I also remember hiding in-between the walls of my home. Renovations from a fire preceding my birth left small openings at various points throughout the house I could easily slip into. There was something therapeutic about the whole ordeal. It felt like nonexistence, like falling into a black hole. The truth of the matter is that since I was very young, I have craved this feeling of nonexistence. To be nowhere, belong to nobody. I know that sounds all very Sylvia Plath of me, but it’s the honest truth. If it wasn’t the walls, I’d split out of a family party, go into the yard or a closet or under a bed. I’d let my family call out my name and let it go unanswered. I’d receive my lashings when discovered, and with exhaustion my grandmother would say It’s alright if you’d like your privacy, but we’ve got to know where you are. I couldn’t begin to explain that no one knowing where I was, was the point.

In my early twenties I decided to see a therapist and was told over and over that I have severe detachment issues that probably spanned from my nonverbal years, prior to living with my grandparents. The idea is all very nice and everything, but I really prefer to say I am merely addicted to agency. The keys are always in my hand should I deem it necessary to obtain a getaway car. There is something unnerving about people like that. We are genetically engineered to sense hesitation, any flinching creature who is unpredictable and assign them a threat. Like when you go oversees to get inside tiger enclosures and they say Don’t you dare get scared, don’t you dare act nervous, because they’ll take that as a welcome for a fight. And I’ve had my fair share of fights. I’ve been a shitty friend, horrid wife, a messy bitch, the worst kind of daughter. All in the name of making sure if I wasn’t fucking with the vibes anymore, I could see myself out.

A sure way I have been always able to gain the trust of others has been through writing. Regrettably, the self revealing kind. The more I spill spill spill, the more engagement I get. I think it’s my ability to tell the truth, the kind of truth you can get killed for nowadays. A truth that is not rooted in the discourse riddled, black and white thinking that is virtually my version of spiritual warfare. Whenever I don’t know what to write, I sit down at my computer and just write out my truths. I don’t think myself a prophet, I believe I have been messy and revengeful and self involved enough in my life to just simply get it. I just don’t care what people have or have not done in the name of their own self interests. And actually, I think you need to experience a bitch like that in your life to know that you can Freak the fuck out, burn it all to the ground, and be on your merry way. A woman can be a dumpster fire, nothing more than a tongue like a sawed off shotgun. Let the pitchforks and torches come knocking, they will get bored. They are so quick to get fucking bored.

As self involved as I am inclined to be, I never much thought about what I meant to other people so much as what they were to me. Maybe that is self involved? Let me know. Anyways, it occured to me in the last couple months when I got a confession from a close confidant that they had done something probably deemed unforgivable by most. Not assault or murder or any legal matter, let us be clear. But the kind of thing that would warrant a 10 part TikTok series in today’s climate. But yet also, the kind of thing your grandmother would reveal while you chopped carrots together in the kitchen. Something she did many moons ago in her youth that would cause you to gasp, giggle, and say Not You, Grandma! And she’d wave her hand in the air, clearing dust from the past and respond with Such were the times.

Given what I have allowed and moved past from my own life, there was no great reaction. No chastising looks of judgment. We shared a cigarette, she said she just knew she could tell me. From there I silently recalled all the times I have been a burial ground for shame and humiliation. When someone sat in front of me, removed a couple pounds of baggage, and took a sigh of relief. A full circle moment for the girl who hid in between her walls, disappeared into black holes after becoming a tornado and destroying all the shit in her wake. Wondering if I’d be sentenced to a life of punishment for the years I was a headcase, a cunt, a liar. I think I’m just a good place to keep secrets, ‘cause I have a junk pile of my own. I am a good place to be absolved of guilt. I am a reassuring thought. I really hate getting too Hallmark-y with my birthday reflections, but I know it’s an almost inevitable curse to fear time slipping by with age. I am once again comforted by the reminder that the years really do answer the questions we might not even think to ask. Thank God for the years I was The Fucking Worst. Thank God for 27.

~

I requested a Proof of Life photoshoot taken by my friend Jazmyn on the beach this past fourth. After doing the typical poses, the safe ones that always concealed my post morning bagel bloat, I observed the photos while laying horizontal on my towel. Using my hand to shadow the screen under the hot July sun I felt a deep sense of panic. I observed someone I did not recognize. My mid section seemed to balloon between my upper and lower body. The hips and curves I take pride in felt lost under rolls of fat and a swollen pooch. Never like any other time before, did I want to scream Mother FUCK in public. To scare the happy LBI beach goers, make the bucket hat babies cry in fear. To go up to all the other girls my age and younger and curse them the fuck out for being in a bikini next to me. Happy birthday, America

I knew I gained 20 pounds in a span of 3 months after being a healthy and stable weight the whole of my life. I knew because I weighed myself on New Years while visiting my girlfriend’s mother in Pittsburgh and quietly pulling the scale from under the bathroom sink while she was downstairs making cookies. Things weren’t fitting; I had my suspicions. But 20 pounds felt absurd. I soothed myself by chanting internally that it was January, and I had at the very least 6 months to remedy the situation. Time apparently got away from me, and no changes were applied to my diet or exercise.

Part of me finds it endearing to be this way in the current climate. I’ve written other cultural commentary on the ozempic apocalypse, enter Starving People Can’t Fuck. Maybe if I (God willing) become an old lady I can look back on this time and smile with pride that I was indulgent when everyone fought to fight hunger. I don’t long to be thin in that way-to be clear. I don’t mind not fitting into Brandy Melville. I don’t mind being built like a fertility sculpture. I mind that my body became something foreign, seemingly overnight. I mind that I didn’t have the willpower to do something about it. I mind that in a subconscious way, I’ve written off participating in certain ventures until I deem myself hot enough to experience them.

Some of my favorite artists have been picked apart and dissected for striking before and afters. Sarah Pidgeon from Love Story transformed into CBK by going platinum blonde. Color analysts use this as an example for why finding your true tones are so important. She thought she was a soft spring, when in all actuality she’s a warm autumn. Now she is the face of Dior. Knowing your season is life or death. Inde Naravette from Obsession, however, should credit her overnight stardom to striping the LA blonde and going jet black. Also losing weight, of course. Thank you Twitter.

You can remove yourself from the narrative, but never from reality. I know that statistically, attractive people make more money. They are trusted more. They succeed more. Our vanity precedes us in every room. Especially in the artistic community. I know my lover will adore me until I go soft and grey, but that doesn’t mean the world will. Nothing about being beautiful directly impacts any of my dreams. I want to be a great writer, be so great that people want to take pictures of me, but not for the cover of Vogue or Cosmo. My Leo sun cannot be denied, but my ambition doesn’t lean towards being a runway model or sex symbol nor has it ever. So why does it matter???

Because yet, there is a chance even still the world will open wider if I become better looking. Perhaps if I finally figure out what my season is (soft autumn or deep summer??!!) my life will make more sense. If I sit at the bottom of my BMI percentage, laser off my teenage acne scars, perfect a base routine, do pilates, invest in Paloma Wool clothing and french manicures, get comfortable with uncomfortable shoes, keep a waxed pussy at all times, laminate my eyebrows and stick to a signature fragrance my life will become more. Caroline Calloway said scheming her way into an ozempic prescription worked. Zara Larson and Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter personal rebrands skyrocketed their careers without changing a thing about their music. Is there someone I can call, do you think? Someone I can make a check out to, any number, and say please, do whatever you can.

My mother’s beauty was a great fixture of my girlhood wonder and jealousy. She was voted most attractive, I got most likely to be tardy. When my cystic acne started around age 10, she looked at me with bewilderment and dramatically exclaimed (she denies this still) we have to take you to a hospital! Her face had never seen a zit, her hair never a bad day. Freshly after high school she entered a bar that was hosting a modeling competition. Too shy to enter, she was approached by the judges afterwards who told her if she entered she would have won. From there, they paid for 6 months of modeling classes and constantly tried to talk her into living in a New York City modeling house. Whether or not she would have gone, is unknown to even her. She got pregnant with me the following winter.

One day while recounting this story, she took a pause and said the saddest thing I had ever heard anyone say. She told me that the day she walked into a crowded bar and was no longer the most beautiful woman in the room was the day she died a little inside. I think her beauty was proof that she deserved a good life, better than what she maybe ended up with. The hazel green eyes, natural blonde, 5’11 stature she given was a very precious gift she most probably feels she squandered. This was my first lesson on the precarious nature of beauty.

There is an unwritten expectation in performing beauty. Something often confused with cleanliness or a good mental state. Manicured nails and a full face of makeup belongs to a woman who not only cares what other people think, but nurtures herself. If you want an unkempt model-off-duty look, you had better have a nasty face card and size two waist. If you are overweight or have crooked teeth or a deviated septum there is an assumption that you either don’t love yourself or haven’t yet achieved the facilities it takes to remedy The Situation.

Lena Dunham’s Famesick press stop on Drew Barrymore’s talk show raises one to my forementioned grievance. She too, has been peppered with side comments on remarks as to why she wouldn’t get on GLP1’s when she so clearly has the access to afford it. The line, Dunham explains, between what we do for ourselves and for other’s comfort has been blurred. Mostly everyone who chisels away at their body denounces it’s for anyone but themselves. No one ever comes forth and says it was for the sake of polite society. To keep the eyes of a wandering husband. To be taken more seriously. No one says that they decided to run an experiment on how they might be loved if they simply change.

There is a possibility for me, even still. I very well could be one box dye away from greatness. A few dress sizes from a book deal, or being discovered and cast in an A24 indie. They will post before and afters of me as an example for What Life Can Be Like. Photos of me and my friends in dimly lit bars from someone’s Instagram next to me on the red carpet. Or my delusions will get the best of me and I’ll succumb to a more Requiem for a Dream type fate. The clown haired mother, sweating out speed and cottage cheese, withering and wanting by the television waiting for her big break on The Tabby Tibbon’s Game Show. All wound up to go nowhere fast.

There is another option I suppose. Another experiment of sorts. Forgetting the brand revamp and seeing how far I can go, how much joy I can covet by existing plainly - but wholly. To not live in a series of before and after. Before and After I gained weight, Before and After I got my braces off, Before and After the grays came in. I can see how loved I would be regardless.

love, hailey,

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

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I am of the belief that women and girls spend the better part of their lives negotiating their own innocence. The female experience is an accusatory one. To be a girl is to be in a constant state of trouble, the allegations never clear. We are used as neutralizers. Scapegoats and masters of seduction all unbeknownst to us. Forgoing innocence in pursuit of freedom is the bargain we all make at one point or another.

Clinging on to symbols of girlhood has long since been documented on the internet. I gathered images of meadows and baby animals with milky filters on Tumblr like a scrapbook of my youth. The delicate creatures and dream-like state coated my transcendence into womanhood like a protection spell. Perhaps it served as a subconscious reminder that some part of me would always remain as pure. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Ascending from childhood, prematurely yes, likened to taming a wild animal. That’s the way it would seem. My relationship to my father changed drastically, as well as all other men and women who taught or reared me to some capacity. I remember smearing eyeshadow on my lid in the bathroom, turning my head and seeing him sneering. Sneering. Like a villain in a storybook! Smearing lipstick across my face in a clown’s grimace when I was a toddler seemed to have a more endearing effect. But nothing is endearing about a girl growing into a woman.

I didn’t understand, but I did. The changes were happening and it made me tainted. And in turn, the hysteria set in. A perfectly sound person can get sent to the looney bin and come out completely insane. That’s what it felt like. That might be the backbone of female hysteria; being sane in a world full of crazies. The listlessness of suburbia seeped into my brain overnight and there I was, understanding just why the Libson sisters ended it all.

It’s no wonder why I developed what I now refer to as The Baby Deer complex. You may question how it is different from the fawn defense. The Baby Deer Complex is not a defense mechanism at all, but rather an act of self-preservation. It does not serve to save you from an attacker, it reminds you that you are not dangerous. There is nothing about your body, your desire, your selfish wants and needs (as a woman) that is inherently destructive.

Most girls share the same North Star, philosopher and oracle: Sofia Coppola. Her parallels to the feminine experience embody a universal experience. Deeper than the visual aesthetics, she was always good for capturing The Feeling. How so much of being a girl is waiting around for your life to happen. Wondering if you might be loved. What is required for survival. And how much of it is weighing the dangers for a chance at life.

One could argue that Coppola invented the meme I’m Just a Girl. Just not in the way it has become. The synonym for idiocy or naivety. An explanation for some transgression like not checking your engines oil or racking up a credit card bill. But innocence all the same. She put a pair of teal converse into a shot of Marie Antionette to remind us that fall of French aristocracy was put on the shoulders of a 14 year old. We see the Lisbon sisters and Pricilla in constant aimless states of lounging and toying with childhood memorabilia while simultaneously tantalizing men. All the good trouble seems to come from her characters merely existing.

When I met Sophia last week at the BookMarc signing, I sat in line and tried to come up with a solid question to ask her. Her favorite mediums, books, and films were public knowledge so that was no good. I have a close pregnant friend, could I ask her philosophies on raising children on her behalf? Again, probably knowledge buried in some interview. Finally, I settled on the one that could serve most useful: what is the first step of your creative process?

Her answer: daydreaming. It’s funny, because I’ve been talking and writing and thinking so deeply about innocence and freedom. Existence in my own terms has caused me a great deal of trouble in my own short life. It has been a constant barter, how much can I ask for and what penance I will have to pay as a result. But daydreaming might be the one thing we can indulge in without trial. Where the world you build can remain beautiful and limitless without the stain of reality. That’s probably the most important place for a girl in a place like this.

love love love,
hailey

Now, at the height of U.S education’s downfall, teachers from my Pennsylvania hometown have started peddling the slogan, Educate, Don’t Facilitate! across white t-shirts and picketing signs in response to administrators hiring “facilititors”, who unlike teachers lack relevant certifications or experience leading classroom instruction. If anyone could facilitate education, then no one needs the salary of an “expert”.

Late last year, the Trump Administration deemed education as a nonprofessional degree. It appears that the matter of whether or not teachers are experts of education has been called into question, along with whether or not we need experts at all. I couldn’t help but wonder: Is expertise losing its novelty?

Fran Lebowitz once said that the audience is just as integral to a performance as the performers. Case in point: the NYC’s AIDS crisis. Lebowitz pointed out that we have a tendency to memorialize the performers lost during the epidemic while overlooking the audience. The culture of the arts was held at a more higher caliber because the audience had a true standard of connoisseurship. And when that audience dissolved, so did the need for excellence.

Each generation is promised a future more advanced than the last, and yet, there is a looming dullness overcast where the light used to touch. The art of reference has been softening by broadness. We have conflated accessibility with mediocrity. A performers success is measured by the audience’s attention rather than admiration. How easy it is to look elsewhere, how brooding it is to be found uninteresting. But to stay interesting, you mustn’t require much thought or discomfort.

The next wave of connoisseurs have only one word stamped on their resume: influence. You want authority over the culture? Deliver something soft and warm on a silverspoon. Promise a controversy free career. Be prepared to say sorry or never say anything. Say the slogan, never mind the meaning because it is of no matter. You can join the coalition or maybe get away with standing for nothing.

Keep them watching and you can have whatever you want. The cover, the clothing brand, collaborations and features. You can even have access to the real tastemakers, whole teams of them, to configure Their Work around Your Face. All credits go in the caption, of course.

When critical thinking becomes counter culture, we move farther and farther away from the point as a means to not be misunderstood. Rewarding mediocrity discourages the pursuit of excellence. A lot of people may have noticed Emma Chamberlain’s collaboration with West Elm, but very few would have caught the three up and coming interior designers awarded a NEXT award this past month. Should we go to design school, or make YouTube channels? Which would provide a greater payoff?

In the same way I coveted Hannah Montanna t-shirts in middle school, one might convet a porcelain pigeon from Emma’s collab and feel a sense of closeness to her, rather than connection to the art itself. I suggest this to say that I don’t discourage her [Emma] from trying a hand at interior design, or whatever she is interested in. She is the daughter of a talented painter, yes, but is there a line between Art and Merchandise?

Is it our fault that much of music and film has become a pump and dump scheme? We hate Frank Ocean for not giving us anything after Blonde, we condemn Lana for pushing back her album releases, and we became enraged when Ethel Cain released a full album of ambient music with no lyrics. There is no support or interest in the artistic journey unless we have a plethora of material for our consumption.

Connoisseurship also requires a secret third thing Gen Z deeply fears: authority. When that thought came to me, I almost laughed and deleted that entire line in this post. Gen Z, the Call Out, Read-You-Down, Purity Checking Virtue Signaling Nipple Sucking generation is afraid to take authority? And then I realized that it was that very reason why I was correct. Gen Z is in the business of taking away, just not taking over.

No one wants the responsibility because it requires a level of discernment from your audience that rarely exists anymore. It requires an agreement on conversation before conflict, and the risk of blame. Doxxing and surveillance culture don’t really create a breeding ground for this to flourish. The audience is no longer interested in seeking leaders but hunting traitors. At best, they’ll just become very bored. If we could come to understand that authority, true connoisseurship, is about Service rather than Command, I think we could move towards a better place. We need to lean into the risk of being misunderstood and know that those who listen will be the only ones that matter.

Above all, the more important ingredient missing is the ability to engage with what does not always interest or include yourself. Being able to judge something that doesn’t cater to your experience with an unbiased lens is the highest form of intelligence. Risking the time it would take to properly commune with that thing, be it reading a shitty book or listening to a genre you cannot stand, is the best exercise for your taste buds. Engage with it all. Get really good at one thing and learn how to speak about it in such a way that it could inspire anyone. Immerse yourself in it, emerge a better person.

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A Christmas gift that thinned the amount of presents under the tree for me by at least a quarter, but needed, nonetheless. I swished my butt while I walked, fixing the long crisp flat ironed hair down my back. Thinking myself demure, I took my time selecting from the normal array of cheeseburgers and hot dogs from the cafe. Bouncing while I moved, locating my table of girls in no time. I smiled chagrin. I was ready for gossip and stale French fries.

“That is not your sweatshirt.”

It took a few moments before I realized that my friend seated across the table was speaking to me. Could it be a joke? I might have laughed. A combination of WhatHuh came from my slack-jawed mouth.

“You definitely took that from my house when you slept over. There’s no way that’s yours,” she doubled double down. She was very serious. The girls got silent, a giggle was stifled. This was very serious

I reasoned that it was possibly identical to the many she did own, reasoned that even though I never once considered stealing from a friend, maybe someone else had and an easy case could be made that it was me. I think I offered to text my mom as proof, swearing she wouldn’t lie on my behalf. My friend rolled her eyes.

“Hailey. Your mother did not buy you that.”

My throat scorched and face ran hot. I understood all at once that the plausibility that I was capable of theft was of no real matter. The cause of her accusation was disbelief that I, my family, could afford something like this. The only way something in a department store, off the rack, could come into my possession could only be of nefarious circumstance.

Everyone knew that we were poor. To be clear, I was not the poorest. There were kids in school so far worse off than me. Kids whose parents clearly did not care if they showered or had stains on the collar of their shirts or holes in their soles. Who smelled like cigarettes. My appearance was never proof that there was no one at home to love me. But still, we were poor.

Before the school gave us fancy lunch codes to punch in at cafeteria checkout, free meal kids had to stand in a separate special line each day with a big fat white cardboard meal voucher. This was the first time I remembered being othered from my classmates due to my family’s economic status. I can’t remember when I figured out we didn’t have money. Money, or lack thereof, was always discussed openly.

The first time a peer ever referred to me as poor was the 6th grade when the braces soldered to my jagged teeth began to fall off. If memory serves, we had lost our medical benefits because of a layoff, but I can’t be sure. The monthly orthodontist appointments to tighten each bracket halted, and wires soon snapped and poked the soft insides of my cheeks and gums. What was meant to be the last year of three before my final, perfect smile was revealed completely undid months of results. I did not smile with teeth nor look at the inside of my mouth the entirety of that year. Eventually, they still noticed. I was dubbed trailer trash.

I started working as soon as I was able. I gave myself burns from hot coal pizza ovens at a shop after school and all the weekends to keep up with nail appointments and outlet mall trips with friends. I worked hard to maintain this idea that I was no different from them. I would ride in their mom’s new Mercedez and Hummers through suburbia. I would drink Everclear in their large cream-colored finished basements. They pulled out their parent’s credit cards; I pulled out my bank card. They got fun summer jobs lifeguarding at the pool; I sweat my ass off in front of the ovens all year. And still, I convinced myself there was no difference between us.

When Sweatshirt Gate happened, I felt like I had lost control of my own narrative. There was no separating myself from whatever idea people had about my family. I loathed money in high school. I hated whenever someone would start talking about it. I hated when boys bought my froyo or theater ticket. I hated how it meant I was expected to give something in return. A kiss. A hook up. A yes to a dance or relationship. But most importantly, I hated anyone with money. I fucking hated them all.

Not much about this changed in college. As I advanced to better paying job I only developed more of a scarcity mindset. If you shook me awake at any point during the night, I could tell you how much I had in checking’s, savings, and on my credit card bill. Down to the cent. I didn’t care about finding a rich boyfriend, I knew I’d never have a marital joint bank account. I wanted my own shit. I was only ever going to chase and obtain what would be mine.

And yet, these truths surrounding money kept presenting themselves and reaffirming more each time. On money, on the wealthy. Lots of those revelations came from dating people who came from wealth, something I can promise in earnest was a coincidence. That doesn’t make it any less convenient, but I digress. Finding myself obtaining more money and observing people who had more than they knew what to do with altered my opinions and anxieties.

Recently, I’ve developed an interest in documenting what is true about the things I cannot always control. And my finances are one of those things. The following is a loose list of important truths I have come to understand about money.

~

Nothing about another person’s finances should be assumed.

The state of another person’s affairs shouldn’t be a point of comparison on principle. However, whatever idea you have about the state of another’s bank account is most likely wrong. I have met ex boarding school kids whose single grandparent bares the load of tuition while their parents exist in a state of ruin. Families who flaunt a new in-ground pool that was paid for by a cashed in 401k. There are those who fight to obtain wealth and those who fight to appear as though they already have. This is a gimmick to observe but never judge. Understand how defeating this desire must be, accept you’ll never have the full picture, and return attention towards yourself.

Poverty is not virtuous.

Being poor isn’t a moral failing. But there is also nothing inherently righteous about it. For so long, I saw myself as the same victim of the lunch table getting bullied by the rich girl. I convinced myself that others pitied me, so in defense I demonized them. This did me no good. There is no greater way to prevent yourself from digging out of poverty than demonizing money. It was probably the worst thing I could have done. Severing my sense of value pertaining to finances has been the most healing. Developing a steady lifestyle that can be upheld through the ebb and flow of my bank account changed my life.

It does not guarantee a good life.

Long deceased second cousin to my maternal grandmother were millionaires. They lived in a grand house on an estate in the Pennsylvania countryside with horse stables and a few acres of apple trees. My grandmother would talk of her visits as a girl, her shameful jealousy of her cousin’s fortune. Less frequent visits and communication transpired with her age, the cause unknown until she was informed much later. The husband drank his money, the wife had violent bipolar, and subsequently, an awful black mold growing behind their mansion walls was never attended to. Their son succumbed to pneumonia, and they succumb to the guilt.

My grandmother told me this story when I asked if she would have rather married a rich man. She told me there wasn’t truly an answer to that question because there was no way to know if she might have fared better. I remember this often when the simple/cliche Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness mantra fails to permeate my conscious.

~~~~

thank you,

h.n <3

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Watch Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond via Netflix and you’ll understand what I mean.

Rather than stand beside something and make its acquaintance, men have a habit of pissing on and penetrating it instead. An unfortunate symptom of their innate nature? Maybe. But I don’t find it shocking that society bends and rejoices to this notion. That our opinions and language bend with an almost tender reverence for men who conquer.

Looksmaxxing is a great example. While women have submitted to patriarchal standards of beauty and accepted the social capital associated with them for the last millennium, men have now discovered something different. Biohacking. Bone Smashing. A new science has emerged, and it has its own metrics and scale. It is optimization, not your pussy middle school push-up bra. Through makeup and clothing and skin treatments and special shampoos, we [women] know what is required of us to be of value. And yet, in the thick of a male loneliness epidemic and the rise of incel culture, we have been so obviously outdone.

From a socioecological lens, this may be the gateway to our understanding and acceptance of gender-affirming care. It was surely never going to come from women affirming their own femininity. A woman affirming her gender (in a manner that the patriarchy accepts) is simply business as usual. Expected. GQ published an article entitled “Let Trans People and Looksmaxxers Change Their Bodies.” Do I love that the fact that GQ’s first piece in support of trans rights was roped in with 4chan philosophy? No. But at the very least, it opens up a conversation.

Do yourself a favor and scroll through LinkedIn, and I don’t mean in a way of self-harm. Jobs in marketing and advertising are going through a major rebrand. If How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was made today, Benjamin Barry would not have worked as an Advertising Associate, but as a Growth Engineer. Market Researchers are now Qualitative Analysts. Sorry ladies. That B.A. in Marketing from Syracuse University won’t be cutting it any longer. Women made up roughly 70% of the marketing industry until the 2020s, but that dominance is rapidly shifting. Men are pivoting from finance and tech jobs into the industry, bringing with them an emphasis on systems and optimization rather than buyer behavior and psychology.

One could argue the need to diverge from emotion and feeling is a protective measure on their [men’s] part. Deeper than the submission they avoid, it is a fear of falling to the fate of women entirely. There is a sense of defeat in empathy and understanding, is there not? Understanding another’s torment makes it difficult to continue it. Simultaneously, the very thing they avoid often provides relief from the bitter cold of needing to subdue the masses. Many conservative white male politicians have been exposed for cross-dressing. Does this expose some hidden desire to identify as trans or transfemme? Perhaps. I personally believe this is more of an integral practice for the sanity of men in power. Femininity, by their perception, is to be free of concern. As we all know, that could not be further from the truth. But the truth does not matter. They find and extract capital wherever they can and indulge in perverse vices as they see fit.

Capitalize. Optimize. Masculinize. Rinse and repeat. Are we headed toward opulence or deeper into oppression? Can we find any benefits from the methodical world men keep building and building upon before us? One devoid of feeling, sensuality, and an understanding of Source and Balance. Who will maintain?

As a full-time Data Analyst, I often grapple with the internal crisis of contributing to climate change via data centers and technical waste. Upholding systems put in place by the likes of Peter Thiel and Sam Altman puts my stomach in a twist. My educational background is in Public Health, and my pursuit of data science was to expose and represent marginalized populations in distress. Rather than wallow in another existential crisis, I’ve chosen #HopeCore like a good Gen Z kid should.

Data Ecofeminism has been a hyperfixation of mine since Mindy Seu featured the concept in her book A Sexual History of the Internet. A complex philosophy, but the general belief is that, just like women and the environment, nothing—not even the internet—should be treated like an abundant resource. Reverence and gratitude for Source can and do exist on all planes to some degree, even when it feels as though the masses do not. It has completely restored my hope and assurance that I, as well as others, can continue my work in tech with minimal harm and exploitation of others and the environment.

Modern mainstream masculinity exudes domination and deletion. I have only found peace by observing dilution. Muddy water only runs clean under a clear stream, never by trying to rip the shit out of it bit by bit. Open the dams, ladies.

Sort of. I know something horrible happened between me and my mom. I know I had just come home after living in Hawaii for four months and I was really mad I didn’t have the guts to stay. I had a car and prospects of working on a papaya farm. I think it was the relationship that made me come home. The relationship that would will me to spend my first semester driving five hours to upstate New York to watch a 22 year old boy play beer bong, di, and orchestrate a perfect night out where me and the girl he was fucking couldn’t cross paths. Finding out was only a relief to my understanding of why his classmates could never look me in the eye. That’s all the relief I ever got.

I felt like one of the great expendables. Nothing that you felt bad about hurting or throwing away. Small, benign, self destructive coping mechanisms came in the form of keeping a diet of bland foods and smoking excessive amounts of weed. I’d smoke myself into a paranoid state, shivering in between my sheets and tasting the blood pooling from the skin between my gritted teeth. It was pathetic and a waste of time.

After finding a wilting bar of mushroom chocolate leftover from a music festival, I swallowed an ambitious dose and turned off my cellphone. Conscious that this was the worst possible headspace I could possibly take psychedelics in, I didn’t mind where the trip took me. Anywhere but here please. Suicide cheat code.

But as I came up I could only laugh. I laughed and I leaked, mouth watering and big fat tears rolled down my cheeks. I laughed at the absurdity of everything. I did not think about my mom or anyone I had dated or what choices I was or was not meant to make. I thought about putting ‘writer’ down as a future career in every grade school yearbook. I thought of all the screenplays and novel storylines cooped up in my notes app, filled in fleeting moments during class or at a stoplight. And the journals. the blog and 9 journals floating in the universe with all my poetry and prose and thoughts.

And most importantly, how I could have possibily just let them all go.

The idea I cared about anything else but the poetry, the craft, which I had let fall to the wayside felt ridiculous. I could really only laugh and laugh and laugh about it. The next day I drove home, gathered all my journals and started the process from beginning, annotating everything from 15 to 21. I posted small out of context snippets on TikTok and read passages aloud. Write a book was a constant comment. So I did. 500 people signed up for an email chain for updates as to when the release would be, my process dissecting so much of my past work, etc. It kind of acted as a Substack platform before I knew of it.

I published the full book filled with poetry and prose October 16th, 2022. I edited the full thing myself, evident by the spelling and grammatical errors that slipped through the cracks.

Still, people seemed to enjoy it.

The book was live for a few months before I decided to remove it from Amazon. I don’t know why, I think I wanted to hire an editor and do a better, more final release that wasn’t so unpolished. But I never did. It was a nice tastemaker, a fun project. But my first real project would be better, yet I never got around to producing a more polished version. My focus was on new projects and subconciously I felt that little poetry book behind me.

But then people asked about it.

And people resold copies online once they became unavailable.

So really, who am I to deprive the lot of you?

Some may call it a Rupi Kaur sting piece. Some have sent me pictures of their copy marked and annotated to The God’s. You can really feel however you want to about it. I first put it out cathartically, never expecting people to care much. And then they did. Somewhere along the way I still thought it had to be better. I guess this is me giving up the idea of Better. Giving up the absurdity once again, without the help of the mushrooms this time.

Enjoy.

Or like, don’t.

xoxo, h.n

WHAT WE BECOME

I once heard someone say that your relationship to sex, money, and food are all one in the same. Something to do with a scarcity mindset. Something else about indulgence. What I know for sure is that sex, money, and food are all currently in a bizarre state. None of which is a matter of actual scarcity, just distribution. people are horny but lonely. people are poor and the 1% have more than they can spend. we throw away thousands of pounds of food, but people are starving-or forcing themselves into starvation.

Hunger is expensive, and starving people can’t fuck. No really. Starving People Cannot Fuck. What happens during the quest to become and stay thin goes past the effects malnutrition has on your libido. Withholding from food has a long history of maintaining sexual purity.

Talk to any anorexic and they’ll tell you about the high they get from hunger. Scientists say that the primitive adrenaline begins to kick in after enough deprivation, a woozy decline in blood sugar lulling you into insanity the same way a diabetic may feel slipping into hypoglycemia. All the biological urges of reproduction and mating slow to a cool stale halt. For women, a retroactive puberty stops your bleeds.

Christianity and Catholicism has a long history of The Holy Anorexic and The Sinful Glutton. It was Eve who bit the forbidden fruit, resulted in The Fall of Man. Her and Adam realized their nakedness and became separate from their direct communion with God. Anorexia mirabilis (Latin for miraculously inspired loss of appetite) were the most dedicated of Nuns during the Middle Ages and refused food in pursuit of chastity. Self-control conjures the Holy Spirt and wards away temptations of lust.

God-like hierarchy of the mentally ill is nothing new. The new age messiah ran Pro Ana Tumblr pages and held Sunday service in chatrooms, reciting high fiber smoothie recipes and cardio intense workouts like scripture. Most people still confuse it with tit implants or a nose job. Something to make you softer, prettier, lovable. Thinness has never and will never be anything of the sort.

Maybe at first, it’s to feel more fuckable. An unrealistic beauty standard, a distraction. I feel it has very little to do with a man at all. It is something masturbatory. A kind of martyr. You can suck it out, purge it, shit it out, or pay for it. There are injectables and powdered drinks or amphetamines. It doesn’t matter. No one really gives a shit anymore. Never mind the optics, pay attention to the simulacra. I have been starved and restuffed. I have the power to close my mouth. I can endure. Be without. Can you?

A mere five senses we are given and we have ripped out one with such haste. On purpose. Food is community. Communion. Food is fucking. It’s bite and taste and spit. Federico Fellini said to never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat, she’s probably lousy in bed. Food is foreplay. I may offer you a sip of my wine, spoon feed a bite off my plate, to let you know I don’t mind that we share saliva. That I want to kiss you. Cows and horses never graze the pasture all at once because they understand how vulnerable eating is. How there is required intimacy and trust in sharing a meal.

I remember watching Blue is the Warmest Color for the first time at age 14, via Tumblr Putter Locker link. Watching Adele eat spaghetti was unironically the most erotic scene in the whole film to me. Her unrefined sensuality, inhibition towards indulgence was mesmerizing. Later that summer, I would take the chewed gum of a boy into my own mouth on a dare. This would be the first time I can recall feeling a sense of sexual euphoria without much physicality.

But nothing could taste as good as skinny feels, in the same way that doing heroine under a bridge is far more fun than having dinner with your family. The polarizing statement, the Fuck You that is your budding skeleton, gets your rocks off harder than any orgasm. In pursuit of purity, you have somehow found anarchy.

The fourth wave of feminism has proved the most convenient to the cause of starvation with the wet blanket wall of Body Positivity. You don’t know my body. My healthy. My happiness. Any accusation of malevolence is simply women shaming women. Sorority Canva Infographic Feminism. The rest of us bite our tongues while a brave few call the bullshit stinking up the air.

All of what is left unsaid today will be replaced with apologies tomorrow. Sorry for the kidney and heart failure. Sorry for the babies born with birth defects caused by GLP-1’s. Sorry like we are so sorry for Karen Carpenter, Nikki Grahame, Isabelle Caro. Sorry to the girls who left the clinics just to find that the world had become an act of asceticism. Tasteless and decaying.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to exist within my body. Rejecting all forms of deprivation, as if the world does not try and deprive us enough.

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

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Mamdani approving free childcare in my city before breaking two weeks in office shot us all with a surge of hope in a cloud of unprecedented terror. the comfort came in knowing “it’s really that easy” mixed with the pain of knowing that it never mattered whether or not it was easy. depravity is a choice. a conscious one. do you know back in The Great Depression, women fashioned dresses from flour sacks? and when flour companies discovered this, flour sacks started being printed with beautiful floral textiles. an altruistic free market - could you imagine?

such were the times. now even the architectures cruel. it’s hard to ponder in a room full of hard metals and beige walls. but we try, because you’re always one Great Idea removed from the people who decided to paint the walls beige. we’re a nation of thinkers. movers and shakers. if you stay on the hamster wheel long enough you can be found deserving of Greatness.

what’s a thought if it can’t do you any favors? a pang of desire for a new hobby hits you for all of a few moments before you start calculating the time it requires. then comes the weighted risk of finding out that new thing isn’t your thing and you’ve wasted your time. funny enough, much of your life has been measured this way. chance of failure, success, weighted humiliation. pleasure is capital. no-that’s wrong. risk aversion is. preservation. consequently, nothing you create is worth existing beyond a pay-wall. you have successfully optimized every aspect of your life, trimming the fat of anyone who challenges your boundaries and invisible rules. now you are full of half-baked dreams and no one willing to drive you to the airport or show up to your birthday party.

and hey, maybe it’s not your fault. since the day you were born, everything was fed to you on a transactional basis. no dinner for Fs on report cards. ice cream for As. who cares if they sell your data? your parents read your text messages every day until you were 18. your boyfriend demands to have all your passwords. Life 360. it’s all been dished out in tiny amounts since the day you were born. like a frog in a hot pot; they’ve been cooking you slowly all this time.

as silly as it may sound, if the day came where the lottery ended and a life of endless access was not possible, would something inside you die a little? to know that no moment of virality, no app, no superfood, Pilates routine or nose job could hand you a golden ticket? remember, this has all been survived by the belief that The Dream is possible. no, not The American Dream. that’s long dead and buried. that was the dream of equality. this is the dream of dominance. excess. transcendence.

and if you could stomach that, what of the righteousness in your efforts? does your work ethic make you superior by willingness to do what others will not? or could you find fulfillment in mere willingness to participate. the integrity and intension in the way you move and interact with others. we hold all of these things like symbols, praying they will speak for us. what if a man was no longer judged upon the firmness of a handshake, but his gentle touch. it’s easy to intmidate. it’s tough to be tender.

I’ve never known what people wanted. just what people fear. these days I think that’s mostly friction. in my nightmares, I see us dying for convenience. they’re banking on us being too lazy for the revolution. we’ve never been absolved of pain, only conditioned for the kinds they want us to bear. I’m not an activist and I don’t believe I was ever born to organize or lead the masses into history. I just pose the question: are the nature of your comforts worth the consequences of your future?

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

it was an urban legend, most likely, as I cannot find anything that proves such events occurred. still, aren’t all legends rooted in some kind of truth? the story was of a baptism. the reception of a baptism actually. after the babe of two young parents was freshly bathed in holy water, anointed and dedicated to The Son of God, they raced home to prepare for the party. trays of sweaty deviled eggs and fancy cheeses needed to be unwrapped and removed from the refrigerator. pigs-in-a-blanket to be put in the oven. the couple bickered over whether the cake was removed to dethaw from the ice box and whose responsibility it was. the mother anxiously anticipated backhanded commentary from her mother-in-law on new furniture additions. the father grumbled his annoyance for hosting under his breath.

the newborn, milk drunk and sleeping, was removed from the car seat and laid onto the marriage bed while loose ends were tied. a vacuum ran frantically along the carpet slicing fine runs into the fabric. hors d’oeuvres put on the good plates. every surface area wiped. guests soon poured in from the chilly outside. the father dutifully threw the cluster of coats, hats, and scarves in the upstairs bedroom.

a home was filled. laughter and cards and gifts floated throughout. wine was corked. bellies filled. perhaps an hour went by before someone, a great aunt maybe, inquired on where the very star of the party was. the parents looked at each other, all the brisk tension of the morning melting into something different. something churned sour. at once they bounded up the stairs heading for the master bedroom. under piles of coats was their newborn baby, still and blue wrapped in white satin.

~

many years ago, a pastor delivered that story during a Christmas Eve candlelight sermon while I sat in the congregation. I never could forget it. my family wasn’t religious; we were occasional Christians out of desperation. when times get hard kind of thing. but Christmas Eve service was mostly always attended. we might have put Jesus on the back burning all year, but we could at least show up for his birthday.

the pastor followed The Baptism by the story of Jesus. that night Bethlehem was running over with eager spectators hoping to witness the birth of the messiah. all the while 13 year old laboring Mary was denied entry to each any every suitable dwelling, left to deliver in a manger. the possibility that the miracle which those people sought so desperately to bear witness could stumble so casually on their front porch was inconceivable. the irony is obvious, and yet…

details can suck the life out of purpose. like saving up for a vacation just to sit sullen on a white sand beach wishing you lost more weight. I always love seeing a bride or groom jump in the pool on their wedding day. watching expensive makeup and a rented tux get ruined. proving that none of the trimmings mattered. get too lost in the frills of anything and you neglect everything. you forget why you went to the party. you miss the miracle.

I won’t harp on year end musings, only hover if that’s alright. 2025 felt like over explaining as to not be misunderstood, causing us to be pulled further from the point entirely. everything moves so quickly now, it makes anything worth pondering over feel unimportant. as if a thought could ever come late. inopportune. I hate feeling like that worst of all. like I can’t afford to take my time. I want to arrive when I get there and I don’t want to forget why I left, what I’m trying to move towards.

I have learned that most prisons are ones we anticipate rather than currently reside in. I can’t think of more than a few moments this year, maybe my whole life, where fear went past perception. the shame you will feel, the rejection that might come, the dissatisfaction from whomever. I have no resolutions for 2026. not really, I don’t. maybe I’ll make adjustments in the springtime. things tend to bend easier in the heat. point is, I don’t want to be more of anything. I just don’t want to miss anything. the quiet of my thoughts. the act of Communion. a Miracle.

love, h.n<3

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

~ My journal entry, March 2024

+++

The 2013 Indie Documentary ‘I Hate Myself:)’ had all my least favorite things: a white male edgelord, impromptu penis, and self-destructing female heroine. Le Cinema Club posted it for free describing it as ‘Joanna Arnow’s unashamed documentation of her yearlong relationship with an open-mic provocateur’. The hour-long film is a hard watch filled with the subject’s racially charged comedy shows in a Harlem dive bar. And Joanna, a nice Jewish girl from a middle-class background in Brooklyn, dissects her relationship with the dumpster fire that is James.

Through dialogue with loved ones, Joanna establishes herself early as a wallflower. A film student hiding behind the camera, a girl who wasn’t kissed until the age of 22, desperate to please her conservative parents. It’s through the initial drunken, grotesque rants and degradation of Joanna by James that you feel an immediate sadness for the director. Her obvious timid, vulnerable disposition makes her an obvious target for guys like James.

It’s not a foreign concept. A lot of women view romatic history as a lens into how little they felt about themselves at that point in time. Nice girl loves bad boy. ‘We accept the love we think we deserve’ and all that Y/A novel scripture. There is some universal pity to be offered for that. And I don’t mean people who disguise their true colors in the beginning, only to reveal who they are when things like time or marriage or babies binds you together. I mean men who make it clear early on that they’re wretched.

Mid-film, narration by Joanna changes this palatable narrative.

I like compelling, charismatic people. Maybe I would like to be him. I would like to be a performer - I think that’s the best thing you can be.

This was the beginning of the end for me. End being my sympathy for the director and my greater understanding the true reality. The voyeuristic view of their crumbling relationship begins to look like a consensual kink. Some of the most compelling moments of the film are when she breaks the fourth wall, so to speak, and we see her recording him from reflected surfaces as James terrorizes everything in his wake. It’s a reminder that past her well-meaning parents and friends pleading she escapes from his clutches, she is a willing participant.

James’s own insecurities become evident by his own admittance. Like all White Male Edgelords, his contrarian nature insists you see him as a rebel rather than the truth behind his overcompensation. He gets off to yielding power over Joanna, Joanna gets to be in proximity to someone with perceived power. She gets to agitate her parents. She gets to be a part of something bigger.

Whatever wave of feminism we’re on right now makes it next to impossible to criticize other women for their willingness to date God awful men. Melania Trump is a prime example of this. Society has marked her as some Sugar Baby to First Lady Greek Tragedy. We insist that all she wanted from Trump was a meal ticket. And now she’s forced to platform human rights campaigns and painstakingly, decorate for Christmas (lol I had to). I believe this is actually a great disrespect to Melania, whether or not you like her. Her humble Yugoslavia beginnings often seem to mask the reality of her true intelligence. Her fluency in six language and widely successful career established years prior to her marriage with Trump that seems lost upon us. She was 28 when she met her husband. For lack of a better word, she was and is A Grown Ass Woman. But it simply isn’t the better story.

I knew a few heterosexual couples in college who had frequent screaming matches at every party and bar outing. After observing these arguments weekend after weekend, I saw them more as an act of public roleplay. Not just sexually, but a cathartic, necessary part of the relationship’s dynamic. In the sense that the relationship couldn’t exist without it. It feels dark to suggest such a thing. I think it feels that way because it forces you to look inward and find that maybe you yourself have used romance for your own acts of perversion.

I’m not completely sure if Joanna fully acknowledges responsibility in her willingness to date someone like James. The end of the film feels as though she has come close to a few revelations about herself. I commend her for the willingness to explore shame with such a public medium. The relationship is proof that she does harbor a darkness, or longs to be immersed in someone else’s. Either way, there are two willing participants. It was the kind of thing you only ever watch once, that tests your ability to see past the comforting belief that you lack agency over your own life.

I think one of the most beautiful things about love and romance is how self-revealing they can be. It requires you to critically think about the nature of your attraction. What we need from people at certain points of our lives, no matter how sinister. Maybe that’s the one thing none of us ever wish to discover about ourselves.

thank you so much for reading. if you have any thoughts, comments, or conversational points never hesitate to reach out. take care of yourself.

xoxo,

hailey

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

If you’ve ever cared to know what your favorite niche blogger (me) does for a living (hint: it isn’t this blog) then here is your answer:

<drum roll>

I’m a data analyst.

Excel spreadsheets and VLOOKUP isn’t something you usually put on your dream job manifestation board. I’m not one to ever job shame, especially in the current job market, but living in New York has given me the desire to channel something more creative. In the past few months I have been attempting to pivot into market research. Trend forecasting has consumed my psyche since moving to New York and learning it even existed. WGSN has been my bible of late. And I’m not ashamed to admit that baby wants to sit with the tastemakers.

Blame Carl Jung, I suppose, for my obsession in humanity’s mass behavior. I’ve been a little insufferable since learning about the collective unconscious, beating it to death on this publication in particular. The never-ending web of how nothing we do is by accident or meaningless. How politics effect fashion, fashion influences technology, and technology changes your sex life.

But lately, our collective behavior has begun to feel artificially manufactured. The viral-TikTok-hot-take-echo-chamber has been on my radar for one. Prime example, Vogue’s recent Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? article. Completely baseless? Not necessarily. Yet, I cannot help but see it as a mere extension of these isolated narratives that implode online. They encourage added discourse, have quip taglines, and mostly contain premature ideologies you left in Middle School.

Sensationalized discourse like this has a nasty habit of being adopted into mainstream thinking once it leaks through our FYP’s. Where internet discourse falls short, being an active member of the community won’t. And I think we’ve become way far off base. Research is observation, but it’s nothing without participation. And we really need to stop seeing our daily scrolls through comment sections as participation.

What else has been filling in the gaps for us? For starters, if you haven’t heard: the internet is dead. Dead Internet Theory really took shape for me during the pandemic, when our primary connection to the rest of the world was online spaces. Politically charged as it was, it was the first time I observed highly engaged content and opinions with a sense of…skepticism. Not quite like the Vogue article, but something that was baseless in its entirety.

Example: Andrew Tate. He came out of seemingly nowhere, operating with this whole theatrical production of professionally filmed videos accompanied by a male incel fanbase. In 2023, a single investigation into Andrew Tate’s following confirmed 4,500 bot accounts producing over 15,000 daily tweets in support of him on X alone. And that was just one platform. In hindsight, I think he was the first person to really built a platform off of reactionary engagement rather than admiration.

Rage bait content doesn’t get enough credit for how lucrative it is, or how the algorithm favors it. The conflation of distorted ideologies and perceived fanbase did make red pill content a hot topic and widespread to men and young boys. The mirage can be made real and that is a terrifying realty.

This past October, an additional 49 million bot accounts attached to hundreds of sim cards were found during a Europol sting operation. Connections were made to the typical internet scamming: phishing emails, streaming farms, etc. But what else could that many accounts be used for? What narratives could it push, ideas could it inflate? Who benefits?

None of this is meant to be a dog whistle for added conspiracy. Truly. Moreso, I hope it’s a call to participation. A call to being inquisitive before argumentative. To realizing how we are constantly primed for conflict. Narratives only become real when we believe them. There is still hope yet to hold on to our truth.

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thank you so much for reading. if you have any thoughts, comments, or conversational points, never hesitate to reach out. take care of yourself.

xoxo,

hailey

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

Some sources of interest that aided me writing this piece

Raaaage Bait

Stupid Man

SIMCARTEL

As it happened, Peter Van Houton turned out to be a washed-up drunkard writer burrowing his head in Europe. His answer to Hazel’s request, quoted from the novel:

“…to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel…it’s ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”

If you’ve read the novel, or have seen the movie adaptation, you’ll know that Van Houton’s character is less surface level by novel’s end. I digress; it got me thinking about present day artist/fan relationships.

So much of creative expression is now centered around the consumer, rather than the fan. The fan merely appreciates the craft. But the consumer is hungry. The consumer wants to eat, so it better be pallatable. The consumer sees the artist’s work as something to be tailored around its own dreams, whims, and ideas. This is what one might refer to as “commercial artistry”.

Like fans, consumers still wish to be close to their respective artists. This is dependent on the artist exchanging support for proximity rather than mere viewership. It’s deeper than a relationship. It’s falsified elaborate exclusivity. It’s the idea that we have access to process and craftsmanship of the product.

Unfortunately, I have to say the taboo words: Taylor Alison Swift. Taylor Swift wasn’t the first to concoct this capitalistic fan/artist relationship, she’s just probably the best to ever do it. Each album release comes with several varying studio versions. There’s an album release party for the fans (AMC movie). A docu-series covering the making of the album (on Disney+). And sure, in between she throws in an IRL cookie baking party with a few select fans in her West Village brown stone.

In comparison to other popular female musicians, such as Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan, who have fictitious personas standing between them and their art, I image it’s easy for fans to feel close to Taylor. The “real” Taylor. And her romantic melancholy lyrics might ring genuine to those who lend an ear, but I believe it’s the early access to tickets (provided to Capital One cardholders) and perfectly color-coded Era’s tour collectables that fill the belly of her beast(s).

Another example: The Summer I Turned Pretty, obviously the most popular series this past year reaching way past its previous y/a nonfiction audience. And why wouldn’t it? The business model is to essentially exist in every accessible way possible. Each episode has prerecorded TikTok quips of the cast. The female lead Lola Tung has her own ambassador contract with Coach’s sustainable brand Coachtopia that she wears on the show, but there’s also a TSITP limited edition line under the company. If Coach is too expensive for you though, you can always scroll to the shop section of each TSITP episode on Prime and get exact Amazon dupes of Belly’s dresses, bathing suits, and jewelry. Chris Briney even narrated a separate soft-core porn novel about, if you could believe it, two brothers fighting over a girl. A perfect ecosystem.

The pressure to monopolize and monetize our attention can’t be surprising. Slow media depreciates with each passing second. I think there’s this fear amongst creators that it’s easy to be forgotten. So of course they tailor projects to the delight of the audience. They allow us to purchase exclusivity. They blend all our wet dreams into one big Consumer Slushy. We get fanfiction movies IRL with Oscar nominated actresses. A loop of nostalgic reboots. Commercial artistry is a choose-your-own-adventure. And so long as we sip on that slushy, the softer our teeth get. Have we lost the ability to critically analyze work? What happens when we are given something to chew?

When Tyler the Creator released Don’t Tap the Glass, my thought was that he meant to create distant between the him and his fans. His no phone policy during listening parties and initial concerts, to me, was a way of forcing people to exist more inside his artistry rather than try and perceive it. In the same way you couldn’t bang on the glass at a zoo, you couldn’t poke at his madness. You wouldn’t question his absurdity. And you certainly wouldn’t will it to morph around your vision, your dreams. It was a reminder, to me, that a good fan is truly one who is simply happy to witness.

The idea that a certain font and color scheme could make my writing more palatable to my readers makes me nauseous to say the least. I write cathartically most of the time, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it for the aspect of connection. As much as I’d love to stay stoic in the back alley, smoking a cigarette and waiting to be noticed, there is also some level of strategy required to connect. To really be seen. What do you, as the maker of your own creative world, tailor for the masses? What have you diluted? Does it still look like you?

thank you so much for reading. if you have any thoughts, comments, or conversation points, never hesitate to reach out. subscribe to unreliable narrator for more posts like this one. take care of yourself.

xoxo,

hailey

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

verb

make a reality of.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs requires several achievements before one can attempt greatness. Attempt. Not achieve. First come physiological needs like air, food, shelter. Then comes safety, love and belonging, followed by esteem. According to Maslow, after all of which are obtained, you can begin to figure out your life’s purpose. I’d like to tell Maslow that all great people I know found their purpose at the bottom of their own barrel.

But such theories are not completely false. I remember being 13, staring at the glow-in-the-dark ceiling stickers and thinking about girls’ butts in jogger suits. Thinking about girls with cropped hair tucked behind their ears or in permanent ponytails. Thinking about the suitcase girl from Parent Trap. Thinking of them and teetering on the edge of drawing any conclusions—shame, acceptance, or otherwise—before hearing glass shatter against the wall in the next room and deciding those conclusions would have to wait for a different time, another place.

A formal course of action is not always possible in a burning world where nothing waits for anything. In fact, I’m starting to see a “formal course of action” as increasingly false altogether. As I write this, I’m on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, accompanying a friend on her work trip. Back in the academic sphere, I’m reminded of the constant drumbeat hammered into my head since pre-K: the world is a very serious place, and I had to ready myself to be worthy of it.

First-grade teachers won’t take your kindergarten shit. High school won’t take your middle school shit. And college professors? They’d sooner throw a textbook at your face. But then teachers had sex scandals, and my professors sent me one-word replies to lengthy emails—“Sent from iPhone.” And the corporate world? An even bigger hack.

I wish someone—anyone—had sat me down just once and explained that so much of the world is a façade, and I’d probably do better to get a grip on that fact. Everything I’ve learned about actualization has been a reflection of contradictions that exist everywhere, in every system. I may sound anti-establishment at times, but it isn’t that—it’s about understanding the playing field a little better.

Self-Advocacy

My favorite Lana Del Rey moment is, above all, her Variety acceptance speech. Her stream of consciousness is that of a true poet, and her cheekiness is endearing—tolerated precisely because of how little she speaks publicly. Perhaps there’s a lesson buried in that: use your words conservatively, and they’ll be more forgiving. I digress. My point of concern is when she credited Jack Antonoff’s help in her becoming Grammy-nominated.

The curious thing about Lana is that 10 years into her career, she thought her lack of Grammy nominations was about quality. No one had ever put her name on the ballot. Even Lizzy Grant had to apply for the nomination. Is that even fathomable?

Part of my good karma in New York has been the privilege of getting drunk with people who work behind the scenes in the industry. Biggest revelation? Dazed’s Most Influential People, People’s Sexiest Man Alive, Forbes 30 Under 30—none of those accolades are handed out randomly or through some objective voting system. There isn’t a board of executives hand-picking lineups based on achievement. It’s all a combination of good PR and who you know.

It was disappointing to hear at first. Like finding out about Santa Claus. But the upside? Understanding the real power of self-advocacy. It’s not about waiting for others’ support; it’s about how far you’re willing to bet on yourself. There’s something very confronting about that, isn’t there?

Desire

A constant in the laws of manifestation seems to be the need to get clear on exactly what you want. Every genie story carries the same message: be careful what you wish for. The root of desire—mine and others’—has always been a curious research project for me.

Not too long ago, I was swaying awkwardly in the corner of a house party when a less-awkward brunette saw me drowning and struck up a conversation. Through the usual stranger-to-stranger pleasantries, I learned she managed two art galleries.

“That’s so fucking cool,” I said, genuinely, while feeling crummy about my low-paying nonprofit job. But she rolled her eyes and said, “You would think so.”

Turns out, this Charlotte York-in-training had academically prepared for her career, but she was miserable. After much conversation, my interpretation was that she had a deep affection for the arts, but her job wasn’t just about being surrounded by them. She dealt with bitchy clients, pretentious artists, and endless fucking paperwork.

Arrival at a perceived end goal and being met with unrest is nauseating, but still a lesson. First, consider banishing the concept of an “end goal” altogether. To be a real-life actualizer, you must master the art of pivoting. How unfair is it to rest your life’s happiness on one thing? Much of what we wish to actualize comes with hidden baggage. Those who dream of running galleries may be happier wandering museums on weekends. Those who wish to be famous writers may be happier posting on Substack.

I don’t know much, but I do know this: life is so much fucking paperwork. The trick is deciding what kind you can stand.

Knowledge

Everyone has heard the phrase knowledge is power, but no one says that knowledge can also be debilitating. And I don’t mean the 24-hour news cycle. I mean instructional knowledge—the how-to guides, self-help books, and manuals we treat as gospel. They confine us to a “universal process” that isn’t the way, just a way.

In an interview with Andrew Huberman, Rick Rubin attributed his success in the music industry to his lack of formal training. Without it, he had a blank slate for experimentation. No subconscious structure, no barrier.

Universal truths are rare. Sometimes it’s better to do less research before beginning something new. That said, I do believe in studying mistakes—you don’t need to follow others’ paths, but there’s no sense in stepping in the same pile of dog shit, you know?

Actualizers

Paris in June. I’m walking through the Louvre, hands in my pockets, idly twisting a tiny keepsake. In front of a Van Gogh, the thought occurs to me. I pull the trinket out of my pocket and snap a picture to send to my girlfriend.

.

The precious object was a glassblown marble of her own creation. Seeing her art in the museum was the first time actualization became something different to me. Suddenly it wasn’t about process or rules—it was about derailment, fading boundaries. And once you see that, you notice it everywhere. Do you know how many start-ups flood their careers page with fake job listings to make investors believe they’re expanding? Do you know how many media platforms use bots to boost traction?

The movers and shakers of today are creating imaginary narratives to will their projects into existence. So slip your unpublished manuscript into a Barnes & Noble. Sneak your artwork into the Louvre.

And above all, remember: the complex inner workings and politics exist because we are inherently complicated beings. What we want is much simpler than how we frame it. What stands between you and what you wish to be real is air. An exchange of atoms. We are the thing that must be conquered. Nothing more, nothing less.

love, h.n

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM // UNRELIABLENARRATOR222

A thick sheen of numbing cream is glazed over my mouth, leaving me feeling anesthetized in the way you do after a cavity filling. Drool is pooling under the cushy cavern from beneath my tongue, and something about the lack of sensation has made me forget how to swallow spit. The needle is retracted for the last time and an ice pack in the shape of a pouty kiss is resting in its place. My baby sister squeezes my hand, eyes going cartoonish as she examines the final product.

“Mom’s gonna freak.”

“I know.”

The nurse injector laughs and throws her gloves away in the garbage, cleaning up the vials of Juvéderm, Restylane, and Botox that were just pumped into my 19-year-old mouth.

“You’ll be swollen for a few days. The bruising depends on how your body responds to the injections… oh! And no drinking from straws, kissing, or blow jobs for at least ten days.”

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I pay at the front desk of the medical spa ($650 USD, the first big purchase on my brand-new Discover credit card) and stare at myself in the vanity mirror of my car in the parking lot. A purplish hue is already beginning to form, as if I’ve just enjoyed a cluster of ripe summer cherries. When I get home, I will have posted an in-depth story on my private Snapchat, detailing the experience to my 65 closest friends. Each day for weeks after, I’ll post pictures of how they (my lips) are settling, showing them fade from plum to rosy hues. And one by one, girls will swipe up on my long-winded rants and ask how much it costs, how bad it hurts, and if I think they should do it themselves. And as the (I’m pretty certain) first person in my hometown to get such a cosmetic procedure I beam with vigor to answer each question. And at the time, earnestly, I encouraged them to follow suit.

Seven years later and wiser, I look back on those pictures of my last teenage year with remorse that doesn’t make me regretful of my past so much as vengeful for my future. And no, not vengeance from the cosmetic industry. The hunger for vengeance could only be satiated by my own personal pact not to ever exhaust resources (time, financials, safety) on unnecessary body modifications. Especially at a time when such resources are becoming more scantily spread. It’s also just as important to me to say at least once, firmly, that my M.O is not to demonize plastic surgery. I just don’t care enough to.

Yet, immune to the influence of such an industry, all the same I am not. This is probably what keeps me humble to snarking those who do partake. I am always one bad photo away from googling Turkish nose jobs. Living in a city like New York is to be constantly subjugated to ideals, ever changing ideals at that. When the shiny people on my screen start to make my own reflection look dull, I know I can take the train home and sit on the porch with my grandmother, watching her leathered hands shuck corn. I know I can retreat to the smoker’s section of my favorite clubs and see eyeliner settled in the creases of smile lines. I have built my own world within a matrix of otherworlds, and I recognize screaming into the void ad nauseam would only be a poor use of anybody’s time. My only urgency to the masses is to forage the same path of escapism.

Since leaving adolescence at the rise of procedures becoming accessible to the general public, I have watched body modification intertwine with late-stage capitalism and consumerism in such a fascinating way. Self-preservation is the hottest fad since sliced bread, be it 12-year-olds with 10 step skincare routines, or men that are afraid to die. I consider my position of opinion and perspective a privileged one; I drank the Kool Aid and then demonized the whole institution. These days I just take up real estate in the grey area, that’s how you see everything from where you stand. Humanity’s quest for vitality is actually one of humor. Did you know how gun powder was invented? By accident. A 9th century Chinese alchemist was in search of an elixir of immortality; subsequently creating what would become the biggest asset to war, the leading cause of death in most of western society.

This is poetic as it is absurd; this is absurd as it is poetic. Like any woman in STEM, my first and main priority is always to question the function. The sustainability. And although we could run in circles discussing how humanity’s quest for vitality is rooted in elitism, pedophilia, or existential dread over our own mortality, I have to zero in on some kind of symbolism. That is, The Sex Symbol.

The Sex Symbol is your mother and your whore. She is all encompassing and all consuming. Everyone wants to be her yet no one can seem to hold her. Beautiful women are punished. Punished for utilizing their beauty, punished for not. Our modern-day sex symbols are dragged through public humiliation rituals by those who are supposed to adore them the most; the men who attain them and the admirers who spend their whole lives trying to be them.

Subconsciously, everything we do is for Her. The creams, the Botox, the way we give blow jobs. We contort ourselves in her likeness because there is something inside us that believes we can become her. In the thick of my teens, I would scroll blog images for miles of tan bikini clad models sprawled out on white linen comforters and black sand beaches, gauging the proximity between me and them. I’d read interviews of how they broke through the industry, how they were discovered. That’s what actresses and models always call it, don’t they? To be discovered is to be recognized as a necessity. And what it must feel like to have your beauty be seen as a necessity.

Some would say it’s merely a sign of the times; I say it’s always been this way. Once upon a time, we worshiped fertility sculptures. Aphrodite and Athena. But heavenly bodies have now become earthly idols, thus leaving behind the concept of a benevolent Goddess. So we all come to hate these women eventually. We scrutinize the way they use their sex appeal, we challenge their beauty. In between Reddit snark threads comparing their likeness to those with fetal alcohol syndrome, another is inquiring where she acquired her outfit and who does her hair.

To be beautiful is to be assumed clean. It is to assume privilege and proximity to luxury. But how true is that really? The root of that idea is simple; such things are afforded by being desirable to men. Such a concept is deeper than a myth. How could it not be the complete and total lie?

Sex symbols have a history of being sexless. Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson, and Julia Fox (who later came out as a lesbian) have all cited their general disinterest in sex with men. Is this due to the nature of being desired widely by men whose main interest is the physical? Does the currency of a woman’s beauty take away from the sensuality of it? I can’t say I know, and I can’t account for every woman having the same experience. I remember when The Morning Shed first became popular on TikTok, and I saw women making jokes about their male partners’ attempting to touch them after completing their rigid night routines. It made me think of being 19 with freshly plumped lips, the nurse warning me not to pucker for a kiss until they settled. There is nothing beautiful about preservation over functionality.

.

The idea that a woman’s sex appeal guarantees an abundance of prosperity is simply untrue. I have stood in the smoking section of a nightclub with models who are put up in roach infested agency apartments, scraping by on promoter dinners and a dream. I’ve seen the failed attempts at OnlyFans careers. The mothers who become homeless after divorce, a symptom of years of stay-at-home servitude depleting their professional resume. The mistake doesn’t lie in the effort to become a model, a wife, a sex worker. It lies in the notion that being desired by men could ever equate to security.

Since coming out as a Queer woman (in a happy same sex relationship) I’ve had countless older women encourage me to always mind the potential for a husband. As angry as it makes me, I can’t help but feel a kind of sadness for them. Curiously, most if not all of these women have been burned in some major way by men. Infidelity. Financial ruin. Abuse. But they still have the idea ingrained in them that male partners are necessary for survival. They believe this so immensely that they fear for my own life, still blindly unaware of how men have deteriorated theirs. This is honest as it is tragic.

Do we mock the girl who believes such things are possible? Those who believe in the shiny fantasy of pretty privledge? To do so would be a projection of all our deepest insecurity; foolish want, whatever that looks like for each of us. And we so do foolishly want transcendence from the hellscape that often comes with femininity. So I don’t build cases or make mockeries out of women who tangle themselves in such desire. So much of womanhood is fabricated for the sake of our own oppression. A woman aware is a woman worth fearing.

love, h.n

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM // UNRELIABLENARRATOR222

anyways, the masturbatory thing. after communing at my Mum Mum’s for dinner I drove by a few past relics. mostly all my old schools and the two homes we lived in for a few years, the only time I wasn’t under the care of my maternal grandmother. it wasn’t the first time I had done such a thing; it just meant something else this time. I’ll be twenty-six years old in three months, and it isn’t to say I’m caught up in the dramas of aging but more that I’m realizing how long I’ve been sentient. my childhood stays pretty vivid in my mind. I have cataloged smells and feelings and memories either how they were or how I believed them to be. but so much goes over your head, you know?

I think my grander awareness for The Moment came around age twelve or so. you need less innocence for that, unfortunately. rose colored glasses coming off. a real soap opera situation. but it happens to us all in one form or another. I think it also comes with the realization you have an identity. that people are perceiving you in such a way and you, in turn, are perceiving them. my rearing and raising molded it most of all.

poverty was a major identifier. it stuck to me through both obvious and small ways. obvious in the braces that stood stuck on my teeth one year too long, missing a wire and a few brackets on account of neglecting to update our Medicaid information and losing dental insurance. small in the way my friend Michelle’s mother would drop me off in her brand-new lime green tricked out Jeep, with one of those fuzzy cheetah steering wheels, announcing “the cutesy tiny house!” upon arrival. then there was late and flakey, measured in my tardiness to hockey practice and habitually remaining last to be picked up. I remember my coach lighting up a smoke as soon as the other girls left, bitching and moaning about me holding her captive. something made me sad about her smoking in front of me, not that I was prudish in that way. I never thought it was cool of her to let loose like that when it was just us. I felt like I wasn’t worth saving face or maintaining a positive authority enough to not swear or smoke around.

kids that come from chaotic homes are often spit on twice. kindergarteners show up late to school and they have to face the wall for the whole of recess, like a write up at your corporate job. you receive free lunch, and they pass out thick cardboard meal tickets so ostentatious it feels like a practical joke. you don’t bring the freshly baked brownies to Girl Scouts when it’s your turn and your troop leader is waving her hands, sighing and sending one of the other moms to Dunkin’ for some last-minute donuts. and you sit there, eating your Fuck Up Donut and feel this deep sense of immorality.

the projections manifested in my adolescence as affirmation I was whatever I was made to feel. the evidence seemed so concrete. I was scrappy. a shit kicker and agitator. I was angry. that juvenile version of myself feels like a dirty secret I must always disclose to new people I meet. oh, if you knew me then. you might not have liked me. I’m different now. I am so much different now. I have dreams about becoming rich and famous and watching girls from math class post tell all’s about how much of a cunt I was.

before walking at graduation, one of my science teachers pulled me to the side and said it was never too late for me, insinuating I had moved past this invisible line at the tender age of 18. you can still come back; you can be saved. and alright, graduating with a 1.7 GPA didn’t set me up for the greatest trajectory into the real world or whatever. cussing out a school security guard and forging signatures to get out of class and getting caught for doing it didn’t either. but that’s the thing about asking a kid questions; you ask the right ones and everything changes. no one asked. I don’t think I would have told anyway.

when they called my class down to the gymnasium for our senior photo I hid in the bathroom and hit my vape. I think at the time I thought it was funny to be absent, I think on a deeper level I didn’t want to be associated with any of it. not really the people, though I never got along with most of my classmates. more just in defense of immortalizing those years as any real part of my life. it had to be nothing more than passing the time. all of it.

I’ve been gone, Far and Away for a whole year nearly. and I dunno, I guess it’s just hitting me that I’m making it work. I’m the kind of girl, woman, that goes to her biannual dentist appointments. I’ve ever been late on the rent. I have a high yields savings account and 401K. these are precious things I hold close to me because in some ways they weren’t supposed to happen. I’m still on the way but in many ways I have already arrived. that fact deserves more stock than I tend to feed it.

𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃

Journal Excerpt

April 20th, 2025

they’re building more shitty suburban homes on top of the previous bunch near Manderach. new pickle and tennis courts in an effort to draw in a younger hip crowd. not unlike my grandmother, who use to look down at the valley, at the patches of land blurring by the driver’s side window and speak of what came before. I remember when soil was less effected; she remembers when it was barren. “Nothing but trees and open field here, back when,” she used to say. isn’t it crazy when you grow enough to know “back when” in the flesh? I’ll make it a point to tell Ry about it when I drive him to basketball practice tomorrow. perhaps he’ll only just barely look up from his Nintendo switch and nod. one day I’m sure he’ll feel the weight of it. the weight of the constant change and the matter of trying to figure out where you fit into it all. that much is inescapable. I cry so much when I come home. it’s embarrassing the way I’ve been blubbering. I use to think it was because I felt like I was leaving something behind, that I missed it or whatever. I think it’s because I stopped identifying with it all. a long time ago really. and that’s the very thing I yearn for. kinda like when you break up with someone and even though you’re happy to be out you still cry because you miss how it feels to miss them, to love them. freedom hurts, too. they won’t tell you that though.

love, h.n

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

lately all I do is push buttons. wake up, go straight for the phone. two clicks on the side to pay for the train. to pay for my $8!!! matcha. the one on my vibrator each night before getting five hours of sleep. i push my own buttons by starting fights with my mom, when she calls on occasion, for reasons that could be justified but unlike me to go through the trouble. i stalk ex’s and their girlfriends and their mothers and people i never dated or loved or even fucked. i post short form TikToks to sad song with one liners that make girls with bunny pfps comment “same”. i over eat. i skim through articles my friends thoughtfully send to me. omg sooo good! i text back before realizing the topic is something sad or grotesque and definetly not omg sooo good!

it is the last exhale of winter and it feels like hesitation. I am not depressed. my life is actually very sweet and my needs are met and I do not feel numb and I do not pick at my skin and google nose jobs like I would if I were. the laundry gets done; the writing goes untouched. there is milk in the refrigerator; my outfits go without accessorizing. it is not quicksand that sucks me under, but a sticky glue pinning me in place. I need another story, something quick and sweet and nothing that belongs to me. give me videos of fat kids hitting the griddy. give me overpriced salads. give me three pathetic orgasms so i can fall asleep.

when I was in my final year of college, I took a 9am Monday yoga class as an elective because I thought it would be an easy A and because doing yoga every Monday morning sounded like someone who had their shit together. all of the pretty blonde nurse and nutrition majors took the course and I thought their Lulu Lemon leggings would rub off and grant me a little bit of magic. I got a B- in the class on account of my infrequent and late presence, no points deducted for rolling in smelling like IPA’s and gas station weed but I would have understood if there was.

on the rare occasions that I did show up, on time, and sober I found that through movement I could get my thoughts and my body and my breath to work as one unit in a way that felt other worldly. you could argue that most of my life has been spent with all three of those things at war with each other. I am not quite sure if it was the control, or the lack thereof, that did it. it was like all my energy was spread out, evenly distributed throughout my body. I have a strong constitution- it’s kept all in my head and shoulders and my feet drag along behind the rest. 6pm may hit and the thought will occur to me, “have I taken one good deep breath today?” my toes go numb and fall asleep a lot. you understand. this would be a good time to say something cliche about my inability to let anything go, even oxygen.

in the spirit of being stuck (and vanity of knowing bikini season is approaching) I decided to take my obligatory New York City Class Pass free trial and put my ass back on the mat. I needed to be without thought, I needed to breath and wait for an answer on what my next move should be. sometimes when you think you’re stuck, you convince yourself that you’re doing nothing when you’re doing everything but nothing and you need to start doing nothing. Sui Yoga in Soho offered an “Energizing” “Setting Sun” session described as “moderate” which I assumed would be super chill and low impact but should have known “energizing” was code for absolutely batshit bonkers. key tip ladies, if a yoga class is ever described as “energizing”, please know that you’re going to leave walking funny-especially if you haven’t even considered attempting to touch your toes in months. I think I was really looking for “restorative”. whatever.

thanks to the semester I spent hungover in my college’s old humid auxiliary gym, I knew the basics and could mostly figure out the rest. cat, cow, child’s pose. they cranked up the heat and pretty soon I was sliding all over the mat, slipping off the block and cramping my wrists from improper weight distribution. even still, there were lots of times where my mind did shut its vapid little mouth. my body opened and closed on par with every inhale, exhale. the last five minutes spent in shavasana (corpse pose) with the lights off I felt cracked open and free for the first time in however long, high off the smell of BO and Salt and Stone deodorant.

while journaling in the lobby cafe after, the instructor sat at the tabletop next to me and asked if this was my first class.

“is it that obvious?” I joked.

he smiled in a way that told me yes but in a way that was more polite than not.

“I just wanted to tell you that your form wasn’t bad. you only slipped up when you watched someone else and tried to match your own movement to theirs’s.”

“right.”

it was a different version of the same comment I received in my quarterly review at work two weeks prior. my boss had told me that she noticed a change in my project report style. I had told her in earnest that I thought I was doing a lot of things wrong, so I followed the format of my colleague.

“I noticed that. you know… when you do that, you also make the same mistakes as other people too.” I closed my eyes and nodded.

“right.”

while walking home I felt a deep sense of misplaced shame cooking in my belly. my burden, my invisible monster in this life is a deep sense of mistrust I have for myself. it is such a way that it should be assumed anything I have a hand in will be covered in red ink eventually. I am the perpetual pupal, the intern of my own life. I think (I have) always been afraid of how far this mistrust could extend. as if I could be convinced that the sky is green if someone argued with me long enough. maybe it is the very truness of myself that makes me reject it so. because there is a very real trueness about my dreams, my creative aspirations, my life.

but sometimes I think they feel too big. too big for my body and always bleeding that messy red ink. my own stories feel too good to be mine. show me looksmaxxing GRWMs instead.

stunning realization about my creative avoidance however: there is no escaping the fact that I am a creator. I am simply now creating a life riding the carousel. and hey, it’s a ride that society works overtime trying to keep you on. the ride that keeps you lonely and stupid and poor. did you know they have fucking Klarna on DoorDash now? a Chipotle burrito payment plan, bonds for goddamn E. coli.

so yes, I will grant myself a little bit of grace. a little bit of grace for being born a rat in a cage of flashing lights. there is no shame in that. the feeling of being stuck with all these blinding options will always be an symptom of our shared social contagion. but the waiting. the mistrust. the looking over my shouder to see proof of my fallacy in whomever’s actions oppose it. you can’t. I can’t. you’re staring at the ground and your trying not to trip over your feet, but you’re running into everything. unbow your head, you fool.

love, h.n

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

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video evidence of my crash out.

song: I Know it’s Over by The Smiths

i am a full fledged nor gather into barns groupie now. he has a patreon that i will most likely be subbing to as well… also, i did some googling to find the source of such a name, if it came from anywhere, and was so pleasantly surprised. it’s a biblical verse, Matthew 6:26. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
the takeaway is that there's no need to be anxious about your needs being met, God will always provide. i am not religious, but how beautiful? does the universe not always provide anyways? 

blah blah blah

i am building a group of all girlfriends for the first time since my pre-teens. it feels so beautiful and wholesome and so much more than i could have asked for.

𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸

been soooo down for the futuristic internet y2k pop that is blowing up rn. found Oklou recently and fell in love with her hardcore. it’s a nice break from recession pop… tea.

just finished Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth recently and i am so obsessed. set in 1990’s Ireland, beautiful sapphic love story about two best friends. think lesbian Normal People. can’t recommend more.

in a few short months i will be laying in a grassy field, itchy after rolling around in fresh cut grass and happy to be.

nature vag

NYFW was this past weekend and in turn, i did a deep dive into some archives. elena velez is my new favorite designer, don’t know how i discovered her but i adore the show she put on back in 2023. model mud fight. hell yeah.

started a new Pinterest board called heavy metal and reflective. an ode to Azealia Banks (she got cool again) but more as a new inspiration for my style. i was always the gold hoop girl. but gold bends. i want armor. i want to feel like a knight going into battle. i want you to see me on the street and be forced to consider whether or no i was headed to a medieval turn up

The Formula for Inviting the Flow State by Dr John Verkaeke. tapping into flow state has been extremely difficult for me as of late, so this came at a lovely time. my favorite part is the end, the bit that asks why bother? because i do have such thoughts more often than someone would guess but the answer is always a greater source of meaning. i create to soften my cynicism, bring truth 2 the madness<33

✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*✧.*

love, h.n

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

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tonight i met a mutual, a creative, in a dimly lit wine bar in Brooklyn. we discussed upcoming projects and discovered house fires both permeated our lives at one point or another. it’s always fire, always heat, connecting me to everyone special one way or another. she excused herself to the restroom and i found myself not tempted to use my phone to fill the empty space. it’s caught up to me again, the state of my life as it stands. all the people so interwoven into the fabric of my days and nights that i did not know existed last year. this world is a bottomless pit of people you can love, if you did not know. so many you’d be surprise. how easy they are to love, would surprise you more.

i went home and looked at myself in the mirror. once in the hallway’s, once in the tiny upclose kind your mother keeps on her bureau for plucking eyebrows too thin. magnified, i can see the pitted acne scares around my cheeks-a token of my teen years. tiny black dots on my chin and nose. smile lines beginning to take form, sun spots blooming around my eyes. history. artifacts. far away, in the dull illumination of the hallway, it gets even stranger. belly button length red raven hair. who made such a choice?! something older about the eyes. a curious brow, an impregnable question filling the air.

when you’re on your way to who you are becoming, it’s easy to forget to bring yourself with you. these days feel like years, and the years tick by like minutes. thinking about my life last year, the one before, and several before that, takes me by the throat at random. explain to me that i am not curled up in my college apartment taking bong rips at my roommates feet. convince me my grandmother is not outside in the yard, picking fruit from the cherry tree. the tattoos, the bumps, and the bruises. i walk differently, talk differently, love and make love differently than i have before. and what’s more is that i simply cannot stop. i keeping looking back like you’re right behind me, but it’s always beside. hold me tightly, even if it’s by the throat. i need to feel that you are still very close; every version of myself i have ever known.

love, h.n

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM

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bought tooth gems to try out recently. i am so tooth obsessed it's the first thing i look at when i meet someone. i love a chipped tooth. when i can tell if you're a smoker. a gap, a metal filling in the back. SHOW ME YOUR TEETH! ! ! !

highly recommend watching drunks, or at the very least maybe just this scene. Parker Posey is everything, and this soo captured the atmosphere of AA meetings. i grew up going to methadone clinics and support groups with my parents. there is so much chaos yet this earnest, vibrant light of love and vulnerability. addiction is a curious thing, always been intrigued by it. 

this song is soooo theatrical i listened to it twice on my run today. first half all bass and drums, pretended i was in a movie running in an airport after the loml. pretended i was a huntress vampire slayer running to finish off the last of a coven. then the second half, the lyrics just go bizerk. go indulge. 

i can't get in a relationship right now because i have some things to handle but... i miss how it feels to crave closeness. i am such a furious lover, more so than people ever expect. i miss slipping my head up somebody's sweatshirt, breathing in morning breath and not caring. i miss desperation to merge with another body!!! 

i don't have to say anything i don't think. 

below is a series of The Vulva and The Virgin. Catholics were sooo pussy obsessed and i adore that. 

i love love love scrappy scratchy white trash trailer park lookin’ tats i cannot tell a lie. i want a bunch. look into Ethel Cain’s tattoo collection sometime. her’s are so perfect. she said she did all of them on her bedroom floor wine drunk. that’s what i want

i love me some miss Honey fr. indulging in your own suffering is a privledge and a sign you don't have enough to do. it's so fun to romanticize.. so good for creative energy too but alas but must move on!

been so on my channel orangeeeeeeeeeee. first time i smoked pot in the 7th grade this was blasting on a tiny speaker in a garage. no ones parents were home. i wanna hone that energy always. 

ok so what whatever.

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love, h.n

thank you so much for participating in the publication of this piece. your support means the world to me. if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing with a friend, family member, or reposting on social media. if there are any questions, comments, or general conversational points you’d like to discuss please never hesitate to reach out via social media or email. take care.

email: Hailey.Noecker99@gmail.com

IG: HAILOGRAM