• Melbourne literary darling Paul Dalla Rosa is set to publish his first novel Your Future is Behind You with Catapult Books. The project, slated for publication next year, follows ‘three gay men who reunite in Melbourne after one returns from London’s collapsing media scene’ (via Publisher’s Marketplace). Okay! Cannot wait…

• They got the London Book Review. The LBR website — which, dare I say, is not accustomed to virality — was temporarily down after an overwhelming influx of traffic to classicist Emily Wilson’s review/take-down of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Wilson, known for her fresh and accessible translation of the classic poem, wrote that she ‘would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.’ :/

• The Booker Prize longlist is here! And it is weirder than anyone expected. I’m especially keen to read Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House, beautifully reviewed here by Isabella Gullifer-Laurie.

• Boobs are back, according to style.analytics. She reports that: ‘Breast enlargement has 335k monthly searches, up 45% since last year. Breast enhancement is at 63k, up 85%; and breast augmentation is at 2M, up 26%.’ In my vibes-based analysis, these statistics also align with this Liana Satenstein article entitled The Ecstasy of Exposed Bra Straps.

• I’m excited about the release of James Robert Woods’ The Birthday Trip, out in Australian cinemas this week. Patrick Marlborough positively reviewed the film on his Substack.

• Dua Lipa, who has excellent taste, will curate this year’s London Literature Festival. As part of the program, Dua will interview Zadie Smith about her 2000 debut White Teeth. As an aside, I learnt from Lena Dunham’s Instagram that Zadie Smith was in attendance at Taylor Swift’s wedding? Like, what? And, in more Zadie Smith gossip, some are speculating that this short story is a thinly veiled account of an affair the story’s writer had with Smith’s husband Nick Laird? This gossip is old news but it is new to me (via. Kaitlin Phillips’ Gift Guide). And I know that it’s tacky to even bring it up but she’s so private that I can’t help myself…

• Good news for fellow lovers of Bard’s Apothecary — a gorgeous tiny taco restaurant has opened next door! With a menu based on chef Jose Angel Delgado Juárez’s family recipes, Super Taco is the newest addition to Crosley St, with Andrew McConnell’s Côte Basque set to open across the road later this winter.

• Ivy Wolk — or, as I like to call her, our generation’s Lena Dunham (sorry, Rachel Sennott) — has published a low-key epic short story in Volume 0 entitled EFFIGY GIRL.

• I’m probably biased because I work in children’s publishing but is illustration really big right now… or am I crazy and projecting? Perhaps it’s because I’m so fatigued with AI art and obvious, ugly graphic design that I’m more attuned to all that is slow and beautiful. A singular piece of evidence for my hunch — Feed Me alerted me to this Merit illustration.

• The Wall Street Journal has reported that New York dermatologists ‘say clients are increasingly asking for treatments that help preserve fine lines and facial expression.’ If I could fully raise my eyebrows at this news, I would!

• Is Melbourne winter especially bone-chilling this year? I’m seeing a lot of Bali and FNQ on my Instagram feed, so I suspect it might be. I’m going to Palm Cove next week, so if anyone has FNQ tips for a girl who doesn’t know how to drive, let me know.

• MIFF begins next Thursday. I’m particularly keen for Maddie’s Secret and Portrait of Jason.

• Australian publisher Scribe is putting out a stunning new edition of Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, both locally and in the UK! I love this news and I’d love to know how it came to be (if anyone wants to tell me lol).

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry seems to be having a resurgence among young men who come into the bookstore where I work. Thoughts?

That’s all for now <3

Bx

Like the time I placed my bowl of porridge on the roof of my car, as I loaded it up with my things for the day, before driving off and watching the porcelain roll down my windscreen and then the bowl of oats smash across the intersection. I remember thinking in a panic, “What the hell, you freak!". I raced back home to collect my brush pan and shovel to clean up the sloppy mess in the middle of the road, conscious of the morning traffic swerving around me. But this moment of uncertainty gave me a sense of unexpected vitality.

And I couldn’t help but think: Am I the first person to smash their bowl of porridge at this intersection?

It is in these moments that I feel the sublime sense of freedom: I am alone in the world. Trailblazer. Innovator of my own destiny. Change maker. Although there is discomfort in the unknown, there is something joyous about experiencing a happening that is only occurring to you. It can be short-lived, but the ‘you had to be there moment’, with yourself, is clarifying. Like a private joke—falling over—but you’re the only one that knows about it.

Even in the original experience, there is an urge to even relate it to pre-existing media. Perhaps, given our generation are digital natives, there is little that we do, think or wear that is untouched by a form of cultural relevance or trend.

There is such a sick sense of pleasure in finding a meme, movie or song that articulates a thought you have already had or when you have an experience, and you are instantly reminded of a cultural artefact. This sense of connectedness enforces the idea that there is truly hardly anything left that is an original experience. And given the fast pace that I consume, I scroll, I click, I watch, I leave little time for one.

There is nothing more soothing than coating yourself in the warm blanket of a watching reels replaying your favourite TV characters, or revisiting a book you’ve read, a film you’ve watched, a song that transports you to a specific time in your life. When the pain and promise of contemporary life feel as though it drags us into uncharted waters, there is nothing as comforting as the REWATCH. It is as though, whenever I am going through something, my only balm is to put on Ratatouille (2007) and return to the simplicity of the past (or epic cinema). It is as though I am only able to let go by handing over the steering wheel to someone else, to go to a familiar destination—as I fall asleep to my Pride and Prejudice (1813) audiobook.

It cannot escape my notice that we are existing within a cultural loop: sequel, sequel, sequel, reboot, reboot, prequel, reboot. The world, in political but also cultural regression, has responded to the precarity with a risk-averse model, giving the people what they want: The past.

The entertainment industry is aware of this desire. The 2016 revival is not a trend by chance; it has long been brewing in our culture’s desire to claw back the millennial optimism by repurposing popular media. This is also given the current economic precariousness, with production companies far less likely to invest in a risky project, instead opting for programming with a built-in audience. But as we live through this real-time cultural epidemic, the attempts at rehashing every single franchise must be interrogated, as to what it is doing to our collective media culture. The Devil Wears Prada SEQUEL. Malcolm in the Middle REBOOT. Young Sheldon, The Big Bang Theory, PREQUEL. Sex and the City: The Movie, Sex and the City 2, And Just Like That: Season 1, 2 and 3. I even think, this could be said for Lena Dunham’s memoir, Famesick as it RECOUNTS the production of Girls.

It feels like a party that should have ended hours ago, yet as you head into the lounge room in the early hours of the morning, light coming through the window, and you realise: everyone at kickons looks fucked.

Watching your favourite nostalgia-inducing pieces of media become a stretched, reworked form of content is a strange experience. It feels like existing in an alternate reality, where you are watching something, but because the premise is the same but the characters are different, you cannot help but feel that you are also a different version of yourself in a different reality, one where everything is slightly off balance.

There is a clear distinction between revisiting your favourite film, preserved like a time capsule, and your favourite film being rebooted, extended and ‘prequelled’. I interrogate my resistance to these remakes, and wonder whether I simply do not want my favourite characters to age or develop. But I cannot think this is the essence of my aversion. Conservatives like to say the issue with And Just Like That… is that it got woke, and while I do agree that Charlotte, Miranda and Carrie’s narratives became preoccupied with the current political discourse, the critique needs to acknowledge that the issue is that they’ve tried to tackle something far more sinister: The present.

There are myriad reasons why And Just Like That… failed to recreate the magic of the original series. Some are tangible, while others are more mystical, for there is no perfect science when creating art. I am sure, an authentic extension of the Sex and the City cinematic universe was possible, but injecting well-loved and deeply politically disinterested early 2000s characters with COVID-19 and the optics of the contemporary age, was always going to be an uphill battle. The characters feel disingenuous and disconnected from their past selves. Thus, it begs the question, why not create new characters, new ideas, new universes that find new ways to engage with the present?

As we witness the preoccupation with glory days of the past, and the ‘rebootification’ of the entertainment industry, I have realised, along with a lack of original experience, I am craving more than ever original content. But though I deeply desire it, there is still a part of my brain that gets surprised by the ingenuity of original media. Films that create their own cinematic universe, with no aspirations of a sequel.

Like the tonally off, slightly racist, unknown film, Vamps (2012) starring Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver. Honestly, a really weird film, but incredible original content.

I wonder, what happens to us as a society, when we consistently consume ideas (in media, but also more widely) that are known to us. Does it make us less likely to engage with new people? Does it make us less brave? Does it make us less tolerant? The reliance on the recycling of culture makes me want to carve out more original experience of life. To go to a restaurant because it smells good, not because you saw it recommended on Instagram. To read a book, without reading reviews beforehand, and devouring it in the privacy of your own mind. To watch a film, and to not even log it on Letterboxd…

Still, the best way to describe a night out is, ‘last night was a movie’. Picking at the fun of imagining life, as if we are a part of a great connected social construct. Such a formative part of my adolescence was watching Skins, and lusting over the idea that one day that would be my life. Obviously it was wildly inaccurate, but it made me feel connected to a world, before I had reached there myself. This warm feeling still strikes me when I listen to Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway driving around in my car. Or when it rains and I stand next to a window, arm out stretched, pretending to be in a romantic movie. Life has been lived many times before me, next to me and will be after me. So give me an original experience.

• No one is immune from arts funding cuts. Rachel ‘Raygun’ Gunn has taken a voluntary redundancy from Macquarie University, where she worked for over a decade in media and cultural studies.

• Bianca Censori — a graduate of the University of Melbourne architecture school — was a guest critic this week at Columbia’s Advanced Studio IV program.

• Lena Dunham’s hit memoir Famesick is already out of stock with its Australian publisher! They’re reprinting and more copies are due next week. Yesterday, at the bookstore where I work, about ten people came in and asked for it. But we were sold out. Lena’s Substack campaign for Famesick has been truly incredible. Not to be shady but…mayhaps the local publisher should have printed more copies? So happy for Lena nonetheless <3

• Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodrigo were spotted on a dinner date two weeks ago. Probably a publicity relo and yet, to me, this seems to be written in the stars.

• There was a heap of discussion earlier this month about the marketing agency Chaotic Good and their use of various digital marketing strategies to promote Geese, as well as Cameron Winter’s solo work. This week, Shaad D’Souza wrote about indie music and viral campaigns for the Guardian.

• Sahar Rabah has won the 2026 Calibre Essay Prize for her essay Between reality and dreams. She is the the first Palestinian writer to win the prize. You can read her essay in this month’s ABR.

• Via Beat Magazine: young Australian women are out-snorting men in cocaine consumption! Go off, ladies.

• The LA Times has drawn a (slightly tenuous) connection between fragmentary novels and dwindling attention spans, citing Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth and Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation

• Friend-of-the-newsletter Stacey Collee will release Sex, Love with no more poetry. Cannot wait to read.

• There is/was a bed-bug infestation at Brunswick Savers. The story is still live and all the info I have is from this Paris End Instagram post, so I defer to them on this.

• Angelic girl vocalist alert — Folk Bitch Trio will play with Mitski at the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid.

• Who says writers can’t be models? Lost Lambs author Madeline Cash looks super chic in her new GAP campaign.

• Anika Jade Levy’s novel Flat Earth is coming to the small screen with Vice Studios.

• The Archibald Prize finalists just dropped. My jaw dropped when I spotted Keli Holliday.

Earlier this year, over coffee on Elgin Street, a particularly bro-ey friend of mine asked me why I read fiction at all, seeing as it is “made-up”. It was a few days after New Years. I gave him a pretty formulaic response, alluding to imagination, empathy, narrative and entertainment. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier and more immersive,’ he asked, ‘to just wear an AI headset?’ I work in books, at both the beginning and the end of the production line. And perhaps for that reason – although I suspect he was being contrarian rather than sincere – his bullshit question seemed to me an existential one.

He might have been more satisfied with my response had I listed a bunch of metrics that could be optimised by reading. But I’ve come to resent the austere, vaguely Protestant way people talk about reading, as if it is akin to, say, broccoli. It’s good for you! It increases your vocabulary! It makes you more empathetic! In the viral ‘mental toughness’ program of self-optimisation called 75 Hard, one of the daily instructions – aside from two workouts, a gallon of water and a progress picture – is that the participant read 10 pages of a book, ideally a self-help book. I think we know, intuitively, that reading is therapeutic. But isn’t it a great deal more than that too?

I read to interrupt myself. I read to experiment with a different kind of time, to modulate my perception so it enters a mode increasingly distinct from its fluttery phone-attached norm, to slow my heart rate, to return myself to a different yet familiar experience of being. But I also do it for those almost inarticulable reasons which concern the soul, for a kind of edification that isn’t moralistic or self-optimising but a worthy end in and of itself. I’m not always entirely focused when I read, I get distracted – read forward and then back, reread, think of things other than the book itself. The images that come to me when I read fiction are half-formed, a patchwork of memory and make-believe, a sketchy montage of impressionistic representations of the work in front of me. Reading, especially reading fiction, is an act of co-creation, the melding of two consciousnesses. Fiction requires the imaginative power of both the writer and the reader.

It is easy to sentimentalise about reading, especially early experiences of reading, which feel so special and formative, so entwined with our experiences of first constructing the world. I read pretty hungrily as a young person. By the time I was nine or ten, I was reading two or three books a week (not to flex…). When I first thought about this obsessive habit – which I have not since replicated at the same rate as my ten-year-old self – I felt inclined to nostalgically write ‘these are my most vivid reading memories’. But I quickly realised I couldn’t “vividly” remember a single book I had read for the first decade or so of my life, except Harry Potter (lol). What I do remember is that my parents never stopped me from reading, no matter the hour. My compulsion to read at such a ferocious rate halted when I was 12 or 13. The reason might be obvious: when I was 12 or 13, I received my first smartphone. The chain of causation was linear.

So, back to the phone… again! There are well-trodden ethical and political questions here about labor and power, so well-trodden that to even mention them feels a little passé. But I don’t think I can untangle my aforementioned phone-attached state – the flightiness, the overflow of energy, the elevated cortisol – from the conditions that support or (perhaps more accurately) create it. The mechanisms of the digital sphere we inhabit work intentionally to surveil, analyse, harness and predict the informational data we produce. These mechanisms then aggravate that data towards profit. The sacrifice is our time and attention. As Zadie Smith writes in her most recent collection of essays, ‘The novelty this time is that we pay the cost existentially. We are the product. Every kid on the train is in their private, monetized dream, giving up their human attention to the algorithm, which at some point down the line will be turned for somebody else’s profit.’

I like the way that Zadie Smith writes about technology and believe her to be a necessary voice in its discussion. But sometimes, when I read her sombre, often elegiac writing about algorithms, tech billionaires and attention capture, I think: but she doesn’t know what it feels like to post a really great selfie on your story on a night out and receive a bunch of replies. She doesn’t know the rush of watching five excellent reels in a row and sending them all to your best friend. She might not agree with me if I told her that some girls really do have a talent for… posting. Some girls post in a way that both halts and animates their audience, just as a great film or painting might. How can I reconcile that with everything else, all the evil? I don’t know.

It obviously isn’t a binary of books = good, internet = bad. The internet is not a totality of evil. I’m writing and publishing this very essay…on the internet. And the idea that a novel must always be good and virtuous doesn’t seem so helpful either. It puts me in a mind of something Ottessa Moshfegh quipped to Bookforum in 2019:

I wish that future novelists would reject the pressure to write for the betterment of society. Art is not media. A novel is not an “afternoon special” or fodder for the Twittersphere or material for journalists to make neat generalizations about culture. A novel is not BuzzFeed or NPR or Instagram or even Hollywood. Let’s get clear about that. A novel is a literary work of art meant to expand consciousness. We need novels that live in an amoral universe, past the political agenda described on social media. We have imaginations for a reason. Novels like American Psycho and Lolita did not poison culture. Murderous corporations and exploitive industries did. We need characters in novels to be free to range into the dark and wrong. How else will we understand ourselves?

When I think about the excess of time I spend on my phone, which could be spent reading, I feel a little bit of shame and self-reproach. Mostly the thought makes me melancholy. The problem is not that I don’t read as much as I “should”, for some moralistic reason. It’s that I don’t read as much as I want to. The compulsion of my technology use keeps me from a something that feels better, closer and more true. I like to spend time in the company of imaginary characters. I like to interface with the consciousness of another person. When fiction is good, really good, I have a feeling of more life, of expansion. It’s not a habit I’m likely to replace with an AI headset.

Welcome to a special Sydney edition of Gossip — a round up of all our favourite news and whispers from Melbourne and beyond

• Cameron Winter is currently travelling around Australia, performing solo and with his band Geese (supported by the Sydney-born, London-based band Radio Free Alice). At his solo show in Melbourne, Winter’s support act was Jing Tao – a Melbourne-based pianist in Year 7. I can’t wait to see CW play tonight at the Sydney Opera House. Love will literally be revealed…

• Tomorrow is Lunar New Year! Hello to the Year of the Fire Horse. It’s set to be a time of change, speed and action.

• Rhode has officially touched down at Mecca. At the Paddington Mecca store I visited yesterday, 10 girls were crowded around the freshly-minted Rhode stand, all of them in search of the sold-out glazing milk. The store attendant was doing God’s work. Hailey Bieber hosted PR events at A.P. Bakery and The Nielsen. Will she come to Melbourne, I wonder?

• From the February Harper’s Index: The odds that an American woman has had cosmetic surgery is 1 in 25; the odds that a Mormon American woman has it is 1 in 7. Those of us who watch RHOSLC already know this!

• The New York Times has released a (slightly tense) conversation between Chloé Malle and Anna Wintour about the future of American Vogue. Awks.

• My little brother claims he spotted Margot Robbie in Glebe over the weekend. She was in Sydney so it’s not out of the question. Fact check?

• Rintel’s Diner is back open as of last Thursday. Hooray!

• Ash Wednesday is this week, marking the beginning of Lent. I’m giving up booze so if you spot me with a drink in the next 40 days, smack it out of my hand!

• Last fortnight, we quoted style.analytics’ report that plum and purple would be big colours of 2026. This week, we add one more colour (of our own) to that prediction: mint green. The credit for this prediction goes to friend-of-the-newsletter Megan. She also reminded me that in the prelude to Lady Gaga’s Marry the Night music video, Gaga says: ‘And I also believe that mint will be very big in fashion next Spring.’ Huge.

• Ballerina Farm is embroiled in yet more controversy, this time around the company’s sale of raw milk. On January 29th, Utah-based radio station KPCW reported that, in mid-2025, Ballerina Farm’s raw milk failed a regulatory health inspection. The reason: the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food had found high levels of coliform (a family of bacteria that includes E. coli) in the product. Hannah Neeleman released a video statement on Instagram last week, saying the following: "During the period in which Ballerina Farm sold raw milk, it passed the state's required testing. Additionally, Ballerina Farm never recalled any product, including its raw milk. Raw milk that did not meet regulatory or industry standards was not sold and responsibility disposed of." Hmmmm…..

• Australia has the highest per-capita gambling losses in the world. This isn’t news. The news is this: since legalising sports betting after a Supreme Court decision in 2018, America is catching up. Read about America’s new sports betting epidemic in this incredible and very sad Harper’s report from Jasper Craven.

• Bunny alert. Playboy has launched on Substack!

• I can’t stop thinking about this line that Margaret Qualley texted to Vanity Fair writer Marisa Meltzer after her profile with the magazine: ‘I love my husband, my family. I love dancing and horses. I love the moon. Happy crying is the best. I love listening to Tara Brach and books on tape. And anything Jack writes. Female friendships are so holy, shout out Talia Ryder. My sister was my first soulmate. I wanna die on a farm. I need to learn how to drive stick, my brother tried to teach me but I was 12 and it didn’t land. Smokey, dog, god. I love you world, thank you for having me.’ (via. FeedMe)

• Someone stop Emerald Fennell. The British director’s “adaptation” of Wuthering Heights is here. Biggest eye-roll emoji ever.

• Bar Carnation has opened in the old Gerald’s Bar space in Rathdowne Village. Flowers everywhere.

• The 19th Melbourne Art Fair is on at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre this week. Pick up one of these for free

.

• Eileen Kelly – mental health advocate, contemporary Carrie Bradshaw, interior designer and all around dream girl – was spotted holding hands with 62-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis. Okay, what?!?!

• Abbie Chatfield – one half of Australia’s most obnoxious celebrity couple – has discovered Melbourne darling Spike Fuck. The ex-Bachelor star posted a reel about his incredible EP Smackwave… a crossover literally no one saw coming.

• Addison Rae did not win Best New Artist at the Grammys. But the Best New Artist Grammy is low-key a curse. So maybe that’s a good thing.

• Last week, we were all rocked by news that iconic corner pub The Fitzroy Pinnacle would close. This week, The Fitzroy Pinnacle is back! Bar Liberty owner Michael Bascetta has purchased the pub and it will re-open on February 18th.

• Over the weekend, I went to see Nick Cave at Alexandra Gardens with my parents. I learnt soon after that many others had attended…also with their parents. Checks out. It was a beautiful night <3

• Yesterday, Australian Open champion Carlos Alcaraz lugged his massive trophy to Carlton Gardens for a photoshoot. The star tennis player wore Louis Vuitton. We hope you liked your time Melbourne, Carlitos <3

• Style.analytics has reported that plum and purple are set to be big colours for 2026. In her Instagram report, she revealed that ‘mentions of plum have increased 175% year-over-year across FW25 arrivals’ and that searches for ‘dark plum’ have soared 220% on Pinterest.

• This year, I got really into the Australian Open. The influencer style at the Apérol stand left a lot to be desired. But on court it was a different story. We’ve already discussed Naomi Osaka’s opening outfit. I also loved this pink Wilson tennis dress worn by Marta Kostyuk, Reilly Opelka’s Steve Irwin style SEASE kit and Jess Pegula’s stack of gold chains.

• We <3 Zara Larsson. The stripped-down version of Midnight Sun she performed at the Grammys went off.

• There’s soooo much noise surrounding Madeline Cash’s debut novel Lost Lambs, out in Australia today (two weeks behind the US lol). I haven’t seen a fiction debut with so much buzz around it in yonks. Can’t wait to read.

• Now open in West Melbourne: Gamja Hotteok. A new Korean potato hotteok spot, also selling house-made fruit vinegar ade.

• Friend of the newsletter Andrew Tabacco’s 2025 film Year in Review is now live over on Kinotopia. Loved it.

• Speaking of Australian film, Sydney-born Rose Byrne is an Oscar nominee!

• Many more ADHD diagnoses incoming. Victorian GPs will now be trained diagnose and treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

• Odessa A’Zion has exited the A24 adaptation of Holly Brinkley’s book Deep Cuts. The character A’Zion was set to play – Zoe Gutierrez – is described in the book as being Mexican and Jewish. In a gracious and candid Instagram statement, Odessa wrote: ‘I just cannot do it knowing more about Zoe now…There are a plentitude of people more than capable of playing this role and I am NOT one of them. I can’t wait to see who it ends up being.’

I certainly don’t take pleasure in my friends’ pain. But there is something so delicious about knowing intimate aspects of a friend’s life. I mean, obviously, that is why you’re friends — ultimately, you care. Catching up over a coffee, wine, plat du jour, listening to your friend recount the trials and tribulations of contemporary life (being left on read, accidentally replying all to an email thread, having your heartbroken) as agonising and or as trivial as it is, it all matters.

But I cannot help but interrogate our desire to know, even when the information, situation, or event involves people that we don’t know. Is it the internet’s fault? The para-social relationships we have formed — we feel as though we know everyone? Or is it just celebrity culture?

The latest case of the Instagram crashout (sans close friends feature) comes from the Millennials’ royal family — the Beckhams. Eldest son (and notorious nepo baby) Brooklyn Beckham recently took to his canvas (the Instagram story) to reveal (what we’ve all been dying to know), the state of his relationships with his parents, Victoria and David Beckham. The family feud has been simmering for months, with subtle digs and noticeable unfollows and absences, but with no statement or public acknowledgement from either party. It has caused me and many others to question: Where did it all go wrong?

Beckham is hardly an internet darling. His attempts at cultivating a cultural identity have fallen flat. His photography book ,What I See (2017), and television show Cookin’ with Brooklyn (yes, I know), have been widely criticised. Another tale as old as time — the generationally wealthy child, with all the time and resources, yet none of the clue or charm. You hate to see it. Although luckily/unluckily for Beckham, something he does have is attention. Or attention to his immediate family’s interpersonal relationships.

While the Beckham family’s fame is unique, their difficult family dynamic is somewhat universal. As Leo Tolsoy opens with in Anna Karenina, ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ The relationships within families, and by extension, new partners, are destined to be tumultuous. Beckham’s intra-family conflict is hardly original. Except maybe that ‘inappropriate’ wedding dance…

Public vulnerability is ingrained in our consumption of art. We often praise literature, film, television, and music on their ‘authenticity’. A word that is connected to a work’s legitimacy. An ability a musician, writer, artist has in conveying how they really feel. But whether or not this is the truth is not usually the point.

With the intensity of internet discourse, the truth can get buried deep under the piles of comments, memes and cultural commentary. While facts and accuracy are important, I do think there are sometimes too many sides to a story — that random people on the internet could never and perhaps should never understand. It makes me question, in art, are the people involved entitled to privacy?

In her preface to Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1961), Joan Didion makes the statement, ‘Writers are always selling somebody out.’ Ushering in 'new journalism', Didion reported on her life and the world as she saw it — ‘she blended into the scene; she internali[s]ed its confusions.’ Rather than harbouring on statistical and sterile language, Didion reflected a time firmly through the lens of her experiences, relationships and observations. The degree of truth that sharing others’ stories means that writers are ‘selling somebody out’, I think, depends on the nature of the work and the structure of powers at play. But it does further the question, is it even possible to create art without including aspects of our personal lives? I suppose, as artists, we make the decision to be open to this as a possibility. But do our subjects?

Whenever Helen Garner’s How to End a Story (2021) gets brought up in conversation, someone will always comment on her shit husband, “Poor Helen!” While the premise of Garner’s work is not to make her a victim, the diary is expectedly candid in her feelings of betrayal and sadness as she recounts the breakdown of her third marriage. The three diaries that range from 1978 – 1998 have recently been republished into a 800 page tome (winning the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction). The publishing exercise of repurposing a diary proves that, beyond the literary merit, there is still such an appetite for the form.

But beyond being deeply invested in Garner’s reflections, I did at the time wonder how her ex-husband, fellow writer Murray Bail, felt their marriage laid bare. I assume the girls on their Garner grind increased the traffic on his Google search exponentially, which may have helped him sell a handful of books. But as a person, who I am sure is not posting his personal life on his Instagram story, I can only imagine the phenomenon would be distressing. And yet, Bail is such a micro-victim of this scenario. His name is not mentioned, there are no photos, and while he is at the mercy of a Google search, I don’t think he is being stalked by paparazzi or that the foundations of his livelihood have been put at risk.

Lily Allen’s unexpected fifth album West End Girl, is perhaps our greatest musical example of ‘crashing out on the Instagram stories’. With lines such as, ‘Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken / How’d I get caught up in your double life?’ Allen playfully and brutally dissects her marriage to actor David Harbour. Both Allen and Harbour are heavily in the public eye and have literally opened their home on the internet — laying their interior design choices and relationship bare. But even with extreme fame, I think the right to privacy should be a consideration.

On Allen’s album, Anna Russell writes for The New Yorker, ‘The album is also about privacy — who gets to have it, and who doesn’t. Allen has been in the public eye in the U.K. for two decades, and has a lot to say about tabloid culture in Britain.’ She continues, ‘But “West End Girl” pushes that project of self-exposure further. Making a record that explodes her privacy allows her to reveal herself on her own terms.’

This is not Allen’s first attempt at telling her side of the story. Her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly (2018) is a confessional on her troubled childhood, teenager-dom and adulthood — mistakes and all. While her observations and retellings are her truth/a truth, there are parts that have been met with conflicting ‘truths’. In the book, Allen shares an occasion that she and Zoë Kravitz ‘went out partying and ended up kissing’ — implying a consensual encounter. However, when Kravitz was asked in an interview on the occasion, she referred to the ‘kiss’ as an ‘attack’. I do not support any form of nonconsensual behaviour from anyone, and this is a circumstance when one truth should irrevocably prevail.

Without minimising Kravitz’s experience with Allen, I think the fact that both parties have public interest means that at least both parties have platforms and are heard — this is a privilege that not all victims have access to. When Allen’s West End Girl began to permeate the cultural sphere, I saw many comments that deemed her melodic misery null, as she was an alleged sexual offender (I stand with Kravitz, being commented repeatedly). I suppose the logic was: Because she had caused someone else pain, she was not allowed to complain about experiencing pain herself. Without wanting to seem morally contrarian, I do wonder if this is a dangerous path. No one is perfect, and just existing in the world means, unfortunately, we will cause others harm. But it is with this logic that we also know harm will be done to us. To live is to accept these conditions.

Upon considering the ‘messiness’ of modern life, I cannot ignore the OG over-sharer, Carrie Bradshaw. I am late to the party, but I have recently embarked on the coming-of-age ritual of watching Sex and the City from its beginning. I am now up to season 5, but had to pace myself through Carrie’s affair with Mr Big in season 3. This essay is not on the morals of cheating on your romantic partner; rather, that I struggled to have empathy for Carrie while she lamented to her patient girlfriends on Aidan subsequently breaking up with her. She acted without considering the pain she may cause to another person.

I realise Carrie is a television character used to explore emotional complexity, and Samantha’s lack of judgement (‘Not my style’), is an important moment of acceptance — acknowledgement that women are sophisticated and multifaceted — an act of resistance at a time that readily reduced feminine personhood. I also realise that the show’s premise hinges on Carrie’s public vulnerability. While at times she is punished (cue season 5, episode 8, ‘I Love a Charade’ where she verbally vomits on fleeting love interest Jack Berger, causing him to literally run away), she is ultimately rewarded by her successful column and career. Indeed, Carrie is emotionally slutty, but she is also relatable in her impulses.

I often find myself being emotionally slutty with my friends. Perhaps after four years of boarding school, two years of college and five share houses, I am accustomed to a reduced level of privacy. As much as being publicly vulnerable is liberating, it should come with caution. Once something is said, it cannot be unsaid. Once something is posted, it cannot be un-posted (everything exists on the internet forever). The same thing can be said about hurting someone else.

There is no conclusive answer to why we all want to know. But, I think a big part of it comes from our desire to connect. Learning about someone else’s crash out, blow out, drama further enmeshes us within humanity’s fabric, one built on the acceptance that we will make mistakes, but is strengthened by our perseverance to try to do better. I understand that some harm is devastating and truly reprehensible, so in this essay, I suppose I am talking to a lesser act of fault. Regardless, the majority of mistakes will come with consequences — another sign of the shared space (Earth) we inhabit. It is impossible to live, form connections, exist in society, without touching on someone else’s life. But isn’t that a good thing?

Further Reading

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1878

Brookyln Beckham’s six instagram stories …

How to End a Story: Diaries 1995–1998 by Helen Garner, Text Publishing, 2022

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries 1978-1998 by Helen Garner, Text Publishing, 2025

My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen, Viking, 2018

Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961

West End Girl by Lily Allen, 2025

The Dishy Operatics of Lily Allen’s Breakup Album, The New Yorker from 4 November 2025

Welcome back to Gossip — a round up of all our favourite news and whispers from Melbourne and beyond.

• Happy Birthday Dolly Parton! The Queen of Country turned 80 yesterday.

• Adelaide Writers’ Week has been cancelled, after 180 authors dropped out of the festival in protest of the festival’s erroneous disinvitation of Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. You can buy Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Discipline here (UQP is reprinting so there will be more stock available soon!).

• Awards season is here and Timothée Chalamet is everywhere.

• The fourth season of Industry premiered on HBO last Monday. Its second episode, which dropped yesterday, is my favourite of the series thus far.

• Debbie is on this weekend! Tickets here.

• Marty Supreme was low-key great. Like Uncut Gems but happier and funnier.

• Why is Ivy Wolk randomly the best agony aunt ever? An extract: ‘Girl. Of course you are in grad school, as grad school is God’s sandbox for bored and unstimulated bitches to languish and play in until they decide to self-publish poetry books or get pregnant.’

• New York Magazine is bringing back classifieds! Should Pleasure Principle do the same?

• I’m hearing a lot of noise about vintage sportswear. I’m on board — we’ve all seen too many pink CSB sets — but I have questions about hygiene….

• Girls on TikTok are “friction-maxxing” – swapping all the little infantilisations of contemporary life (ChatGPT, Uber Eats) for deliberate inconvenience. J’adore.

• Loved this review from Greta Rainbow about Bryan Johnson and Madeline Cash’s new novel Lost Lambs.

• Australian Yerin Ha will star as the lead in the new season of Bridgerton, dropping January 29.

• The thong epidemic continues. The dogs are out…everywhere.

• Rhode Beauty will land at MECCA in early February.

• Alysa Liu proves to Little Monsters everywhere that anything is possible <3 Her Gaga free skate was magical, powerful, ethereal.

• It’s tennis season! Obsessed with Naomi Osaka’s entrance outfit tonight.

Welcome to the Pleasure Principle gift guide, for those who have left their holiday shopping to the last minute. Almost all of these gifts are available in Melbourne and/or do not require delivery.

We must defer to the many other excellent gift-guides of the last month, including but not limited to: Shaad magazine, Rayne Fisher-Quann and, of course, the queen of gift guides… Kaitlin Phillips.

Happy holidays! Let’s get into it.

APPOINTMENTS

• Book your beloved an acupuncture appointment with the greatest — Daniel Ooi at Komyuniti Wellness

• Is your girl feeling a bit lost and unsure about 2026? Could she benefit from a reading from Sue Thomson the clairvoyant?

• Or, what about a classic 45 minute relaxation massage from Vigorous Thai Massage on Smith Street?

SUBSCRIPTIONS

• My favourite newsletter is Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me which is paywalled and would be an excellent gift

• The Paris End is doing a subscription-plus-book end-of-year deal…

• Low key….if someone got me a New Yorker or Paris Review subscription, I would be jazzed. Print forever <3

SKINCARE

• Anything from Monastery, available at Florian Home.

• From Clean Compound in Northcote – the Hotel of Beauty Health retreat tinted glow serum, the activist Brass Tube press, the Lesse sculpting tool.

• Good sunscreen! Always a practical gift, especially for your friends who never wear it. Good picks include: the Avene 50+ serum, Beauty of Joseon Rice + Probiotic SPF50+ PA++++, La Roche-Posay Anthelios Wet Skin Sunscreen 50+(this was tested and found to have SPF 72+!), Mecca To Save Face SPF50+ Superscreen, mesoestetic mesoprotech melan 130 pigment control 50ml.

QUICKFIRE BOOK ROUND

• For the media gossip: Empire of the Elite by Michael M. Grynbaum

• For the girl who found God this year: Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Polek

• For the hospo queen: Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans

• For the perpetual PhD student: Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser

• For the true-crime freak: The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein.

• For the sensualist: Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

• For the actor out of work: Audition by Katie Kitamura

• For the Didion/Babitz obsessive: Speedboat by Renata Adler

• For the girl who hasn’t read anything since My Year of Rest and Relaxation: The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

• For the excellent cook: The Talisman of Happiness by Giovanni De Angelis, with Ada Boni (only recently translated from Italian)

• For the doomer: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

• For literally anyone: Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra

FOOD/DRINK/ORGANICS

• For the gal who is never without her DC… a slab of sugar-free Cola Gaza

• This RieslingFreak 6-pack… or just a single bottle

• A few litres of really good olive oil wouldn’t go amiss…

• A beautiful bottle of vermouth?

• A restaurant voucher is really just a way of saying…. I’ll take you for dinner. All these restaurants have vouchers available on their websites: La Pinta, The European, Manzé, Public Wine Shop, La Tortelleria, France Soir.

• A beautiful bunch of hydrangeas. It’s summer!

MISCELLANEOUS

• For the smoker in your life: visit Alexander’s Cigar Merchants on Toorak Road — lots of beautiful lighters, cigars, cigarette cases etc.

• Engraving is major <3 I’ve had success at this trophy store on Victoria Parade.

• Rosalía’s new album Lux changed my life. The album is inspired by female saints and mystics and it expands on ideas around femininity and faith. On it, Rosalía sings in 14 different languages. It feels sacred and monumental. More on this to come.

• Great news for Rathdowne Village frequenters… Carnation Canteen is opening a new spot in the old Gerald’s Bar. From their Instagram: ‘We can’t wait to serve ice cold martinis and glasses of champagne in such an iconic space.’

• Your Instagram-allergic bf can breathe a sigh of relief. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka pointed out that ‘as it’s become harder to trust a high number of followers, the opposite—a conspicuously modest following—has attained a certain cachet.’

• Fave bakery Tori’s has opened a new bakery on Exhibition St.

• Skincare heads might be familiar with Augustinus Bader’s patented TFC8 formula, initially developed for severe skin traumas. But at $297 for 30 mL, the TFC8-containing ‘Rich Cream’ always felt to me like a ridiculous expense. Not anymore! The luxury skincare company is collaborating with Dua Lipa (!) on a new affordable skincare line. LFG!

• Zohran Mamdani is the mayor-elect of NYC! Biggest yay ever!

• Etiquette guides are back. Two items of business on this. The first is GQ’s 125 Rules for Modern Gentlemen, which includes tips such as ‘Stop walking three feet ahead of your partner,’ ‘Never raise your voice at someone unless there is an emergency,’ and ‘Always offer to pay on the first date.’ The second item is Feed Me’s Official Guide to Social Skills. One recent instalment featured this gorgeous tidbit from The Drift editor Krithika Varagur: ‘just like you shouldn’t let school get in the way of your education, or your girlfriend in the way of your wife, you mustn’t let cooking get in the way of having people over. Entertaining should be 90% pleasure, 10% effort.’

• As predicted by Booker Prize psychic Jaclyn Crupi, Flesh by David Szalay won the biggest English language literary prize in the world.

• Beloved Melbourne fashion house all is a gentle spring is opening its first showroom in the Century Building. The space feels like such an apt choice for a brand with such an appreciation for tradition, beauty and craftsmanship.

• From the grapevine: ahead of her shows this week, Addison Rae was seen today and yesterday in Collingwood. She was spotted at Jim’s Greek Tavern, Hinoki Pantry and Meatsmith. My housemate and I went to see if she was still kicking about but by the time we arrived, she was nowhere to be seen.

• The Paris End launched their collection Exclusive! (Giramondo) last Saturday at Russian House.

• Timothée Chalamet’s Vogue cover — the last cover Anna Wintour worked on — is truly terrible. As Kurt Johnson commented, ‘Ur so brave for posting this’.

• The shortlist for the 2025 Woollahra Digital Literary Award is here! Boyfriend of the Substack Gareth Morgan is shortlisted for his SRB essay Water Splendour. Yayayayayayayayay.

• Thornbury Picture House will open a new single-screen cinema next month in Brunswick.

• We are both obsessed with Zara Larsson’s song Midnight Sun. And so are the Grammys! The Swedish pop diva was nominated for Best Dance Pop Recording.

• After much speculation, RHOBH star Kyle Richards appears to have come out as bisexual. She said: ‘I could go Brad, I could go Angelina.’

• A follow up from Gossip02, Helen Garner WON the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for her incredible collected diaries. Very well deserved.

Okay, that is all for this week!

xx

• Kiwi fruit is massive right now. I was reading one of the many recent articles about the fruit’s various benefits when I stumbled on the following line: ‘Let me fill you in on the findings of a randomized controlled trial that electrified gastroenterologists everywhere. The study was funded by a kiwifruit marketer, but its methods were rigorous and showed clear measurable outcomes.’ The influence of Big Kiwi!

• The lifts in the Nicholas Building broke after last weekend’s storm. Oh no!

• Local favourite pub The North Fitzroy Arms is Good Food Guide’s Best Pub of the Year. I live for their Schnitzel Holstein. Also, obsessed with the comment on the pub’s Instagram that reads: ‘This pub is weird… they keep advertising the high quality food and cosy fires…but all I see are a bunch of annoying 20 somethings who are always obnoxiously loud in the beer garden.’ Haters everywhere!

• We ♡ Lily Allen’s new tear-jerking record West End Girl, her first in 7 years. The album documents the breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour and has debuted to excellent reviews. Another open relationship bites the dust.

• Childhood educator and Palestine advocate Ms. Rachel is a Glamour Woman of the Year. So incredibly well deserved. In her interview with the magazine, she said: ‘My love and care for children doesn’t stop at my own children. It doesn’t stop at the children in our country. It embraces every child of the world.’

• In excellent news, Hermès has appointed British designer Grace Wales Bonner as their creative director of menswear! This is a full circle moment for Wales Bonner who, in 2019, told an interviewer it was her dream ‘to work with a brand like Hermès.’

• I’m obsessed with Rosalía’s new song BERGHAIN, which features Bjork, Yves Tumor, the London Symphony Orchestra and boys choir Escolania de Montserrat i Cor Cambra Palau de la Música Catalana. The song feels genuinely different and new. New York based firm Special Offer (who worked on Brat) did the art direction. The video is stunning.

• Daniel Kolitz’s essay The Goon Squad, published in Harper’s last week, went semi-viral. This essay really really bummed me out.

• Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia, starring Emma Stone (and her new face), comes out in Australia tomorrow. I’m intrigued by this remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!

• Amplify Bookstore has chosen Andrea Long Chu’s brilliant Females as their November non-fiction bookclub pick! ‘Everyone is female, and everyone hates it.’ You can buy tickets to the bookclub here and buy the book here.

• The Federal Government has rejected the Productivity Commission’s suggestion that they introduce an exemption to the Copyright Act for ‘text and data mining.’ Phew.

• A viral British Vogue essay by Chanté Joseph asked an important question: ‘is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend now?’

• Fave podcast TrueAnon makes $182,000 (USD) a month. Good for them!

• Okay, does anyone know what Vogue World is? Loved the video of Australian divas Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann walking down a Hollywood lot. But why?

While ‘That Girl’ can be interpreted as derogatory, I think, it ultimately is positive. A girl who is on top of their life – what’s bad about that? To be fit, healthy, meditating, working hard, in control of one’s finances. You go girl.

As we come out of the ‘Year of the Girl’, notably through the intensified cultural ideas of ‘girl-dinner’, ‘girl-math’, ‘im just a girl’ – there is no denying the current girl-power. Within the patriarchy, this is a welcome movement. However, I cannot help but question whether this shift has reduced ‘girlhood’ to an aspirational, monolithic and, at times, condescending aesthetic. We have ‘brat’ as the antithesis to ‘demure’ and ‘clean girl’, but by naming these archetypes, are we reducing the female experience to a trending label?

It is here that I acknowledge that girlhood no longer exists for just girls. The concept of a ‘girl’ now extends beyond biological definitions, to a mode, a performance and a trend. Anyone can identify with ‘girlhood’ and this is an important distinction. But this is an element of my question. If someone justifies an ill-advised financial decision based on ‘girl-maths’, when are we beginning to call something negative a ‘girl’-like behaviour?

The ‘final boss’ of girlhood could be the latest trend of handbag accessorisation. Whose bag can hold the most highly flammable and landfill-adjacent items at once? While it sounds as though I am being derogatory, I am fully participating in this trend – the more the accessories the higher I will ascend in my most powerful self – I am sure of it. But where has the impulse to collect child-like items? I ask this genuinely, as I regretfully have a stuffed Miffy on my bed, a life-size Miffy lamp, a Miffy toothbrush holder, a Miffy magnet, Miffy bath mat and Miffy keychain scattered around my house. A collection lovingly-formed five years ago that now haunts me every day (in a sort-of positive way.)

The craze of the Labubu has encapsulated much of 2025, but it is Sonny Angels that have served as another long-standing veteran of ‘kidult’ culture – a portmanteau of kid and adult. The small, cherub figurine, is naked with rotating headpieces, each derivative of a ‘collection’. They come in ‘blind boxes’, which mean it randomises which one you receive. This is obviously a tactical marketing move, entrapping fans into purchasing multiple to acquire their ‘favoured’ tiny boy, shiny bum, cute headpiece wearing figurine. Per ‘sonnyangel.com’, “He may bring you happiness” and that he is a “welcome sight… on your desk and so many other places.” The enterprise makes it clear – Sonny Angels are not for kids. The desk, a symbol of labour and work makes an unclear message: Is it an attempt at a signifier against capitalist culture or is it in support of work? Something small to make work happy, or something that reminds us there is life beyond work?

Either way, as much as girlhood is separate from labour, it is fed by a desire to cultivate our identity, which heavily relies consumerism. A girl needs capital to participate in the Girlhood Marketplace. (Therefore, most of us need to work). This isn’t to say that this is a negative aspect of girl-life (I love to work and I love to shop! The two work in a symbiotic relationship, most of the time ...) But it is the ability to participate in the marketplace that gives girls an opportunity for customisation, that I think holds some of its most joyful power. This creativity and acquisition of style is enshrined from a young age – collecting Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets and the Ello Creation System (Lego for girls). This extends into adulthood – trolling Depop and Ebay to find vintage designer deals and saving up to buy our completely necessary $96 bronzer from Mecca. The joy this brings can be felt so deeply in my body, it feels like a spiritual experience.

This freedom – to be able to accessorise ourselves (and our bodies) to present to the world as we wish – often, feels like a radical form of opposition to society’s current and historically rigid expectations for women. As we are finding new ways to express ourselves, we are finding new ways to look inward, learning more about ourselves in the process. So I tell myself with my new shoes.

But I also wonder, is there a sinister end game to the Girlhood Marketplace? I am curious as to what happens at the end of this road – where we have consumed so desperately and unrestrainedly to fit within ‘girlhood’ that we lose an essential part of ourselves in the process. Perhaps Taylor Swift is an interesting example, with the 28 variants to her latest album The Life of Show Girl (her third album in three years — not including her rerecorded discography), she represents an almost apocalyptic and capitalistic artistic model. I truly wonder about the point of her mass output, beyond, she knows her loyal fans (largely ‘girls’) will consume whatever she puts on ‘Swifty Marketplace’. As one of the richest people (not girls) in the world and the top celebrity carbon producer, she has to know that her impact is not wholly positive. Some of the narratives in her latest album feel reductive (positioning herself within a girl-to-girl conflict, ridiculing and sexualising her opponent), it feels highschool and the perspective of a 35-year-old girl. ‘Stop talking dirty to me / It sounded nasty but it feels like you’re flirting with me’. I think it infantilises herself, and her audience, when she does not approach these complex narratives with nuance. Leaning into the ‘girl vs girl’ trope without an awareness of her prowess or of the subtleties of female relationships, does not do justice to the complexities of ‘girl-world’ (a place she actively commodifies and controls).

If Taylor Swift encapsulates a version of a ‘girl’ jumping off the deep end, I realise I am in some ways, negating my issue with girl-culture reducing the female experience. If she wants to be a girlboss (girlbossing too close to the sun), then why don’t we just let her? That’s feminism, yes… but it is a very white and privileged reading of womanhood, without an awareness of the structural systems of power. Further, given the intersection of capital within femininity, I am hyper-conscious of the monetary requirements of girlhood. I’d like to take time to consider the other aspects of young femininity that are not controlled by a level of marketability – perhaps, sleepovers, brushing each other’s hair, gossiping… bring it back <3

Within my curiosity of Girlhood Marketplace, I have begun also investigating the potential or perhaps existence of Boyhood Marketplace. I am not a boy-apologist (I am aware of the patriarchal constructs and pressures that make girlhood costly),but I am curious as without the freedom of girl-creativity and girl-shopping, are experiences of boyhood less… fun? Freeing? inventive? I am conscious that similarly to girlhood, that boyhood is a spectrum that does not necessarily prescribe a gender or sexuality — it too is a state constantly in flux.

Similarly to trending girl-cultural phenomena, the performative male has been getting proliferated online — find here, the ‘Performative Male Contests’. Essentially, it is a man that drinks matcha, reads bell hooks and has a literary tote bag draped over his shoulder — performing feminine interests — this is considered negative. Essentially, they could be only wearing a Labubu around their waist to garner sexual attention from women, so therefore, he is performing femininity as a trap. However, as we are in a heightened age of the manosphere, I cannot help but consider these men, fine? Sure, seeing a man’s Hinge profile that displays a selfie with an overtly placed Attached (the self-help book on attachment styles) on the bed side table is mildly triggering, but I think women have enough discernment to choose whether they engage. I think if we continue to disparage men for intellectualism, fun drinks and Clairo, then we are just widening the divide between genders yes, but also the cultural marketplace. My argument is not that the girl-world should be diminished, but more so the manner in which it is commodified could be shared. I don’t think this will bring about world peace, but giving boyhood the ability to consume and create, could lead to a greater feeling of expression and community. I guess, boys, discuss?

I think the core aspects that I find nurturing within my experiences girlhood, are the freedoms to express in hairstyles, fashion, instagram captions, enforcing the idea that I can change my life or the way I feel about my life via these forms of expressions, and it gives me hope. Sophia Coppola’s film discography captures girlhood in a multitude of perspectives and shades. In Fiona Handyside’s Sophia Coppola: A Cinema of Girlhood (2017), she states: “Girlhood is a place of fantasy, experimentation, evasion, transcendence, standing not temporally before womanhood but rather alongside it.” This is perhaps the most compelling aspect of girlhood’s power, it is not just a phase of life that women mature out of, it is a state of mind that exists in tandem. Therefore, similarly to the cycle of a person’s life, girlhood is not to be defined by bad financial literacy or an infantilised approach to the world, but more so, an expansive and creative frame of mind, where anything is possible. I understand the marketability of these ideas, creating products to help girls reach their highest power, feels intuitive and true to femininity. But this can only be a part of girlhood – not its entirety. As girlhood is not exclusively for girls or capitalism, but for anyone in pursuit of freedom.

Further Reading

Year of the Girl

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/61545/1/2023-was-the-year-of-the-girl-barbie-taylor-swift-era-tour-tiktok-trend

https://consequence.net/2025/10/taylor-swift-the-life-of-a-showgirl-album-variants/

https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/labubu-sonny-angels-gen-z-housing-affordability-nostalgia-20250701-p5mbm5

Taylor Swift

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/13/why-does-taylor-swift-think-shes-cursed?_sp=7bb55be6-593c-4213-a5bb-21eaca8a2aab.1760072872444

https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2024/02/13/taylor-swift-and-the-top-polluters-department/

Performative Male

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/style/performative-men.html

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/performative-male-style

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/29/tote-bag-matcha-performative-male-women

https://theconversation.com/let-performative-males-be-gender-has-always-been-a-performance-and-our-need-for-authenticity-is-bad-for-us-263478

Sophia Coppola

https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/single-post/the-girls-of-sofia-coppola

https://www.booktopia.com.au/sofia-coppola-fiona-handyside/book/9781784537159.html?source=pla&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21618361136&gbraid=0AAAAA-Ia9hPjKbZqFULtvQOANH_FBHNgH&gclid=CjwKCAjw3tzHBhBREiwAlMJoUnQ50YRlR8hgqwAK-CE96rsHWkI2a4IOTKt30gZ0ywvt-I4zCTfGOBoC6poQAvD_BwE

• The bush is back! Or so it would seem from Skims’ launch of faux-bush underwear. The release of Kim K’s hair-clad micro-thongs sold out within hours. Bethenny Frankel was asking the right questions: ‘Whose bush was it modelled after? And can’t we just grow bushes now?’

• Brunswick Vietnamese eatery Good Days will open on Smith St later this year. Good Days chicken and rice forever <3

• Miles Franklin winner Siang Lu sold the rights to his novel Ghost Cities to Summit Books UK. Yay!

• Melbourne band Floodlights put out a new single, ‘Tricky’, on Wednesday. Fave lyric: ‘I wanna be free.’ Same.

• The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returned to the runway on Wednesday night in New York, with much better results than last year. The show included appearances from many of the original Angels – Candice Swanepoel, Adriana Lima – as well as contemporary stars like Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser, Barbie Ferreira and the Hadids. I agree with shes___underrated that the show perfectly balanced ‘nostalgia’ and ‘fresh faces.’

• Spring has sprung! It finally feels warm in Melbourne and the parks are filling up with first dates.

• Greek heartthrob and politician Yanis Varoufakis has a new book out — Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance. It’s a history of Greece and its politics, told through the lens of a handful of Varoufakis’s female relatives.

• Like everyone, I was extremely saddened by Diane Keaton’s passing last Sunday. In re-watching some of Keaton’s back catalogue, I discovered that Nancy Meyers’s classic rom-com Something’s Gotta Give is available for free on SBS On Demand.

• The NSW Government has pledged $3.2 million to the writing and literature sector. From The Guardian, ‘arts minister, John Graham, said (the initiative) was a response to urgent pressures, including low incomes, declining reading rates and the growing impact of digital media and artificial intelligence on publishing.’

• I’m bummed to be missing the Same Page Art Book Fair at Gertrude Contemporary this weekend. The fair is a celebration of small print and independent publishing, with stalls from Books at Manic, Perimeter Books, Memo Review and more.

• Gwyneth Paltrow thinks it’s ‘punk rock’ that her Marty Supreme co-star Timothée Chalamet is dating a single mother. She said: ‘I was like, “That’s so cool. I really love to hear that [from] a young man like you.” I understand a 45-year-old who has his own kids going out with a woman with kids, but it’s a cool choice [for him]. I respect it. I think it’s kind of punk rock….I didn’t know [it was] Kylie Jenner.’

• Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt – starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg – opens in cinemas this week. I’m intrigued by this Me-Too adjacent drama. Our friends over at Kinotopia gave it their tick of approval.

• The angels of Folk Bitch Trio covered the 2008 classic track ‘Sex on Fire’ by Kings of Leon. Soooo beautiful.

• Cher Tan is the new managing editor of literary magazine Overland! From their Instagram: ‘Overland is extremely excited to announce that we have a new Managing Editor—the outstanding, dynamic, and inimitable powerhouse that is Cher Tan. With Cher’s appointment, we are saying goodbye to our longstanding comrade and Managing Editor Natasha Seymour. Tash is off to The Netherlands, and we are desperately sad to see her go—but so looking forward to seeing what she does next!’

<3

• Dating apps are over! According to the New York Times (lol) and my own anecdotal observations. An alternative? Consider setting up your friends. Last year, my bestie and I set up two of our friends and they are still happily together. I loved this article from Delia Cai about the perfect set-up. More food for thought — a girlfriend messaged me about the resurgence of dating clubs à la @crushclub. Would you attend a Pleasure Principle singles night?

• Local newspaper The Rotunda surveyed a sample of residents and visitors of Fitzroy North. The findings are….what you would expect. A highlight: ‘Royal Oak lovers are also much more likely to refer to the suburb as ‘Fitzroy North’ rather than ‘North Fitzroy’. Bizarrely, the North Fitzroy Arms is the same.’ Love that the suburb’s top two favourite cocktails are ‘martinis and negronis, with women strongly favouring the former and men the latter.’ The Rotunda added that ‘none of the nine non-binary respondents opted for either.’

• From the grapevine… Mecca Bourke St has someone on hand to watch the crystals. Who is this person? A crystal specialist? Part of his job is also, apparently, to transport the crystals to the beach and charge them.

• The saganaki is back at City Wine Shop! I must say we’re not totally clear on the timeline on this… PP’s influence? Probably not lol.

• Beloved queer Darlinghurst bookstore The Bookshop will sadly close this coming December. You can shop from them here.

• Lana took her swamp-tour-guide (not an insult, a descriptor) husband Jeremy Dufrene to Valentino’s Spring Summer 2026 show at Paris Fashion Week and they looked gorgeous. Why am I suddenly on board with these two? Loved the upside-down sunnies on his cap. Bayou chic.

• This is old news but new to us. Carlton all-day eatery Heartattack and Vine is under new ownership… from Instagram, my guess is that the handover was around August?

• How to End a Story – the (brilliant) collected diaries of beloved Melbourne author Helen Garner – is shortlisted for the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. We’re rooting for her.

• The Cut shared some advice on how to read more. A highlight from publicist Kaitlin Phillips: ‘in my household, my husband reads every night before he goes to bed and I’m not allowed to use my phone in bed when he’s doing that so I get cowed into joining him. His rituals are stronger and healthier than mine and I just fall into line. I do about half of what he does, half the exercise, half the reading. And that’s good enough for me.’ Beautiful and romantic!

• Chris Kraus has a new novel out – The Four Spent the Day Together. I’m half-way through and enjoying it.

• The Smashing Machine, the solo directorial debut of Benny Safdie, flopped at the box-office on its opening weekend :( The film’s lead Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson posted the following on Instagram: ‘In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere.’ So true.

• Ex-XoJane beauty editor and How To Murder Your Life memoirist Cat Marnell sold her debut novel The Bored and the Beautiful to Penguin Random House. It’s set to be ‘sexy’ and ‘sleazy’ and the protagonist ‘writes for the hottest pop culture outlets.’ Let’s fucking go!

• Another Paris Fashion Week highlight – Yohji Yamamoto. From fashion critic Rachel Seville Tashjian: ‘Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the high priestess of internet style muses, worshiped Yamamoto, and you could see why in this collection: These clothes were protective, sophisticated and intelligent without being confoundingly provocative. They’re respectful of their wearer, but don’t hide your femininity.’

• The trailer for Rachel Sennott’s I Love LA is here. Will it be the Zoomer Girls? Yet to be seen.

• Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize for Literature! The Academy noted his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

• Standing Room is expanding again. They are set to open a new café on Grattan St in Carlton.

Until next week! Xx

Based on Jenny Han’s young-adult trilogy of the same name, The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP) first aired on Amazon Prime in 2022. But it was with season three, released weekly from June to September this year, that the show’s reception reached fever pitch. TSITP follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) who, like Sabrina, is torn between two brothers – one sensible and accomplished but hot-and-cold and the other adoring, boisterous and a bit inept. Every summer, Belly and her family visit the beach-house owned by her mother’s best friend Susannah. The two boys in question are Susannah’s sons: Conrad (Chris Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). I began watching TSITP a few weeks before the season three finale aired and caught up very quickly. Watching it felt less like a choice than an inevitability. Clips from the show had colonised my Instagram and TikTok, many of my friends and colleagues were talking about it. In age, gender and location, I felt firmly in the target demographic. I surrendered to the pull of Amazon Prime and watched.

The central beach-house of TSITP is located in ‘Cousins’, a fictional East Coast town that seems to be an amalgam of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nag’s Head and The Hamptons. The world of the show is textured by clichéd (but nonetheless enticing and aspirational) signifiers of an affluent East Coast summer – blue hydrangeas, white lace Doën blouses, red Jeeps, lobster rolls, country clubs. The soundtrack of the show is one that might accompany the montages inside the mind of a teenage girl. Heavy on the Taylor Swift. The life of the show online is also – and I wish I knew another way to put it – Taylor Swift fan adjacent. Millennial women dissect the show in forensic detail in search of “Easter eggs” – repeated numbers, colours, signs – with a kind of schizophrenic logic.

It goes without saying that the show is… kind of bad. It’s trashy! Every scene feels like a music video. The dialogue includes pseudo-philosophical lines like Conrad’s musing that Paris viewed from above is ‘like the human body’ (he’s a medical student btw). ‘If you try to make sense of it organ by organ,’ he says, ‘it’s a Sisyphean task — it’s overwhelming. But if you’re able to take a step back and look at it as a whole, and see how the body works together in concert, suddenly it makes sense. And it’s fucking miraculous.’ Watching the show with my housemate, we would often start screaming at the television because we were cringing so hard at the music or the screenwriting. I started getting real whiplash when I saw comments saying Chris Briney should win an Emmy for his role as Conrad. These people are crazy! I thought. Thank God I’m not one of them. But I was… And if I’m talking about TSITP in smug and condescending terms, it’s only an attempt to conceal the fact that the show had an embarrassingly strong effect on me. For a few days, it overrode and displaced my actual life. I was living inside a regressed teenage beachside fantasy.

Since it happened, I’ve been trying to narrow into the reason for this obsessional period, especially because I know I am not the only one. Many of my friends – all of them with ostensibly better taste than that indicated by obsession with a teen drama – became hooked on the show and the noise that accompanied it. One possible reason for TSITP’s popularity with millennials and elder-Zoomers is that it returns its audience to teenhood – a time before adult responsibility; a time when emotional dramas could take precedence over almost everything else. As Greta Rainbow writes, the events of the show ‘transpire in a world that is recognizably ours yet free of bad headlines, allowing the big emotions — sadness, gladness, everything in between — to unfurl without interruption.’ In the same way teenagers are often protected from the world by their parents, comfortable in the sanctity of the domestic sphere, TSITP protects both its characters and its viewers from the friction and interruption of the news cycle. Greta Rainbow again: TSITP contains ‘no dashed-off mentions of Trump, or COVID-19, or attending school over Zoom.’

The show is also aspirational in feeling. Its characters are successful and beautiful, many of them are wealthy. Their world seems warm and full of possibility. This fantasy is cross-generational. Laurel (Jackie Chung) – Belly’s mum – spends the first season avoiding writing her next book, smoking weed and watching 1940s films with her best friend and wearing A.L.C and Posse. Real. And because we know that tragedy will soon strike these two enmeshed families, their shared fantasy beachside summer feels all the more special and significant, as if its memory is becoming nostalgic in real time. As novelist and culture writer Delia Cai notes of the show’s first season, ‘if heartache, both of the teenage and the existential variety, is a fact of life, doesn’t that make some good, frothy fantasy all the more essential?’

This is a teen drama so the central romance is often saccharine. But I like that TSITP rewards its two main characters – Belly and Conrad – for their blind romanticism, yearning and waiting. And beyond all its projective and predictable moments, the driving relationship of the show feels, at its core, genuinely romantic and enchanting. Heart-opening! Like Sabrina, the show ends with its two lovers united in Paris. Paris is for ‘changing your outlook, for throwing open the windows and letting in la vie en rose’ – so Sabrina says to her beloved in the 1954 film. I wonder now if this soapy television show might have let its cynical female audience let in a little la vie en rose too…

• City Wine Shop has removed two crowd favourites – the saganaki and the steak au poivre – from its usually consistent menu. When I was discussing this with a friend at Iris Bakery, a girl at another table overheard us and cried out ‘noooooo!’ Apparently the change is permanent. Sad!

• Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are hitched! The pair tied the knot in a star-studded ceremony in Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara. The bride (and the groom) wore Ralph Lauren.

• Australian power couple Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are over! After 19 years with the country singer, Nicole filed for divorce earlier this week, citing irreconcilable differences.

• Rathdowne Village favourite Gerald’s Bar will serve last drinks on Sunday October 26th. Goodbye, Gerald :(

• ‘You must’ve missed me?’ Nicki Minaj and Cardi B have reignited their long-standing feud in a series of tweets.

• Charli XCX had a second wedding to The 1975’s George Daniel last month in Sicily. The ceremony was attended by all the Charli-adjacent broads – Gabbriette, PP favourite Rachel Sennott, Troye Sivan, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Devon Lee Carlson, Shygirl, among others. The bride wore Danielle Frankel.

• Addison Rae wore a set from Dario Vitale’s highly anticipated Versace spring collection at her Nashville show last week. Gorg!

• Paul Thomas Anderson has a new film out and it is showing in 70mm at the Astor for the next two weeks. Read Digby Houghton’s review of the film here.

• Finally! Manolo Blahnik has released a small selection of the shoes featured in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 classic Marie Antoinette.

• In sad news for the Australian literary world, Meanjin will cease publication in December.

• Welcome to the world Loom – a new interdisciplinary literary journal from Adalya Nash Hussein, Selena Repanis, Hasib Hourani and Mira Schlosberg. The first issue ‘Quaver’ is out now. Yay!

• big___farmer has opened a new caff – The Queensberry St Co-op. Best full english in the Southern Hemisphere, imo.

• The Booker Prize shortlist is out. We recommend David Szalay’s Flesh.

• Booker judge Sarah Jessica Parker is now on Substack, with her literary imprint SJPLit. In conversation with Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg, SJP asserted the importance of public libraries: ‘Libraries are nerve central for communities more than we could ever know.’ Go Carrie! Read the whole interview here.

• AFL removes centre bounce and sub rule for 2026. We were confused by why this is breaking news but go off 🙏.

• The Paris End got to the bottom of the Mecca Carlton fire. It was just an alarm system, not an actual emergency. Phew! I 💗 investigative journalism.

That’s all for today

“Has a tote bag”

“In their fourth MIFF session… of the day”

Hearing the ACMI ad run at every Melbourne International Film Festival screening made me cringe – surely no one is going around quoting Korean dialogue, be for real. But the advertising makes sense, it appealed to a certain type of person, someone who wanted so badly to be in ‘the know’, someone from… Melbourne (derogatory).

Before I begin, I acknowledge that I am from Melbourne and fit within this cultural sub-group. But growing up in regional Victoria has allowed me to feel external to it, allowing me to desperately crave to be a part of it.

I saw five MIFF films over the last few weeks, and I’ll admit, I feel a sense of embarrassment at my small list. While friends booked their 12-passes and compared ticket selections (like when our subject timetables would drop in high school – the drama!), we all carefully took notes and examined crossovers. The intensity only increased when the actual festival arrived. Nothing can describe the stress of walking up the hundreds of HOYTS Cinema steps to find your friend (who has saved you a seat – an Armageddon-like experience), and you must parade in front of every single Hinge match (with their current partners), a person who you were in a group project with in your first year of university and the girl you’ve clocked that’s wearing the same scarf as you – from that one micro-fashion label’s Instagram ad. The MIFF of it all.

When I read Bella’s Sydney piece (our previous newsletter), it got me thinking about what I consider to be Melbourne’s key personality traits. Bella talks of Sydney evoking imagery of brunch, Bondi and stupid finance guys, and while we definitely have those (we have St Kilda beach… ok), I feel as though Melbourne at its core, has very different cultural values. Instead of ‘the girls are in bikinis in the frozen food aisle of the Coles’ (Laura and Charles, Vanity Project podcast) we have ‘the girls in the Issey Miyake top with the black Alpha60 pants at Cinema Nova on Monday night’. But these sartorial comparisons are entry-level, I want to try to read deeper into Melbourne’s sacred texts.

Of course, I won’t be able to speak to every Melbourne experience, only my own. My access to a private secondary school and a tertiary education makes my experience of the city a privileged one.

In my first year of my Bachelor of Arts, in ‘Philosophy: The Big Questions (PHIL10002)’, I wrote a really convoluted essay about The Trolley problem, but I also remember learning about Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘social reproduction theory’ and ‘cultural capital’ in his chapter on ‘Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction’ (1977). It introduced me to the idea of the habitus: an individual’s set of behaviours that are determined by their community (which is informed by class, religion, nationality, education and political beliefs). If I have a similar habitus to you, we have similar circumstances.

This is extended by cultural capital which operates as a marker of cultural power. These are divided into three categories: the embodied referring to knowledge and skill-based (like knowing the right emoji to use when your friend gets rejected by her situationship), the objectified being tangible objects like having the right art, books, clothes, and the institutionalised meaning recognition from a notable place, i.e., the university you did or didn’t go to. If you are reading this Substack, it is likely that you have a similar habitus to me.

The value Melbourne places on ‘cultural power’ is not unique (I am conscious that other cosmopolitan and liberal cities value cultural capital), but as a resident of this city, I am privy to a distinct phenomenon that I have defined as ‘Melbanoia’.

Melbanoia is an extension of ‘cultural capital’ and is a form of the embodied state, that hinges upon perceiving and being perceived. It is not a new take, that to exist in Melbourne’s cultural world, we must accept a level of surveillance. Walking into Cathedral Coffee on a Friday night, one accepts that every aspect of what one says, wears and who one is seen with – may be used against you. But the way this has manifested into a distinct style of personal and political discourse (in person and online), has created Melbanoia.

Melbourne places such a distorted sense of ‘cultural capital’ on surveying each other, that at times, we begin to internalise this value and become obsessed with others’ might think of our actions. The Melbanoia of it all – shapes our actions, more than our desire to enact and engage with culture. Instead of reading, studying and critiquing political and social ideas that resonate with us in isolation, we are caught in a loop of wondering what people are thinking of us, when we engage with our chosen artforms. This is extended in our performance of cultural capital (a form of the objectified state), where we feel compelled to be seen ‘doing the culturally acceptable thing’, or due to cancel-culture, we are fearful of ‘being seen doing the culturally unacceptable thing’.

On a frivolous scale, I have noticed this happening when I am at the movies, where I catch myself writing my Letterboxd review in my head – before the lights come up. What will people think of what I think? It is as though I am unable to have a personal opinion, without wondering how it will be perceived. Instead of ‘What book should I read?’ ‘What is a good book to read for when people ask what I am reading?’ This is Melbourne paranoia, as due to the high density of cultural markers (and individuals that galavant around in this habitus), this playground’s cameras feel large and omnipresent.

Initially, I wanted to compare Melbourne literature to Bella’s sexy Sydney novels, so I started reading Christos Tskiolas’ Loaded (published in 1995). But by the time it took me to locate the book and work through the first few pages of his protagonist Ari’s angsty, hedonistic night in Melbourne, Tsiolkas had published a heated response to anti-semitic graffiti (the thing that sparked his piece, not the war crimes) in The Monthly. I disagree with the majority of Tskiolkas’ sentiments in his piece, he comes across as a privileged persona able to hide behind his cultural capital – by consuming art he deems worthy, and ignoring real world events. I am strongly against anti-semitism also but as we bare witness to a genocide, his language is so removed from the atrocities occurring in Gaza, that he outs himself as someone completely out of touch. It is more vital than ever to show a sense of solidarity and humanity to our most vulnerable. Free Palestine.

My essay’s purpose isn’t to engage with Tsiolkas as an individual, but it strikes me that I had begun to write a piece on Melbourne, through a Melbourne-based text, and when I was in the middle of writing it, the Melbourne-based author had engaged in damaging political and cultural rhetoric – and it made me spiral: What would people in Melbourne think of me if I write this essay on Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas? I had been struck down with a case of Melbanoia. I also thought maybe Tsiolkas wasn’t a worthy topic of discussion after all – of what interest are his views? Is it even worth bringing them to light? Should I just analyse Monkey Grip instead? (But is my habitus over The First Stone?)

Freedom of speech and diversity of opinion are important cultural values. Therefore, engaging with views that are different to our own is an important part of cultural life. This being said, I would never condone genocide or want to create an apathetic take that result in minority communities feeling unsafe or unheard. An aspect of my paranoia is rooted in an earnest sense of solidarity. But there is a difference between a strong, consistent political stance and paranoia of your identity perceived through your Substack post as conflated to being in support of an author’s personal opinion.

A few Sundays ago, the March for Australia rally saw thousands protest against ‘mass immigration’. There is not a clear consensus on who the attendees of this protest were, as while there was an upswell of Neo-Nazi ideology, there were also vulnerable individuals (detached from political ideology beyond ‘mass imimigration’) from low-socio economic backgrounds, disillusioned with their lack of cultural and economic power. However, as the day drew to a close, Neo-Nazis stormed an indigenous protest site, Camp Sovereignty, yelling white supremacist abuse and injuring activists and First Nations women.

As a woman of colour and migrant (like every non-indigenous Australian), it is not lost on me how we all exist on stolen land, Naarm. There is value to our progressivism, but our existence (as non-white Australians) in this country is never resolved – it comes at a cost. While the actions from Neo-nazis and the white supremacist attendees are scary, they are not surprising. This language has always existed – it existed in the playground when I was a child, it still exists everywhere on social media, and I have recently learned, it is happening on the street, around the corner from where I live.

Maybe I am exposing my own form of narcissism to think so deeply about the cultural perceptions of myself within my predominately safe habitus, when there are videos of protesters draped in national flags, hurling racial abuse at my fellow non-white community members. I am aware that outside my habitus, I am unsafe – shouldn’t I be focusing on this force? It makes me question how I am even able to compare a fear of my habitus rejecting a cultural opinion with the possibility of racialised violence? These are two divergent systems (it is not as simple as one being material, one being physical), but they operate at the same time, pressing on different nerve endings.

As we go to battle in the culture wars, with growing censorship and funding cuts, it feels as though we are losing vital modes of expression. Therefore, in response to the erosion of the nation’s cultural capital, we need to read as many books as possible, watch as many films as possible and look at as much art as visually possible – without documenting it or giving a fuck about what other people think of it. Cultivating an independent voice is an essential part of engagement with cultural life – it provides us autonomy, a level of critical thinking and an ability to discuss. And this gives us the understanding and empathy to stand up against genocide and fascism. There are many Melbournians with cultural capital that do this consistently (through their social media, physical presence and boycotts), that I strongly admire.

But I realise Melbourne is a beast that will continually eat itself: We start at the head by engaging with culture, we speak to others and connect on our shared discussions of art, before we realise that there is a genocide and a evolving white supremacist movement, it makes us question how we can discuss ‘culture’ when there are material dangers to the vulnerable members of our community. Down the beast’s body we continue, we have livelihoods in the arts, professional careers and we love art, so we continue, but we attempt to fulfil a political responsibility, but it makes us hyper-aware of who is standing up for who, who is creating important cultural commentary and who isn’t, we become so consumed by the cultural landscape that we begin to create work in response to this surveillance, then we reach the tail and we realise that vital cultural institutions are being unfunded, so we think, fund the arts, keep creating, keep critiquing – and we’re back at the head, swallowing its tail.

Regardless of this cycle – It is essential to critique others who have cultural capital and it is essential to critique ourselves, while we do this critique. It makes us better listeners, learners, artists, thinkers – better people. However, I think Melbanoia makes us think with reduced clarity, fearing disagreements from our mostly friendly habitus. When we become consumed by what people in our habitus might think about our performance of culture, i.e me in this whole Substack, we give less space to engage with the actual forms of facism and violence that exist outside it.

Donate to Black Peoples Union

Further Reading

Bourdieu P (2002) Habitus. In: Hillier J, Rooksby E (eds) Habitus: A Sense of Place, pp. 27–34. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Regional Population, Australian Bureau of Statistics

‘A perception that Sydney is Crass’, The Guardian

(In writing this essay, I have been trying to discern the reasoning for Melbourne’s perceivership. At first, I thought it was because Melbourne had a smaller population than Sydney, but a quick Google revealed to me that they are similar (Melbourne at 5.3 million, Sydney at 5.5 million). I began wondering if it were because culturally, we value ‘wokeness’ and being ‘progressive’ (which is what Kyle Sandilands has stated as the reasoning for the ‘Kyle & Jackie O Show’s poor Melbourne ratings – after consistently holding a large market share in Sydney). But it doesn’t feel conclusive enough in understanding how our performance of culture has become so self-conscious.)

‘Neo-Nazis and racist rallies: why it’s important the Australian media call them for what they are’, The Conversation

The March Australia Melee, The Saturday Paper

Literary journal Meanjin to close after 85 years of publishing, Crikey

Why we cannot be silenced, Overland

Vanity Project, ‘Neuter Naarm vs. Sex Sydney’

The Battler, ‘Ep: 23: The Slap’

Art set in Melbourne :)

Films

Dogs in Space (1986)

Love and Other Catastrophes (1996)

The Castle (1997)

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Television

The Secret Life of Us (2001-2005)

Underbelly (2008-2013)

Offspring (2010-2017)

Literature

Monkey Grip (1977) by Helen Garner

Loaded (1995) by Christos Tsokias

In My Skin (2005) by Kate Holden

The Adversary (2020) by Ronnie Scott

Theory & Practice (2024) by Michelle de Krester

Sydney is, in my mind, the most libidinally charged city in Australia. It could be because of Sydney’s humidity, or perhaps its crassness or its worship of beauty or maybe some other inarticulable thing. Sydney feels sexy. Melbourne’s self-consciousness, low temperatures and oppressive grid drain it of some of this charge. I’m not the only person to come to this conclusion. In their (dope) polemic Neuter Naarm vs Sex Sydney, Laura and Charles of Vanity Project follow a similar line of thought, capturing the vibe of the City of Sydney in a single image – ‘the girls are in bikinis in the frozen food aisle of the Coles.’ There’s no real need for me to rehash the Sydney/Melbourne thing here – listen to that Vanity Project episode instead.

I bring up Sydney, not only because Melbourne winter is making me blue, but because I am thinking about two late-90s, Sydney-set novels I read in a similar mood last winter, both of which energised me out of my funk. The first of these is Eat Me – Linda Jaivin’s stylish 1995 novel of four women’s exploits in inner-city Sydney. The second is The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter – a detective lesbian crime novel in verse, published a year prior to Eat Me.

Eat Me is a frivolous and glamorous novel; it’s also funny and, at times, ridiculous. It technically falls into the category of ‘erotica’ (that genre with all its middle-aged connotations) but the sex scenes of the novel generally make me laugh more than they make me blush (the LA Times described it as a ‘high-spirited comedy of manners only thinly veiled as erotica’). And where contemporary “eroticia” often circumvents eroticism entirely – think of the regressive wish-fulfilment narratives of romantacy and the corny dominance-submission dynamics of writers like E.L. James and her successors – Eat Me feels genuinely empowering. The novel follows the sexual encounters of four women. Julia is a photographer, who dates younger men and snake-charmers. Chantal is a glamorous faghag who edits a fashion magazine. Helen is “a feminist academic” who enjoys roadside dalliances with tradies. Philippa is writing an erotic novel (it’s meta lol), the fruit-themed opening of which appears as the first chapter of Eat Me. The novel unfolds in a series of vignettes, some of which are scenes lifted from Philippa’s novel. It seemingly exists in some alternate universe where pleasure is taken and given without much shame or neurosis.

Like the characters of Sex and the City (this book came out a year before the show first aired), the four central women of Eat Me meet regularly in cafés to debrief on their respective exploits and discuss the social and political baggage of each encounter. And like Sex and the City, it is the discussions between the book’s female characters that are most interesting. The dialogue is fizzy and light, picking up bigger ideas but maintaining levity. For instance, of a sex scene in her novel involving pieces of fruit, novelist Philippa asks the following to her friend Helen, a gender studies academic: ‘You’re up on these things. What’s the latest line on pornography among feminists? I’m a bit worried. Think they’ll take a dim view of the story?’

The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter is perhaps a more substantial project, distinct in its verse-crime-novel structure. Written mostly in non-rhyming couplets, it follows private investigator Jill Fitzpatrick, who is hired by a wealthy North Shore family to investigate the mysterious death of their daughter Mikey, a poetry student at the University of Sydney. Dorothy Porter’s subverts and critiques the intelligentsia – poets, academics, lawyers – of inner-city 90s Sydney. ‘It’s a grabby, grotty world,’ Porter writes, ‘not much to go around / Blame patronage, Jill, grants, fellowships, Writers-in-residence.’ The poets of The Monkey’s Mask are indulgent and selfish, willing to deceive and even murder. These tendencies are typified in the manipulative (and murderous) Diana Maitland – a poet and academic, who is ‘incessantly intellectual,’ with a ‘muddle of novels / by (her) bed/ French and South American authors.’

Particularly interesting about The Monkey’s Mask is the fact that it does away with the tendency of Australian writers to capitulate to an overseas market. It neither fetishises its Australianness, nor does it genericise the particulars of Australian language or location. Writing for The Paris End, Oscar Schwartz aptly diagnoses the following impulse in Australian writers: ‘we self-consciously try to replicate what’s happening overseas, often a few months or years too late, and then global audiences mostly overlook us, preferring that which comes directly from the Hegemon. Rejection breeds insecurity, envy, and a scarcity mindset, driving many of our most talented to leave, or, worse, paranoically deny their overseas influences, producing scenes that are somehow at once imitative and inward-looking.’ Rather than writing to enter an abstracted, international group of cultural elites, Porter centres in on the hyper-local. The Monkey’s Mask is full of idiosyncrasies of Australian conversation – ‘bloody,’ ‘daggy,’ ‘G’day’, ‘dobbing in’, ‘bludging’, ‘lefties’, ‘grog’, ‘lezzo.’ The novel is also textured by images and signifiers of Sydney. For instance, describing Mikey’s mother, she writes of ‘a woman’s voice / Pure North Shore’ – see: wealth, whiteness, conservatism.

Needless to say, if you’re in need of a sexy and entertaining winter read – both Eat Me and The Monkey’s Mask are excellent. And if still you’re bummed out by the fingerless-gloves-of-it-all in Melbourne, I have two pieces of advice: listen to Summer Forever by Addison Rae. Book a flight to NSW.

In early 2024, I bought Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat (originally published in 1998) in an op-shop near Wilsons Promontory. I found it more of a joke with myself, as I had been recently diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder with severe contamination anxiety, and had begun struggling to eat without agonising over food’s preparation. What if it made me sick? What had it touched? Had it been stored correctly?

In her introduction to How to Eat, Nigella states she is not a cook or a chef, that she is a ‘trained eater’. The words struck me, as with something as basic as eating, I now found myself suddenly dramatically untrained. I was barely able to eat a tub of yoghurt, without aggressively studying the best before date.

‘You are going to be food poisoned instead of me, even if we eat the same thing. It is a frame of mind.’ My friend tells me, and I agree. What am I so suddenly afraid of? Eating is a form of living, am I scared of living? ‘You are searching for absolute certainty in places where there is none’, my psychologist tells me, and I agree. Life has never been certain, so why am I now unable to handle this?

In a letter to a friend, German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche penned, ‘I am in a mood of fatalistic “surrender to God”—I call it amor fati, so much so, that I would be willing to rush into a lion’s jaws.’ Essentially, this is Nietzsche expressing his enthusiasm for his ‘formula for human greatness’, the Latin system of belief—amor fati—meaning the love of one’s own fate. He trusts fate so much that he is willing to fall into extreme danger. I know normally people wouldn't consider eating, extreme danger. But that is what my mind had to overcome, every time I went to put something in my jaws.

I began to wonder, what did Nietzsche eat?

connection between eating and living is one we are all part of. We put things in our mouths every day. The sensuality of placing something between our lips, letting it touch our tongue before our teeth rip apart the substance into small pieces, is a great pleasure. But we also eat to satiate, to fuel ourselves and to be strong. My inability to eat (skipping meals out of fatigue, throwing out perfectly adequate foods out of fear of contamination, crying when I can’t choose an acceptable can of tuna due to slight dents in the tin), presents a sign of my inability to live. At first, it was mainly a psychological problem, but when my clothes began to sag and my hands began to peel and bleed (due to obsessive hand washing), did ‘eating’ and ‘living’ unify and combine forces as one.

I shared my fears with friends, in hopes to gain some reassurance. But I was just attempting to validate my anxiety in an attempt to ‘feel normal’. This was what was so debilitating about my intrusive thoughts, they were always seeking reassurance. The act of asking others if ‘they thought my lunch that I cooked 2 days ago was safe to eat’ would in the moment be comforting (if they responded positively), but it would aggressively add fuel to my need for external validation. Google became my closest confidant. Hearing about others, stretching the realms of food preparation and storage, would somewhat distort the balance of food poisoning probabilities in my head, but it reinforced the structure of these thought processes. Paranoid and meaningless math equations, hundreds of Reddit threads about leftovers, and phone calls to my Mum became a decision making body. I hear this is also called bargaining—tossing ideas around in my head, calling myself crazy, then quickly confirming myself as normal, before doubting myself entirely—all before breakfast. This constant dance would make me collapse into bed at the end of each day, dizzy from my intricate and secret cardio routine.

Why am I unable to surrender to eating/life? I want to rush into the lion’s jaws—eat sashimi, meet new people, travel to new places—I want to trust my fate and love my fate (even if that includes food poisoning). But more-so, the grief, the pain, the unexpected, all being required to experience love, the comfort and the pleasure of living.

My obsessive food thoughts (and identity crisis) reached a tipping point last year on holidays in Korea. In a city with minimal English but maximal flavours, I was uncomfortable immersing myself in my birth culture. My fear of contamination, of illness, ate at my brain. My patient partner listened to my fears and would help me pick things that my mind deemed ‘safe’, while he went off to eat pigs lungs. His rationale was that we should only eat at places where there were no tourists, as South Koreans would know the best (which meant safe, to me) places to eat in South Korea. He was right. But my desire to shift toward gentrified restaurants filled with white tourists made my identity spiral. Am I racist? I am Korean, why can’t I eat like one.

While I travelled from Seoul to Busan, I devoured Crying in Hmart (2021) by Michelle Zauner (the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast). American raised Zauner connected to her mother’s Korean culture and family through food, finding profound connections to her identity through the Korean grocery store (Hmart), the infamous online Korean cook Maangchi (before Nagi there was Maangchi #iykyk) and memories of cooking and eating with her extended family. It was though eating reminded her that another part of herself existed. Another form of life and living. Her mouth remembered the textures, the tastes, transporting her backward (through memory) but also forward (as it assists her in grieving her mother’s death by feeling a renewed sense of intimacy). I empathised with Zauner's rumination on feeling like a Korean outsider, but also felt jealousy when Zauner was able to find her way back to her roots through food. Being a Korean adoptee, my most prominent ties, in a culinary genealogical sense, have been severed.

My position as an outsider, struggling, became apparent when I found myself observing men in a local Sokkoritang (oxtail soup) restaurant in Busan.

Four men piled into the small eatery, big bags in tow. They were mumbling, laughing while figuring out the table arrangements. As soon as they were seated, menus appeared at their tables. They hardly looked at the laminated documents, and when the older waiter came over, with little to no consultation, they all pointed to various icons on the menu. The man taking their order nodded neatly and then vanished.

It didn’t take long before the food arrived on their table. The waiter, with a tray, placed each diner’s side dishes with ultimate precision. Each was served with kimchi, pickled radish, raw garlic, washed lettuce and small pickled fish, all in small silver bowls (banchan). Shortly after, their big bowls of cloudy grey soup were placed down in close succession, and once again, the waiter vanished.

Like a theatre performance, the men ate. With no hesitation they picked up their chopsticks and dipped them into the noodles and pork and shovelled it into their mouths. They talked, food spilling out of their faces. They each know exactly what each ingredient is, what it should taste like, what it means. They didn’t even look at the food, they simply ate. Triumphant at the end of the meals, their empty plates and bowls shone like trophies.

I looked at my half-finished bowl of soup. My chopsticks lay precariously on the side of the dish. Half-eaten pork floated to the surface, the thick lightly touched noodles suspended in the broth.

Writing a year on, I have some distance from this frame of mind and particular period of pain (and growth). My psychologist said there is a clear connection between my unexpected reproductive surgery due and the subsequent fear of putting unknown materials (food) inside my body. (In early 2023, an Intravenous Uterine Device (IUD) punctured my uterus and ended up in my abdomen. I had to undergo ultrasounds, X-rays and an MRI scan to locate its whereabouts, before an urgent laparoscopic surgery to remove the floating contraception from my body). Therefore it makes sense that I’m fearful of putting things inside me—things have the power and a level of unpredictability that can cause harm.

After living in the inner-North for a large portion of my young adult years, I had grown accustomed to bespoke sourdough croissants, cloudy and chilled wines and tiny, tiny, small plates that form a large bill. I regularly dined around the gastronomic scene, eating regularly at new and old institutions, dropping $8 on bread and butter without a second thought. I was studying full time and working casually in hospitality, money came in unpredictably, so spending did not follow logic or sense. I look back at this time, while not financially prosperous, as a time I ate well, but I now, I wonder if I lived well.

It is not lost on me, as a Korean Australian, that this culinary scene, my scene, was glaringly white. My identity crisis (the confusion of being Asian that mainly eats small plates and drinks pet nats), abstractly coincided with my move from the inner-North to inner-West in Melbourne (along with my rent increase). After a year in Flemington and now almost 6-months in Footscray, my consumption of food has dramatically shifted. To those unfamiliar with Melbourne suburb minutiae, these areas are vastly culturally disparate. While the inner-North was once and still is a hub for migrants, the steep gentrification has created a fervent ground for trending food spots to feed young professionals. While Asian and Middle Eastern can be found in the North, I often find the menus fused to align with Broadsheet and Good Food Guides, that like to label them ‘hidden gems’ (as though they haven’t existed for years, institutions within their own right).

Footscray is a home to predominately migrant communities, with restaurants and cafes reflective of this palette. When elderly market vendors speak to me in Vietnamese, before realising I am mute (out of embarrassment for only being able to speak English), I wonder if I am just too ‘White’? How can I fit in but stand out so aggressively, all at once? In time, I have grown slightly more confident in my Footscray tongue—I know where my favourite pho is from, where to get banh cuon and even my favourite drink from Scarlet Corner (matcha green tea Oreo!). But I still struggle to grasp Footscray’s food language, and when I return to the Northside wine bar, I feel out of place also. My tastebuds (and identity) are/is stuck somewhere in the middle, a form of cultural no man's land.

Out of desperation, but also inspired by Nigella’s How to Eat, I have prescribed myself an ongoing investigation; find out How to Live. Instead of punishing myself for not being able to exist as a fixed entity, I will now try move forward embracing as much as possible from the world around me. Accepting that I do not need to eat or live in a singular manner (I can be asian and eat at the trendy bar). Aware of myself as a vessel that is designed to be filled by food and experience (the delicious, the bland and the poisonous). Acknowledging that eating, a form of living and living, a form of eating, I want to ‘rush into the lion’s jaws’, trusting that things may not taste good or feel good—and this is an integral part of the human experience.

Further Reading

How to Eat by Nigella Lawson, 1998

Crying in Hmart by Michelle Zauner, 2021

The Korean Cookbook by Junghyun (JP) Park & Jungyoon Choi, 2023

Amor Fati, podcast by This Jungian Life

Be Sweet, by Japanese Breakfast

Maangchi, website

In the late nineteen-nineties, encouraged and emboldened by her doting and supportive husband John Diamond, Nigella Lawson released the cheekily-titled cookbook How to Eat (1998). Nigella was not a chef but a food writer – she had worked as the restaurant critic at the Times for twelve years prior to the release of her book. Her ‘qualification,’ she writes in the preface for How to Eat, is ‘as an eater.’ Conversational and wonderfully written, How to Eat was an instant bestseller and soon followed-up with a similarly personal and chatty Channel 4 television series entitled Nigella Bites. But her early ascension to fame was also marred by tragedy. While her television series was being filmed, Nigella’s beloved husband John was diagnosed with throat cancer, which necessitated the removal of his tongue. In 2001, very sadly, John passed away.

Nigella Bites was my introduction to the world of Nigella and I suppose in many ways my attachment to it is a nostalgic one. I have a handful of vague, warm memories of the show playing ambiently in the background after dinner when I was very young, around the time I was instructed to go to bed. I have clearer memories of watching it happily with my mum a few years later – perhaps when I was nine or ten – deciding which recipes we would want to eat and which ones we wouldn’t. Nigella Bites (which is available to watch on Youtube) remains my favourite of all the pieces of Nigella media and has provided consistent comfort to me ever since.

Despite a shared love of expensive and oily food, in vibe and appearance, Nigella is in many ways diametrically opposed to Gabbriette. Nigella is incredibly warm, overflowing with upbeat energy. She is gorgeous in a classic bombshell kind of way; she is hour-glassesque. I love her style in the early seasons of Nigella Bites. She wears matching little pink wool cardigan sets, red v-neck sweaters, pencil skirts, denim jackets. It’s a little secretarial, in the vein of Mad Men’s Joan Hollaway but also practical and maternal without feeling matronly. Unlike Martha Stewart, who is perfectionistic and uptight, Nigella’s cooking style is messy and almost a little manic; she throws pans about the place, spills things, licks her fingers and puts piping hot food in her mouth because she cannot wait to eat it. Her sex appeal is well documented (and obvious). When I mention my love of Nigella to men, they often get this milky, glazed-over look in their eyes, as if they might start drooling. When I saw Nigella interviewed by Matt “Cravat” Preston last year, he, also, was drooling over her. Her sex appeal has also been (cruelly) mocked, a reminder of the (misogynistic) threat that overt female sexuality can reduce us to clowns, make us spectacles to be mocked. Nigella’s persona carries genuine eroticism, the kind of eroticism that arrives when we sense someone can truly surrender to pleasure and is capable of indulgence in the extreme. Nigella actually articulated this idea quite directly in an interview with the Daily Express in 2007. She said: ‘I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.’

What also distinguishes Nigella from say Jamie Oliver or Martha Stewart or god forbid Gordon Ramsay is, in my mind, her erudition. She writes – and speaks – incredibly beautifully. Much of the delight of watching Nigella Bites (or any other of her television programmes) is sparked by witnessing how articulate Nigella is, how beautifully she speaks. While squeezing the juice from a lemon, she says, ‘I quite like this ritual disembowelling’. In the foreword of a recent edition of How to Eat, Jeanette Winterson quotes another particularly charming line of Nigella’s – her instructions for making a trifle: ‘when I say proper, I mean proper: lots of sponge, lots of jam, lots of custard and lots of cream. A degree of vulgarity is requisite.’ My favourite piece of Nigella’s writing comes from the introduction to this recipe for a Lemon Polenta Cake, shown to me by a colleague a few years ago.

It would be logical to chalk Nigella’s writing chops up to her career as a journalist and her love of reading. She regularly posts book recommendations on her Instagram account, recently reminding her followers of her love of Helen Garner. It would be cynical to attribute her eloquence to her expensive education. I would say that Nigella’s particular style of writing – florid, ornate, beautiful, at times a little indulgent – is an extension of her particular aptitude for creating and indulging pleasure. All of it – the messiness, the warmth, the chaos, the greed, the beauty, the eloquence, the indulgence – seem to me to be somehow connected.

Further reading

How to Eat (2014 edition) by Nigella Lawson

Nigella Bites, hosted by Nigella Lawson

‘Nigella Shops’ in The New Yorker

‘A Spoonful of Seduction’ by Judy Bachrach in Vanity Fair (2002)

‘The Promises Martha Stewart Made – And Why We Wanted by Believe Them’ by Joan Didion, in The New Yorker

Gabbriette on Instagram

erewhon hauls, ozempic, and chefluencers by Mina Le (video essay)