Hi everyone,
“That one conservative” not even getting a name makes this tweet for me. What a messy week!
This week I wrote…
Last week, I had an epiphany. It has started to seem like every single pop culture story that had truly taken over the internet the past few months involves a man treating a woman poorly. What’s up with that?
So, I wrote about it. Here’s my main hot take:
“I for one am tired of it. I’m tired of watching smart, successful, well-rounded women be humiliated by the actions of men, left to pick up the pieces of their life after being mistreated by someone who claimed to love them. What all these famous men have in common is a lack of basic decency towards the women in their lives. It speaks to the misogyny and disrespect that still is threaded through many heterosexual relationships, and demonstrates how far we have to go.
Ultimately, we shouldn’t let this bad behavior slide. It’s fun to gossip about celebrities, but it’s also important to call out misogynistic cruelty where we see it. So instead of brushing off these stories, let’s use them as examples of what not to accept in our own romantic relationships, and make it clear this behavior is unacceptable and frankly, embarrassing. It’s time to turn this summer of shitty men into a fall of female empowerment, where the queens in public and in private can truly shine.”
Team Lilly Jay!
IMO, Girl Dinner has been thinkpieced to death, and people are kind of missing the creator’s original intent. So I, uh, wrote a think piece about it!
“Does that mean girl dinners on their own are promoting disordered eating? I don’t think so, personally. When I watch the videos of girl dinners, what I’m noticing isn’t actually the meals themselves (which, in truth, are sometimes disgusting) but the delight the women are taking in the beauty of not caring. In a world where it sometimes feels like women need to optimize every second of their existences, where we are told to count calories and macros and double-wash our vegetables and make gluten-free substitutes and avoid dairy, sometimes it can be delicious to just pile up a big mound of hummus and crackers and call it a day. It’s not about restriction; it’s about indulging in the freedom of not giving a F. Of eating what you want, even if it is just soda and a pickle.
At least, that was the creator’s original intention. In an interview with the Today show, Maher emphasized that girl dinner isn’t about the ingredients at all. Anything can be a girl dinner, if it makes you happy.”
This week on the internet…
I really enjoyed Allison Davis’ hot take on the Barbie hot takes, and the message that the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, is trying to send.
All of it’s great, but this paragraph is a standout:
“Of course it’s a stretch to search for a radical or subversive feminist manifesto in the Barbie movie — something lovingly approved by Mattel and Warner Bros. (and Chevy and Birkenstock and Chanel and Duolingo). It’s also not the first time in recent history that a bunch of people wore pink en masse and gathered for a joint activity hoping it would provide some meaning regarding the state of women’s empowerment. (At least Barbie isn’t as empty as the pink pussy hat in the back of my closet.) But now that girlboss feminism has gasped its last gasp, now that the closest thing that era had to Barbie Land (The Wing) has crumbled, now that feminism is a sales pitch, it can sometimes seem that all we have is snapping at the zingers in a Barbie movie. (I worry about our emotional states by the time the Polly Pocket film adaptation drops.) That it provokes tears, that it resonates at all and doesn’t feel like a relic of a different time, probably says more about us than about the movie.”
I’ve been intrigued to see the level of discussion of the role of influencers in the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, as exemplified in a recent NY Times piece.
The story reads:
“Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike. Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show ‘Only Murders in the Building.’
But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu. The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent.
‘I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,’ Ms. Giulietti said. ‘People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”
I do think people are overemphasizing how many influencers actually aspire to one day be in one of the Hollywood unions, which I don’t think even a majority, but especially not all, necessarily do.
Move aside quiet quitting, here comes the “lazy girl job” (why does every TikTok trend have girl in it?)
The BBC has the scoop on this new trend:
“Beyond the nearly 350,000 likes on Judge’s post as of this writing, the #lazygirljob TikTok hashtag currently has more than 17 million views, with other young women describing their own lazy girl jobs. In one video, a creator says all she does is ‘copy and paste the same emails, take 3-4 calls a day, take my extra long break, take more breaks AND get a nice salary.’
But both full-time content creator Judge and workplace experts alike say the ‘lazy girl job’ isn’t necessarily about being lazy at all.
Instead, the term reflects a new mindset that’s taken hold in the era of the Great Resignation – one in which workers are increasingly demanding sustainable salaries and flexible conditions, while challenging the notion that hours clocked equates work accomplished.”
One more thing…
Why is this me?
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Have a great week,
Stephanie
Buy my book on the influencer industry, Swipe Up For More!