling evolution happening before their eyes, will have just as much right to be involved if they choose to. Though how much truth there was to the promo remains unclear (rumors of a rift between Shane and the rest of his family have persisted), it served as a metaphor for who controls WWE at the end of the day—Vince McMahon—and who is poised to take it over—Triple H who, perhaps counterintuitively as a man, gets more credit for the women’s evolution than the most powerful woman at the organization, despite her protestations—when he retires or dies, whichever comes first.

Then again, maybe not.

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Rightly or wrongly, McMahon has successfully branded herself as the fairy godmother of the women’s wrestling evolution, calling to mind parallels to another controversial matriarch of the industry.

This is none more evident than in Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy’s book Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History & Rise of Women’s Wrestling which, in its final sentence, describes McMahon thusly:

“The future of women’s wrestling might very well be in her hands.”

If nothing else, she’s earned the title of Chief Brand Officer.

This chapter appears in my book A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment via Fayetteville Mafia Press/Tucker DS Press.

“Can you imagine a white guy writing and directing an original movie that finishes in the top 10 of the domestic box office for the year and shatters the all-time record for most Oscar nominations and then not winning Best Director?” Turns out the actual white guy who won, Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, didn’t even have to do that. [Roger Ebert]

“Black people needing to be twice as good as everybody else is a joke you could make about [Michael B.] Jordan having to play twins to beat four white men at the SAGs.” And beat them he did, at both the Actor Awards and the Academy Awards. [The New York Times]

Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theatre’s first Black principal dancer, danced in Timothée Chalamet’s face wearing her iconic Firebird costume for the Sinners musical number at the Oscars. [Vogue]

The significance of the new Best Casting Oscar, which went to One Battle’s Cassandra Kulukundis. [Vox]

The Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast also has an informative discussion on the topic.

Motion pictures are political. [Salon]

The dearth of rom-coms “has left a void that’s been filled by much more extreme imagery.” [The Atlantic]

Heterosexuality is the real horror in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. [The New York Times]

Planned Parenthood is offering Botox to survive. As Jessica DeFino found at her newsletter Flesh World, the makers of Botox donated to politicians who helped federally defund Planned Parenthood because we exist in a vicious circle. [Wall Street Journal]

“‘We’re Watching the Erasure of Women’s Bodies’: Casting Directors on the State of Size Inclusivity”: “This season, size inclusivity dropped to the lowest it’s been since we started tracking runway representation three years ago,” which is a pretty big indictment because GLP-1s and the return to heroin chic was already on the horizon then, a far cry from the body positive 2010s. [Vogue Business]

Darryl Hannah wrote an op-ed in response to Love Story’s portrayal of her. [The New York Times]

Sofia Coppola directing a Britney Spears biopic?! Yes please! (If they actually let her make it.) [Elle]

The sects are not okay (nor have they ever been): another Duggar molested a child and a Mormon wife had her season of The Bachelorette cancelled after renewed allegations (and video evidence) of domestic violence. [The Cut, USA Today]

Speaking of Taylor Frankie Paul, I’m just gonna leave this here. [Instagram]

So now you’re accused of using AI if you write good. Also, justice for the em dash. [Intelligencer, Salon]

A buzzy new self-published-cum-traditionally-published novel was revealed to be written with AI. The author (“author”)—a Black woman—has been hung out to dry by the publishers who didn’t do their due diligence in discerning if it was written by AI in the first place. It raises questions about who we criticise for AI use (I’m gonna be criticising everyone who uses it sorry) and which demographics are shut out by traditional publishing. [The New York Times, Instagram]

Leigh Stein on Lindy West’s polyamoury book: “I am worthless if I lose Aham is an underlying belief that never gets challenged—by a therapist, by a friend, by her editor, or by the author herself.” [Attention Economy]

Traci Thomas on why book controversy is a good thing for literature. [Threads]

The Rihanna shooting, Heated Rivalry and stan culture. [Friday Things]

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Elsewhere from me:

Speaking of, I had a recent brush with stan culture upon the publication of a piece about the power of gossip in Bridgerton for Shondaland. Entitled “Saying Goodbye to the Lady Whistledown We’ve Always Known,” I got ratioed by angry Bridgerton stans pissed that Penelope gave up her title of Lady Whistledown that she fought so hard for last season which I agree with, but it’s like they didn’t even engage with my piece, which was a history of gossip as a tool of power for women when they didn’t have any other means of exerting it. I think they were mad at the Shondaland production branch and thus were commenting on my Instagram as if I was a representative of it. #Medialiteracy, folks

I covered the Oscars red carpet for the third year in a row for BBC.

I wrote about the most exciting Best Supporting Actress race maybe ever! [Jezebel]

I wrote about how Sinners made it all the way to the Oscars. [The Daily Beast]

I wrote about why Hush is the best horror movie you probably haven’t seen. [Roger Ebert]

I interviewed Saratoga Schaefer about their new novel Trad Wife. [Jezebel]

I wrote about the 60th anniversary of Valley of the Dolls. [Financial Times]

I wrote about Shere Hite, the feminist you've never heard of who changed how we think about sex. [The Meteor]

TV

The Actor Awards [Netflix]

Deadloch S2 [Prime Video]

The Pitt S2 [HBO Max]

Stumble [screeners; Peacock]

Abbott Elementary S5 [Disney+]

The Beauty [Disney+]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

The Comeback S3. How can Michael Patrick King be so good at writing a comedy about “a woman of a certain age” that engages with current issues in the The Comeback and yet completely fumble those same parametres with And Just Like That…? [screeners; currently airing on HBO Max]

The Academy Awards [Seven]

Margo’s Got Money Troubles [screeners; airing on Apple TV+ from 15th April]

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen [Netflix]

The Miniature Wife [screeners; airing on Stan/Peacock from 9th April]

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette [Disney +]

Elsbeth S3 [screeners; Paramount+]

For All Mankind S5 [screeners; currently airing on Apple TV+]

Movies

The Bride! [in theatres]

1000 Women in Horror [Shudder]

How to Make a Killing [in theatres]

Bridesmaids [Stan]

The Craft [Netflix]

Ready or Not: Here I Come [in theatres]

The Magic Faraway Tree. I preferred the real world parts of this tbh [in theatres]

The Drama. Zoë Winters and Hailey Benton Gates steal the show as per use. [in theatres from 2nd April]

Books

Dress, Dreams & Desire by Valerie Steele

Whidbey by T Kira Madden

Femme Feral by Sam Beckbessinger

The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared by Rosa Campbell

Westward Women by Alice Martin

Strange Girls by Sarvat Hasin

Ghost Town by Tom Perrotta

We Are Gathered Here Today by Bobby Finger

Mother is Watching by Karma Brown

The Judgement of Gender by Allison Butler

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (reread)

The Oldest Bitch Alive by Morgan Day

Upward Bound by Woody Brown

The Adjunct by Maria Adelmann

Love is an Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson

Like This, But Funnier by Hallie Cantor

Ruins, Child by Giada Scodellaro

Body Double by Hanna Johansson, Kira Josefsson (trans.)

My Dear You by Rachel Khong

Bad Bunny performed the Super Bowl Half Time show and here are all the references you may have missed. [Rolling Stone]

“Bad Bunny is leading a new wave of Spanish-language musicians that doesn’t have much interest in crossing over anymore.” [Slate]

We were all rooting for Tyra Banks. [The 19th]

The domestic thriller used to symbolise women’s oppression, but more recently they are a metaphor the fear of infiltration of our safe spaces. [TIME]

Sydney Sweeney’s lingerie line Syrn is the brand we deserve now. [The Cut]

Digital blackface is the new minstrelsy. On that topic, go check out Liberty Russell’s book, Black Meme: A History of the Images that Made Us. [The Guardian]

A Black TikToker with Tourette syndrome response to the BAFTA controversy.

Slate interviewed another Black woman with Tourette’s about the incident.

Elsewhere from me:

It’s Oscars season (I’ve got a few more pieces coming up closer to the ceremony in two weeks so look out for those, as well as my red carpet coverage for BBC for the third year running!) and I profiled Amelia Dimoldenberg and the Elton John AIDS Oscars party auctioneer Lydia Fenet for LA Times Envelope.

I interviewed EJ Dickson about her new book One Bad Mother. [She Knows]

I wrote about why Mark Wahlberg probably wont be in a Ryan Murphy project any time soon after Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette dragged him for his hate crime past. [The Daily Beast]

I was on the Powerbombshells podcast to talk about my article on modest women’s wrestling gear.

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TV

Paradise S2 [screeaners; Disney+]

The Pitt S2 [HBO Max]

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model [Netflix]

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette [screeners; Disney +]

The Beauty [Disney+]

Abbott Elementary S5 [Disney+]

Stumble [screeners; Peacock]

Elsbeth S3 [Paramount+]

Lemonade [Tidal]

The Miniature Wife [screeners; Stan/Peacock from 9th April]

The Testaments [screeners; Hulu/Disney+ from 8th April]

Vladimir [screeners; Netflix from 5th March]

Bridgerton S4 P2 [Netflix]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

Movies

“Wuthering Heights” x2. Emerald Fennell continues to terrorise millennial women by giving Jacob Elordi sideburns, piercings and a swoop cut. Alison Oliver supremacy [in theatres]

Fear [VOD]

Hush [Plex]

One Battle After Another [HBO Max]

Sinners [HBO Max]

Scream 7 [in theatres]

Books

P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau

Dekonstructing the Kardashians by MJ Corey

The Jills by Karen Parkman

They by Helle Helle (trans. Martin Aitken)

2008 by Susan McCarty

Head of Household by Oliver Munday

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

The Miniature Wife & Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales

Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill

Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein

Pinky Swear by Danielle Girard

The Silent Period by Francesca Manfredi (trans. Ekin Oklap)

Good Woman by Savala Nolan

Judge Stone by Viola Davis and James Patterson

Happy new year! It’s hard to believe we’re already/only a month into 2026. Earlier this month everyone was posting their throwbacks to ten years ago, as if that was such a great time. But so it goes that the worst years for humanity are the best for me personally. In 2016 my writing career—and writing about women’s wrestling—really took off, and I spent three months in New York.

Speaking of women’s wrestling, hello to all the new followers sent over from Articles of Interest, where the wonderful Avery Trufelman was kind enough to publish my piece on modest wrestling gear at today’s WWE Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia. I wrote about how women wrestlers should be compensated for the custom modest gear they are required to wear in the country, and spoke to gear designer Lori Gassie of No Gimmick Gear and McKenzie Mitchell, who has a book on wrestling gear coming out in April.

Articles Of Interest

Wrestling in Riyadh

On the podcast feed today is a very special treat: a feature from one my favorite new podcasts, Signal Hill. Signal Hill is an audio magazine, where every article, opinion piece, and feature is an original podcast. It’s so smart. There’s a story I particularly love, about a push up bras, which you can hear on the Articles of Interest podcast feed…

Read more

7 months ago · 39 likes · Articles Of Interest and Scarlett Harris

I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to talk to the woman who has played a character who has meant so much to me on a show that has meant so much to me. And just like that, I don’t have to wonder anymore because I got to interview Sarah Jessica Parker, who was everything I dreamed of and more. What a way to start 2026 just as SJP caps off her monumental 2025 in saying goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw, judging the Booker Prize and being awarded the Carol Burnett Golden Globe, all of which she generously divulged to me for The Los Angeles Times.

I reviewed Jennette McCurdy’s debut novel, Half His Age. [Jezebel]

And I wrote about what happened to Dr. Collins on The Pitt. [The Daily Beast]

Though published on New Years Eve, my listicle of feminist music videos to commemorate MTV shutting down its dedicated music channels in Europe and other territories missed last month’s roundup, so here it is. [Jezebel]

Links from the rest of the internet

The Oscar nominations are out. Sinners swept with a record 16 nominations, Wicked: For Good blanked with zero, Sentimental Value was rightfully nominated in many of the big categories, and my pick for Best Actress, Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love, was completely shut out, so I’m putting it all on Rose Byrne and her bearded dragon.

Fewer women directed blockbusters last year than the year prior. [The New York Times]

Young American women want out of the USA. Can’t say I blame them. [Vox]

The Sad Art Dad in Hamnet, Jay Kelly and Sentimental Value. [The Atlantic]

The morbidity of seeking out notorious fashion items. [WaPo]

The rise of Christian music on American Idol. [Rolling Stone]

Marty Supreme is a Ball Smell Movie—and not ping pong balls. [Jude Doyle]

“The rich get Birkins, everyone else gets Shein.” [Back Row]

Move over, dead wives. Dead kids are the thriller motivator du jour. [Marie Claire]

“Every single choice I made in The Housemaid was as artful as the choices I made in The Testament of Ann Lee.” I fricken love Amanda Seyfried. Did you know she has a rescue farm and is an advocate for abortion rights? [The New Yorker]

“Too many women are afraid to exist online, or sometimes, to exist at all.” Paris Hilton and Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez fight deepfake porn. [The Cut]

Odessa A’Zion accepted a Latina role, backlash ensued, and she backed out of the movie. Latinx members of Hollywood signed a petition and creator of the One Day at a Time reboot Gloria Calderón Kellet wrote a missive about the scarcity and politicisation of roles for Latinx actors. [Deadline]

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TV

Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story [VOD]

Anatomy of Lies [7Plus]

Bridgerton S4 [Netflix]

Vanished [screeners; MGM+ from 1st February (US), Prime Video 27th February (Australia)]

Abbott Elementary S5 [Disney+]

The Pitt S2 [HBO Max]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

82nd Golden Globes [Paramount+]

Queer Eye S10 [Netflix]

Stumble [screeners; Peacock]

WWE Unreal S2 [Netflix]

The Beauty [Disney+]

Paradise S1 [Disney+]

The Muppet Show [screener; Disney+ on 4th February]

Royal Rumble [Netflix]

Movies

Chris Brown: A History of Violence [HBO Max]

Caddo Lake [HBO Max]

Borderline [VOD]

Vicious [Paramount+]

The Testament of Ann Lee [screener; in theatres from 27th February]

Valley of the Dolls [YouTube]

The Housemaid [in theatres]

Primate [in theatres]

Send Help [in theatres]

Books

Adult Braces by Lindy West

Swiftynomics by Misty L. Heggeness

The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies & Took Over the World by Vicky Osterweil

Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. Mann

Kin by Tayari Jones

Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas

The Body by Bethany C. Morrow

He’s the Devil by Tobi Coventry

Patchwork Dolls by Ysabelle Cheung

Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

You With the Sad Eyes by Christina Applegate

Dream Facades by Jack Balderrama Morley

Threads of Triumph by McKenzie Mitchell

Ava by Victoria Dillon

AlphaPussy by Gina Gershon

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Pantone’s colour (shade) of the year is white because of course it is.

The Flytrap republished one of my Bitch Media articles from a few years ago about the bad white moms of Christmas!

The Golden Globe nominations are out.

So are the Costume Designers Guild noms. [Variety]

And the nominations for the Hair and Makeup Stylists Guild. [Variety]

The University of California San Francisco’s Center for Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health released their annual Abortion Onscreen report, and there were only two fewer abortion plotlines on TV compared to last year, which was the highest since they started recording in 2016. Unfortunately, there were more shame-filled plotlines as well as characters who underwent abortions feeling isolated and abortion as a marker of murderousness or violent tendencies. The Hunting Wives, I’m looking at you.

And UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report showed that 91.7% of these scripted streaming series were created by a white person, and 78.9% were created by a white man. It’s upsetting if not surprising that diverse shows are often the first to be axed—or in this case, not given a chance at all—in times of uncertainty. Look at the deluge of cancellations of shows depicting women and queer characters and characters of colour in the wake of the pandemic, and with the backlash to DEI and wokeness after Trump’s second inauguration, shows such as Clean Slate starring Laverne Cox, Nastasha Rothwell’s underrated How to Die Alone and the queer military drama Boots were all cancelled after one season. How many of these interesting and specific stories won’t make it past a pilot, pitch meeting or even budding creators shutting their own ideas down before Hollywood has a chance to do it for them? A damn shame. [The Wrap]

“It’s a shame that such a revealing look at a famous sociopath risks being overshadowed by the ultimately irrelevant casting of the doc as just another point 50 Cent has scored in his beef with Diddy.” [Defector]

Women use AI less than men which isn’t surprising. [The Noösphere]

The Noösphere

There's a Reason Women Aren't Swooning Over AI Like Men Are

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

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9 months ago · 8544 likes · 342 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

The Vince Gilligan unlikeable female character dislikers have logged on. [Reddit]

Sydney Sweeney might only speak up when she has an issue she wants to be heard about, but here’s what her roles have been saying. [The New York Times]

“Complaints about the quiet parts of Pluribus, or the pace of its plot, may stem from a misconception about what type of TV it is, but for both better and worse, it’s unquestionably a slower burn than its mystery-box brethren.” [The Ringer]

Elsewhere from me:

I wrote about All’s Fair. I’m so sorry. [DAME]

For the 45th anniversary of 9 to 5, I wrote about how the workplace woes of women haven't changed all that much! [The Meteor]

How does one costume design for CGI? I spoke to Deborah L. Scott, Avatar costume designer and longtime James Cameron collaborator, ahead of Avatar: Fire & Ash. [BFI]

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TV

All’s Fair S1 [Disney+]

Elsbeth S3 [Paramount+]

The Chair Company S1 [HBO Max]

The Kardashians S7 [Disney+]

Abbott Elementary S5

Pluribus S1 [Apple TV+]

The Hunting Wives S1 [Stan]

Emily in Paris S5 [Netflix]

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era [Disney+]

Saturday Night’s Main Event (John Cena’s retirement match) [YouTube]

The ’Burbs S1 [screeners; Peacock from 8th February]

The Pitt S2 [screeners; HBO Max from 8th January]

Stumble S1 [Peacock]

Sean Combs: The Reckoning [Netflix]

G.R.I.T.S. S1 [ALLBLCK]

Movies

The Intern [Netflix]

Merrily We Roll Along [screener; in theatres]

Christy [preview screening; in theatres from 7th January]

Hamnet [in theatres]

Goodbye June [Netflix]

Sarah Squirm: Live + in the Flesh [HBO Max]

The Housemaid [in theatres]

The Mastermind [Mubi]

Wicked [Netflix]

Wicked: For Good [in theatres]

The Family Stone [Stan]

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery [Netflix]

Nouvelle Vague [Netflix]

Sentimental Value [in theatres]

Books

We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian

Oh, Sister by Jodie Chapman

Okay Days by Jenny Mustard

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen

The Honeyeater by Jessie Tu

The Introvert’s Guide to Leaving the House by Jenny Valentish

Holy Woman by Louise Omer

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington

I Wrote This for Attention by Lukas Gage

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Black Bear by Trina Moyles

I Could be Famous by Sydney Rende

The Hitch by Sara Levine

American Fantasy by Emma Straub

Culture

Westwood | Kawakubo (until 19th April 2026), Women Photographers 1900-1975 (until 3rd May 2026) and Dior in the NGV Collection (until 1st March 2026) [National Gallery of Victoria]

Diva [Australian Museum of Performing Arts; until 26th April 2026]

Best of 2025

I usually do my best of lists of books, movies and TV on social media but this year I thought I’d try making it for paid subscribers only, so if you want to see my favourite culture of the year, you’ll have to subscribe!

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Top TV

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People magazine finally got their Sexiest Man Alive right for the first time since at least the ’90s, and Jonathan Bailey is the first openly gay man to be bestowed that honour!

Meanwhile, I guess there are no women in Hollywood. [Vanity Fair]

Chante Joseph wrote about how being in a relationship is embarrassing now and I just want to say: welcome to the hoards of single women who are now realising men ain’t shit to a lifestyle I’ve been repping for at least a decade. [Vogue]

Decorative skeletons are sexist. [Slate]

The connection between the return of skinny chic and famine/food inequality. [Friday Things]

50 years of Damned Whores & God’s Police. [Sydney Morning Herald]

Feminist horror novels are the defining texts of 2025. [Elle]

Teen Vogue has folded into Vogue. I wrote for the former earlier this year. [The New York Times]

The theme of next year’s Met Gala is “Costume Art,” or basically fashion and the body. [Elle]

Shein is going to start publishing books. [Publisher’s Weekly]

“I Love L.A. brings to mind a larger question: Are we in a TV character drought? Will we ever have someone as iconic and knowable as Carrie Bradshaw or Don Draper on our screens again?” [Vox]

“Why is there so much less TV these days about being young and single and just figuring it all out with a little help from your friends?” [The Ankler]

The Ankler.

Gen Z Is Huge. Their TV Shows Are Tiny. And Hollywood Is Panicking

Whitney Friedlander is based in L.A. and writes about entertainment and cu…

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9 months ago · 255 likes · 4 comments · Whitney Friedlander

The Beast in Me and the bronze age of TV. [The New Republic]

GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV report for the 2024–25 found that 41% of all queer characters will disappear from TV next season due to character deaths/exits or show endings/cancellations, including 61% of trans characters. TV is a mirror of reality after all, and with DEI rollbacks and the personhood of trans people being threatened by the Trump administration, this unfortunately isn’t a surprise even though it’s a great disappointment. [GLAAD]

Elsewhere from me:

I wrote about Who Runs The World 2, Metroplex Wrestling’s all-women’s wrestling series created by the wrestler Athena out of Texas. Three all-women’s wrestling shows in six months, meanwhile WWE can only manage two in seven years… [The Meteor]

In honour of Wicked: For Good, I wrote about the enduring image of the witch’s hat. [BBC]

Elsbeth skewered Katy Perry for trying to buy a nunnery, the Mother Superior of which died during proceedings, and pop superstardom more broadly. [The Daily Beast]

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TV

All Her Fault S1. I was going to give this one a miss because it looked like every other streaming series about a privileged family, but all the thinkpieces about how it grapples with women’s labour convinced me to give it a go and I actually really enjoyed it! [Binge]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

The Kardashians S7 [Disney+]

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

The Beast in Me S1 [Netflix]

All’s Fair S1 [Disney+]

The Morning Show S4 [Apple TV]

Abbott Elementary S5

Sex & the City S6 [HBO Max]

Wicked: One Wonderful Night [7plus]

G.R.I.T.S. S1 [ALLBLCK]

Elsbeth S3 [Paramount+]

Pluribus S1 [Apple TV]

The Chair Company S1 [HBO Max]

Stumble S1 [screeners; Peacock]

Joey S1-2. I was never able to watch Joey when it aired because I had to work the night it was on. I was surprise to learn it got two seasons, the final eight episodes of which never aired due to low ratings so the Friends YouTube channel dumped them all on there last month and the completist that I am watched them all. I didn’t miss much. [YouTube]

Movies

Hedda [Prime Video]

Twinless [VOD]

The Ugly Stepsister [Shudder]

Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon [screener]

A Merry Little Ex-Mas [Netflix]

Oh. What. Fun. [screener; Prime Video from 3rd December[

Wicked: For Good. Some of the new stuff ironically felt rushed and not dramatic enough. This is Glinda’s movie, and Ariana Grande knocks it out of the park yet again showing a different side to the character. Nessarose done dirty. [in theatres]

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery [in theatres; on Netflix from 12th December]

Anniversary [screener]

Eternity [in theatres]

Avatar. Baby’s first Avatar as I’m writing about Fire & Ash [Disney+]

Books

Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy

Ravishing by Eshani Surya

Life After Ambition by Amil Niazi

Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart

The Fashion of Clueless by Mona May

How to Read a Wedding Dress by Lydia Edwards

Lipstick Object Lesson by Eileen G’Sell

An Academic Affair by Jodi McAllister

Pandora by Ana Paula Pacheco

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us by Danielle J. Lindemann

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma

The Modern by Anna Kate Blair

One Bad Mother by E.J. Dickson

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz

The Slicks by Maggie Nelson

“Taylor Swift used to try to hide her ambition. It didn’t always go well.” [Vox]

“Don’t ever tell a man he’s stacked and his podcast is good. This line may singlehandedly fast-track the downfall of civilisation.” [Vulture]

“There is no way to interpret Swift, the biggest pop star of all time, attacking another female pop star as anything but punching down.” [The Guardian]

“A billionaire asking her fans to buy several editions of the same exact mediocre album is a little hard to stomach.” [Defector]

“Is Taylor Swift’s New Album Bad Enough To Trigger Class Consciousness?” [HuffPost]

Every time Beyoncé puts a new album out she changes the music industry, even when she’s not trying to. [The Hollywood Reporter]

The incomparable Betty Gilpin wrote a letter to AI actress Tilly Norwood. [The Hollywood Reporter]

“What is up with Paul Thomas Anderson and Black women?” [The Guardian]

“Despite a powerhouse cast of Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti, Black women are little more than props and plot devices” in One Battle After Another. [Black Girl Watching]

“Erika Kirk and tradwife influencers owe a lot to Phyllis Schlafly.” [HuffPost]

“Gen X Men on TV Are Really Going Through It.” [Whatever Nevermind]

“Price-Tag TV & the Transformation of Television Prestige.” [Public Books]

“Like Ed Gein, Monster doesn’t know when to stop.” [Vulture]

“To Catch a Predator was just the first in a long line of predatory entertainment about predators.” [The New Yorker]

Internet sleuthing celebrity breakups. [WashPost]

“I don’t wanna feel like I have to get plastic surgery, or go on a pill, in order to participate in this world.” Does fashion—suddenly—hate women? [Concorde]

There’s a Romy and Michele musical! [Vogue]

There’s a new tartan created to honour those accused of witchcraft in Scotland. [Smithsonian]

A new season of Avery Truffelman’s Articles of Interest podcast is out, this time about the intersection between the outdoors industry and the military. “My pet peeve about my show is that I always have to start it in like the 1700s.”

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Elsewhere from me:

I interviewed Eleanor Johnson, author of the fascinating new book Scream with Me about feminism and horror. Definitely pick up a copy! [Jezebel]

The enduring legacy of the showgirl for Showgirls’s 30th anniversary and The Life of a Showgirl. [CNN Style]

Let Emily Blunt be more than a wife, a role she reprises in The Smashing Machine. [The Daily Beast]

I interviewed Grey’s Anatomy’s newest castmember, Trevor Jackson, about taking up the mantle of Black doctors on TV. [Essence]

Victoria Beckham’s new Netflix docuseries was the reconsideration of the former Spice Girl we didn’t know we needed. [TIME]

Robert and Michelle King did it again, predicting the late night scandal on the season three opener of Elsbeth. [TIME]

I interviewed Nicole Lamy, new series editor of The Best American Short Stories. [The Creative Independent]

Movies

A Different Man [Binge]

HIM [in theatres]

Good Boy [in theatres]

All of You [Apple TV+]

9 to 5 [Disney+]

Still Working 9 to 5 [Tubi]

After the Hunt [in theatres]

Frankenstein. Not usually my thing but this was objectively brilliantly made and a top contender for one of my favourite films of the year. [in theatres; premiering from 7th November on Netflix]

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (2025) [Disney+]

Oh, Hi [VOD]

Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

Bugonia. So fucked up. I loved it! [in theatres]

Lurker [screener; in theatres from 27th November]

Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025). I wanted to love this more than I did, but the strength of the performances from J.Lo, Diego Luna and especially Tonatiuh bumped it up. It leaves the original movie, which can be insensitive, in the dust. [in theatres]

Roofman [in theatres]

Die My Love. Top three movie of the year and pushed Frankenstein from that slot. Jennifer Lawrence is a revelation and my pick for Best Actress so far. [in theatres from 6th November]

Eleanor the Great [Jewish Film Festival; wide release from 27th November]

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You [in theatres from 13th November]

TV

Chad Powers S1 [Disney+]

Elsbeth S3 [Paramount+]

Grey’s Anatomy S22 [Disney+]

The Morning Show S4 [Apple TV]

Abbott Elementary S5

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S27

Monster: The Ed Gein Story [Netflix]

Victoria Beckham [Netflix]

Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar [SBS On Demand]

Nobody Wants This S2 [Netflix]

Hal & Harper S1 [Stan]

Peacemaker S2 [HBO Max]

I Love LA S1 [screeners; HBO Max from 2nd November]

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy [Binge]

Sex & the City S5-6 [HBO Max]

The Kardashians S7 [Disney+]

He Had It Coming S1 [screeners; Stan from 20th November]

Books

The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee

Mother of God by Sara Peters

Morbidly Curious by Coltan Scrivner

Near Flesh by Katherine Dunn

The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

Women vs. Hollywood by Helen O’Hara

Fashion in American Life by Hazel Clark & Lauren Downing-Peters (eds)

America: A Lexicon of Fashion by Metropolitan Museum of Art

Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis

Looking for Tank Man by Ha Jin

Only God Can Judge Me by Jeff Pearlman

Millennials Killed the Video Star by Amanda Ann Klein

I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum

Culture

Wicked costumes pop up [Federation Square; closed]

Scream 7/Reese’s Pieces escape room [Strike Bowling; closed]

Fridays Live [Marvel Stadium]

This month Charlie Kirk was assassinated, a bunch of people lost their jobs over it, the most prominent of which was Jimmy Kimmell, who returned to the air a week later, and then there was the rapture that wasn’t. I need a nap.

“Erika Kirk Will Never Replace Her Husband.” [Salon]

The Times contended that using AI is a feminist act. I interviewed Laura Bates about all the reasons why it isn’t. [Wired]

“In the world of men being productive, women seem not to exist.” Or they do, but they’re offscreen, performing invisible labour, like fetching ice water and filming the morning routine videos. [Business Insider]

“The Less You Know About AI, the More You Are Likely to Use It.” [Wall Street Journal]

The summer of high-trash feminism with The Girlfriend, Hunting Wives and Sirens. [Vulture]

Russell Wilson needs to stop trying to coerce Ciara into having another baby. And I know everyone loves Kieran Culkin, but he can miss me with that, too. [Friday Things, NBC News]

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Elsewhere from me:

Mariah Carey finally won a VMA! [The Meteor]

I interviewed Keeley Hazell about her new memoir, Everyone’s Seen My Tits, my first for Jezebel.

I interviewed Laura Bates about A.I. and the new frontier of misogyny. [Wired]

I wrote about the environmental impact of cosmetic surgery. [Atmos]

So far I’ve written about three of my favourite things for TIME: women’s wrestling, Sex & the City and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which finally has its first female showrunner, Michele Fazekas, after 27 seasons!

I wrote about why John Cena’s theme song is wrestling’s most iconic. [The Age/Sydney Morning Herald]

TV

Gen V S2 [screeners, currently airing on Prime Video]

Sex & the City S1-4 [HBO Max]

The Twelve S3 [Binge]

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation S8 [Paramount+]

The Morning Show S4 [Apple TV+]

The Emmys [Binge]

Watching You S1 [screeners, premiering from 3rd October on Stan]

Movies

Splitsville [in theatres]

Model (1981) [Kanopy]

Stans [Paramount+]

Highest 2 Lowest [Apple TV+]

Motherland [screener, VOD]

Shell [screener, VOD from 3rd October]

Skincare [Netflix]

Rosemary’s Baby [VOD]

The Stepford Wives (1975) [VOD]

The Omen [VOD]

The Exorcist [VOD]

Alien [Stan]

The Smashing Machine [in theatres from 3rd October] (article coming soon)

Culture

French Impressionism and Kimono [National Gallery of Victoria; until 5th October]

American Psycho: The Musical [Chapel Off Chapel; closed]

Books

Seed by Bri Lee

The Last Hart Beating by Nattie Neidhart

I Am You by Victoria Redel

Christmas at the Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery

Doll Parts by Penny Zang

Unbearable by Irin Carmon

Without Consent by Sarah Weinman

Cruelty Free by Caroline Glenn

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

Beings by Ilana Masad

Superfine by Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hermès Philosophy by Mara Cappelletti

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

Hush Little Children by Hayan Charara

Jezebel gave me my feminist awakening. I think I always had feminist ideals, but it wasn’t until I started reading the blog in 2010 that I was able to put a label to it.

Jezebel also made me into the writer I am today. Along with Mia Freedman (*insert “you either die a hero” idiom here*) and Australian Cosmopolitan, which I grew up reading and informed my writing voice and style, Jezebel taught me how to be an opinionated feminist writer on the internet.

So it’s fitting that I interviewed actress and writer Keeley Hazell about her own feminist awakening for my first byline for Jezebel.

Her memoir, Everyone’s Seen My Tits: Stories & Reflections from An Unlikely Feminist, was published last week. I spoke to Hazell about class, image-based sexual assault and the Ted Lasso of it all.

Check out the piece here.

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Did you hear? Taylor Swift got engaged.

I spoke to Kristen Lopez about the new wave of culture critics migrating to Substack. [The Film Maven]

Anti-blackness on Love Island. [The Meteor]

“The changes A.I. will make to work in the coming years threaten to worsen the question of purpose that seems to be at the heart of today’s male malaise: What is a man for?” [Slate]

“WWE Doesn’t Care About Women. It Never Has.” [She Digressed]

What if it’s not gun violence, child abuse or radicalisation to be feared in Weapons? What if it’s the single woman? [The Atlantic]

Michelle Obama portraitist Amy Sherold wrote about her decision to withdraw an exhibition of her work from the Smithsonian in the wake of the Trump administration’s censorship. [MSNBC Opinion]

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TV

And Just Like That… final season 😢 [HBO Max]

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation S8 [Paramount+]

The Twelve S3 [Binge]

Only Murders in the Building S5 [screeners; premiering 9th September on Disney+]

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox [Disney+]

Veep S6-S7 [HBO Max]

Movies

Freaky Friday [Disney+]

Sentimental Value. Vying for my favourite film of the year so far, against Sinners. [preview screening; in theatres from 25th December]

Together [in theatres]

In the Heights [VOD]

Freakier Friday [in theatres]

Weapons [in theatres]

Sorry, Baby [MIFF; in theatres from 4th September]

One More Shot [MIFF; coming soon to Stan]

Juror #2 [HBO Max]

Subservience [Prime Video]

The Assessment [Prime Video]

Eenie Meanie [Disney+]

The Chronology of Water [MIFF]

Honey Don’t [in theatres]

Books

Moderation by Elaine Castillo

Open Wide by Jessica Gross. The author really lives up to her surname. Deeply fucked up; I loved it. Shot straight to the top of my favourite books only 2025 list.

Popcorn Disabilities by Kristen Lopez

Softly, As I Leave You by Priscilla Presley

It Girl: The Life & Legacy of Jane Birkin by Marisa Meltzer

Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

The Man of Middling Height by Fadi Zaghmout

Upstanding Young Man by Sharon Doering

Where Are You Really From? by Elaine Hsieh Chou

The Unveiling by Quan Barry

Dilf by Jude Ellison S. Doyle

When We Were Brilliant by Lynn Cullen

Crushmore by Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin & Sophie Ansari

The House of Beauty by Arabelle Sicardi

Culture

Joy nostalgia exhibition [Immigration Museum, closed]

In the Heights [Comedy Theatre until 6th September]

Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Museum, Australia Zoo, Brisbane Whale Watching. Check out more pics, including videos of a humpback whale calf and a double breach, at my Instagram. [Brisbane, ongoing]

ICYMI:

I interviewed Kassia St. Clair about her new book on the history of the Liberty print.

Freakier Friday and our obsession with youth.

A short and sweet goodbye to And Just Like That…

Elsewhere from me:

… because I had the opportunity to write about how the show was a missed one to explore sex in later life for TIME, and how And Just Like That… let Carrie be single, something the original show didn’t.

I interviewed Cole Walliser, director of E!’s red carpet Glambot, ahead of the Emmys. [The Los Angeles Times Envelope]