A Brooklyn Culture Mafia

sus

sus

Moderator
When she's failing out of boarding school, her father, a practicing psychologist, prescribes her pills, which her mother sends in the mail: "And so the FedEx packages kept arriving—month after month. Her handwriting was always on the envelopes; my dad's name was printed on the little orange bottles inside." Adderall is now openly thought of as an academic domestique, but Cat was, in the early 2000s, an early adopter and abuser of the drug. ("How much Adderall was I always strung out on, you ask?" she writes."Lots of Adderall. Enough Adderall to furnish four hundred Damien Hirst Pharmacy installations!") The prep-school anecdotes are especially delightful for their early-aughts arcana: "Those Sidwell Friends kids were wild, man. Girls with tanned abs and Tiffany charm necklaces were always vomiting into koi ponds and things."
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V

version

Well-known member
suspendedreason said:
Kaitlin Phillips piece on Cat Marnell's new memoir. It plays out the quasi-feminist televised fascination with women who defy norms, defy traditional ideas of adulthood— the kind of person who writes her "rent checks in highlighter." [...] Hers is a life lived—selfishly, wildly, and (mostly) unapologetically—without responsibility, or relationships burdened by traditional directive controls, like those with boyfriends or best friends... Marnell defies, consciously or not, the social structures that keep women behaving well in private.

The Dasha Nekrasova school of Woman Unshackled By Society is interesting because its spins this "it-girl under the influence" archetype in with heterosexual traditionalism—learned helplessness recast as abnegated obligations; an adderall addiction somewhere between '50s housewife and downtown party girl; a coke habit paired with lingerie and white wine for Mr. Breadwinner.
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Reminds me of the thing The Quietus published on Kim Kardashian.
thequietus.com

The Quietus | Features | Books | On Feminism & The Female Body In Kim Kardashian's Selfish

Aimee Cliff considers the valuable and radical nature of Kim Kardashian's <i>Selfish</i>, the reclaiming of herself (and her Self) from the media, what it means to be a perfect feminist and whether that matters
thequietus.com thequietus.com
 
sus

sus

Moderator
This kinda writing is a great example, because it's so obvious about it, of the way much of the thinkpiece-industrial complex runs on justifying taste/desire that might otherwise be politically/aesthetically suspect. "Culture writer defends The Bachelor" (or The OC, or Gossip Girl) is related.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
suspendedreason said:
This kinda writing is a great example, because it's so obvious about it, of the way much of the thinkpiece-industrial complex runs on justifying taste/desire that might otherwise be politically/aesthetically suspect. "Culture writer defends The Bachelor" (or The OC, or Gossip Girl) is related.
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Good I'm glad you know now
 
sus

sus

Moderator
@beiser I think this piece does a decent job of portraying the "either open the gender floodgates or narrow them, but you can't have it both ways" dynamic: https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42
I visit a women’s college. I am surrounded by new women and we feel instantly comfortable around each other. I attend a lecture. The speaker yells “who gets to be a woman?” and a crowd of cis women responds “anyone who wants to be!” The sentiment is nice, but I think about the years I spent staring out the window at the stars and I feel suddenly uncomfortable.

Later during this trip I am having a conversation with my new friends about femininity. They are articulate and intelligent women. I’m grateful to be around them. Until I am told by one of them, angrily, that I am not really allowed to talk about femininity because I am a straight cis boy.

I am told there is something special — something ineffable — about Female Friendship. I am told that I could not understand or experience this. They said anyone is a woman who wants to be—is it true? What does this say about my friendships with girls?
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The eagerness to police sits at odds with the liberatory lip-service. You can become part of the Class Whose Testimony Is Permitted, but that requires explicit (read: conventional) declaration of loyalty. The groups and thus expressions that are protected are those that are Recognized As Threatened, with an emphasis on the recognition part.
Do I need to be inspected and dissected by the people who laughed at me in order to receive my credential?
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sus

sus

Moderator
It's interesting one arena this "woman unshackled by the Big Other" trope plays out—beyond Woman Under the Influence—is the Manic Pixie type—an exuberance that's unchecked by social norms, that shuts out all feedback—and is often cast as anti-feminist
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
suspendedreason said:
It's interesting one arena this "woman unshackled by the Big Other" trope plays out—beyond Woman Under the Influence—is the Manic Pixie type—an exuberance that's unchecked by social norms, that shuts out all feedback—and is often cast as anti-feminist
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Women are horrible ask Priti Patel. That's why Sufi won't let them on dissensus
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I spammed barty with it he said that Somalians got the weirdest proportions I've ever seen
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Got to keep them on their toes. On Facebook I 'liked' everything from 'jellyfish' to 'celery' to 'hair gel'
 
constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
You're probably leading the unpredictability leaderboards. Developers tossing obscene figures around, betting on your next viewing.
 
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