It’s an interesting promo, yeah? Hathaway is currently heavily pregnant, and, at 43 with two kids in tow, has got to be feeling it. But there she is, cowboy hat on, a notable twang in her voice, (a clue perhaps? Will she be Robert Duvall’s daughter?) reassuring us, “I’m gonna have this baby then we’ll go make the movie”. Hathaway knows the role she has to play here – more on that in a minute.

If I were a more paranoid person, I would hazard a guess that Tom was … I don’t know… aware of all the attention his second ex-wife has been getting. Especially over the sequel to that other 1990s film, Practical Magic.

Days of Thunder was, so the lore goes, the movie on which they fell in love. If you watch even a few scenes, inserted throughout the music video, Show Me Heaven, (below), you’ll note that Nicole Kidman is more often than not, the aggressor in their love scenes. Though there’s loads of yelling and thumping from everyone, to be honest.

But if you understood Tom, as we all did back then, you’d know that intense yelling was his trademark. Watching Tom’s neck veins pop, his balled fist shaking in fury as he screamed “I WANT THE TRUTH!” (for example) was like watching Michael Jordan leap into the air on a basketball court. This was an icon doing what God, (or Xenu, let’s be respectful) put this man on earth to do.

So, if I were Tom, or someone on Tom’s production team, I would be aware, too, of Brad Pitt’s foray into high speed racing films - F1 made over $600 million worldwide, with over $40 million in brand partnerships alone. Though I’m sure Tom has erased any trace of envy through successful auditing sessions and is probably fine. More than fine actually!

Still. You don’t perform the biggest stunt in cinema history if you’re oblivious to competition. So, you can imagine what led up to that scene at the track today, can’t you? Well I can. The negotiation with Hathaway’s manager alone would have been quite the unctuous treat.

“Sure Tom, it’s just that Annie’s just come off End of Oak Street premiere, she’s got Verity coming up –”

“Hey Suzan? Suze? Yeah I hear you, buddy. But here’s the thing. When the pressure is on we don’t back down, OK? And the pressure is on right now - it’s GO TIME, SUZE!”

“Uh, sure. We, uh, totally appreciate that. It’s just we have a very pregnant lady here and I –”

“Pregnant? Suze, it’s me, it’s Tom.”

“Yes, Tom I know it’s you, I just have –”

“No, see I don’t think you do, Suze! If we treat pregnancy like a weakness then that’s what we’ll get – WEAK. NESS. But if we see this as an opportunity - and hear me on this - it is an opportunity second to fucking none, Suze! We can WIN!”

That said, if this clip is anything to go by, Cruise, now 64, looks as if that famous intensity has waned a little. It looks as if he’s following Annie’s lead here - and good for him! It’s good casting too, don’t you think? Nobody has a higher heat score right now, but there’s also nobody who comes close to Tom’s level of earnestness than Anne Hathaway. But we trust her, you see.

We know she has pure intentions. In this sense, Hathaway functions as a type of surrogate, (pardon the connotations!). Annie, the patron saint of millennial burnout, is telling us Unc Tom is fine, actually! He’s mellowed a lot since you last saw him! No, he wouldn’t dare bring that up - he just wants to enjoy life now.

*************

Thomas Cruise Mapother spent his formative years with an abusive, alcoholic father, who he has described as “an agent of chaos”. He struggled with dyslexia and attended 14 schools in 15 years. Cruise has a reputation as a controlling Svengali type and that may be true – most highly successful people are. Beyonce had unflattering photos of herself erased from the internet, come on now.

But what’s different about Cruise, who, unlike many of his peers, escaped the #MeToo movement unscathed, is that he seems as if he’s hiding in plain sight. Is that the real Tom laughing so zealously on David Letterman? Was that the real Tom dancing self-consciously at the Taylor Swift concert? Is that the real Tom who has allegedly never taken the opportunity to connect with Suri? She reportedly dropped Cruise as surname a couple of years ago and has registered to vote using her mother Katie’s middle name, Noelle, as her surname.

Before Brené Brown published her breakthrough book, Daring Greatly in 2012, her predecessor, counsellor John Bradshaw, wrote Healing the Shame that Binds You. He published it in 1988 - the year Cruise starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. Hoffman won the Oscar for his problematic portrayal of an autistic man, Raymond Babbitt. But Cruise, as the seething, shallow and ultimately broken younger brother, Charlie, is who stands out all these years later.

Anyway, Bradshaw, who was raised by an abusive father himself, wrote this in his book.

“The most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.”

Bradshaw was one of the pioneers of addiction counselling and was of the belief that wounds can be generational - this is the influence Bradshaw had, which Brown says she brings to her data-driven work. Now, here’s a folksy maxim that developed in parallel to Bradshaw’s theories: children of alcoholics will find safety in food or people or, most notably, work. Children of drunks become workaholics.

Tom performed his first stunt, involving a parachute in water, in 1986’s Top Gun, and it almost went terribly wrong. Tom’s biological father moved the family to Canada in 1971 after he gained employment as a defence consultant for the Canadian Armed forces. Though it’s probably just a coincidence that the first time Cruise played a high-ranking military official he chose to do his own stunts.

The next time the self-stunt pops up is the first Mission Impossible movie, in 1996. Again, he’s playing a government official - a secret spy - and again, the stunt is under water. Production began in 1994 and 95 - the same years his then-wife, Nicole was making the two movies that would cement her as a bona fide actress in her own right - To Die For and Batman Forever.

Since then, the stunts have become for Cruise what his intensity used to be - a calling card, a signature, part of his brand. You know what else pops up in his movies? Masks. In Mission Impossible, obviously. But in Vanilla Sky, where he plays a guy with everything who suffers a scarring physical wound from which he can never fully recover. Didn’t have the grit. Too spoiled, too fragile, preferring instead to retreat into an elaborate, science-fiction fantasy and call it life.

In a 2006 interview with Parade Magazine, Cruise, whose wife, Katie Holmes, was heavily pregnant with Suri, gave a rare insight into his childhood relationship with his father.

“For me it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.’ There’s that anxiety.”

If I were Tom’s psychologist, I’d probably wait a beat and then venture,

“Anxiety. Do you mean…when you have to hold your breath?”

Tom wore a disguise in the only openly comedic role he’s ever played - as producer Les Grossman in 2008’s Tropic Thunder. He’s wearing a prosthetic on his face again in the forthcoming Digger in which he’s portraying what looks to be an exaggerated version of Robert Duvall but is a satirical allegory about billionaires.

Cruise is tipped to win his first proper Best Actor Oscar for it. I know I’ll cry. For loads of reasons. I’ll cry for Tom, because, chances are, he’ll be moved and everyone in that theatre will be glassy-eyed. I’ll forget all the rumours and cry, too, because it’s been a long time coming and Cruise, who can act circles around Depp and Pitt, deserves it.

But part of me will be teary for the boy who spent his formative years in poverty, unable to read books or words, holding his breath, and weaving away from his abusive father - and then masking for the world.

The pair, who have reportedly been dating since April, appeared to be cosplaying corporate respectability, bordering on the conservative, if one must be honest. The matching sunglasses, the pinstripe suit. The grey body-con shift dress with black Bottega Veneta pumps, no less. A departure of sorts for Jenner, who usually has two gears: Day Time Preppy or Demi Nude.

But that was then. And here now, is a new dawn; wherein Kendall, like her little sister Kylie, is gaining a type of cultural traction via a relationship with a “serious” actor.

And we know Elordi is serious, not just because he publicly shat on his breakout role in 2018’s The Kissing Booth, but because of the work, you see. Playing the repressed Nate on Euphoria, the oblivious Jock, Felix in Saltburn, The Monster in Frankenstein and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights just to name a few, before landing here in a movie with dogs. Directed by Ridley Scott, of course.

Elordi, who grew up in Brisbane, Queensland, which is ostensibly the Florida of Australia, (conservative, humid and brimming with retirees) is the youngest and only boy of Melissa, a homemaker and John, a house painter who immigrated from Basque Country to the Sunshine State, (as we call it) when he was 8.

But, unlike Florida, Queensland is hardly a melting pot. Our most right wing politician, Pauline Hanson, was born there. Hanson gained breakthrough support in 1996, running on a single issue: race, the year before Elordi was born. In a place where being mid, blonde and tan is the goal; (Muriel’s Wedding was based in the same state) Elordi was not just brunette but working class.

Legend has it the Elordis moved to Toorak, the Upper East Side of Melbourne, for his sister’s ballet studies in 2010. Elordi, then 12, enrolled at the prestigious St Kevin’s College, before hot-footing it back to another private school, St Joseph’s in Brisbane, where he excelled at rugby. The sport landed him a broken back on the field at 16.

Elordi has said he laughed with relief at the injury - finally he was free to pursue his real passion: acting.

See, Elordi grew up idolising Heath Ledger, and certainly the voice, an affected gravel, supports that. But more often than not, the 6’5 actor has drawn online comparisons to Nicole Kidman and Princess Diana for his fey presentation: the hands folded, just so, the colt-like legs, crossed tighter than a deportment grad, the delicate wrists, covered at the The Dog Stars premiere, in friendship bracelets, to say nothing of the designer bags he carries.

He’s drawn accusations of queer baiting but the dominant cultural assertion is that Jacob is a girl’s girl. Always curled up on talk show couches, lightly touching his whimsical little moustache or his fluffy mullet. He’s like one of those kittens who doesn’t know he’s now grown up into a Maine Coon cat.

In her treatise, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that “To be feminine is to show oneself as weak, futile, passive, and docile. The girl is supposed not only to primp and dress herself up but also to repress her spontaneity and substitute for the grace and charm she has been taught by her elder sisters.”

Elordi, like Jenner, has multiple elder sisters, and by that definition, (and the memes) he is performing femininity as well as … well, an actress. Or, a Princess who was famous for curating a type of shy docility. The question is, why? Well, hang onto that question for a second because …

This feminine performance is an interesting contrast to Kendall Jenner, who presents as a doer, not a dweller. Having grown up in front of cameras since she was 10, and with enough wealth and privilege to not have to concern herself with docility, it is Jenner who can sometimes appear as the oblivious Jock, unpicking her Levis out of her coccyx as she walks, head first, into a taco, before wolfing it down, her mouth wide open, lips smacking, not a care in Calabasas.

But Jacob didn’t grow up rich. He grew up tall in a country famous for its Tall Poppy Syndrome. He grew up understanding that if you’re talented and intuitive and you rise over the mid population, you’d better find a way to shrink.

Susan Sontag famously wrote that “What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

And to be sure, both are beautiful. Though Sontag was still talking in binaries and we are beyond gender binaries now.

Still. Can’t you just imagine Jenner, her face sweaty from a work out, clambering on Elordi’s back while he quietly mouth-reads from Sense and Sensibility?

“But Edward had no turn for great men or barouches…” he hears himself whisper, before being violently interrupted by an excessively long burp in his ear.

Alarmed, Elordi might spin around to Jenner, who wipes the NAD-infused water from her mouth with the back of her hand before laughing heartily at his shock.

“Sorry babe! Boxing always makes me gassy!”

To which Elordi might reply with the full force of his Princess Di compassion, “No need to apologise, babe. Burping is natural”.

But there’s a twinge. Well, I don’t know if there is one exactly. I’m just guessing that if you grow up in a country currently facing an epidemic of violence against women, where in just the last week, we had six devastating allegations of sexual assault and no solution in sight; where it’s known that whether you play sport or attend an elite school, as a young man, it is nearly impossible to opt out of a particularly dehumanising strain of toxic masculinity - one so strong, Elordi has admitted it took not his protestations, but a broken back to escape it.

Well, I’m just guessing for all of those reasons, there would be a twinge. An inward wince. A micro-reflexive gag. A feeling maybe shared by that other Australian tallboy, Liam Hemsworth, the first time Miley farted in front of him. Probably stoned. And Liam, also stoned, probably laughed, then, with a face like granite probably added ‘That’s disgusting- seriously.’

Miley, who is openly bisexual, dove straight into a relationship with a woman after she broke up with Liam and as an Australian, I can guess why.

See, Australian men don’t really like women. You should see our Bachelorette franchise - the men vie for approval – not from the woman, but each other.

But let’s go back to 1942, with a guidebook for the 1 million US soldiers deployed to Australia during World War II, called Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia. It contains this fascinating paragraph,

“Australians, especially the girls, are a bit amazed at the politeness of American soldiers. And they say that when an American gets on a friendly footing with an Australian family, he’s usually found in the kitchen, teaching the Mrs. how to make coffee, or washing the dishes.”

In 1942 it was an anomaly. In 2026, the mental load may have narrowed but the concept of politeness towards women, (i.e basic respect) as a foreign concept remains.

Maybe all those sisters and a European dad have made Elordi different. But there’s something about that deeply conservative grey shift dress with those black pumps that gives me a twinge — was she ushered toward it? I hope it was just the cosplay.

According to Variety, “The movie carries a budget above $80 million, so positive word-of-mouth will be crucial to ensure that Oak Street remains a draw through August”.

That might explain why Hathaway turned up to the premiere last Sunday in such a compelling outfit. The 43 year-old, who is pregnant with her third child, wore low rise jeans, (that’s the suburban mum part) and a belly-skimming designer halter-cape in blue and crimson, (that’s the hero part). Cute, right? Mum as the new Superman. Which tracks - a big part of the movie is spent saving her kids.

Only, people didn’t really vibe with her outfit, and literally thousands of comments on social media, ranging from revulsion over her tummy to disapproval of her clothing choice, to accusations of a “fake bump” appeared under photos of her on the red carpet.

It’s a funny kind of irony: here’s a movie about a super mum who can slay dinosaurs, getting slayed, as it were, online for daring to defy the narrow maternal idea we’ve carved out for her.

Hathaway isn’t the first celebrity to be accused of faking a pregnancy. Beyonce and Nicole Kidman both weathered accusations of faux bumps in their time, too. It’s an interesting conspiracy theory, right? It assumes these women would rather go to the trouble of an elaborate and inconvenient lie lasting months just to prove they’re biologically capable of something a sewer rat can do without thinking — ie, have a natural birth.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, a dark one is currently gathering traction online.

The case of Lindsay Clancy is already tragic. The Massachusetts nurse and mother of three has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murdering her children, Cora 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan, 8 months, before attempting suicide in 2023. She’s now paralysed from the waist down because of her self-inflicted injuries. But on certain corners of the internet, people are convinced her husband, Patrick Clancy, did the whole thing.

Nevermind that Lindsay herself has admitted to it or that she was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications by different medical professionals. The idea of a woman, in the throes of postpartum psychosis, not being able to cope is far too terrifying a concept. Easier just to say the guy is behind it all and plot the new Netflix documentary, huh?

I’m not suggesting Patrick’s choice to marry three years after his wife’s suicide attempt isn’t challenging certain ideals, (common as it is), or that the case itself isn’t complicated.

I’m asking why, when it comes to mothers, we can’t accept them as anything other than selfless saints, effortlessly birthing and caring for life, modestly, enthusiastically and most crucially — alone.

Of course we can do it alone! We were the Millennial Girl Bosses, the Gen X latch-key kids and we can’t “do” motherhood? Pftt! Of course we can – and we did.

We did it by reading all the books and scanning the websites and the forums. We did it with Mums Clubs and bloggers and breast pumps and babysitters. No extended maternity leave? No problem! Back to work we go! Oh, work doesn’t want us taking time off for kids? No problem! We’ll just go part time, go freelance, go inward, get an autoimmune disease or a divorce or whatever! Just as long as we keep try, try, trying to show up for everyone!

Our Baby Boomer mothers told us it wasn’t that hard for them, that we’re doing it to ourselves, “over-parenting” and robbing our kids of life skills. But their idea of a prenatal vitamin was a cigarette and a swig of TaB; their concept of co-sleeping meant rolling the kid under the dinner table to keep the dog company.

Look at the Babysitters Club book series, written during the 1980s. Four 12 year-olds in charge of a whole Connecticut neighbourhood’s offspring. No worries at all!

Lindsay had her second child, Dawson, during the pandemic. A moment in time when mothers in particular felt a new level of burnout and the platitude “Live, Laugh, Love” was overtaken with this one, which quickly went viral.

“We expect women to work like they don’t have children, and raise children like they don’t work.”

Writer and relational skills teacher, Christabel Mintah-Galloway, says that “The myth we were taught is that burnout is a personal failure. It isn’t. It is a feature of capitalism designed to make you think you should be able to do it all”.

She adds, “Radical self-care will not save you from a system built to isolate you.”

Real connection involves vulnerability. But it’s hard to be vulnerable when you feel you might be judged by a society with a concept of motherhood so narrow we can’t accept a pregnant belly poking out of jeans.

What should we do when a mother can’t cope? Well, lucky we don’t have to worry about that because A. That’s her responsibility and B. That just can’t be true!

The tricky thing about motherhood is that it doesn’t have deadlines, there are no “hacks”, no way you can solve it the way you’ve been taught you can with diet or work or self-help books or podcasts.

You can’t “feel the fear and do it anyway” when your baby won’t stop screaming for four days straight. You can’t “let them” when your baby won’t sit properly in her car seat. Oh sure, there are “growth spurts” and “transitions” and “teething” – all neatly compartmentalised milestones to help us feel as if we are moving through it. Getting there!

Except, your body is changed, your brain is changed and the real work, the deep, psychologically-draining work of staying present and nurturing without sleep or resources beyond GP checkups is rarely enough to keep a person going, let alone motivated. Throw in a predisposition to mental illness and the very darkest of scenarios can seem somehow plausible.

Let’s step out of that bleakness for a sec and look over at Jon Hamm who is copping it this week for expecting a baby at 55 with his wife of three years, actress Anna Osceola, who is 38.

Hamm was in a relationship with actress and director, Jennifer Westfeldt for 15 years, during which time, the couple was adamant: no children. Westfeldt even made a movie about it in 2011, Friends With Kids, starring herself and Hamm and portraying new parents as sanctimonious sad sacks, over-zealous in their kid-focused rearing, exhausted and delusional about how much agony they were really in. (It’s actually a good movie and feels like the B-side of Bridesmaids with many of the same actors).

But if online discourse is anything to go by, Hamm cheated Westfeldt out of the opportunity to procreate. It doesn’t seem to matter that Hamm, by his own admission, was struggling with alcohol addiction then and probably wouldn’t have had the psychological resources to be a proper father, had Westfeldt decided she wanted kids. She must have wanted them no matter what! It’s a biological urge, people!!

Ohhh. You mean to tell me that with the state of the world at the moment, the lack of accessible healthcare, the disappearance of community connections, the advent of AI, the bleak job market, the economic disparity, (including inflation), the housing crisis and threat of world war should influence the birth rate?

Whaaaaaat?! No, we must rebuke this! Women just won’t play fair, is all!

But, by the way, why are you showing off your weird human tummy that doesn’t resemble a Barbie Doll’s plastic sphere while pregnant? What kind of woman are you?

You couldn’t cope with three kids under five alone with both grandparents in different states and a full time job? You couldn’t juggle medications and chronic sleep deprivation? Hallucinations? Mental anguish? No? What kind of woman are you?

It’s a strange contradiction, don’t you think? We like to imagine mothers fighting dinosaurs, fighting villainous husbands, wanting kids no matter who they’re married to — all while remaining modest and enthusiastic and terrifically upbeat.

But we can’t conceive of them fighting their own internal battles so dark they can’t tell anyone the extent of them. The truth is, the scariest movies don’t involve wormholes, time travel and prehistoric predators, they involve teenage babysitters who are told too late: the call is coming from inside the house.

Welcome!

This is the very first ‘episode’ of voice notes, a rustic, micro-dose of a podcast where every second week I will force someone to give me an answer about whether my take on a piece of pop culture is unhinged or not. Today my husband, Phil was WFH so I roped him into it for reasons that will soon become clear on the pod…

Read more

There’s just one huge inaccuracy at the centre: out of five women, nobody has an eating disorder. Statistically, at least one of them should be weird around food.

If this were any other group of women in their late 40s-early 50s in front of that many baked goods, there’d be GLP1s in the fridge or vomiting in the bathroom. Getting happily drunk and then wolfing down a greasy “breakfast sandwich with hot sauce”?

Sure Jen.

This series covered spousal death, adultery, breast cancer, teen pregnancy and late life lesbianism. But you can’t have one scene with someone asking Holly, “Are you sure the joy of baking isn’t tied to the joy of avoiding food as a means of control as is typical for most women with an eating disorder?”

Or something along those lines. I’m spitballing! No wrong answers in a brainstorm!

Gen X and Millennial women grew up with supermodels and Ally McBeal - you don’t live through that and tuck into a charcuterie board with gay abandon.

Speaking of supermodels, did you see Miranda Kerr on the Let’s Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari podcast this week? Kerr, who admitted to “a lot of pressure” during her modelling years explained that she doesn’t eat spinach or sushi because of “the parasites”. And fair enough, lettuce is not exactly a heat score right now. But when Kristin asked her if she ever ate carbs, Kerr blanked for a micro-second then volunteered,

“I really eat a lot of squash.”

I gotta be honest, that phrase has been on repeat in my brain since I heard it. I’ve sung it to myself in the shower, I’ve asked my 12 year-old for a backbeat so I can do a spoken word recording (he declined). I really eat a lot of squaaaaarsshhh!

Beat Drop

As a tonne of people have pointed out, this is her privilege, to be able to eschew perfectly healthy foods like sushi and spinach while the rest of us are trying to gather enough money just to buy groceries. Nonetheless! Kerr is out here eating bison and venison and – I don’t know, probably one of Santa’s reindeer – because she’s a super wealthy healthy model married to billionaire Evan Spiegel, of pervert glasses fame*.

We roll our eyes, we call it weird, but nobody is writing hot takes on whether they’re actively worried about Miranda Kerr or the impact of such restricted eating on her kids – or our kids. Similarly, nobody is writing hot takes about Kaia Gerber, who has allegedly got herself an enhanced butt, but still has the sort of hollowed cheeks that used to cause alarm before we decided blephs were the fashion.

What are the assumptions here? Is it that if you’re a supermodel married to a billionaire, or a young actress who reads “Important Novels” (with Cindy Crawford for a mother, no less), you know what you’re doing?

People were triggered when I wrote about Olivia Wilde looking underweight a month ago. They told me it was wrong; that she was “naturally” thin. Here’s Olivia last night at the premiere of her movie, The Invite in Switzerland. And not a hot take in sight.

To quote author Virginia Sole-Smith “There is … a general understanding that most people who work in Hollywood … are living with some kind of functional eating disorder.”

And yet! The rules are apparently different for Ariana Grande, who has had at press time, a billion hot takes written about her, with commentary ranging from ‘I’m worried’ to ‘I’m triggered’ to ‘Think of the Children’ all amid an outcry of ‘What are her people doing?’

It’s true, Grande looks worryingly ill and her latest music video suggests that she’s conscious of this, given the camera angles and the inclusion of a note which reads, “Couldn’t hurt to lose a few LBS.”

But her people? Her “people” were happy to let her become engaged to a mentally-ill man she’d dated for four weeks. Let’s not imagine she has a board with the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mr Miygagi and Yoda on it, able to dispense nuggets of hard-won wisdom.

Of course Grande has gone into hiding, and feels nothing but our scrutiny. Eating disorders don’t begin when you see a rib cage and they don’t end when people are called out. In fact, less than 6 percent of people with eating disorders are medically underweight. The average onset occurs at 18 years-old. Comments on Grande’s weight loss began when the singer was 19. She’s now 33.

Grande has probably been telling her “people” she wants her version of bison and squash for years now. Pete Davidson once told Seth Meyers that Grande said she wanted a teacup pig - as a pet. Piggy Smalls arrived within the hour. You don’t need Britney Spears’ dad to land in serious psychological trouble, you just need enough people on the payroll.

Too harsh? Please, hang on!

In her 2009 treatise Bodies, author and psychotherapist Susie Orbach talked about what was at that time a growing trend of the human body as a modern status symbol and therefore, endlessly improvable. But, she noted, this “perfectible” body didn’t result in contentment. Instead, an obsession with a supposed ideal yielded a type of human Whack-A-Mole, where greater focus led to more perceived problems, or as Orbach put it “a body which, to an alarming degree is becoming a site of serious suffering and disorder.”

That was 17 years ago, when Ariana Grande first auditioned for the Nickelodeon series Victorious. She was 16.

It used to be that the primary advantage of being wealthy was being free to pursue your passions. Peggy Guggenheim collected art, Brooke Astor became philanthropic. These days the mega rich have gone full tilt into “wellness” in the vain pursuit of maximising their most powerful asset - their body, (and with it, their mortality).
But us Normies have other names for it - Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), Orthorexia and the one with the highest mortality rate: Anorexia Nervosa.

So where does this leave us? (Apart from another billion hot takes). Well, before we go any further, let’s go back to 1927 when the head of MGM Studios, Louis B Mayer wanted to discourage actors from unionising. The logic went that if you single out one person, offer them a shiny reward, they’ll stop talking about the exploitative system and start working harder! And so, the Academy Awards was born. A hundred years and a thousand gowns later, we know it worked.

It’s true that Ariana Grande has huge visibility, thanks in part to her music and her crossover into a movie franchise and, it must be said, her wild choices in men.

But disordered eating doesn’t live in one famous body. This is an airborne epidemic, embedded into the lives of women - and men - both famous and non-famous. It is part of how we live and so ubiquitous you don’t even have to put it into hit TV shows about midlife women because, as a plot point, it’s old hat.

Ah! But if we can all pile on one woman and say the problem begins and ends with her because “normally we don’t comment on women’s bodies” and “now we’re worried about her influence” we can convince ourselves we’ve done something.

When really, we’ve become our own Louis B Mayers. We’re only too happy to hold her up as a shiny example of how things can sometimes go wrong without ever looking further at a system that has spent the last century insisting that women make themselves smaller in order to succeed, while acting like it’s some type of anti-feminist social taboo to point out that it’s working - and it’s everywhere we look.

*I will never stop pointing out that CEO of Snap, Evan Spiegel also tried to market those pervert glasses.

Thank you so much for signing up.

As a fellow Substack subscriber I take it seriously when someone who has never seen my unfiltered face commits to my writing!

Ok, so this is a slight departure from my usual newsletter, although I am dying to talk about Brad Pitt’s appearance at Taylor Swift’s wedding, Nara Smith’s double-down, pivot, one-two-step, pirouette - honestly a stunning routine worthy of a gold medal - and what all of that means for us as feminists. Stay tuned!

But first, the news: there are a few medium-sized changes coming because I Say This With Love has gone far above my expectations and I want to take that as seriously as I can.

When I started in January my main goal was just to get all my rants out into the world. These days the freelance work I do is mostly copywriting and other stuff that is, spiritually speaking, still copywriting. Shoutout to not following your passion!

My close friends, family and co-workers - ok, everybody! - always encouraged me to start a Substack but it wasn’t until my bestie, (her name is Jess and she coined the term “bunker people”) told me in her usual gentle/firm way, “You need to do this” that I felt it in my soul.

See, I’m extroverted, (An ENFJ thank you very much) but still terribly insecure, due in part to some scarring work experiences. (Ripped the hope right off!) So sometimes I can come off as a little …Olivia Rodrigo’s Maggots for Brains but like, older and married with kids if that makes sense? (Barely).

So I began how I intend to leave this world: anxious, afraid but ultimately limp.

Then, one Sunday in March my piece on the Sanchezing of Oprah Winfrey got 21,000 views. I had just over 200 subscribers at the time so it felt like some sort of weird miracle. You know when your dog barks but it seems for a second like they said your name?

“EWWROW NAT” is what Substack seemed to be saying to me.

So I did what anyone would do in that moment. I whispered “What the fuck was that?”

Because it felt eerie, but not real. At best, an anomaly. AT BEST.

Um. It wasn’t. The Substack grew week on week. There was a dip in May that I’m not going to talk about. You’ll just have to read it in my forthcoming memoir: ‘Why Nobody Likes Evergreen Takes: The Natalie Reilly Story”.

Then in June the dang thing exploded. Olivia Wilde’s face got 50,000 views in six days, (she’s currently at 73K). I don’t know about other Substack writers and creators, but this is an INSANE number for me.

And then a music producer by the name of Jack Antonoff broke up with his wife and my piece on him being, well, a boneless guinea pig, racked up 60,000 views in four days and is now at 75K after three weeks.

For a Substack of just 600 subscribers, which is what I had then, let me tell you I was practically sick with shock, not because I don’t believe in what I write or plan it carefully or think deeply, (I mean the book references in my articles aren’t exactly holiday reads!) But because - and I can not stress this enough - that many people don’t normally vibe with my writing.

See, I’ve been writing about pop culture and misogyny and body image and how the three sort of co-exist, you know, like a sexy Cerberus since 2012. So, supportive, thoughtful comments being the majority? VERY NEW AND SHOCKING.

Speaking of ancient Greek myths, The Odyssey one surprised me too. You all really got it? You stayed to read it all? It’s currently sitting at 41,000 views. Nicole in the bunker is not far behind.

And now I’m here.

Bragging at you with 1.4K subscribers. It may not seem that much, but to me it’s a high point. Every week I see your amazing comments?!! And how thoughtful everyone is and how generous with praise and fair in disagreement and now authors I admire for their incredible writing have made me part of their Sunday morning routines?!!

Beth! Jean! Gabby!

FEMINIST ICON SUSIE BRIGHT

People like Laura asking to pay for a subscription?

So here’s my plan. I don’t want you to have to pay if you can’t. The cost of living is no joke, and neither is AI - it’s taking jobs that writers like me used to take for granted and loads of you are now on Substack trying like me for some traction.

But I’d be an idiot not to take this seriously. It feels like life finally handed me a different citrus fruit.

So I’m turning on a paid tier for subscriptions, starting now. There’s another reason, too - a shocking amount of you are already pledging! Real people who are not friends? No, I’m not some flakey, faux-humble person. What I am is cynical so I have trouble trusting that decent, smart people actually have money!

Now, more transparency because I’m big on sharing, (dive into that ENFJ profile link when you can - you won’t regret it! Hahahah Did I mention I was vain?)

I’m in early talks with personal sponsors but at the moment, that doesn’t feel quite right. Never say never! Let me assure you that whatever sponsorship I am fortunate enough to secure in the future won’t be intrusive or “organic” (far too awkward) and it will never be a sponsor that does not align with my values. So no “hot singles in your area” ads, for example.

Now, if a lot of people sign up to a paid tier and I find I can live without sponsorships, I will.

And of course, for those who do sign up there will be extras, such as…

Voice notes

This will be a short podcast about stuff that may have just happened in the pop culture space that’s too urgent not to speak on. And good news: I like talking even more than writing. And I always have a lot to say! And sometimes my voice is a bit scratchy, a bit … watery… but that’s down to my autoimmune disease and many people have told me they find it sexy.*

*This is a complete lie and I want to apologise to both my brothers who are reading.

Now! These pods are going to be conversations between me and probably a new person every second week. (Identity TBC). I’m not just talking to myself over here! But everyone I speak to will have a background in either media or broadcasting or stand up comedy and sometimes, all three. We are professionals, ok?

Recommendations
Paying subscribers will also have access to my personal recommendations and opinions once a month on beauty treatments plus the latest in wellness.

I’m not an RFK Jr fan so no saunas in jeans and no MRIs for shiggles. These will not be ‘affiliate links’. They’ll be stuff I really like. And, BTW, if you haven’t acquainted yourself with my ‘About’ page - I used to write a beauty column and then a wellness column so I have the expertisssssah.

The first podcast will be going up within the next two weeks. My recommendations will go up once a month. The price for the paid tier right now is as low as I could possibly make it, because hey, living in the end times shouldn’t mean living in the expensive times, right?

But, before I do all that I wanted to let you know about it so if you don’t want that paid tier in your life you’re still going to get the weekly article. Which you can of course pay for if you like. What does the Substack blurb say? Let Natalie know you value her writing more than life itself. Or something.

Either way, thank you for being here.

One day I’ll write in detail about what really propelled me to do this (emotionally, spiritually, somatically) and maybe then you’ll understand how much you all mean to me.

In the meantime, thank you for all the likes, all the comments, all the follows and the PLEDGES - I am obsessed with you all. Too much? Soz that’s who I am, that’s how I roll and thanks to your support, maybe I don’t ever have to change.

With love, always -

Nat xoxoxo

This seems to be a bit of a trend among a certain cohort of A-list actresses. Reese Witherspoon is apparently learning German for her, erh, German private equity financier Oliver Haarman and Jennifer Garner is dating John Miller, a tech CEO. These are women, you’ll recall, who were once married to high profile dudes; creative types who have at times, slipped into addiction, adultery and acting out.

We’re all familiar with the adage: every good relationship needs a rose and a gardener. Someone who is willing to till the earth, carry the emotional load (maybe the mental load, too) while the other …stands there and looks hot. Like Ryan Phillippe in Cruel Intentions, leaning on his good looks and Reese’s can-do attitude to have two kids before they’re 30. Or, in the case of Keith Urban and Ben Affleck, men who bring a certain dangerous charisma to the relationship while their wives work around them, digging in, looking after kids as their partner’s careers bloom.

Well, maybe not Keith. I mean, he has, like Affleck, battled addiction, so that’s the dangerous part. “Charisma” is tougher to nail down here, given Urban’s hair is straighter than Avril Lavigne’s during her Skaterboi era; his face more self-tanned than Christina Aguilera’s during her Dirrty video. Look, it’s safe to say the man has an aesthetic and that aesthetic is late 90s songstress, and honestly, who am I to yuck Nicole’s former yum?

But! One could argue, if one was feeling like the narrator of an Agatha Christie mystery, that these women were all led to believe that being an actress would mean that they’d be the rose or at least take turns between rose and gardener in their marriages. What they ended up with was two dirty hands and a rake.

So many of us Gen Xers and Millennials, lightly traumatised by our Boomer parents dynamic, chose a sensitive, creative man because we didn’t want to end up controlled. One of the most beloved relationships on TV in the 1990s was Monica and Chandler’s on Friends - and she called all the shots, training her husband like a rescue pup.

But what happens at midlife? When the old dog we thought we could lead starts growling at shadows and pissing in the house?

Two recent shows, Four Seasons and The Invite have explored this conundrum and at the core of both is a relationship where a once spontaneous and creative man (Will Forte / Seth Rogen) has lost his mojo, and his wife, (Tina Fey / Olivia Wilde) is only too keen to roll up her sleeves and “fix” the wilting rose.

Alas, what happens instead turns the wife into a buttoned-up party pooper; someone who thinks of her husband as another child to be managed, (Fey keeps calling Forte “buddy”). And what do you know, the more controlling she is, the more the man shrinks, infantilising himself into a soft ball of boyhood – all impulse, including sexual – gone.

Both couples only remembering at the end what Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”.

So what does it mean that these A-list actresses, now in their producer eras, have all earned serious money but opted for the C-suite? I mean, Garner’s Five Star Weekend, a frothy concoction of cocktails and perimenopausal tears is officially Peacock’s most successful TV series ever. What does she want with high tech?

Well. If we’re to stretch this analogy just a teensy bit further, we’d call these finance bros “landscapers” - they can do more than tend to the rose; they can remodel the entire property. They’re in private equity, guys. The thing that’s behind the enshitification of all we hold dear and one of the only occupations to survive the oncoming A.I-pocalypse.

Can’t you just imagine Reese co-ordinating the whole thing over some sweet tea in Nashville (that Nicole never touches)?

“Niccck!!! Oli says Mike has a bigger investment portfolio than all of their friends! Who cares if he doesn’t read, honey! Can he read the stock market? Oh I’m joking y’all!”

Well, hold on, maybe it’s that these women need a guy who’s FINALLY not threatened by their success. That’s not a nice theory but research says it’s a real one.

And yet, (there’s always a “and yet” with me). These are no ordinary businessmen. They have Bunker money. You know, the type of money to build underground bunkers, a la Mark Zuckerberg. The king of the Metaverse has one in Hawaii, one in Palo Alto and one in Miami - in preparation for the end times, (though he denies this).

Jeff Bezos has one in the same location in Miami, hence its name “Billionaires Island”. Sam Altman has denied he has one anywhere, preferring instead the term “reinforced basement” which is hilarious coming from the guy who invented A.I and has justified its energy sucking mechanisms by saying that hey, humans use energy too.

When the end comes there’ll be data centres above the ground and bunkers below. The rest of us will stagger around in the desert like extras from 28 Days Later: Eat ‘Em Before They Burn!

Oh, I’m joking y’all!

Now these women, they’re rich, but they’re not Bunker People. They were roses who became gardeners to foolish men who wilted in their light, (and perhaps too much pruning, we don’t know!)

Nicole, though, has probably flirted with Bunker People. Tom Cruise is spiritually of the bunker, you know? He can hobnob with Bunker People.

When the end comes, we know Miranda Kerr will be safely ensconced in a bunker, anointing her temples with Kora Tumeric oil while her husband, CEO of Snapchat Evan Spiegel, he of pervert glasses fame, dances with AI ghouls. But what of our other female entertainers?

See, Nicole has always said she never planned her career and that she leads with her heart. Reese is more open about her ambitions, but only in terms of film and TV producing, oh and bookclub oh and Draper James. Jennifer Garner knows how to garden, so she’ll do well in the bunker greenhouse. Gwyneth married the creative guy, (writer producer Brad Falchuk) but we’ve all seen how hard she’s flirting with bunker people, so she’ll be fine, probably thrive down there.

It’s just so interesting though, that these women who were once content to be perceived as Rosy Girl Bosses, at least to their fans, are not so content as to want to stay single.

At a time when so many women are opting out of marriage, to live their own lives and these actresses are making shows which mirror that reality, they’re deciding to bunker down as it were, with serious money men. Either the end times are coming faster than we thought or these women were never the rose or the gardener – but the sole architect of the entire project.

Probably, it’s both.

*Bunker People is a term coined by my bestie, Jess Irvine. #womensupportingwomen

More on this next week…

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Some of my closest friends are dads. Hey, I’m married to one. Anyway, what do we expect from the director who proudly shuns email? (I’m sure his personal assistant loves that). All while inventing new and torturous ways to complicate the filming process. And suffering is where I want to go here today, so please – pretend you’re Matt Damon and sniff nobly through the pain.

Can we begin with the female actors? Lupita Nyong’o has faced racist backlash. Anne Hathaway’s gotta do the whole thing pregnant, while facing criticism over ruining the film via alleged botox use. Meanwhile, Charlize Theron is weathering accusations of abusing GLP1s. Theron took to instagram to defend her eating habits, photographing a bowl that appeared to be 78% steam followed by a couple of delicately arranged morsels of sushi above the caption “You told me to eat”. Oh way to stick it to us, Charlize, you gluttonous slob woman! Haha, oh boy! Is my face red!

Then there’s Zendaya, who was apparently not pretty enough to play Athena and faced criticism for wearing the wrong earrings. Her husband, Tom Holland, went so far as to wear jeans and a long-sleeved top on a muggy day in Paris, (suffer the children!). While Robert Pattinson has done his usual trolling, claiming he wore leopard print undies. But if we move over here to our big American actors, an interesting pattern begins to take shape.

Matt Damon, the aging boy-prince of Boston, he of good humour but without actual jokes, is humbly divulging just how challenging the epic was to act in. He told Seth Myers about being sprayed with water and screaming in his trailer to “age” his voice. (For the record, Pattinson said he thought Damon was experiencing a painful bowel movement). Damon laughed at that, but probably remembered how he permanently damaged his adrenal gland after he starved himself, eating only tiny morsels of fish - for his first breakout role in 1996’s Courage Under Fire.

Then there’s The Bear’s Jon Bernthal, who has described his time in the literal trojan horse as if he was fighting for his life on a beach in Normandy. “When the horse was still in the water, that water was freezing cold,” Bernthal says. “It’s no joke. There’s no frills. There’s zero. Nothing. And I really love that. I call it ‘No acting acting.’ He [Nolan] just puts you in it.”

Oh I beg your pardon, sirs! I had no idea this was some type of masculinity competition. Let me ask Pete Hegseth to join this meeting so we can get some clarity on why these men are behaving like they’re about to be tested for low testosterone.

Better yet, let’s dig up this sterling quote from actress and director, Kristen Stewart, who explained her theory to the New York Times just last year about why men go hardcore method: “Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive.”

Yes, Stewart just said acting was bottoming. But then she went further, suggesting that if some of these men “can … feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing.” A little less submissive, then. A little less girlish?

But Anne went full method for three days! Yeah but Anne didn’t tell us that - co-star Logan Marshall-Green did.

It reminds me of Leonardo Di Caprio, who finally won his Oscar for The Revenant in 2016. The hype had almost nothing to do with his performance (mid, even for a Dad flick) and was instead focused on the hardship of the freezing shoot, including, but not limited to when Leo went ahead and popped himself into the carcass of a horse.

While you’re mulling over that visual, let me remind you of Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar win, for The Dallas Buyers Club, in which he lost 45 pounds (23kg) eating mostly fish to play a man dying of AIDS. It’s worth watching for the belt he wears throughout; flapping off him like some sort of phallic reminder that he is indeed suffering for his art.

Tina Fey said it best at the Golden Globes that year “For his role in Dallas Buyer’s Club Matthew lost 45 pounds, or what actresses call ‘being in a movie.” He still won.

Did you see the trailer for I Play Rocky, about Sylvester Stallone’s first filmmaking experience? It dropped on Thursday. The story of one man who insisted on starring in the movie he wrote while also insisting on bashing the frozen meat in that scene with his bare hands. Spoiler: he broke one of them.

Guys, are we courting Oscars or Jackass? Why are we seeking injuries? Oh but we know why, don’t we? Acting is too plush an occupation for a tough guy. It’s the thespian’s equivalent of your dad’s cold plunge. The tech bros used to call it “dopamine fasting” while starving themselves. But it all boils down to the same thing.

“In patriarchal culture males aren’t allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do.”

bell hooks

Speaking of cold plunges, remember when Kate Winslet withstood 20-hour long shoots in the freezing water for Titanic but the main thing the media focused on was her weight?

Look, acting is not the hardest job out there. But if we’re talking cumulative suffering, or physical pain, then it seems the ladies are the ones who must endure - in silence.

We rage at them for their abuse of GLP1s or their botox or the literal colour of their skin but don’t stop to consider that famous women’s bodies are more scrutinised now than at any other time in history. What else should a woman do when her entire physical self is picked apart by millions every day? Of course she wants to fold up and disappear.

Feminist philosopher Kathryn Morgan called cosmetic surgery a “colonisation” of women’s bodies. People love to quote from Orwell’s 1984 when they’re talking about self-censorship under fascism but body conformity provides its own unique form of safety in a 24 hour gossip cycle, where a new woman is offered up hourly for us to feast on, and tear apart like a cyclops.

Yes, the online world! Where men invent wild new names like “hiplets” to shame women and female actors starve and mutilate their bodies in preparation for each press tour. Meanwhile, the male actors brag about how they suffered physically – on a sound stage in Los Angeles. Oh I know, there were mountains climbed and caves entered. Damon even got into shape! Funny– women aren’t allowed to get out of it.

Instead they must look glamorous and still, while the boys bang on their chests like gorillas, in a movie that’s supposed to be about brains beating brawn.

The music producer, who’s collaborated on roughly 88 songs with Swift, was once considered one of the “good ones” - a type of boneless, non-toxic music pixie who sat at the knee of the singer, ready to transmute her vast talent into synth-heavy hits.

But ever since Lena Dunham detailed the breakdown of her nearly six year relationship with Antonoff in her memoir, Famesick. (Released in April, though it feels like one long, parasocial summer) our ardour has cooled. Was Antonoff, who resembles an oversized guinea pig, in fact that guy?

And did Qualley read the memoir and decide to take Dunham’s side?

Well, hang on, let’s give the actress a little more credit: she most likely saw all her husband’s issues perfectly articulated in black and white and realised she wasn’t alone!

Though just yesterday a rep for Qualley said there were only “two people” in the marriage, which seems like a veiled reference to Dunham but is in fact a denial that Qualley is involved with Drew Starkey, her co-star in the upcoming film King Snake. Meanwhile, Qualley, who deleted her wedding photos from Instagram, has since added one blurred photo with Antonoff back to her grid.

I mean, you know he called her crying, “First Lena’s book, now you! The paps are everywhere! It’s humiliating, ok? I’m meant to be on tour! I just don’t know how much more of this I’m supposed to take, Saisie!”

(Saisie is his pet name for her, according to nobody but me. Qualley’s real first name is Sarah and it’s my distinct vibe that he’d pull a reverse Tom Holland).

Anyway! It’s an interesting spin on an old dynamic, don’t you think? Traditionally, when a man takes a wife 11 years his junior, it usually requires more than 3 years of marriage for her to wise up to his complications.

For decades women have been taught not to make a fuss; to be serviceable, to be “cool” in order to capture a man’s attention. Stray from this blueprint and you’ll be called “high maintenance”. The best bet is to be both uncomplicated and pretty - jackpot.

As Dunham wrote in the epilogue of Famesick about “beautiful” Margaret Qualley,

“I wept like a child on the first afternoon I saw a paparazzi picture of them kissing on the Brooklyn Bridge, I knew that nobody would understand why I was so upset, that they’d assume it was because I was jealous of her, and that made me weep even harder.”

It’s a narrative as old as Helen of Troy (*pulls down glasses, winks*) and despite Dunham’s steadfast refusal to adhere to it, she knows what people will think.

bell hooks called it “the politics of envy” where women, instead of rising up to defeat the narrow, white supremacist idea of capitalistic beauty standards, instead compete with each other for the prize. It’s what dumb men mean when they say “You girls are your own worst enemies!” And for too many millennia now, the prize has been some goofy guy who is light on relational skills and heavy on the singular pursuit of what makes him happy, at the direct expense of anyone who dares to demand his attention after the limerence has faded.

If an ordinary woman needs extra attention, say, for a debilitating chronic illness, or a hysterectomy, where is the pay-off for the man? As Dunham ruefully recounts in her memoir, there is none. She says she failed at this sacred patriarchal rite of passage; the bagging of a sensitive “good guy” by having too many needs.

So when we learned, circa 2021 along with Lena, that Jack Antonoff was dating the actress who personified unattainable youth and beauty in The Substance, we were sad, a little eye-rolly, but not surprised. Despite not knowing Antonoff at all, we knew this truth to be self-evident: the man will choose the more bendy girl. And “girl” is the operative word. What did Carrie Bradshaw tell Big right before his engagement to Natasha?

“Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.”

She was quoting The Way We Were, the 1973 movie about a complicated woman (Barbra Streisand) in love with a square-jawed jock, (Robert Redford). Of course it was never going to work out. And yet! There’s Harry, (Billy Crystal) a complicated man with unconventional looks, bagging Sally (Meg Ryan) and apparently, this means the stars have aligned. Because who else would put up with her? She was high maintenance!

Dunham has said that Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, Jane Eyre, had a lasting impact on her writing and that it informed her memoir. In the novel, Jane, who is both narrator and main character, tells us she is “plain” no fewer than 48 times, explaining as much to Mr Rochester, in a monologue where she urges him not to marry the prettier Blanche Ingram, confessing her love for him while simultaneously detailing what she views as their biggest hurdle: that she’s smart and soulful but essentially defective.

The miracle of the novel, and why it’s so celebrated some 180 years later, is that Rochester marries the plain woman with nothing to offer except her devotion. Well, that and the fact that she can read everyone to filth.

Lena has since gone on to a happy marriage but the tongue clicking around Antonoff remains. We thought he had humility! And yet, here was this woman-child, the progeny of two former models, (Andie MacDowell and Paul Qualley) opening her glossy lips to say, without reservation, that she’d found her person in him.

Is there no justice in the world?

Well, it turns out, there is.

You see, men love to blame a woman for their relationship complications, believing if they just traded her in for a less complex version, they’d be content. But in his dogged determination to keep putting himself first, the man may stop noticing the world, or the girl he married. Maybe she has needs and is human, after all. Maybe, in his refusal to meet the ongoing demands of a relationship he becomes what he set out to avoid: the partner who’s high maintenance.

*Of course we have no idea what really went down and all of this is my extrapolaish!

Speaking of expectations. It’s interesting to see some of the hot takes surrounding Taylor and Travis Swift Kelce (Swelce!) and their wedding at Madison Square Garden- that it inconvenienced people, that it was tacky, that it was a narcissistic spectacle of billionaire cringe and, most damning of all: that it was mid.

As if the person who wrote the lyric, “his love was the key that opened my thighs” is supposed to have an understated wedding, somewhere quiet, out of town where helicopters can easily fly overhead and take pics. Did we forget why she has such broad appeal? She didn’t earn a record of US $2 billion from a worldwide tour for singing songs only accessible to elites.

Are we going to get mad now that she chose happiness? Are we forgetting that whenever she’s chosen anger, (even self-referentially) she’s faced backlash anyway?
As British journalist Laurie Penny once famously pointed out, “One sure test of social privilege is how much anger you get to express without the threat of expulsion, arrest, or social exclusion.”

Swift faced social exclusion; making herself so small, the internet believed she could fit into a suitcase. Perhaps this is why we don’t know the exact details behind Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ absence at the wedding, beyond those unsealed texts - every time Swift expresses herself outside of “entertaining” she’s punished for it.

And of course, this includes the wedding. But Taylor Swift has been telling us over and over again who she is - and it was never someone who thought they were cool.

We know the Maya Angelou line, “When someone shows you who they are - believe them the first time.” By the way, why are we all familiar with that line? Not because we were tapped into Ms Angelou’s genius, but because another universally beloved, thoroughly mid celebrity, introduced us to her - Oprah Winfrey.

Life is too short, too painful, too wrenching right now to parse through what is good taste and what is merely mezzanine. I say this not because I am tired, (I am, always) but because every time we’ve put stock in a “genius” artist or otherwise, they’ve failed us. Morally. Crushingly. Think of any (male) genius you know and now tell me about their spotless ethical record. It’s tough isn’t it?

So let Taylor have her silly puns, her corny JUST&T MARRIED signs, her book of vows that goes on for 20 minutes. Let Paul McCartney play, as befits the man whose co-writer, John Lennon, abandoned their universally beloved band, declaring himself a genius, too lofty for The Beatles.

Yet John’s horrible parenting, adultery and abuse is a footnote, way behind “give peace a chance” as if the two aren’t at best, contradictory, at worst, rank hypocrisy. In fact, Lennon is part of a long list of problematic male singers we bestow forgiveness on, because of their “genius” from Dave Grohl to Morrissey to – ahem – Kanye West, right up to Matt Healy.

Is it any wonder Swift herself opted for a footballer in the end?

We compare her union to a royal wedding and the analogy is apt. After all, look at Princess Catherine, who chose last week to walk over 37km in the sleet and mist, up the three highest mountains in Britain in order to raise money and express her “gratitude” for the hospital that helped her through her cancer. Whatever happened to an oversized cheque? Well, we only have to look at Swift, who together with her new husband, donated $26 million to charities - many of them New York-based - to celebrate her wedding. Still it wasn’t enough.

Meanwhile, nobody is talking about Travis, and William of course, who appeared at the finish line to greet Kate, while she, 18 months out from a life-threatening illness, dried herself off from the trek. But William has never been hounded by the paps like Kate, never been judged, (despite those rumours of infidelity) never been compared to every other man in his orbit. Maybe the trek was a type of spiritual penance for the princess; an elite level of self-harm; “If I walk far enough and freeze enough and punish myself enough maybe people will leave me be.”

If that is part of Catherine’s personal philosophy, who could blame her? Look what we did to her mother-in-law, look what we do when one of the world’s most beloved women decides to throw a party for herself and her husband.

Gloria Steinem wrote in 2015 that “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke.”

But Taylor Swift, ever the mastermind, was one step ahead and made those armies her closest allies, turning her reputation as a frivolous girly pop singer into the most successful entertainer alive. If that’s mid, then let her be mid.

Before we really get into the genderedness of it all, do you remember when Jacob Elordi appeared on Saturday Night Live two years ago with the same sort of gaunt look and people were saying much the same thing? Elordi had the perfect excuse - he had dropped the weight for a role in an Australian miniseries, playing a prisoner of war.

But back to Olivia. Just this week she was out again promoting her latest film, The Invite, which she both directed and acted in and the face was still QUITE GAUNT. So, I’m not sure I buy the fisheye lens. But there’s two other things I want to posit here.

The first is that, as we’ve all gathered by using our retinas, there’s been a big swing back to extreme thinness, thanks in part, to weight loss medications. Although anyone who thinks that medications haven’t always been an integral piece of a female celebrity’s beauty regimen is forgetting showbiz lore, honey!

The other thing is that, well … I’m already talking about a woman’s face in detail so I may as well commit….

(Deep breath).

Plenty of other celebrities are just as underweight as Wilde, but there’s one crucial difference — they have fillers. No, not the big, puffy fillers you might be used to associating with Jocelyn Wildenstein. Artfully placed fillers, so the body can look skeletal without impacting the face. Like a human bratz doll!

Remember Courteney Cox once said it was a choice between having a skinny ass or a fuller face? Well, now you don’t have to choose. Such great news!

Which gives rise to the next question. Why? Why hasn’t Olivia gotten herself fillers? I’m not saying she has to, I’m saying she is 42 years-old with a wrinkle-free forehead, so she’s already leaning on something, why not go all in?

So, ok, I wonder if Olivia likes how her face looks? I mean obviously but actually in the same way that Mark Zuckerberg believes that his Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses can be made cool if he wears them with his trendy gold chain, thereby neutralising any thought of them as Predator Wear. Or, Pred Wear if you will! Pred Wear used to mean Jeffrey Dahmer glasses, but now those same actresses with artfully filled faces are wearing them and maybe that’s a metaphor?

But to continue. Perhaps Olivia’s face is a signifier, not just of thinness and possible ozempic abuse or disordered eating or illness, (God forbid!) but something more subtextural …

Please, hold my hand, my beer, my mind full of feminist theory - and allow me to try this on!

Germaine Greer wrote in The Whole Woman in 1999, (her follow-up to The Female Eunuch) that women, if they wanted to succeed in society, had to “live the lives of unfree men”, worse, they could only find public acceptance if they were beautiful.

Yes, Greer had named the problem and the cause of Girlbossing a decade before its zenith. But she went further, saying that women had swapped the true Feminine in all of its messy, bloodied glory, (heaven forbid a woman give birth or lactate) for a mere performance of femininity, arguing that this “fake equality” had led to a double bind for women - work as hard as a man but look hot while you do it.

You know, just like Olivia Wilde has two kids but you’d never know it from her concave abdomen. Oh I know, “not all women” who have had two children lose their abs but enough, ok? Enough women.

So here comes my point. If Wilde bounded up to the premiere of her movie in a modest gown with a full face, we’d subconsciously read those signifiers as “feminine” and Wilde already copped accusations of stereotypical feminine behaviour when she directed Don’t Worry Darling, by dating one star in it and famously fighting with the other. Nevermind that countless male directors have done the same thing, including your precious Steven Spielberg! Oh yes Daddy Steve; creator of alien Jesus – E.T. – has himself fallen from grace.

Wilde has to now project competence as a director, a position less than 10% of women occupy in Hollywood. But! She also has to show us she’s obeying the unwritten rules of Girlbossing - to be fierce; invulnerable, but in, like, a sexy way.

If she shows up as a complete woman, maybe a bit soft, a bit approachable, she’s in dangerous territory and might be perceived as weak and therefore bad at a big man’s job. So, she has to be hot but hard, like a married guy with a wife and a couple of children he never sees.

Wilde has already done the podcast of exoneration so now all that’s left to do is look the part. It’s just curious don’t you think, that a woman trying to look untouchable resembles a dude when he’s playing the role of an “unfree man” - a prisoner of war.

If this were 1998, when the first Practical Magic movie was released, there’d be whispers about their “special relationship” and quotes from the National Inquirer from Oprah and Gayle, welcoming them into some sort of secret lesbian quadrant.

As it happens, Bullock’s first post on Instagram in April was a little nod to the sequel, dropping into cinemas in September. So the “Happy Birthday” message to Kidman kinda follows a marketing trajectory here. Or maybe it really was a happy birthday message, too. Two things can be true!

Listen. I’m sure Sandra and Nicole are really friendly, they seem like lovely people. But soul mates? Just when we thought we had the celeb fauxmance figured out, (recall Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney giving us piping hot chemistry for 2023’s Anyone But You – a soggy egg sandwich of a rom-com). Here it comes… the codified, commercialised Celeb Best Friendship.

Nicole’s been here before, with Reese Witherspoon while promoting Big Little Lies. The two were executive producers so they were undoubtedly real friends. But the narrative painted them as something approaching sister soul mates. Nicole, shy and sensitive, complementing Reese’s chihuahua energy. And they were united against common foes - abusive men and low viewership.

However, Reese had another sister bestie: Jennifer Aniston, her co-star on The Morning Show. Those ladies posted elongated instagram homages to each other on birthdays and whenever a new season of the show was coming out.

But answer me this, (*bites down on pipe*) : if they really were as close to Reese as they said, why didn’t we see the three of them together on Instagram? Because that’s what tends to happen in friendships - besties meet each other and they become friends too, or at least, friends in-law. Why wasn’t that broadcast?

Or maybe that’s just me, a self-identifying friend hurdler, catcher, keeper, lover. Blame it on the rabid extroversion, with just a splash of childhood trauma.

But enough about me. Australian sociologist Michael Pusey*, building on the work of Max Weber and neoclassical economists, coined the term “economic rationalism” last century and TLDR, it’s the idea that culture devolves to such a point that we’re no longer making choices that are moral, (or, as we say nowadays, “authentic”), but rather acting only to maximise personal utility and profit. So guess where that leaves friendships? Welcome to Transaction Town, where you only have to ask “What’s in it for me?”

Anyone with a wifi connection now understands that when we watch movies, we’re buying into the mythology of not just the actor, but their brand, i.e. something purchasable. And, given the late stage capitalistic moment we’re living in, that brand now encompasses not just the celeb’s personhood, their partners and even children, (hi Sunday Rose!) but their co-workers as well.

But these are not ordinary workmates-turned-friends. These are Best Friends. Forever Friends, accorded a status akin to marriage. The Mormons gave us Sister Wives, but stars on social media have birthed Sister Friends. How else to market a feminist-tinged dramedy?

Well, that’s celebrities. Who cares what they do? I’ve got my friends! See, that’s also interesting because thanks to the internet and the cost of living, nobody goes out any more. Nobody has time for their friends. We’re told communities are crumbling but maybe one reason we no longer have strong soul ties is because cultivating and maintaining a friendship takes time. And who has that anymore? Why catch up with a friend when I could be networking? Rubbing shoulders, or in Sandra and Nicole’s case, touching foreheads?

Which brings us to another Best Friendship - Taylor Swift and Blake Lively.

Theirs was not birthed out of a commercialised “sister wife” stunt - the pair met fairly organically. But their recent troubles involving Blake’s court battle with her former director Justin Baldoni have allegedly overshadowed their bond and now media outlets are asking if they can make up in time for Taylor’s wedding.

If reports are to be believed, it was strained, in part, because Blake leant on Taylor not just as a friend, but a big, fat, powerful brand. Can their friendship weather this storm? Can it go on despite the fact that Taylor stands to gain nothing from the union? Well, nothing monetary, no brand extension. Just the rekindling of an old - and maybe old fashioned - friendship.

*He was also my professor and low key changed my life.

Ok, so. Lopez was on the Subway Takes podcast on June 5, promoting her new Netflix rom-com, Office Romance. When asked about her “hot take” as is customary for the podcast, Lopez, full of joyful charisma, opined that kids should study self-love, telling host Kareem Rahma that loving oneself should be a “subject in school from kindergarten all the way through college.”

“Because [schools] teach us things intellectually,” she continued. “But an intellectual mother fucker with no emotional intelligence is dangerous! It’s a dangerous person. Okay?”

Pop culture obsessives (like me) immediately sprang up like meerkats, catching the dig that was obviously directed at Ben Affleck, the man she was engaged to from 2002-2004 before Ben called it off, only to crawl back 20 years later to woo her, dropping love bombs so precise, so expertly targeted, that they might be termed “love drones” … before he married her and then broke it off again in 2024. The same man she praised repeatedly for his intellect. At one point calling him a genius.

And look, Affleck, now 53, probably is an intellectual in celebrity circles. Which is to say, he reads. And yes, among the exes of J.Lo, including but not limited to Marc Anthony and Sean “sex trafficking” Combs, he’s practically St. Thomas Aquinas.*

But what did George W. Bush teach us? (apart from the fact that what you think is rockbottom is never rockbottom, whether it’s love or Republicans). “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me …you can’t get fooled again”.

This is not to blast Lopez for giving the guy a second chance. Affleck fooled us all! We were rooting for him! For them! (Well, I certainly was).

But the ferocity of it; the speed, the urgent need to seal the deal.
To paraphrase that little proverb currently circulating on Substack, If a woman marries once, she loves you, if she marries four times, she loves weddings, (and engagements - those clock in at 7 for Jen). Yep, Lopez loves herself a party. She even had a Bridgerton-themed breakup party two years ago. Oh, sure she called it a birthday but come on Jen, nobody celebrates a 55th! And amid a public separation? While preemptively shutting down comments on their instagram? What did we just say about emotional intelligence? What did you just say about self-love? We’re not erh, conflating it with a fragile ego are we?

Self Love, By J.Lo
“Self-love” as Lopez calls it is an interesting term, don’t you think? It feels like something Sex and the City’s Charlotte would have said about Big over breakfast in 2003.

I digress. As an excuse for bad boy behaviour, it’s a bit retro. Certainly it pre-dates “He’s just not that into you” , which arrived in 2004. In 2026 we’d label him “A toxic narcissist with avoidant issues” and call it a day.

J.Lo’s self-love line is actually a “tell” just as obvious as the mason jars that decorated her “country chic” wedding to Ben in 2022: this is a woman who is stuck in the not-too-distant past. Which is fine! As long as Ben was too? And there we have it. If Dua Lipa and Callum Turner are on the same page, Affleck and Lopez were reading different books altogether. Or maybe Jen was watching Bridgerton while Affleck read aloud from Chomsky.

Look at Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds - they are a lot of things, but they both believe that together they are not just the hottest but the smartest, funniest couple in Hollywood. Or look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Those two still think they’re both 25! And good! Good for them! Stay in your bubble! But stay there together, ok?

What Jen is essentially saying with her dig is that she has EQ but may not have “intellectual” chops. Otherwise she wouldn’t have called him a swear. Which is revealing isn’t it? This woman has succeeded as a top entertainer for the last 25 years, despite the backlash, the weddings and commentary like this. And she doesn’t think she’s smart?

Jennifer, where is the self-love?

*Affleck popped a reference to the philosopher monk in The Tender Bar. So yeah, he’d probably agree with me.

Look, (stifles crying hiccups) I get it! If you’re an actress, you want to keep working without alienating ordinary people.

How will the millennial mum who grew up on the Devil Wears Prada possibly react if Anne Hathaway casually admits, “Actually, I had an eye lift”.

It’s so tacky! Best leave that transparency to the Kardashians, right? It’s much easier for Hathaway to respond to allegations she had a facelift to say “I didn’t make a huge medical decision.” without mentioning that of course, there are plenty of things you can do that don’t involve an overnight stay in St John’s Private. It reminds me of Senator Elizabeth Warren who said in 2014. “I’m not running for President”. What she meant was “I’m not running this year”.

Two weeks ago Mindy Kaling told Bustle she didn’t want to talk about two things: her weight loss journey, which she says involved just running and eating healthy, and the father of her children. But Mindy we know it’s probably Ozempic and BJ Novak! And we actually don’t care that much. Does BJ care? Is that it? Why can’t you just admit to Ozempic? And Daddy BJ? His name is Ben by the way. Benjamin Joseph. I don’t know why I had to tell you that. Maybe because BJ feels like another lie.

Meanwhile, Cameron Diaz keeps saying she’d never do anything to her face but hun, the lack of any lines whatsoever around the bottom half of your visage, the firmness of your chin at 53 years of age is not due to Ponds cream. Or maybe it is. But I find it hard to believe you when you’re also out here saying you never wash your face.

Again: I understand! Who doesn’t want to look good? I don’t want to sound overly critical, (well, no more than usual). There are dozens of famous men who’ve had hair transplants and nobody ever talks about those. This eye of Sauron we have boring into the faces and bodies of female celebrities is grossly unfair.

But let’s look at it this way.

Imagine if these celebrities took us on an Architectural Digest Tour of their mansions but told us they bought them for $140K through sheer hard labour. We’d say “Ok, that’s none of our business but why are you lying?”

Famous women are showing us how to get ready for events, telling us “it takes a village” so why can’t they go one step further instead of giggling and telling us it was just a fish eye lens, Olivia Wilde?

Another Olivia - Olivia Munn - has shared with the world how she bravely fought breast cancer. There is video footage of her in a hospital gown about to go under.

But she won’t recant her statement that she used nothing more than potatoes and tweezers to change the shape of her eyes. Halle Berry is happy to speak on severe vaginal dryness –SEVERE – but won’t discuss how at nearly 60 she looks 35.

Demi Moore told Harper’s Bazaar that “Ageing is thought of as a decline. But that is just not the truth.” Uh, what ageing, Demi? Where? Oh, your arms? This is interesting because there are plenty of famous women just as sinewy as Demi but we don’t run screaming because we’re conditioned to the youth looking emaciated. We’re just not used to the olds.

See, this is the knock-on effect. The normal ageing process starts to look incorrect, wrong somehow. Hello Rachel Ward! Ah yes. But even Ward, when she aged, took herself away to a farm in Australia. Her husband Bryan has been looking 70 years-old since 1998 but he didn’t need to flee from sight and say “Oh all I care about are regenerative farming practices” because that dude has kept working - get this - even while he has aged. He was in the Travellers just last year at the ripe old age of 78.

Gloria Steinem told Allure in April that “Women are allowed to be older now than they used to be and still be considered relevant.” But Steinem, who has repeatedly insisted she’s had no work done, might want to amend that statement. Women are allowed to get old and stay relevant as long as they look taut.

That’s the inconvenient truth of it. And here’s another one: all these women in their 20s and early 30s saying they can’t wait to get old. Please. Take a deep breath from your diaphragm because you don’t know what old even looks like!

“Ageing is a privilege” they say. It reminds me of poor Britney Spears, who took a very public vow of chastity as a teen so audiences could feel ok about her ceaseless objectification. It’s a noble premise but let’s just wait until we get there, hey?

As Rosie O’Donnell wrote on Substack just a few days ago, “I used to feel very strongly about facelifts. Not casually - morally. I had assigned myself as head of all women who would never - ever.” And then she went out and got one. It’s similar to Jane Fonda who also vowed to let herself age naturally then changed her mind. Which is fine! Let the reader who is still under 35 understand: I do not object to the work. I’ve had some stuff done myself.

But! The pile-on of patriarchy, brutal capitalistic culture and techno facism has led to a pervasive feeling of “end times”. So why not throw caution to the wind? Tell us! Or don’t tell us anything – just don’t lie.

We can handle celebrities, sportspeople, academics, astronauts… but a comedian being canonised into the parthenon of secular sainthood?

Well hang on a sec. This may not be the outlier it appears.

If you’ve seen Marty: Life is Short, the documentary on Netflix, you will have seen that Martin Short is known not just as a comedian’s comedian who threw the best parties in Hollywood, but a genuinely kind person who loved people. This, despite or perhaps because he was marked, at a young age, by the tragic passing of his parents and older brother.

Short is Canadian, just like John Candy, another comedian whose recent documentary, I Like Me, showed that underneath the comedic persona was a compassionate human being. Catherine O’Hara was another Canadian comic actor who crossed paths with both men and when she passed, the tributes focused on two things: her wit and her light and not in that order.

Maybe it’s because they’re Canadian. But you know who else is Canadian? Justin Trudeau. And it still doesn’t explain Colbert, who has stayed married to the same woman for 33 years, or the man who promoted him on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart. There’s another guy who has stayed married and someone even Dave Chappelle got emotional over, highlighting Stewart’s generosity, and integrity, above his comic chops before presenting him with the Mark Twain Prize for Humour in 2022.

None of these people come from wild privilege. Colbert, Candy and Short all lost their fathers before they turned 21. Both Short and Colbert have said it liberated them in a sense; allowing them to go full bore ridiculous, because they had already faced the worst thing that could have happened. And when you’ve trudged through unimaginable pain, you tend to want to hold on and manufacture joy as fast and as often as an Amazon warehouse robot sorts packages.

It’s why, as comedian John Mulaney says in the documentary, “Marty is great at life.”

Chevy Chase also had a documentary made about him this year. One that unfortunately exposed exactly why he was fired from the Emmy-winning show Community, (the irony!) and nobody wants to work with him. And here is where I hope I can show you, using nothing but my own muddled brain, that there is a reason to rejoice in these dark times.

*Clicks Deck to Reveal a Pyramid with a Furby at the Top.

The Furby has the Face of Bernie Madoff*

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, comedians were troubled souls. If you wanted a better life, entrepreneurship was your pathway. There were books, like Rich Dad Poor Dad and financial gurus like Suze Orman, who told us money wasn’t about cash but emotions, (look, she wasn’t wrong). By 2011, people were putting shrines outside Apple stores because Steve Jobs died. I know nobody is perfect and RIP but this was a guy who stole ideas and equity from his employees and was prone to wild in-office tantrums.

Then, around the mid 2010s, women like Brene Brown and Elizabeth Gilbert were encouraging us ladies to inhabit vulnerability and shed shame. Ah! So this was how to LIFEMAX! For those of us raised by highly critical Boomer parents or stuck in loveless marriages and stagnant careers, it felt liberating.

Then Mel Robbins told us to “let them”, (an unoriginal idea but a great slogan) at which point we cut off our emotionally immature parents, we sanctioned our “toxic friends”, and we stopped trusting our bosses, who called work a “family” but had no problem laying us off. But then what?

Even Oprah let us down.

What to do when the centre will not hold? Which humans become not just inspiring but instructional in a world without the security of friendship, family, work or future? A world in which every celebrity has been or will be cancelled?

Sure, some of us have turned to Gemini, asking “How do I lock in when I feel I have nothing to live for? Please give me 20 ideas and make the tone soothing without being sycophantic - this is not the ladies bathroom at 2am on a Saturday”.

It seems the answer lies not with the entrepreneurs, who have trillions but a rotting carcass of a soul; or the self-help books that promise clarity, but deliver a callow life of individualism. These people can’t connect with anything other than plausible deniability (thanks Bezos) or rapturous applause at a TED Talk.

But there, beyond the applause, where the elder statesmen of our culture are frolicking and splashing in clear Canadian lakes, the answer seems close. These are the ones who know how to produce happiness in-house, and everything that includes: laughter, friends, warmth, joy, love, fun, genuine connection, depth and even hope. By being silly and inviting everyone in their vicinity to do the same.

Funny isn’t it? It looks like frivolity is synonymous with … emotional intelligence? Look at Amy Poehler’s podcast, (Called “Good Hang” a motto Martin Short said he used whenever he took a job - were his cast mates fun people? He cared less about the money). But back to Amy. A woman who is displaying so much empathy, they’re writing articles based on how she asks after dead relatives. And she’s won a Golden Globe for it.

Look at Caleb Hearon, who won a role in The Devil Wears Prada 2 for being hilarious on his podcast and having what the NYTimes called “a down home affability” which is a slightly patronising way of saying he maintains extraordinary warmth while still being razor sharp.

Didn’t Oscar Wilde speak on that 130 years ago? Something about how being silly means you’re really a genius? Whatever.

The point is, when the world is burning and before we all go down with it, we might look to the comedians. It seems those silly jesters know how to life-max better than anyone - by putting connection before ambition - and reaping a harvest.

Ok. This has gone a little viral (thank you!!) so I think I owe you wonderful people the proper quote from Oscar Wilde… it isn’t quite ‘being silly = genius’ but it’s in the ballpark I hope!

‘We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.’

In Australia right now the NDIS is making massive cuts to disability services, and yet, if you look at TikTok, neurodiversity is so common and quirky and such a great excuse for terrible behaviour, we kinda wish we all had it, right?

So. I’m going to tell you a few things.

1. I’m neurodivergent. If you need further details on this, my DMs are open!

2. Almost everyone I love is also neurodivergent.

3.I am well acquainted with the side of the spectrum that’s not on TikTok and yes, I do know what “high support needs” look like. Spoiler: it’s not Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. (Real ones know Tom Cruise is having a lot of meltdowns of his own in that movie and that autism runs in families.) These characters are neuro-d-coded, which means they appear that way but may not be!

So without further ado -

1.Maria, The Sound of Music
The nun-turned-nanny is putting the Hyper in ADHD. The meme supports this finding. Climbing up 1km hills in Salzburg to jump around and sing is one thing, being “always late for chapel” - compelling. But wearing nothing but vintage and DIY clothes? Honey. If she were alive today there’d be a septum piercing.

2. Julius Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer
Ok, a real historical figure, father of the atomic bomb. Can I say he was, without doubt, on the spectrum? No, but through the wide eyes of Cillian Murphy it’s looking like a red hot yes! Like, the dude is not just inventing the bomb, he’s learning Sanskrit for kicks. And yet, he can’t properly relate to women? Right there is what Lindsey Mackereth lovingly coined “neurocomplexity”.

3.Adam Sackler (Adam Driver), Girls
The rigidity! The meltdowns! The obsessiveness! The lack of voice modulation! Maybe Adam Driver, too. That’s his business!

4.Kayla and Randi, Hacks.
It’s a classic pairing! The ADHD personality brings all the sparkle and chutzpah to the office while the autistic person works on spreadsheets, coffee trays and innovation.

5.Willy Wonker (Gene Wilder) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Hyperfixated on candy (dopamine). Needs almost non-stop alone time, (literal years). Hates being perceived. Is eerily calm in emergencies and neutral in the face of tragic child accidents.

6.Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock
Finds it difficult to stay present but has grandiose plans, (who could forget the Jefferson biopic). Alas, Tracy can only pull them off if the dopamine keeps flowing, hence his biggest money making invention is not the show he stars in or his movies, but the pornographic video game he invents for fun. A great example of what happens when neurodivergence is allowed freedom to create on their own timetable.

7.Miranda Priestly, Devil Wears Prada, 1 and 2
Sensory sensitivity, (hates Emily’s chewing), Encyclopedic knowledge of fashion, (cerulean monologue), direct communication style and her deep love of a routine - latte, handbag thrown on desk and breakfast waiting.

8.Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) Mad Men
Had to be explicitly told the unwritten social rules from Joan about how to behave as a woman in a 1960s office, including how to dress. Ignored hierarchy, telling Don - her boss - “It’s not my fault you don’t have a family or friends or any place to go.” Was similarly blunt with boyfriends, throwing this clanger to her future husband “I don’t know what to say… I mean, I don’t even think about you”. Truly, ahead of her time.

9.Kramer (Michael Richards) Seinfeld
The dude ignores social cues, (doesn’t knock, eats his neighbour’s food without asking, tells a woman to her face she needs a nose job). But is also constantly brimming with creative ideas, including the Man Bra, the Rickshaw and the coffee table book about coffee tables. He was also in possession of something a lot of ADHD men can relate to: the kavorka. That attention deficit often reads as nonchalance and women love it.

10.Larry David, Curb your Enthusiasm
Respects wood more than people, obsessed with tiny details that are unimportant to everyone else, even if it costs him friendships. But also, Larry in real life. Because in real life, as he’s told us before, is when he’s masking. Although … Have you seen this clip of him with his hands over his ears? We love an aurally sensitive king.

11.Phoebe Buffay, (Lisa Kudrow), Friends.
The singing, the flapping of hands when she’s super happy, (stimming), the obsession and kinship with animals, her inability to lie, her casual and often cutting bluntness, often directed at Ross and do you know why? Because Ross is also neurodivergent but had the privilege and wealth of making a successful career out of his hyperfixation: dinosaurs.

12.Kendall Roy, Succession (autistic).

13.Roman Roy, Succession (ADHD). The impulse control alone, guys.

14.Kristy Thomas, The Babysitters Club.
Wears a Steve Jobs uniform of polo necks. Needs to be in charge with strict rules and a club to feel safe enough to socialise. Obsessed with making money. Also, did you know that author Ann M Martin worked extensively with neurodiverse kids? She knew what she was doing.

15.George McFly, Back to the Future
Watches reruns, hyperfixated on science fiction, uninterested in social groups, (has to be forced to go to the school dance) prefers his own company. Appears oblivious to romantic cues.

16.Elsa, Frozen
“Do you wanna build a snowman?” Absolutely not. I need time by myself to work on my incredible, once in a generation talent, completely alone, undeterred by harsh conditions, friends, family or bad weather. Most important: don’t touch me when I’m overstimulated or you’ll live to regret it.

17.Joaquin Phoenix, The Joker, The Master, Her, Parenthood
I have a theory that the Joker origin story actually begins with Joaquin breaking into his dad’s dental surgery and smashing stuff with a hammer in Parenthood.

18.Buster (Tony Hale)Arrested Development
Buster would get the classroom support and the therapy but meanwhile, here’s his brother in-law, Tobias Fünke (David Cross) - who hates showering without clothes on and has scant regard for gender norms - right under our noses.

19.April Ludgate, (Aubrey Plaza) Parks and Recreation
Appears aloof and cynical to cover her social awkwardness. Excellent at administrative tasks and has unique hyperfixations including German Death Reggae and Halloween sound effects.

20.Fonzie, (Henry Winkler) Happy Days
Wears the exact same thing every day, has a stim, “Aaaye” and strict rules around loyalty. He also loves his routine, including the way he does his hair. Finds some words difficult to pronounce, (sorry). But above all else, he has absolute mastery over tech, including the jukebox and the TV.

Sports Illustrated, what took you so long?

Speaking of diversity … guys! I wanna say thank you! For too long you two, Stephen Cannella and Ryan Hunt, co-editors since 2019, acted as if you were invested in diversity. Or at least a pretence of diversity by putting non-traditional looking women on the cover. Which means they were still super hot by your dad’s standards, but not a super model, per se.

And the per se is important because Cannella and Hunt could pretend they cared! Last year’s cover was actress Salma Hayek Pinault who is curvy, (read: has boobs) but also 58. She still looked 40 but the point was made. In 2024 it was Gayle King. Yes, the woman has been in both a keyhole swimsuit and a rocket.

In 2023 it was Martha Stewart - remember that? Before Madame Stewart there was Yumi Nu, a curve model of Japanese descent in 2022. Sure, other “traditional looking” models were on other covers but it was a significant departure from 20 years prior when “diversity” meant Elle Macpherson with darker hair.

But this year? Hilary Duff, blonde, tan, muscular with boobs?! Thank you Sports Illustrated for dropping the act! Oh sorry what? Is this still considered diverse? Oh she’s older is she? At 38 she’s probably ready to withdraw her superannuation.

Curvy? I mean, I guess if Demi Moore is your measuring stick. Yes, look, I’m sure ad sales are falling, (this is print after all) but more importantly you’re probably just sick of pretending you care about pandering to anyone but … the base, AKA, men between 34 and 55 who still love sports and boobs and butts and obviously have never seen the internet.

With nothing but love,

Nat xoxoxo

Also, Sunday is Mother’s Day and as a present to myself, a mother of two, (are you shocked? I read as a single 22 year-old don’t I?) I’m taking the night off. So here is Lauren, who is also a mother BTW! Is this mother-on-mother crime? Probably! Let me know your thoughts!

She could’ve worn anything. As the major sponsor and honorary co-chair of the 2026 Met Gala, along with her husband, billionaire tech titan, Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sánchez Bezos would have had numerous looks at her disposal. The theme this year was “Costume Art” and Lauren, known for her extroversion, could’ve gone all out. Her stylist, Law Roach, who was once only beholden to Zendaya, had enough time to source whatever she wanted, given that his other major client would not be in attendance.

But a navy satin dress? With a pearl and crystal strap? What in the name of 90s bridesmaid fashion is going on here? The outfit was more conservative than the one she wore to Donald Trump’s Inauguration! (Which caused quite a bit of controversy, by the way, due to the lacy bra-under-blazer situation, something she said she had humbly “noted”). But this?

It was saying “work function’”, it was screaming “keyboard to cocktails”, it was giving ...not much at all.

Blake Lively, no stranger to controversy and, let’s be real, fierce online hatred, appeared to double down with her frothy Versace gown, complete with train at the same event. Here was a woman unbowed by disapproval. Lively’s mission statement appeared to be: let them eat cake.

But while Sánchez Bezos says she met with Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry to create the gown it’s still, almost as if Sánchez Bezos knew on some level that she was not there as a celebrity but a purse. A wallet.

An Apple Pay Tap.

Could it be that the prevailing cultural mood, which is that billionaires suck, has reached the frontal lobes of Lauren’s brain?

On some level that answer would be a “yes”. After all, hubby Jeff, who did seem to enjoy his time at Paris Fashion Week in his elevated athleisure wear, was not in attendance.

Perhaps the couple, married for less than a year, read this New York Times piece, one of many, which posits that the biggest dickheads in the Devil Wears Prada 2 are based on them?

Because that simple navy dress with minimal makeup is a marked difference to the “Mob Wife” aesthetic she showed off in Paris and Milan. This is a woman who has said she “loves fashion” and yet the theme was… understated? Perhaps Loz knew that if she went big it would make a bad situation worse.

And yet, if we look at the painting she is purportedly referencing, (yes, I said “purportedly”, it is the Met Gala, hun) it’s clear that Sánchez Bezos knows exactly what we are saying about her, and she’s giving her right of reply.

According to Vogue, Sánchez Bezos drew inspiration from John Singer Sargent’s most famous and controversial painting, Portrait of Madame X. It features a full-length portrait of a young socialite, Virginie Gautreau, the wife of a wealthy Parisian baker twice her age. The painting caused an enormous scandal in 1884 because it dared to show a woman’s decolletage; worse, it depicted a strap falling down, clearly connoting promiscuity, (something Gautreau was kinda known for). The painting received such negative press, Sargent had to hide it for 30 years, eventually selling it to the Met.

Sánchez Besos told Vogue, “For me, the image represents how fashion and cultural standards can shift over time. Today, a strap is a strap, but back when Madame X was painted by Sargent, a strap was a scandal.”

In other words, Sánchez Bezos knows she’s controversial but with this dress and its strap she’s revealing more than just cleavage.

The wife of the guy who made his billions by mistreating workers before aligning himself with Donald Trump and anit-immigration companies, thinks people hate her, not because income inequality in the United States is at a record high and Bezos could easily help to fix it but because … (*squints*) she is unfortunately just too sexy.

Can’t you hear her telling Katy Perry “I might be wearing navy babe, but I’m here to have fun tonight! I won’t dull my spark to make them feel brighter!”

And Katy would say something unintelligible. No literally, because of that weird AI mask she wore.

But it seems as if Lauren is telling us, quite directly, that the only thing scandalous about her is the way she looks, or more specifically, dresses, and any problem we might have is not structural or political but personal - don’t you get it? Or is it still not clocking to you?

We’re jealous.

A version of this piece has already run on Mamamia. Reprinted with Permission.

In it, Swift spoke about her process. But we didn’t find out until Friday that the world’s most successful performer was not only prepared for the interview, but one step ahead - anticipating every question with impressive precision. Interviewer Joe Coscarelli said “She knew we were going to talk about bridges, the shift in perspective in the third chorus. She had examples.”

You know who else is known for her meticulousness, but in a different mode - a type of compulsive politeness? Anne Hathaway. She’s on the publicity tour for The Devil Wears Prada 2 this week, but years ago, when someone asked her “Are you vegan?” she replied that she was, adding, “I think everyone can agree I have the personality.”

Hathaway gave up veganism in 2019 but she’s not wrong. That earnestness, the deep and abiding desire to get every moment “right” is part of what made The Devil Wears Prada such a colossal hit and is, if you’ll follow me here, totally vegan coded.

Hathaway is also doing publicity for Mother Mary, a movie that unabashedly draws inspiration from Swift, which tracks, doesn’t it? Because Swift has kinda got a “vegan personality” too. In fact, in 2019 rumour had it she was vegan, even though she’s not.

Full disclosure: I’m a vegetarian myself so hear me when I say it’s no putdown.

Yes, research has shown that veganism does cross over with disordered eating; the restrictiveness, the baked-in perfectionism of it, the “Sorry yes, even marshmallows I’m afraid”.

And yet! It’s also my contention that while, ok, sure it’s sometimes for health and sometimes for the planet and one’s own mental illness, one doesn’t build an entire personality from it without big feelings, (that’s why it ties in so neatly with theatre kids). That over-identification with animals; the baby sheep, the little lamb, led to the slaughter, the try try try of it all. Classic VP.

It was author Gillian Flynn who once described the “Cool Girl” a rough sketch, really, of Cameron Diaz characters, in her 2012 best-seller, Gone Girl, as a woman only too happy to bathe in the male gaze while “jamming hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang.”

If that’s a meat loving woman, then the essence of a VP is a Type-A, “girl’s girl” who is somehow still unable to crack that top rung of cheerleaders. Instead, she struggles with anxiety, overthinking and ball sports.

Which cancels Reece Witherspoon out - she’s too extroverted, too emotionally conservative to grasp the inherent softness conjured by the VP in those quiet moments of teendom, when it’s just her, whispering to her imaginary horse, Gwenevere, in her bedroom, before writing in her journal, where all song lyrics, grudges-turned-poems and unrequited love letters reside. VPs may be born that way, but they’re refined in the furnace of adolescence.

The Vegan personality is, to paraphrase Don Draper here, delicate but potent, and contains some nuance. Natalie Portman, for example, is a real-life vegan and while her character, Nina, in Black Swan is totally VP-coded, Natalie herself is not. She’s too giggly, too flirty. The real VP knows joy and masks hard but laughs silently, often while reading Hermoine Granger spin-off fan fiction. “What if the magic was love of feminist theory as opposed to anti-trans rhetoric and hate?”

Drew Barrymore, once a famous vegan, has also succumbed to the beast. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Drew, just like fellow former vegan Lady Gaga, knows what it is to go “off script” and have a good time. A “good time” for Hathaway or Swift is not really enjoyed before 30. There is too much vaping, guys! GUYS!

But past 35? That’s when the VP comes into her own, with a bit of therapy, a heartbreak or two and hard-earned self-awareness. Anti-hero was Swift’s big wink back to us, her proclamation that yes, she knew all along. Though, it’s tough to tell if she really did know - because society has changed too.

Do you remember Hathahate? When, after she won her Oscar in 2013 for Les Miserables, Hathaway, in her earnestness, was compared unfavourably to Jennifer Lawrence, (total meat eater by the way- growing up with two older brothers in Kentucky, there’s no way she can’t be).

Taylor received her fair share of online hatred around that same decade, which again, was set off by comparisons to a more “male facing” female celebrity - Kim Kardashian.

Swift tried to self-correct with the Reputation album but it was received at the time as childish petulance. Swift said in the NYTimes interview she didn’t care because she knew it was good - and it was. But she did care. She ran away to England. I remember! I was there! (Yes, you may have guessed: I have more than a dash of the VP myself). Swift also said in the interview, “I think that the 2010s was a time for women in the entertainment industry that we’ll talk about later.”

Let’s talk about it now! So what happened? Well, Feminism 2.0 happened, the Girl Boss died when full-time office attendance did, along with the idea of meritocracy and pay rises and softness via “cottage core” became a legitimate way of being. Part of it was down to women realising that feminism was bigger than White Girl Pain and there were no hacks, no diets, no skincare lines that could save us.

And out of that, came a new tenderness. Remember? “Tender” was used to describe everything after 2020, from memoirs to menus. It was “tender” this and “tender” that and “Be gentle with your tender self” which sounds faintly masturbatory but was and is the VP’s raison d’être, her only chance to reboot her fluttering nervous system after a football game. Why else do you think Swift brought so many people along with her to watch Travis?

Ah but a wonderful thing bloomed amongst all that tenderising - people, who once occupied very specific corners of the internet, began amplifying their voices. On TikTok and in podcasts, gay men and women, queer folks and neurodiverse kids, hyperfixated, anxious girlies - all of them found safety and resonance in Taylor’s lyrics and her multiple easter eggs. These were the over-feelers, the VPs who bristled when told “it’s not that deep” and they had found their queens.

Irony, once the easiest way for cool girls and boys to detach, folded into a celebration, not of cynicism, but of the ridiculous, the camp, the diva, because, thanks to our current dystopian hellscape, (including the worsening cost of living crisis) the idea of cool has turned inward, replaced with a “you do you, queen” unfiltered ethos, all raw and cosy, (Yes, Lena D is a VP too, but with a less perfectionistic bent).

VPs may say they’re whimsical, that they love messiness, but underneath their waist-length hair is a huge brain, tight as a drum, thrumming with a thousand projected outcomes, scenarios, wounds, crushes and observations.

Forget Claude, forget Gemini, the real genius of our age is a plant-based personality. And, just like a cruciferous vegetable, their bitterness, produced in the soil of collective hatred, is their greatest strength.

Like so many other women who spent the Obama years penning scorching hot takes on pop culture, I gleefully over-identified with Lena during her tenure as the enfant terrible of prestige TV.

Well, in 2026 I’m pleased to say that, having since acquired a little chronic condish of my own, that over-identification is yet to wane. Shoutout to bed bathing, Lena! I coined it just now and it’s restorative, just like forest bathing, only you can’t get off your mattress! And I’m not just saying that because I want to move up a rung on the giant polycule! (Well, maybe I am a little.)

See what Lena does to us? She forces us to examine ourselves! And while not all of us had a hit TV show at 24, I think everyone can identify at least three things they share with Dunham. Maybe more, maybe less. Certainly, we are all better acquainted with trauma. The Epstein files are right there, my huns.

1.There’s the Big Breakup of Your 20s. Sometimes it’s a man, sometimes it’s a Bestie, and if you’re super unlucky, it’s both.

2.There’s Not Being Believed by a Doctor.
Then we get chastised for believing in the healing properties of vaginal jade eggs.

We are DESPERATE ok, Sir?

Then there is 3. Hating Yourself and then Looking Back Sad for Yourself for Hating Yourself. You know that thing of seeing your younger self in a photo and wondering why you were so obsessed with your physical imperfections because, you were actually fine?

Dunham has said in recent interviews that she marvels now at how markedly not fat she was. But unlike the rest of us, she had every website pointing out that she was wrong. As if she didn’t know. As if she wasn’t deliberately, intentionally serving us a body that was normal, just like ours. And we hated her for it.

And here’s where I am going to get pointed. At the Time 100 Gala this week, Nikki Glaser, one of the most successful comedians working today, made a few barbs at her own expense, describing how she looks down at her naked body with disgust. These lines read as jokes but they also perform a function, a pass: “If I already know how gross I am, you will then allow me to continue speaking.”

It was journalist Pauline Frederick who once famously said, “When a man gets up to speak, people listen then look. When a woman gets up, people look; then, if they like what they see, they listen.”

And if they don’t like what they see? Honey, why are you still talking? You’re asking for it now. Lena’s original sin was not just being normal-looking, it was that she didn’t explicitly tell us, in as crude a way as possible:

“Relax everyone! I already hate myself! I know I don’t deserve to be here!”

If we’re wondering why Dunham’s memoir is a best-seller now, then sure, yes, “society” has changed. But also? Society feels Dunham has paid her dues. “Oh so it turns out she was suffering after all!” To quote that other feminist icon, Krusty the Clown Doll, “Suddenly I don’t feel like killing anymore!”

I’m sure I don’t have to quote from yet another femmo book here, but what the hell,
The Beauty Myth saved my life when I was a teen. So, while Naomi Wolf has now gone a little rogue, her words are no less true. “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience.”

That was in the 1990s and thirty years later, that definition of “obedient female” has widened from “thin” to include “Basically anyone who doesn’t look like AI”.

Why Colour Analysis is Ruining Lives
Allow me to flashback again to the 90s, a time when my mum stumbled on colour analysis theory. It’s where you discover what colours suit you, based on the four seasons. That’s right! It was not invented in 2023! Oh but I have a theory about its comeback.

So, anyway. Mum bought the book, Color Me Beautiful and proceeded to diagnose her husband and her children, (my two brothers, myself and my sister) as being in possession of a particular seasonal colour palette, throwing large “swatches” of colour under our chins, to see which one made our eyes pop and our skin glow.

Now, with my dark hair and pink skin the colour of lunchmeat, I didn’t need two dozen “swatches” held up to my face to know I was a Winter. But, given I look terrible in icy pink I have to wonder if I was misdiagnosed.

Also, why is there always a terrible teal in amongst the thirty or so swatches? It’s like that first suspect on Law and Order: SVU. “Oh, it couldn’t be that one - way too obvious!” You’re putting in filler colours that don’t look good on anyone, I know it, you know it and Mother Nature sure as hell knows it!

But back to the present day where people on TikTok are making-over photos of celebrities using the magic of AI to change the colours of their makeup, hair and gowns so they can look better! Jennifer Lawrence, for example, is not a “True Spring” but a “Warm Spring” which to me sounds very “Pisces Moon, yes, but with a Libra Rising”. Or when someone tells you that all Capricorns are serious and you say “Oh but I am one?” and they come back with “oh it’s actually all about your birth CHART.”

But that’s not why I’m mad, or not just that. Look, I get it - the primary task of any celebrity who walks a red carpet is to behave as our doll, so naturally, we want to make them over just like we did Barbies. It’s dehumanising, but that’s showbiz, baby!

What we’re also saying when we practise this is that there’s always a better, more correct way to ENHANCE yourself. And, this is of particular interest to me in an age where, now almost anyone can be thin thanks to GLP1s, or facially symmetrical, thanks to accessibility to, and widespread promotion of, cosmetic surgery.

I guess what I am saying, while typing this in my shoe-hued maxi dress, designed to suit no one, is that colour anal reads as just another hurdle we have to clear. Now that weight loss and face are attainable, how else to keep us in a perpetual state of fear and need?

How else to keep us obedient?

I guess, like my misdiagnosis, we will never know.

All my love,

Nat xoxo

Let’s just get this out of the way now: Madonna will be 68 in August and possibly the only thing that gave it away at Coachella were the glasses. Or maybe the fillers, or maybe the glasses were there to distract from the fillers. Hey, it’s not for me to judge, but as we shall soon see, (flounces magician’s cape to reveal Gender, Social Inequalities, and Ageing under my arm) it’s not entirely irrelevant either.

Madonna, so the canonic text goes, fled her emotionally absent, motherless home in Michigan for the electrifying streets of New York in 1978. Back in Bay City she didn’t shave her legs or under her arms, she was a self-defined outcast, comfortable, she has said, with nonconformity.

By 1984 she had released Like a Virgin. Written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, the latter conceived of the song while driving around on his father’s vineyard in the Coachella Valley.

Soon, the smashing of taboos — including but not limited to eroticising the Catholic Church, simulating masturbation in concert, and a graphic sex book — became her trademark.

But Madonna’s sexual defiance, a response, perhaps to her strict upbringing, her traumatised self, (Madonna was raped at knifepoint around the year 1979) her yearning for recognition, her own experiences in queer and nonconformist spaces in New York, became a blueprint for every other female pop star who followed.

Where sexualised women were once regarded as ornamental, (the showgirl, the stripper, the burlesque dancer) Madonna loudly, brashly, controversially took that ornament and smashed it against the wall, inventing for the 20th century a new paradigm and collapsing the dichotomy, first with her name, then with her music.

But Madonna, never sitting still for long, would shed and shed again, arriving at the new millennium as a self-defined guru, not of erotica so much as electronica, With Ray of Light in 1998 and then Music in 2000.

But it didn’t matter, the die was already cast.

By which I mean, it didn’t matter how many Indigo Girls CDs you owned, or that you understood the metaphoric significance of LILITH FAIR or how often you pressed “repeat” on your car stereo to hear Lisa Loeb croon about some guy telling her she “only hears what she wants to”, (awesome bro - I’m sure Lisa was a real shrew).

It didn’t matter that you once wore a too-tight leather choker with bootcut jeans and an embroidered denim vest to a Bjork concert, while your parents assumed you were at a sleepover, (hang on, maybe that was just me).

Well, whatever! I mean who even cares that Madonna herself signed Alanis Morissette to her label, no doubt recognising in her the same type of defiance, maybe the same anger, before it calcified into something more polished for the male gaze.

Because here was Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson, and Pink, (before she discovered liberation through the trapeze), writhing in their corsetry, whisper-moaning lyrics and turning abdominal muscles into an erogenous zone.

Ariel Levy called it “raunch culture” and wrote in her 2005 book, Female Chauvinist Pigs that, “A tawdry, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular. What we once regarded as a kind of sexual expression we now regard as sexuality.”

And then — oooh my stars in heaven! What’s this now? Madonna, the founding mother of simulated sex acts on stage, arrived, too. Here she was, reaching down to both Britney and Xtina at the 2003 MTV Video Music awards to pass the torch - via, what else? Several seconds of highly choreographed tongue kissing.

That was twenty-three years ago. We’ve had six Katy Perry albums since then, (and countless music videos where, if you can stand to remember, there was an instance of cream shooting out of Perry’s bikini.)

Madonna knew it in 2003 and she knew it on Friday night. The nonconformist icon, who blasted away everything we held sacred, could no longer guarantee that her presence alone would be enough to promote her album. She needed a mini-ganger, (that’s a doppelganger who is also a mini me. Yes I just thought of it then.)

Madonna needed someone who encapsulated all of that titillation and spice, while tap dancing around sexually explicit innuendos… something Madonna had previously only attempted with a hammer. Ah yes, Sabrina Carpenter, who is sexy but dainty; provocative, but cute!

Is this how Madonna returns to us? Gloria Steinem said that age radicalises women. But Madonna is no ordinary woman. She doesn’t need to diversify her super fund to shore up her twilight years in a care facility. Still, she does have six kids to feed.

Maybe this is something we will look back on in another 20 years when Madonna is sitting somewhere in a conical bra, smoking a cigar made entirely of lab-made non carcinogenic tobacco.

Maybe we will see it as the beginning of the end. Of culture? No, it’s the economy stupid! As Levy wrote, “The glossy, overheated thumping of sexuality in our culture is less about connection than consumption. Hotness has become our cultural currency, and a lot of people spend a lot of time and a lot of regular, green currency trying to acquire it.”

What a shame that Madonna, always ahead of the curve, knows what we may not want to accept: thumping sexuality is only powerful while you’re young.

With love,

Nat xxxx