Do you need Self Esteem?

Self Esteem is a California-based retail brand founded in 1997 by textile industry executives Richard Clareman and Andrea Rankin-Waters. The idea was to bring trendy, hip styles to tween and teenage girls and also “promote their sense of inner self-confidence”. The irony of a clothing line to boost confidence is not lost on me, as much of tween girls’ socialization is ‘othering’ girls based on their appearance. (It always starts with one middle school bully...) You know I’m an optimist, but it’s hard to effectively convey a mission of “creating the inspiration for individual style that expresses the inner you” when feeling good about yourself is often antithetical to the explicit purpose of every business: profit. I appreciate the sentiment though, and so did the market.

Self Esteem was wildly popular! Its juniors category was so successful, they expanded into girls and plus sizing. (Yes, there are 3+ sizing conventions for the same market segment…) Their cheeky, playful novelty graphic tees were available at 3000+ retail stores across the country, including speciality boutiques integral to tweendom of the late 90s and early 00s: Charlotte Russe, Deb, dELiA*s, Limited Too, Mandee, Pac Sun, Wet Seal, Windsor, and many more. Even if you can only vaguely recall the name, you may recognize the Curly Girly brand logo when you see it.

Self Esteem on the world wide web

Self Esteem’s ethos of “style and substance”, as well as openly inviting customer feedback on design silhouettes and screen-print ideas, made for a very effective grassroots marketing strategy. Their website had over 100,000 unique visitors each month (!!!), with customers finding a forum “to express their ideas and innermost feelings.” I LOVE pre-e-commerce websites, and Self Esteem’s is no exception.

The early internet is my favorite kind of digital experience, when consumers would temporarily “go” instead of permanently “be” online, and the purpose of the internet was to connect, explore, and learn, not buy. Self Esteem’s site featured an extremely limited selection of clothes, because shopping was still a sacred, in-person, mall-bound spiritual practice. Therefore, to support the brand’s nascent world-building efforts in the digital realm, there were a variety of fun activities on the site, including cookie fortunes, poetry, embarrassing moments, entertainment, and “homework help”.

Who’s on aux?

Not sure who was in charge of the music on Self Esteem’s website, but they contain multitudes. Seems like a Cool Gen X person was in charge, with the final stamp of approval given by a Boomer dad with Millennial tween daughters. How else can you possibly explain this mix from 2002?!

• P!nk, “Get the Party Started”

• American Hi-Fi (Interview)

• Atari Teenage Riot, “Too Dead For Me”

• Buzzcocks, “Breakdown”

• Mariah Carey, “Loverboy”

• Mandy Moore (Interview)

• Fatboy Slim, “Weapon Of Choice”

• Handsome Boy Modeling School, “Sunshine”

• Alicia Keys (Interview)

• Craig David (Interview)

• Jamie-Lynn Sigler, “Cry Baby”

• Aaliyah ft. DMX, “Back In One Piece”

• Pavement, “Spit On A Stranger”

The site menu also included a “Streaming Radio”, so as far as I’m concerned, Self Esteem invented streaming. In 2004, their music video list included 300+ songs across all genres of popular music, with the most frequently featured artists being 2 Pac, Shania Twain, M*rilyn M*nson, R. K*lly, Toby Keith, and Usher. Cursed. But don’t worry, “Toxic”, “Dirrty”, “Stacy’s Mom”, “Leave (Get Out)”, and hits from Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard of American Idol cleanse the palette.

Which Self Esteem character are you?

Time for a quiz! Add up your points to find out which Self Esteem brand mascot you are. Answer as your 8- to 12-year-old self, it’s more fun that way. :)

Question 1: You’re going to the mall with your friends. What do you bring in your purse?
A. Lip gloss. Need to look cute for when I “accidentally” run into Joey at the food court.
B. A digital camera and a marker, for an autograph and photographic evidence in case I meet Justin Timberlake!
C. A $20 bill – or two – so I can get a new outfit for the dance next weekend!
D. I forgot to bring my purse, but I just found a $5 bill in my pocket. It’s enough for a pretzel and a soda!

Question 2: You’re painting your nails. What color(s) do you pick?
A. A French manicure, obviously. It’s classy!
B. I’m too busy to paint my nails, but if I had the time, probably red or pink.
C. Rainbow colors! Each finger is a different color. You get a little of everything.
D. Purple with sparkles. Lots of sparkles, please.

Question 3: You’re at the department store with your mom and it’s taking forever. She lets you pick out one item at Limited Too as a reward for your patience. What is it?
A. A silver jewelry set with a necklace, ring, and earrings
B. A journal with a lock and matching fluffy pen
C. Blue temporary hair mascara
D. A plushy soccer ball picture frame

Question 4: You’re making a music video with your sister and cousin so your moms let you have a sleepover. What’s your primary role in the production?
A. I’m the glamorous leading lady and love interest of the band’s frontman….duh.
B. I’m the director behind the camcorder, choosing our shooting location, getting all the best angles, and intermittently yelling ‘CUT’!!!
C. I’m the principal dancer and choreographer, and you better get the moves right or we’ll have to start all over again!!!
D. I’m in drag as the band’s frontman, wearing a baseball hat and my dad’s baggy t-shirt to look like a boy.

Now, give yourself 1 point for every A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D. Add your points together to get your result!

4-6 points: Flirty Frog

You are classy, refined, and beautiful, with high standards and a no-nonsense attitude. The Flirty Frog keeps it simple and straightforward, making her a great listener, friend, and confidant.

7-9 points: Adventurous Turtle

You are loyal, down-to-earth, and always ready for a good time. The Adventurous Turtle works hard and plays hard, loves being surrounded by true friends, and can make any situation entertaining.

10-12 points: Cool Cat

You are creative, artistic, and dynamic, with a unique sense of style. The Cool Cat has unmistakable personality, confidence, and sincerity that adds flair and joy to every friend group.

13-16 points: Funky Monkey

You are playful, happy, and spunky, with fun-loving spirit that people like being around. The Funky Monkey is effortlessly popular, a great sport, and adaptable in any social situation.

Also, asked the question I’ve always wondered: where have all the monkeys gone? I have a Paul Frank sweatshirt (made for adults), so I’m doing my part to protect their legacy.

What is your fortune?

The website had a very cute animated “Fortune Cookie” section, where you click on the cookie to crack it open and reveal a Self Esteem-related fortune. I’ve categorized them by astrological sign. Read for your sun and/or rising, and take it with you for the rest of the day!!

• Aries + Gemini: Happiness begins with Self Esteem.

• Taurus + Libra: Rewards come with great Self Esteem.

• Cancer + Pisces: No dream is too big when you have Self Esteem.

• Leo + Scorpio: You are a person with tremendous Self Esteem.

• Virgo + Capricorn: You have the Self Esteem it takes to achieve great things.

• Sagittarius + Aquarius: The world is a better place because of you and your Self Esteem.

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Lindsay, Bea, Janani, Tia, and Taylor! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

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• Effective immediately, extra content/fun stuff for paid subscribers will now be its own full, designated email, as opposed to a section below the paywall in each issue. Cadence TBD. You can upgrade your subscription here. TY LY! 💖

• Disclaimer: There are The O.C. spoilers in this post. If you have not seen the show since it premiered 23 years ago, that’s on you.

This week in 2006, television – and the course of our society & culture, as far as I’m concerned – changed forever. The death of beloved antihero Marissa Cooper (played by Mischa Barton) was among the most devastating losses in TV history. But:

1. This was the way Mischa wanted to go – out with a bang!!!

2. Do not believe the Season 4 slander!! I didn’t watch S4 during its original run, because everyone said it wasn’t the same. I first saw it probably about five years ago and wholeheartedly believe Season 4 is actually better than Season 3. (Do not get me started about the wet blanket that is Johnny! His arc should not have been as long as it was! RIP to Johnny though…)

3. Even if the show’s creators & writers regret the way it went down with Mischa and her team when severing their professional ties, I appreciate the show’s subsequent reframe of her tragic ending. In Season 4’s “The Chrismukk-huh?”, aka. the parallel universe episode, it’s revealed that Marissa would have fatally overdosed in Tijuana (Season 1) had Ryan not been there to save her. Okay now I’m crying hysterically…

The O.C. has always been one of my favorite shows, and I’d been wanting to write about it for quite some time. I’m super excited to have contributed a piece called “Your Pool House or Mine?” for Are.na Annual!!! Are.na Annual is a yearly anthology of writing from the people of Are.na – an online social networking community and creative research platform for creative curation and organizing ideas. (I generally think of it as “Intellectual Pinterest”.)

This year’s theme is “pool,” and I decided to interpret that theme quite literally. To me, The O.C. is the most important cultural product with swimming pools as a central element! I really enjoyed collaborating with editors Meg Miller and Amirio Freeman and was so excited to see my work in print!!! The book is sold out, but please enjoy an excerpt from my piece. You can also check out the full set of 100+ The O.C.-related pool images on my Are.na board, Pools of The OC.

Your Pool House or Mine?

In The O.C. (2003–2007), swimming pools are shimmering facades of delusion and denial that set the stage for the show’s strong emotional current. Affluence cannot protect these dramatic suburbanites from being pulled into the undertow when they least expect it. The Cohen family’s pool in particular is like a nonverbal character, silently witnessing spilled secrets and ready to pop insulated bubbles of privilege at any moment. It’s the primary site where secrets are divulged, cosmic paths cross, and fates turn. It’s where our beloved characters dive in, make waves, float, sink, and sometimes even drown. The spatial symbolism depicted on The O.C. is intentional. Swimming pools are imbued with symbolic significance that shape the characters’ experiences, behaviors, and perceptions of themselves and others.

Ryan’s pool house has become an instantly recognizable cultural landmark. Even those who haven’t seen the show can sense the Californian grandeur that ruled supreme in 2000s American culture. Throughout the four seasons of the show, the intro theme is bookended by two architecturally significant depictions. The first shows Ryan’s face through the car window, flipping the perspective and fading into a view of dozens of cookie-cutter mansions. The last scene shows Ryan emerging from the pool house, looking past the infinity pool, hot tub, and manicured shrubbery out toward the sprawling coastal landscape. These scenes immediately establish The O.C.’s emotional structure, with Ryan as an underdog. The pool serves as a looking glass to Ryan’s hero journey: navigating the complexities and entitlements of upper-class privilege while avoiding repeating the same dysfunctional patterns he knows all too well.

Season Two’s first episode, “The Distance”, depicts two sets of characters: the ones who traveled vast distances and the ones they left behind. The built-up resentment between them formed an emotional rift, like a hard water stain on a pool lounger cushion that’s had an entire off-season to set in. The first shot in “The Distance” after the intro theme shows the Cooper-Nichol’s outrageously large mansion and impressive swimming pool. Marissa and Summer lay poolside, suntanning, dissociating, and drinking cocktails so strong Summer jokingly asks if Marissa mixed lighter fluid in them.

Julie, frustrated by her sullen daughter’s emotional distance, approaches Marissa. She’s listening to music on her iPod, as far away from her mother as she could possibly be without leaving home. When Julie’s concern seems contrived, Marissa retorts, “Do you really wanna know what’s on my mind?” before releasing a guttural scream, flipping her chair and towel into the pool, picking up and chucking the side table into the water, turning her back, and walking away. The pools of The O.C. maintain their composure through emotional intensity, witnessing crossed boundaries, complex negotiations, overdue confrontation, and erupting conflict.

The pool is like an all-knowing force, with its premonitions driving interpersonal relationship narratives and character arcs. Characters’ inextricable ties or ultimate fates are often first seen by the pool. The pool sets the stage for the initial appearance of Summer Roberts, Kirsten drinking alone, the reunion between Ryan and his mother, Seth and Summer’s first kiss, the reacquaintance of Jimmy and Hailey, Seth and Anna’s breakup, and even the pilot episode appearance of the catering waiter who ends up planning Julie’s wedding in Kirsten’s backyard after his husband delivered her baby.

Each poolside encounter holds some kind of significance, reinforces the ties that bind, and proves that nothing is quite what it seems at surface-level. The pool’s warm, sunlit, sparkling appearance reflects back the superficiality of those who gather around it, exposing what lies underneath. Scenes of rest and relaxation can devolve into riots; calm can escalate to chaos. Whether as a result of a power struggle, blackmail, or act of sheer desperation, the pool in any particular scene guarantees that whatever is hidden will always rise to the surface. Try as they might, the characters largely cannot replicate the stillness or silence provided by the idyllic poolscape for very long.

Secrets are shared in the presence of the pool:

• Kirsten calls her financial advisor to transfer $100,000 to her disgraced high school beau, Jimmy, without telling Sandy

• Ryan tells Marissa that Luke’s dad is gay

• Seth tells Ryan he lost his virginity to Summer

• Ryan tells Seth that he stole Oliver’s note to Marissa out of her locker

• Theresa tells Ryan she’s not keeping her baby, though he later discovers that she does

Secrets are spilled in the presence of the pool:

• Lance humiliates Julie by going undercover as a waiter and publicly screening their vintage 80s sex tape at a party

• Luke blows his cover that he slept with Julie Cooper in front of her daughter, his ex Marissa

• Seth finds out The Nana is being nice to people because she has cancer

Negotiations are made in the presence of the pool:

• Sandy and Kirsten arrange opposite sides of a lawsuit on their respective flip phones

• The boys ask permission to go to Oliver’s penthouse so he doesn’t steal Marissa away

• The boys convince the parents to let them go to L.A. so Grady Bridges of The Valley fame doesn’t steal Summer away

• Ryan asks Sandy if Lindsay can come to Thanksgiving, before it’s revealed in front of the entire extended family that she’s Caleb’s “illegitimate love child”

Conflicts arise in front of – and sometimes end in – the pool:

• Hailey arranges male strippers for Julie’s backyard bachelorette as a setup

• Eddie angrily confronts Ryan about breaking up his relationship with Theresa

• Kirsten questions Sandy about his old flame, whom she saw after he claimed Rebecca was dead

• Trey’s troublemaking love interest Jess ends up face-down in the pool before being rescued

• Julie lightly poisons Cal, triggering a heart attack that causes him to fall in the pool, and – despite her best effort to save him – die

The pools of The O.C. served their architectural and psychological purpose to drive multi-faceted interpersonal relations through nearly the entirety of the series. An earthquake in the third to last episode of Season Four destroys the pool house and causes full structural collapse in the main house. The last swimming pool ever seen on the show is not the Cohen’s, it’s a new property they’re touring with a realtor. The Cohens ultimately settle back where they belong in Berkeley, no swimming pool in sight.

The pools of The O.C. were memorable as a character in their own right, holding an almost unbearable amount of tension between what was said and unsaid, what was submerged below, and what rose to the surface. Looking out at the Cooper-Nichol mega-pool, Jimmy exclaims, “It’s everything you’ve always wanted.” Julie responds, quite aware of the compromises and sacrifices required to maintain such a luminous surface, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Lindsay, Bea, Janani, Tia, and Taylor! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

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If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Nicstalgia Newsletter ☆ My Instagram ⟡ My Cool Website ♡ Aerobics Schedule ☆ Podcast Episode Archive ⟡ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine ♡ My Physical Media Shelf ☆ iPod Shuffle Player ♡ Workout Playlist Archive ☆

Hello beautiful readers! In addition to my iPod Shuffle listening experience and fitness class schedule/retro aerobics videos, I’ve finally updated my elliptical class playlist archive!!! Now ALL 136 of my themed playlists are available for your listening pleasure! Yay!!! If you want to check out my favorites, I shared my top 10 here.

If there’s one thing about me, it’s that I love a list. It doesn’t even need to be orderly, logical, or in any particular order. The New York Times agrees – they recently published an unranked list of The 30 Greatest American Songwriters Alive. Two of my Mount Rushmore performing artists were included (Missy Elliott and Mariah Carey), plus Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey, Diane Warren, and more. While the writers listed are among the best, most renowned, and respected in the biz, I couldn’t help but think of Kara DioGuardi.

She’s one of the most commercially successful contemporary songwriters, with over 320 songs released by major labels, 150 songs on platinum selling albums, and over 50 charting singles. She was also the fourth American Idol judge and has written for many All-American Idol Rejects. (Seeing as her autobiography’s title is A Helluva High Note; Surviving Life, Love and American Idol, it doesn’t sound like that was a fabulous experience – but I’ll find out. Reading her memoir is on my to do list next week.) I find DioGuardi’s songwriting experience prolific, even if her pop rock, teen punk, Literal Trash, Disneycore repertoire is perhaps considered lowbrow by music industry standards.

Below you will find hyper-specific, highly distinguished lists – in either alphabetical or chronological order – of songs by DioGuardi and my favorites from NYT’s list. Enjoy!

Favorite Kara DioGuardi-penned songs for American Idol alum:

1. “You Found Me” / “I Do Not Hook Up” by Kelly Clarkson (Co-written with Katy Perry, who originally recorded the song for One of The Boys) by Kelly Clarkson

2. “The Real Thing” by Bo Bice

3. “Open Toes” by Katherine McPhee (Another All-American Idol Reject…you already know I love this one)

Favorite Kara DioGuardi-penned songs by non-American Idol alum:

1. “Spinning Around” by Kylie Minogue

2. “Escape” by Enrique Iglesias

3. "Right in Front of You" / “Taking Chances” by Celine Dion

4. “Come Clean” / “Stranger” / “With Love” by Hilary Duff

5. “Brave New Girl” / “Ooh Ooh Baby” by Britney Spears

6. “Autobiography” / “Pieces of Me” / “Better Off” / “Boyfriend”by Ashlee Simpson

7. “First” / “Over” by Lindsay Lohan

8. “Screwed” by Paris Hilton (this song allegedly caused the beef between Paris and Hilarie Duff, who was allegedly supposed to record this song as the debut single for her scrapped solo record)

9. “He Could Be the One” by Hannah Montana

10. “Good Girls Go Bad” / “Hot Mess” by Cobra Starship

DioGuardi has also written for artists including but not limited to: Jessica Simpson, Eden’s Crush, Play, Soluna, Rachel Stevens, Nikki Cleary, Gwen Stefani, Natasha Bedingfield, Raven-Symoné, The Veronicas, Jewel, Jesse McCartney, Ryan Cabrera, Christina Aguilera, Vanessa Hudgens, Nick Lachey, Ashley Tisdale, Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, The Cheetah Girls, Camp Rock, Demi Lovato, P!nk, David Archuleta, Adam Lambert, Agnes, and Melanie Martinez.

It’s also worth nothing she has soundtracked all of Nicole Scherzinger’s endeavors, from Eden’s Crush to Pussycat Dolls to her solo material.

Favorite Mariah Carey ballads with belts, riffs, and ad-libs I have been practicing my entire life:

1. ”Vision of Love”

2. “Emotions”

3. ”Can’t Let Go”

4. ”All I’ve Ever Wanted”

5. “One Sweet Day”

6. “Butterfly”

7. ”Lead The Way”

8. ”Never Too Far”

9. ”Through The Rain”

10. ”We Belong Together”

Favorite Missy Elliott music videos that permanently altered my brain chemistry, and I refuse to pick only 10:

1. “The Rain” (Supa Dupa Fly)

2. “Sock It 2 Me”

3. “Beep Me 911”

4. “Hit Em Wit Da Hee”

5. “She’s a Bitch”

6. “Get Ur Freak On”

7. “4 My People”

8. “Work It”

9. “Gossip Folks”

10. “Pass That Dutch”

11. “Lose Control”

12. “We Run This”

13. “Cool Off”

Plus songs without videos: “Lick Shots”, “I’m Really Hot”, “Wake Up”, “Let It Bump”, and “On and On”

Favorite Fiona Apple songs that desperately make me want to learn to play piano, ranked in order of rage:

1. “Extraordinary Machine”

2. “Criminal”

3. “Paper Bag”

4. “Shadowboxer”

5. “Never Is a Promise”

6. “Get Him Back”

7. “Carrion”

8. “Sleep to Dream”

9. “Limp”

10. “Get Gone”

    ---

Favorite Taylor Swift songs that I enjoy singing on the top of my lungs while driving through the Connecticut countryside:

1. “Blank Space”

2. “Red”

3. “All Too Well”

4. “King Of My Heart”

5. “Cruel Summer”

6. “The Very First Night” (TV)

7. “New Romantics” (TV)

8. “Electric Touch” (feat. Fall Out Boy) (TV)

9. “New Romantics” (TV)

10. “Clean” (TV)

    ---

Favorite, mostly early Lana Del Rey songs I will sunbathe, read a book, and eventually fall asleep on a beach blanket to this summer:

1. “Born To Die”

2. “National Anthem”

3. “Without You”

4. “Lucky Ones”

5. “Ride”

6. “Cola”

7. “Gods & Monsters”

8. “Love”

9. “Cinnamon Girl”

10. “A&W”

Favorite Diane Warren-penned songs that start with the word “I”:

1. “I Am” by Hilary Duff

2. “I Could Not Ask for More” by Edwin McCain

3. “I Decide” by Lindsay Lohan

4. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith

5. “I Turn to You” by Christina Aguilera

6. “I Want You to Need Me” by Celine Dion

7. “I Was Here” by Beyoncé

8. “I Will Learn to Love Again” by Kaci Battaglia

9. “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher

10. “If You Asked Me To” by Patti LaBelle (I’m partial to the Celine Dion cover)

…which implies the existence of my favorite songs written by Diane Warren that don’t start with the word “I”:

1. “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion

2. “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” by Mariah Carey

3. “Don’t Need You To (Tell Me I’m Pretty)” by Samantha Mumba

4. “How Do I Live” by LeAnn Rimes

5. “Music of My Heart” by Gloria Estefan and NSYNC

6. “Save Up All Your Tears” by Cher (her cover is the best version IMHO)

7. “Sweetest Sin” by Jessica Simpson

8. “There You’ll Be” by Faith Hill (from the Pearl Harbor soundtrack, at the height of my crush on Josh Hartnett)

9. “We Can” by LeAnn Rimes (from the Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde soundtrack)

10. “Who Will You Run To” by Heart

“Shake Ya Body” by Tyra Banks did not make the list, but I just wanted to remind you that it exists. Warren also wrote “Don’t Fight The Moonlight” and “Please Remember” for the Coyote Ugly soundtrack. More on that below the paywall…

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Lindsay, Bea, Janani, Tia, and Taylor! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Nicstalgia Newsletter ☆ My Instagram ⟡ My Cool Website ♡ Aerobics Schedule ☆ Podcast Episode Archive ⟡ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine ♡ My Physical Media Shelf ☆ iPod Shuffle Player ♡ Workout Playlist Archive ☆

I recently crossed an item off my longtime bucket list: Visiting the famed Coyote Ugly bar.

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PS. If you don’t wanna miss a thing: Click “View entire message” in case this email is clipped off at the bottom, or read it directly in the Substack app.

In case you missed it, I got an iPod shuffle! :) To celebrate this simple relic from a bygone era, I made a cool website where you can listen to songs from my actual 2000s iPod! Choose a nostalgic hometown background setting, and be surprised and delighted by ~200 songs – a few which are not on streaming!! It is SO much more fun than Spotify, in my humble opinion.

Today’s letter: Story Time!!! Grab some popcorn, I’m sharing allllll of my fitness journey lore. My current teaching schedule is posted on my website. Check it out! When you click on the VHS spines, you can watch retro aerobics tapes on the retro TV! I’m obsessed with how it came out and really get a kick out of watching these videos.

Behind the paywall: I recently bought a risqué CD and had to explain to the record store owner what it was so he didn’t think I was a sexual deviant. Reminder that you can upgrade your subscription here. :)

The Early Years

There is a home video of me attempting to ride a stationery bike at 2.5 years old, but my legs were about 8 inches too short to reach the pedals. This natural curiosity around fitness led to my enthrallment with Richard Simmons VHS tapes and The Jack LaLanne Show reruns. Had I known then that Cher made a workout tape, I would’ve unceasingly begged for it. I’ve always found exercising very glamorous!

I can’t overstate how fundamentally important my movement practice is for my well-being. I could lose executive functioning skills for an entire day or week, and yet in the studio, I am completely locked in. I’m simply wired this way. Regardless of what my “workout” schedule looks like, I crave physical activity on a cellular level. I say “workout” in quotations because I’ve had a complicated journey with my body image and major gripes with the fitness and wellness industries at large. I exercise for fun, leisure, and enjoyment. It’s essential to the fabric of my being. But this is often antithetical to our society’s expectations: Hate yourself and spend lots of money to fix it.

Getting Started

I first became a fitness instructor my freshman year of college, assisting Step class (yes, the killer workout craze of the 80s) and a then-novel Latin rhythms-inspired cardio dance format called Zumba. I also was the executive assistant to the Fitness Director and worked the gym’s front desk, where I would see two of my several crushes daily. This was an objectively bad time in my life, but I enjoyed work.

I transferred schools junior year and asked my new Athletic Director if I could spice up the barren group fitness schedule. She appointed me Group Fitness Director and put me in charge of Zumba and “Abs”. (Now we call it Core, but those were the times.) I was paid double the minimum wage rate I made at the gym front desk – more than what I made at my off-campus job at Michael Kors. After my very first class, a tall blonde acquaintance with the snark of Busy Phillips mixed with the vacancy of Jennifer Coolidge said, “I heard the class was awesome, even if you didn’t know what you were doing.” I played dumb and blindly accepted the backhanded compliment as unambiguous praise. I got into the groove, taught I think 4 classes a week, designed and plastered flyers around campus, started a Facebook page for updates (groundbreaking in 2010), and whipped out dance moves at a party or in the dining hall if someone asked me to. The baseball team found out about my Abs class, and I enjoyed torturing them (making them hold a plank for more than 30 seconds).

Staying In It

Flash forward, I became entrenched in the NYC boutique fitness bubble. I took 500+ ClassPass classes at 100+ studios in 2015 and 2016 (insane) and started FitNic NYC, a dance/fitness Instagram account and community platform for speaking panels, workshops, and dance classes. I found it really hard to navigate because:

1. No one was doing community efforts like this, only branded pop-ups and culty influencer events. The whole point was to bring people together and make them feel like a part of something, but I often felt alone.

2. I didn’t piggyback off of popular movements like Kayla Itsines’ Bikini Body Guide or SoulCycle and therefore didn’t amass a social media audience (when the algo was good!) or become known outside of the local scene.

3. I didn’t have the confidence to become a bonafide “influencer” (still a new concept then) because I was lowkey bullied at my corporate job and didn’t realize it would become a viable career path.

In 2024, the owner of a studio I often frequented for dance cardio asked me to teach the elliptical format. Random, but sure!!!! I had so much fun programming and teaching my classes, and I’m very proud of my playlists. I led 181 classes in 365 days (insane) and didn’t realize my One Year Anniversary class would be my last. It was a blessing in disguise, finally ending a relentless, year-long cycle of chronic burnout. Right when the studio unceremoniously closed, I heard about an audition for a new gym. I tried my best, got hired on the spot, and teach CORE and CARDIO DANCE now.

Looking Ahead

The gym has been open for a couple of months, and I continue to build my teaching confidence, try creative new routines, and give myself grace if I’m not “perfect” every second of my life. It has been a great joy figuring out my signature style. In unsurprising news, my classes are camp!!!!!!! Although “camp” is definitely a culture mismatch and somewhat unexpected for gym-goers, everyone can agree the music is great. My goal for this year is to find more people who share my philosophy so we can have fun, be cute, and enjoy dancing together. (If you’re one of those people, respond to this email please.)

I feel that many (most?) people still exercise to punish themselves. In self-guided workouts, I recognize people’s frustration, anger, and desire for control, as their face flushes but the light drains from their eyes. In instructor-led classes, I recognize the peer pressure to keep up appearances. People (particularly white women with money) succumb to diet and self-improvement culture, moving like pre-programmed robots in an aesthetically uniform cult. If anyone’s “having fun”, it’s because they think they’re getting skinnier or “toned”, which btw is a marketing buzzword, not an actual physiological muscle capability. I’ve had these unhealthy tendencies in the past, and to that I say – in the words of Avril Lavigne – What the hell?! It’s exhausting. But now, I’m proud to say, I can be the change I want to see in the world. See you on the dance floor!

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Lindsay, Bea, Janani, Tia, and Taylor! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

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If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ My Fitness Class Schedule ☆ Podcast Archive ⟡ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine ♡ Explore my Physical Media Shelf! ☆ Listen to my iPod Shuffle!

At this point, there aren’t too many CDs left on my “Must Have” list. But occasionally, one comes your way that’s too good to pass up.

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I’m throwing a tantrum over here at Nicstalgia HQ because I pressed the wrong button last week and ONLY my paid subscribers received last week’s email. They are my favorite readers, but still…oops!!!!!!!!!! So paid subs, there’s still new stuff below the paywall today. Feel free to like/comment/share again lol. Everyone else……I cannot believe I DEPRIVED you from Nicstalgia for an entire seven days. I say this every single week, but it’s a fun one!!!!! Enjoy :)

got me a sea foam green iPod Shuffle with pink headphones for my birthday, complete with ~300 of my favorite songs. (Yes, I am allowed to have 300 favorite songs!!!!!) Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has become my whole personality.

I owned a 4th gen iPod classic through high school and college, but never a shuffle. I always figured I’d want to choose the order of my songs, but carrying this little baby everywhere with me for the last week has given me an unexpected sense of freedom and relinquished my need for constant control over my listening experience.

Enough fiddling with my phone. Enough searching for the right song. Enough HAVING to listen to the EXACT song that pops into my head at any given moment. Don’t like the song? Skip it. Like the song? Enjoy it. It really isn’t more complicated than that! Amidst the chaotic day-to-day pace of New York City life, knowing a perfect song is gonna start playing – from a finite list of top-tier contenders – gives me peace, calm, and even serenity. Listening to my iPod Shuffle is a full mind/body/spirit experience.

I was inspired by the feeling of friction, the nostalgia of coming of age without a complete reliance and dependence on technology, and plugging your iPod into your car with an adapter through the CASSETTE PLAYER. So I made a website where you can go back in time and listen to songs I had on my iPod at the time! Choose your iPod Shuffle color, pick the background setting to a classic (and perhaps defunct) spot from my hometown for an extra tug at your heartstrings, and press play!!!!!

Sporty & Rich launched a California Prep clothing line inspired by The O.C. As someone who is both a fitness instructor and an O.C. scholar, this is exciting news! I’ll have to go to the Soho store and check it out.

Physical Media high fashion alert! “Schiaparelli fall 2026: a top made out of old cassette tapes designed to mirror fur and a skirt made of old cut up CDs, to look like sequins.” Berlin-based indie fashion studio Cruba isn’t happy about it, claiming Schiaparelli copied their design. The people in the comment section did not come through for them – most said that the idea wasn’t actually original and that many others have done this technique before. Tale as old as time.

Obsessed with Jeong Yoon’s CD burning website and Tanner Villarete’s iPod website (that inspired by iPod Shuffle one!) I will be creating more fun stuff as I continue my website revamp. More on that next week. Woooo!!!

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Lindsay, Bea, Janani, Tia, and Taylor! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

What I’ve been up to: an Aries astrology comedy show, a slasher dating show featuring my favorite childhood board game, and naturally, a Celine Dion drag show.

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Today is my birthday!!!!!!! This past year has been fun, eventful, challenging, bittersweet, and insanely stressful, yet here we are. I am really happy, love my life and the people in it, and feel more aligned in my purpose and direction than ever before! 😊 THANK YOU for being here and a part of the journey 💖🤸🏻‍♀️

When I think about this upcoming year in my life, naturally I think about where Nicstalgia will go next. I’ve been consistently writing this newsletter for longer than any job I’ve ever had. It’s by far the most fulfilling project I’ve ever worked on, and there’s still so much room to grow. I feel like a 20th century grandparent whose accordion wallet dramatically waterfalls open with JCPenney pictures of their six grandkids, except mine are: The Chasm, Physical Media Renaissance, The Nostalgia Industrial Complex, Pop Culture Advent Calendar, 2000s Comedies Prominently Featuring iMac G3s, and Flip Phone Summer. I have a couple things in the works and am inspired to a freakish degree!!!!!!!!!!! So I’m making it a goal for myself to grow my Substack from a hidden gem to a cult classic. And you can help!

If you would like to support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription, I’m running a Forever 21 Birthday Special!!!!!! Until Sunday, April 12th at 11:59pm, get 21% off of an annual subscription for $46 (regularly $59). That is only $3.83 per month, which is comparable to a Forever 21 liquidation sale. If you love the rush of a good deal, now is the time.

FOREVER 21 BIRTHDAY SPECIAL

If you wanna be in my figurative MySpace Top 8 among highly esteemed Nicstalgia readers, it’s $143 – or more, I’m not gonna stop you. (143 comes from the popular AOL Instant Messenger shorthand for “I love you”. Popular girls would put “143” plus their boyfriend’s name in their AIM bio to show people who they were dating. I actively avoided my 8th grade bf, so I never did this, but believe me, it was a thing.)

JOIN THE TOP 8

If you would like to give a one-time gift ($5+) instead of a recurring one, I will comp you a free subscription for a month. If you are already a paid reader, I’ll extend your subscription for a month. I will continue doing this even after the Forever 21 Birthday Special is over. Yay!!!

SUPPORT THE CAUSE

It’s also the optimal time for my dream dinner party, in case you missed my Very Aries answer in :

Back by popular demand – it’s the seasonal bucket list (SBL)! I don’t think I’ve made a proper one since last summer?! So for the uninitiated, the seasonal bucket list is about having fun, trying new things, being present, and exercising your free will. I try not to have anything work- or project- related on the list, because SBLs are not meant to have striver energy. It’s not a checklist, spreadsheet, or concrete plan – you just gotta go with it.

My Spring Bucket List

💃 Perform in dance video. This one’s complete already!
🚉 Book a weekend getaway. This one’s also complete already!
🚆 Take a day trip to a town I’ve never been before. I’m excited for this one.
☕️ Host monthly coffee hangs with friends. Not “events”, not “meetups”, not “community”, but informal Central Perk kinda vibes.
🎥 Make a mini life doc on my camcorder. I’m told fairly often that my life is like a reality show, so let’s go with it.
🪡 Practice sewing. Classes are expensive, so idk about that, but I have a lot to make! Not sure why half of my self-directed DIY projects involve sewing when it’s not my strong suit, but when I have a vision, I have a vision!
🎬 Enjoy a variety of entertainment. There’s so much to do in New York! I’m going to plays, live shows, a gallery opening, and a drag show!
👚 Reorganize everything. Self-explanatory.
🎯 Try archery. I mean, why not.
🍓 Go to a new local farmer’s market. I always stop at the same fruit stands because of their convenient location on my existing routes. But I would like to make going to the farmer’s market the main event.
🧢 Make more pop culture merch. Graphic design is my passion!!!

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, Lindsay, and Bea! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

This week’s episode: Performance rehearsals have commenced, the song I never want to hear again, my new favorite probably healthy drink, and how I’m making it through the rain. Next week I’ll give you my MARC BY SOFIA mini review, among other things.

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PS. Huge thank you to Bea for supporting my work and becoming Nicstalgia’s newest Founding Subscriber!!! It’s the highest distinction of readers, like the modern day equivalent of being in my MySpace Top 8. 🎉 Be like Bea! You can upgrade your subscription here, and if you’re on the fence, I’ll be running a birthday sale on annual subscriptions next week.

PSS. This issue is LONG!!!! Too much good stuff to include. Make sure to click the link at the bottom of the email to catch what gets cut off. If you’re on Substack, you can read this directly in the app. Enjoy!

Even if you are from Connecticut, Massachusetts, or New York, there’s still a chance you may not remember Weathervane. Here’s a quick introduction for the uninitiated:

“Every girl asks herself: “What am I going to wear?”

Whether it’s for school, gym class, a big date, babysitting or just hanging out, do you find you are constantly asking yourself, “What am I going to wear?” Don’t worry, you will always have something great and cool to wear when you shop at Weathervane.

Weathervane is an apparel retailer based in New Britain, Connecticut. Weathervane Retail Corp. has operated 53 stores from New England to Ohio since 1969. We have the quality fashions you want at the prices you like. Shop Weathervane for all the Best Stuff...at the Best Prices.”

- Weathervane’s website, 1999

While many Millennial and Xillennial clothing stores have achieved legendary or cult status on nostalgic meme pages, Weathervane is not one of them – to anyone except me, Nicole Tremaglio. I’m taking it upon myself to keep the memory of this mall gem alive. Their stores shuttered completely in 2004, making their self-proclaimed announcement as “your store for the next millennium” painfully short-lived.

Weathervane was the critical connective tissue between my formative experiences at Limited Too and dELiA*s, where I shopped as a curious tween without having to grow up too fast. Weathervane was relatively wholesome in comparison to hoe (complimentary) stores like DEB, Wet Seal, Rave, Rave Girl, and Windsor. I specifically remember Weathervane as the first place I ever bought my own thong. It was pink and had a d-ring buckle. I got it in blue too. This was before the $5 for $25 (RIP) deal that had us hooked on Victoria’s Secret and PINK only a couple of years later. But one of the most interesting aspects of mall culture at the turn of the century wasn’t even the brick-and-mortar clothing store or mall itself. It was the internet.

Weathervane’s Digital Zine

Zines have exploded in popularity in the past couple years, as every single thing Gen Xers did in the 90s does. I’m not talking about zines for political mobilization, community activation, or artistic purposes, but rather zines as a magazine derivative, distinctly created to support commercial activities. E-commerce functionality had not yet been normalized, and the web 1.0 internet was a fabulous way for clothing stores to broadcast product knowledge, build their brand world beyond their four walls, and hang out with their young consumers in the digital realm. Although there is no cohesive brand identity for their internet presence judging by today’s standards, it didn’t matter back then.

Let’s explore the eight categories of Weathervane’s WZine: Tunes, Polls, Be A Star!, Horror Stories, Goodies, Teen Poetry, Entertainment, and Horoscopes!

Tunes

Move over Windows Media Player, there’s a new custom web-based radio in town! You could get the news, weather, traffic, AND music in one place – ummm that’s literally a glimpse into our future! Steve Jobs was probably inspired by the Weathervane Custom Radio to create the first iPhone. Plus, there is literally nothing else I’d rather be doing in 2001 than listening to Britney Spears’s eponymous album. *Britney voice* LIKE THAT!

Polls

Girls could make their voices heard!!! By answering polls about boys lol. Most of these choices were a lot longer, and Substack is making me abbreviate them, but I tried to keep them as true to form as possible. They are hilarious. The “submit” button said “My 2¢”, which I find amazing. Now you can take the polls yourself!

Be A Star!

There was always some kind of sweepstakes or casting call you could enter in order to become a model. As we know now (and perhaps still knew back then), a lot of modeling agencies were really feeders for nefarious activities – cough, Abercrombie & Fitch, cough – but this didn’t stop companies from soliciting underage girls for their contact info and pictures. “I’m gonna be famous!” is the label on the “Submit” button, which is giving Kim Kardashian circa 2007. Again, a glimpse into our future.

Maybe I’m amazed by Weathervane’s sweepstakes was from 2004 – I guess they really decided to go out with a bang. “Win a chance to shop & dine with Jem. Enter to win a $500 Weathervane shopping spree with Jem, artist featured The O.C. Then be whisked to dinner with Jem and 2 of your friends!!” Can I still sign up by any chance??

Horror Stories

From J-14’s Embarrassing Moments column to this, teen magazines always had a humiliation kink. Puberty and adolescent awkwardness were constantly rooted in shame, versus being framed in a “you’re not alone, this is embarrassing but normal” kind of way. (See: Sarah Ditum’s Toxic, Alice Bolin’s Culture Creep, and Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves for more context on how being a teenage girl in the sociopolitical climate of the 2000s was TOUGH.) So *SVU voice* Here are their stories. (I’m not editing them, so any misspellings are theirs 😇 – also, WHO IS JESSE?? She’s from my hometown!)

One day at camp when I was little. I had to rush off that morning and I thought I had my bathing suit top on underneath my tee shirt. I usually put it on before I went to camp. So when I went to take off my shirt all I had on was my bra. I totally forgot that that morning I was rushing. I felt so dumb. I didn’t act myself all day.
-Sarah -- Burlington, Massachusettes

In class I was fooling around because I was bored and playing in my seat we have swivel chairs because it was computer class, and I started to lean back and all of the sudden I fell backwards along with the chair. The whole class saw me and my face was bright red. Afterwards I got a detention for disrupting class. Pathetic huh!?!?!?
-Jesse -- Southington, Connecticut

At the beach I was using a porto potty. (standing up because its so nasty in there) All of a sudden I got dressed, didn’t pull my pants all the way up because my hair was in my face, so I was brushing it with my fingers to the side and then the door to the porto potty opened and standing there was an extremely emabarrased, hot, guy! He quickly slammed the door closed and from the otherside of the door all I heard was a the yelling of “I’m sorry, i’m sorry...” I came out obviously humiliated and he was long gone!
-Jill -- Newport, Rhode Island

I was walking around the mall the other day and I went into a mens clothing store looking for something for my brother to wear. Plus I was looking for a hot guy to talk to. This guy asked me if I needed help and we got onto other subjects when we were talking. He was so hot so I thought I would give him my number. As I went to get a pen out of my purse he told me that my fly was down. After my face turned bright red and I was ready to cry I played it off as if I didn’t have a pen and walked shamefully towards the exit! I’ve never returned since!
-Megan -- Greenwood, Indiana

It was the night I had my first date with Romero. I had waited soooo long for him to ask me out and when he did I almost fainted. He was SO cool the way he asked me if I wanted to go on the Haunted Hayride with him. Well anyway as I was getting ready I found that my stupid little brother had used ALL my chamomile shampoo making a skating rink in the bath tub for his dorky action figures so I had to use my mom’s stinky cheap shampoo. Things just got worse from there. My curling Iron fell into the toilet while I was brushing my teeth and my dad FORGOT to buy me my deodorant when he went out to get the pizza. While I was putting on my makeup I noticed I was getting this totally monster zit right on the end of my nose, and I couldn’t find any coverup. When Romero finally arrived he pulled into the driveway with his sound system so loud it shook the house and he honked the horn for me. My dad is so 1960s and wouldn’t let me out of the house unless my date came to the door so I had to wait. As soon as Romero stepped into the house my dad started asking him all sorts of questions about what time I would be home, where we were going, did he have a hearing impairment and stuff like that I thought I would die. Just then my little brother came running through the living room in his underwear with a towel around his neck like a cape screaming, “I’m superman and you better not hurt my sister.” I was so embarrassed. My mom saved me by sending my brother to his room and saying to my dad that we had to go or we’d be late. With a family like that is it any wonder Romero didn’t ask me out again?
-Nichole -- Colonie, NY

I had just bought the cutest pair of white pants and couldn’t wait to wear them! So Monday morning I had my outfit all picked out and couldn’t wait to get to school. I arrived at school, and things were going fine, until 2nd period. I walked into class, expecting it to be a fun class as usual, but when I walked in a few of my friends called me over to talk. One of them tugged on my pants as I came over and said “Nice pants, and before I could thank her for the compliment she points out to me that you can see my dark purple thong right through the white pants. I was so embarrassed I ran straight to my locker and grabbed my sweatshirt. I didn’t let it leave my waist for the rest of the day.
-Sarah H. W.Hartford, Connecticut

Goodies

This pic of a couple canoodling is from the “goodie” page, where your apparent benefit is signing up for Weathervane’s mailing list. My jaw is on the floor. Honestly, this vibe is kinda what being subscribed to Nicstalgia is like. Right?

Later, goodies included computer wallpapers and were separated from signups, which could be received via email or the new and novel “wireless messaging”. What is this FREE TEXT MESSAGING all about?!?!? HOW does all this work?!?!?

Teen Poetry

Grown men will write poetry and realize the same things a girl does when she’s 11 years old. This is better than most of the poetry I’ve ever read. Just saying. Weathervane didn’t have to go this deep, but they did.

True Love
True love is such an extraordinary thing,
But you never know what pain and sorrow it could bring.
You think that you have found the one,
That it when you realize what you have done.
You let him play games with your heart,
That’s when you slowly start falling apart.
You know what he did was wrong,
But in your head you keep hearing your song.
And then you see him with another girl,
Then your head starts to whirl.
How could he move on so fast?,
While you are still stuck back in the past.
You know that you made a mistake,
And it was your heart that he did take.
He asked you out and then he dumped you,
He just doesn’t understand all of the pain that
you’ve been through.
People say that your time will come,
But if you ask me I think that my time is done.
Kalais -- OH

Untitled
Our short good byes seems to last an eternity
I can’t bare to stay away
When I’m with you I feel such pleasure
And somehow you make me complete
At first I was afraid
But you offered an unspoken guarantee
You open up what’s inside of me
And still I feel at ease
To be here for a moment with you
Is just too good to be true
If what you have been waiting for is me
Then maybe its time we set our spirits free
Que sera sera, what will be will be
To my heart you have found the key
I look forward to being with you
& I never want this feeling to end
My knees get weak, and I can’t speak at the sight of you
“Smile though your heart is aching” but I no longer need too
To be here for a moment with you
Is just too good to be true
So I’ll follow what my heart says
And allow myself to fall
-Ashleigh

Untitled
You hate him, but you don’t
You don’t love him, but you do
You look inside his eyes and find no clue
Right then and there you know,
Your love for him has died
Deep down inside,
You start to cry
He gets on his knees and wants to die
That’s the story of life
And all people hate it
But that’s life
It’s just the way it is
There’s nothing we can do.
-L. Barnard

Mothers Day
People come and go
But I always seem to know
That you are my mother
I make you mad
I make you sad
Yet you’re one of a kind
and yes you’re mine
You’ll never leave me,
Even if you drown in the deep blue sea
You’ll always stay in my heart
And yet, we never seem to part
God gave me a gift which is you
I’ll always try to be true
If I have bad affection
You always seem to turn me in the right direction
I have one more thing to say to you
Which is that, Mom,
I love you.
- Lisa

Friendship-A Poem
Some say friends last forever.
Mine sometimes do and sometimes never.
Best friends are there with you,
Thick and thin and all the way through.
It doesn’t surprise me to believe
That they will always use me in a time of need.
Whether in school or in the mall,
Friends always seem to get me through it all.
Friends make me happy and make me sad;
I just want to thank them for all that we had.
- Amber Slomski

Because of You
Because of you I have a heart,
you gave me faith
right from the start
Because of you, I never felt sad
I was so happy, I always felt glad
But then you changed
Into something I never knew,
Something took over
Inside of you.
You never talked
You never stayed
You always left
And then I prayed
I hoped for the memories
To come again
To stay forever
Until the end
And although things aren’t the same
And you have become so far away,
Because of you
I still have faith
And always will
Everyday
- Tara, Long Island

Entertainment

This section’s content matter in 2001 seemed to be diametrically opposed to Weathervane’s target demo of teen girls. It listed syndicated Billboard articles about electronic pop band Triangle, Ozzy Osbourne, country group Montgomery Gentry, and Southern rock jam band Gov’t Mule. They should’ve had me blog for them about Britney Spears, Hoku, Mikaila, and Hilary Duff – although I guess that’s what I’m doing now!

The music section seemed to crawl toward relevance in 2003, featuring The Streets, Underworld, and Taking Back Sunday, and entertainment expanded to include gossip like, Madonna’s Life, A Movie? What’s Kirsten Dunst’s Next Movie? What Turns the O-Town Boys On? and tips on what’s in style, featuring Jennifer Garner in Alias, Hello Kitty, and Destiny’s Child.

Horoscopes

Ahhhh we saved the best for last. Looking ahead to next month, here are your Weathervane horoscopes for Taurus season:

Taurus
Happy Birthday! You Will Be Starting A Big Romance That Will Really Pay Off! Reap The Rewards This Month. The Time Is Yours.

Gemini
Let People Know Who You Really Are. Stand Proud And Be Heard! You Can Make It Happen.

Cancer
Your Confidence Will Be Strong This Month. Someone Will Notice And They Will Love The New You!

Leo
Summer Is Just Around The Corner And This Summer Will Be One For The Record Books! Summer Cuties Are On The Way To You!

Virgo
Your Helping Hand Will Be Needed By A Friend This Month. Your Friend Will Be Ever Grateful For Your Assistance.

Libra
You Are Definitely Where It’s At This Month. Your Popularity Will Soar. But Don’t Forget To Stay Grounded.

Scorpio
You Will Receive A Surprise Gift From A Secret Admirer And Will Spend All Month Trying To Find Him! You Will Be Surprised When You Find Out Who????

Sagittarius
This Month Use Your Gift Of Gab To Talk To All The Class Cuties. One Will Listen.

Capricorn
Get Ready For A Shopping Spree! But Remember Don’t Go Overboard Or You’ll Pay The Price Later.

Aquarius
Good Luck Is Yours This Month. Good Grades And A Winning Record Are On The Way To You.

Pisces
Your Creativity Will Soar This Month. You Will Come Up With All The Cool Ideas For School And Play.

Aries
Miss Fashion Is On The Way! You Will Be The Envy Of All With Your Fashionable Cool Duds!

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, Lindsay, and Bea! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

This week’s episode: Linda Kensington will steal your man, I finally got to be a Pussycat Doll, we need more ballet film festivals, an unhinged American Girl doll play, my new vintage dance bag, and my next five DIY projects! (Lol I can’t stop making stuff)

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• Have always loved Gap commercials, will always love Gap commercials. The latest campaign is its first Spanish-language one, choreographed by Zoi Tatopoulos, aka. ‘ztato’ and starring 28-year-old Puerto Rican rapper, singer-songwriter, and former footballer Young Miko. Her song “WASSUP” will make any Millennial’s ears perk up, as it prominently samples “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne. It also samples “Chulin Culin Chunfly” by Voltio, and “What U Gon’ Do” by Lil Jon, who makes a cameo in the song’s outro.

• I’ve watched about a zillion episodes of Top of The Pops in the past two months and somehow came across this archival page of TOTP computer wallpapers. You’re welcome!!!

• One commenter cheered “I WANNA SEE YOU BE BRAVE” as Sara Bareilles shoveled [redacted] out of her chimney in a recent viral video. I would 100% watch a Martha Stewart-esque HGTV show hosted by Sara, where she intermittently sings about country living. Why? I’m not sure, but I’m sold.

• I was listening to Katharine McPhee’s album after perusing through my All American (Idol) Rejects playlist, for reasons you will discover below the paywall. I pressed play and my first thought was, ‘Honey, we have Amerie at home.’ McPhee’s album was produced by Danja, who made a much better album in the same year: Britney’s Blackout (2007). I was distracted from “Love Story” by the perplexing lyrics to “Open Toes”, which I will share via lyric video below. I need to read the memoir of Kara DioGuardi (one of the FIVE writers of this wacky song, including McPhee and Danja) to see if there’s a plausible explanation for this.

• I am always talking about the inconsistencies in women’s clothing sizing conventions, how women’s clothing is still proportionally made for teenage bodies, and how adult women thrifting “Y2K” clothes that were specifically made for children is high key weird. Finding (relatively) ethically manufactured and reasonably (if not affordably) priced clothing at a decent quality is damn near impossible in today’s day and age. I absolutely think the body positivity movement of the 2010s tricked people into thinking just because there were more sizes available (sometimes), they would fit better (categorically false). The Pudding made an excellent data visualization about women’s sizing that I highly recommend. Trust me, the problem is the clothes, not you.

The Pussycat Dolls are reuniting as a trio, and apparently none of the other original members knew about it. I love that Lil Kim and Mya are touring with them, although I will not be going. Once you see them open for Britney’s Circus tour, how do you go up from there??!! I will be going to a PCD burlesque class taught by Robin Antin herself this afternoon, so I’ll let you know how that goes. I assume Melody, Carmit, and Jessica weren’t invited because they’re too good at singing and therefore would detract attention from Nicole (unlike two blondes that no one can tell apart), too good at dancing and therefore would detract attention from Nicole, and a right-wing vaccine injury advocate, respectively.

But let’s give some credit where credit is due: PCD was the pinnacle of Literal Trash (compliment). When people ask me what twenty-something girls will look like walking around NYC this spring/summer, my answer is, ‘Like the 2005-2008 Pussycat Dolls’. Need outfit inspo? Look no further.

Exhibit A: More is more

Large nonfunctional belts; tiny skirts; lots of brown; cowboy boots, ballet-inspired, and strappy footwear; dropped waist and/or empire waist; and even Ed Hardy. (I know, I can’t believe it either.) Layers? Sure. Butterflies? Why not!!!!!! Coco Chanel once said to look in the mirror and remove one accessory before leaving the house. That rule of thumb no longer applies, and not just because she was a N*zi sympathizer. (Sorry that’s dark, but it’s Fashion History 101.)

Exhibit B: Fashion deja vu

Corsets; buckle and O-ring belts; hair poofs; ruffles; low-rise pants; cargos; lace camis; and yes, headbands. (Rachel Berry rejoices!) It doesn’t matter which era these isolated trend objects were regurgitated from, you just know you’ve seen them somewhere before. Is it the 2000s? Or is it the 80s? Or….the 50s? The answer is usually: all of the above! Due to context collapse on the internet, where the audience doesn’t have a monocultural, shared concept of pop culture history and references, it’s very hard to achieve pastiche. This is why you keep seeing blatant homages or recreations of the past, e.g. everything Addison Rae and Tate McRae do being direct callbacks to the legendary Miss Britney Spears.

Exhibit C: The cycle continues

As Justin Timberlake and Timbaland once said, “I thought I told you…what goes around comes back around…” In contrast to Exhibit B, where everything looks vaguely familiar, Exhibit C contains zero subtlety: gothic Juicy Couture/Von Dutch fonts; graphic tees containing IP licensed into oblivion; camo pants; studded belts; tiny little shrugs (one can only hope).

In PCD’s 2005 pic below, you can see a LOT of sleazy 70s/80s trends – bodysuits, rainbows, side cutout bodysuits, halter bodysuits, sweatbands. (This is where American Apparel’s aesthetic came from in the 2000s.) Now, we’re seeing that trend cycle complete AGAIN. The 80s came back in the 00s/10s, and now both the 80s AND the 00s are back. Everything can change, but some things always stay the same – like cheetah print!

If you are old enough to have experienced what I call The Chasm – the completion of a 20-year trend cycle in its entirety – then you may be shocked and appalled that youth culture trends fixate around whatever you wore in elementary/middle/high school. PCD’s debut album was released on September 12, 2005. Anyone under the age of 21 was not even ALIVE when “Don’t Cha” and “Buttons” changed the world. I need to go lie down…

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

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If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

This week’s episode: my latest crafting projects, two more celebrity memoirs with casually harrowing details, archival Oscars clips, the movie that cured my ADHD.

Next week I’ll tell you about the music video I was in, the Pussycat Dolls burlesque class, a super fun ballet film festival, an unhinged American Girl doll play, my new vintage dance bag, and my next DIY project.

Read more

Updates for you:

• Website update: You can explore the archive of my 135 elliptical class themes on my new website. It will soon be complete with Spotify links, which I have never shared before (!!!!!!) so if you need songs for the gym – or truly anything – you can find it there. Playlisting is my passion!!!

• We have a new section today called Well, that’s my life! where I talk about something fun I was up to recently. It’s behind the paywall at the bottom. People tell me quite often I should have my own reality show – which I take as a compliment – so here it is.

  

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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My favorite things from the internet this week:

• Everyone romanticizes romcom journalists and misses front of book content (aka. the fun stuff) from 2000s magazines. Luckily, Nicstalgia is there to fill the void!!! Do you remember this cover/quiz from Nicstalgia’s 50th Episode in 2023?

• Lil Wayne songs to listen to when… “in nursing student handwriting” teleported me back to 2008 immediately.

• Most of my time online is spent researching and falling deep into Internet Archive and eBay rabbit holes, and sometimes I come across unhinged items I am completely enthralled by. Case in point: an Old Navy ‘croquette’ (a fried food, confused for the ‘coquette’ aesthetic) top and a $50 René Angélil Celebration of Life cookie. (Have you no shame?)

• This account that makes fake banners in the Philippines is so funny to me…Exhibits A and B: Avril Lavigne Alysa Liu and P!nk Pinkpantheres.

• This shirt is heinous, but imagine thrifting the top worn in my favorite Vine of all time? (A mashup of one hit wonder Magic’s 2013 weaksauce “Rude” with S2 KUWTK where Kim hits Khloe over the head with her handbag)

• The disappearance of colorful squishy pencil grippers in American schools directly correlates to fallen literacy rates. I’m a school store nepo baby (my mom was the buyer and I helped pick out which pencils and erasers we carried), so this crisis hits close to home.

• I love that Zooey Deschanel hates Crumbl cookies.

This week’s episode: My favorite Daylight Savings Time song, the celebrity book I loved, the celebrity book I stopped reading halfway through, the celebrity book I’m excited to start next, teaching my fitness classes, life on the dance floor, getting over 1 of 2 of my childhood fears, and almost collapsing in the record store.

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Macro and micro level, it’s been a week. Getting turned away from The Drew Barrymore Show with Hilary Duff as the guest is my villain origin story. Let’s see if I have more luck with Kelly Clarkson next week. I’m struggling to get through the winter, but I’m giving my best attempt at embodying the wistful energy of Jennifer Lopez in the “All I Have” music video.

I am pleased to announce that seasonal bucket lists, a favorite topic of Nicstalgia readers, will be back for SPRINGGGGG!!! You will get plenty of ideas for how to exercise your free will. In the meantime, here’s what I’m reading and listening to!

Now reading:

• Black Dance in America: A History Through Its People by James Haskins (1990)

Recently read:

• Eternally Electric: The Message in My Music by Debbie Gibson. What a talented woman. I love a celebrity memoir.

• So many 33 1/3 books because they’re easy to carry on the subway, including the ones on Britney’s Blackout, The B52s’ Cosmic Thing, and Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Favorite recent pieces on Substack:

Fandom Exile

Harry Styles: The Prince of Potemkin Pop Culture

Welcome to Fandom Exile, your destination for anti-nostalgia fandom research and cultural criticism…

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3 months ago · 110 likes · 27 comments · Monia Ali

Internet Bedroom

🎀my girlhood essay🎀

When I was about to become a teenager, my family moved from a suburb outside of Toledo, Ohio to a suburb outside of Columbus, Ohio. My father had already been living in Columbus for some time, sharing an apartment with a man who was his spiritual guide and who told my parents to tell other people that he was my godfather when anyone asked questions…

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3 months ago · 30 likes · 4 comments · rachel moss

Matriarchal Blessing

There is one word that explains how so many men can be in the Epstein files. So why is no one saying it?

Attention! This Tuesday, Feb 24th the doors to enroll in Women’s Circle 2026 will close, and will not open again for another year! What is Women’s Circle? It’s the founding membership of Matriarchal Blessing where a badass group of women meet each month to watch movies together and discuss patriarchy. It’s all online. Join from anywhere. All details and…

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3 months ago · 17252 likes · 1472 comments · Celeste Davis

Found Object

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress

If My Best Friend’s Wedding came out today, it would be a prestige streaming series called “Unlikable Woman”, marketed as “brave,” dissected on Instagram, and quietly buried by the algorithm in forty-eight hours…

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3 months ago · 1782 likes · 242 comments · Rodrigo Brancatelli

Songs from my CORE class playlist:

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

ICYMI, in last week’s letter, I shared a photographic treasure trove of physical media I did not buy! Since then, I found like, a dozen more pictures. My camera roll is a bottomless pit, I swear. It does remind me that I should go back to [redacted] and buy that Kudos compilation CD.

Hope you fared well this week with the snow. I try to look as glamorous as Jennifer Lopez in the “All I Have” music video, but I’m so sick of winter. BRING ON THE SPRING!!!! I’ve still been having fun though:

• Got new headshots through Shoott!1

• Have been dancing consistently, plus teaching my classes (yay!)

• Started vocal technique lessons (so fun, and “natural talent” was how my teacher described my abilities…just saying…)

• Did karaoke for the one and only Amethyst at Montero’s (she loved my song choice) and started designing a NYC Karaoke Bingo template just because!

• My website is still massively under construction, but I finally finished my virtual physical media collection page! ISN’T IT FABULOUS?!?! I also finally organized the literal shelf in my room, which looks like the one pictured.

⭐️ Physical media shelf superlatives ⭐️

As you know from exploring the Nicstalgia Consumption Rubric, not all CDs I find in the wild are added to my collection. That doesn’t mean that hundreds haven’t made the cut LOL. Here are some of my favorites!

Best deep cut

Eden’s Crush’s Get Over Yourself single out there, but I really wanted the Popstars album! I found it before Eden’s Crush was later put on Spotify, and I will still have it after it inevitably disappears from streaming again. I need to be able to listen to their cover of Sheila E’s “The Glamorous Life” at any given moment.

Best hidden gem

As the Co-President of the Mikaila Fan Club (with Chet), it was imperative that I acquired Mikaila’s album. In my opinion, “Emotional” is the perfect pop song. PERFECT. I now own 3 copies of this CD, because one didn’t have the jacket and another I just felt like having for backup? Anyway, if you are not already acquainted with the actress who was on Wishbone (!!!) and sang some amazing bubblegum pop bangers, I highly recommend you tap in immediately.

Best gift(s)

has an incredible ear, thorough musicality, a deep passion for music, and uncanny ability to pick out a gift for me that reflects his respect for both my kitschy, campy, and melodramatic tastes. This category is a three-way tie between Mariah Carey’s Glitter, Nude on the Moon: The B-52’s Anthology, and Lady Gaga’s The Fame 10 year anniversary edition that comes with a little Lady Gaga flash drive!!!!!!

Best single

Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely”. This song went triple platinum in my house!!!!!! The next time I am in Florida, I kind of desperately need to go to Coral Gables where they filmed the music video. Their chemistry is so unconvincing (for obvious reasons) and it looks like they were CGI’d in the same room, which was a great relationship model for 11-year-old me. (I actively avoided my first boyfriend in the hallways of our middle school.)

Best soundtrack to a movie I have not seen

I have a confession to make, and please don’t hate me for saying this: I have never seen the movie A Walk to Remember. I really don’t like lying, but I think that about 90% of the time I’ve lied in my life was telling people I’d seen A Walk to Remember when I hadn’t. But I DID have the soundtrack, which honestly, is kinda close enough??

Best splurge

Spiceworld was at a flea market for $9, which is now more than I would ever pay for a vintage CD. But it was the first album I had on cassette tape, and it absolutely changed my life, so it had to be done. I spiced up my life in 1997 and haven’t stopped since.

Best “parental advisory” CD

Has to be Missy Elliott’s Miss E…So Addictive. When I saw the “Get Ur Freak On” music video on MTV, I was shocked and awed by how cool, futuristic, and innovative she was. She’s a legend!!! That reminds me I need to print out the tweet of mine that she responded to with a single purple heart emoji. (I don’t care if it was her assistant or Miss Fendi Dior, it was someone with her login info.)

Most nostalgic find

There is a trifecta of CDs that changed my entire life: Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love, Mariah Carey’s Music Box, and Britney Spears’s Britney. These artists (plus Missy Elliott!) are my Mount Rushmore. No further comment needed.

Most satisfying find

Sometimes I buy CDs from this massive warehouse in Connecticut – they used to be a physical store but now only sell online. Tri-State Area people (and readers of Nicstalgia, obviously) may already know about Drew’s. It was a company out of New Jersey that made themed cover CDs of party music. You could get one for Halloween, luau, baby shower, whatever. They sold them at iParty (RIP) and my favorite was Drew’s Famous Smash Party Hits. Though I’d parted from my original childhood copy, I was incredibly satisfied to fulfill my vow that one day, we would reunite again.

Best promotional CD

I collect retail promotional CDs because I have spent about 15% of my life inside of malls. I have CDs from Old Navy, GAP, Urban Outfitters, American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Limited Too, and dELiA*s. Even though I can select particular CDs from the warehouse, it’s way more fun to find them in the wild. I was at Goodwill with my mom a couple weeks ago and found the first edition of a dELiA*s CD. I practically sprinted to the register…

Most fated find

When I first got really into CD collecting in 2022, the last CD I found on my first trip was NOW That’s What I Call Music! 7. I almost started crying right then and there. Literally over 100 of these CDs exist, and yet my favorite one – the only one I had as a kid – was NOW 7. At the time, my sister had a car with a CD player and we listened to it on the way home. It really was like hearing Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” again for the first time.

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

Here’s some of what I watched this week:

• I’m obsessed with the Olympics and no one can stop me!!!!! I’m particularly a fan of figure skating, ice dance, and snowboarding. I loved Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel’s routine to the bus driver from Spice World’s (Meatloaf’s) song, which they’d previously performed at the German National Championship.

• Friend of the Letter Chet recently released the newest episode of Hit and Run, where he interviewed members of iconique Y2K Pop group PYT 25 years after their debut. In a world where context collapse prevails and literally anyone can interview celebrities (just saying), Chet is a breath of fresh air. He is SO well-researched, articulate, prepared, and composed. I really enjoyed it, as will all niche early 2000s pop music fans!!!

• I watched Netflix’s America’s Next Top Model 3-part documentary so you don’t have to. It only skims the surface in terms of its problematic treatment of its young contestants, it could’ve been shorter, and I’m more interested to see the one on E! where the narrative is shaped by the models rather than Tyra. Although I find using UGC in documentaries a lazy copout that uses creators’ work without consent or compensation, it was fun to see a familiar face – Friend of the Letter Janine! Shoutout to her for giving me a slice of her cake from Netflix hehe :) WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!

Below you will find a photographic treasure trove of physical media I did not buy! The impetus for sharing these pics now is because they clog up my camera roll. I’m tired of getting notifications that I am utilizing 127.9 GB of 128 GB of my iPhone storage – I haven’t forgotten! Consider this the third installment of My Digital Archiving Project (aka. MDAP, which you can read more about here and here). I’ve been keeping my photo count under 10k, which I consider pretty good.

If there is one takeaway for this week, it is: You don’t have to buy everything!! (Case in point: The Cosmopolitan Intimate Moments compilation CD…) For all intents and purposes, I’d like to differentiate consumers, resellers, and collectors because they have different motivations for buying things. Here, let’s focus on the collector’s POV.

• Consumers buy shit they absolutely do not need, usually from giant corporations that actively negatively impact the world and adversely shift consumer behavior: Amazon, Shein, Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx, etc. Intention is low, as they are not purchasing commodities or essentials. These buys are fueled by impulse, novelty, and/or boredom.

• Resellers buy shit at the deepest discount possible so that they can resell it on a secondary marketplace and generate maximum profit: Poshmark, Depop, eBay, etc. Intention is high, as sellers’ livelihood depends on market value of goods sold – though it’s a volatile, ever-changing figure.

• Collectors buy shit because they feel some kind of attachment to or fulfillment by physical items. Intention is high, as collections are shaped by the collector’s individual taste, memory, and sentimentality. If intention was low, that would just be hoarding!!

In my Physical Media Renaissance™ video podcast episode, I go over my Nicstalgia Consumption Rubric. This is how I decide what gets on “the list” of what I buy and what doesn’t. The list is shorter than you might think!

• Rarity: Is the item readily available, still in production, or available at a reasonable cost on the secondhand market?

• Sentimentality: Do you have firsthand nostalgia, emotion, or investment in this item?

• Opportunity: Is this something you would’ve wanted when you were younger and didn’t have it, or couldn’t find at a reasonable price.

• Risk: Would you be mad if this piece of media wasn’t on streaming platforms and disappeared forever?

I came across these CDs/DVDs/tapes/etc. in 2025, and they didn’t quite fit into the criteria for purchase. I kinda wanna go back to the stores and get the first row of items here – FWIW, the MyScene movies are fabulous. But sometimes, it’s okay to just take a picture of something and call it a day. Stay tuned for what I did add to my collection soon…

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

Happy Almost Valentine’s Day! 💋 I love ~love~ in its many forms, and what better way to celebrate than with the perfect playlist? I first saw Cosmopolitan’s Intimate Evenings (1996) in a thrift store a year ago, and although I didn’t buy it for $2, I think about it all the time.1

The atmosphere in which the CD should be enjoyed is prescriptively written on the back cover, setting the anticipatory scene for romance:

“The candles are lit, the wine is chilling and dinner’s in the oven. As you glance around the room, you check that the couch pillows are fluffed, all magazines and papers are stashed in drawers, cat toys are out of sight. Everything is exactly right for an intimate evening with that special man in your life.

Now’s the perfect time to slip a CD into the disc player -- some background music to enhance the intimacy of the moment without interfering in your conversation. The music on this collection was chosen with exactly such moments in mind.”

But why should an intimate evening with that special someone be limited to classical music? SNOOZE!!!! I need soundtracks for improvised living room dance parties, impromptu singalongs, and blissful moments of quality time – drinking Prosecco cocktails, solving a crossword puzzle, eating a perfectly cooked steak, laughing, and snuggling in as many blankets as humanly possible. Please enjoy the first eight Cosmopolitan CD compilations, released from 1992-1994. There’s truly something for everyone, perfect for whatever your Valentine’s Day happens to be!!

PS. ICYMI, last week I made a playlist with my Valentine of all the best songs ever…

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

Not sending this letter out for a week and a half was the longest it’s been in literally years (?!) and I’m happy to be back! Updates from Nicstalgia HQ:

• Went back to the allergist and unfortunately no club bangers were playing in the lobby like the first time :( However, I am cured! :) Extremely grateful to be back at 100% after being meh for all of January, and despite it being the like, 14th consecutive day of below-freezing temperatures.

• ICYMI, I was featured in ’s amazing Eat Your Feelings Substack! Read it to find out what I love eating when I’m in my feels, what dish I cook to impress a lover, who I’m inviting to my dream dinner party, hot to pronounce bruschetta, and my favorite recipe.

• Went to High Valley Books and lost all sense of space and time. I purchased the fourth edition (1969) of clothing textbook How You Look and Dress by Byrta Carson (1949), which I am excited to get into.

• I’ve been dancing a lot!! Getting back into Tap has been fabulous! Jazz and Hip Hop are fun as always. I joined a dance company, which I’m so excited about!!!! I’ve now been in a company in my teens, twenties, and thirties. Never give up your dreams, people.

• I’m really enjoying teaching CORE and CARDIO DANCE!!! Come take my classes Tuesday nights at Grind House! My playlists have been described by , whom I consider the ultimate authority on high quality playlists, as “extremely good and very cool”.

Speaking of extremely good and very cool playlists, get excited about the new Fluxblog x Nicstalgia collab!!!! My nearest and dearest, , and I teamed up on Y2K Pop: 1999-2002 as a part of Fluxblog’s iconic pop music series. (My other favorite playlists from the series include First Wave Pop Girls 1980-1990, 100% Pure Love, Dance Pop 1991-1995, and The Other Pop 2002-2007. Required listening for any pop fan!) This succession of playlists is like a relay race, with artists from one era seamlessly passing the baton to the next. Y2K Pop is an answer to the origin of pop-as-genre, picking up where Madonna and Michael Jackson left off. By the turn of the century, pop is no longer derivative of another genre, but has unambiguously become a genre itself: ABBA was disco, but the A*Teens were pop.

“Y2K” has become a very vague term for aesthetics, music, and culture for an increasingly broad time period, so we wanted to hone in particularly on the turn of the century. 1999-2002 marked the explosion of Max Martin-esque Swedish production that would continue to define the genre throughout the 21st century (also see: Pop Strikes Back 2008-2011, aka. what is now called Recession Pop, and Reign of Pop 2012-2015, aka. the mainstream pop’s answer to indie pop’s Tumblr era). Record execs knew they struck gold with Britney Spears, and they wanted to recreate that extraordinarily lucrative circumstance as many times as humanly possible. I particularly live and breathe for the dramatic drum machines and the “wah wah wah” sound I can only describe as an onomatopoeia. It really does feel like a sugar rush.

While catchy, upbeat music marketed to kids and teens first peaked in the 60s – bubblegum pop, sunshine pop, etc. – it certainly came back in full force in the 90s (see: Groovival, my all-time favorite aesthetic). The difference here was that the sheer amount of products being sold had vastly increased. There weren’t just two boy bands, there were like, ten. (I love BSB and *NSYNC, but the fact that these insanely valuable and beloved cultural products were created as a front for a massive Ponzi scheme is the most American thing I’ve ever heard.) If Britney was a singular pop princess, there were at least 20 copycats. The upside to this is that we could experience a broader world and become invested in artists beyond the biggest stars. This playlist was actually inspired by the Nicstalgia tote I made for myself last summer featuring bubblegum pop artists of varying obscurity.

Cyclical trends, economics and politics directly shape the lens through which we consume entertainment and how music is marketed. Supply chain globalization, mass adoption of streetwear, an uptick in immigration from Latin America to the United States, and puritanical social attitudes around this time influenced the cultural landscape. The eldest Millennial girls exiting their teenage years (e.g. Britney, Xtina) would open the door to what I call Disney Pop for kids (e.g. Hilary Duff, Ashley Tisdale, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, etc.) and Bimbo Pop/Literal Trash for young women (e.g. Pussycat Dolls, Paris Hilton, Danity Kane, etc.). All of these micro-genres all somehow gets mushed under one “Y2K” umbrella, so we wanted this playlist to have a clearer POV. No one values specificity, accuracy, and obscure bangers quite like we do :) Enjoy!!

Y2K Pop 1999-2002: Spotify • Apple Music • YouTube (with music videos!!!!!!)

My triple Aquarius brain child turned 4 this week! I started Nicstalgia as a video podcast and newsletter in 2022 in my parents’ cavernous, poorly lit spare bedroom. I planned, outreached, hosted, interviewed, edited, produced, and marketed 54 episodes (!!) which is not an easy feat. (This was also before video podcasts were the norm btw.) I’d already talked about Nostalgia & Nowstalgia and , and I specifically wanted to have “deep conversations about superficial things”. Mission accomplished!

^^ Watch the Nicstalgia theme song! Music, inspired by Mikaila’s “Emotional” and Britney’s “Oops!…I Did It Again”, by Emily Gabriele. Visuals by Valentina Reyes. The very beginning is a clip of Baby Nic putting on a performance at age 3: “We’re gonna start now!” ^^

Best of Nicstalgia: The Podcast

I interviewed a lot of fun people, friends, family, and creatives whose work I deeply enjoy. Nicstalgia was some of my guests’ first-ever podcast appearance, and others went on to start their own shows, businesses, and passion projects! While the grand majority of conversations were had virtually, I had a lot of fun recording – what would be my last episode, at least for now – in person. I also had an absolute blast researching and really digging deep in my solo episodes:

• Nostalgia Isn’t “Back”…It Never Left

• Physical Media Renaissance™

• 2023 Lifestyle, Fashion & Tech Predictions

• Realistic 2000s Fashion (Supplementary Pinterest board here)

• Unlocking Core Memories (About 90s toys and games)

• The Evolution of Girl Bands

• My Fav Internet Era: AIM, Xanga, Myspace (This episode is how I met , because we were the only ones talking about Xanga!)

• Why 2010s Nostalgia is Already Back

• A&F: Problematic and Successful (Better than the A&F documentary tbh)

• 2000s Girls' Handbags

You can watch the full Nicstalgia video podacst series on YouTube here and explore the archive here or by clicking the GIF below. The GIF lives on my website that I am in the middle of coding/re-hauling. (I will try to show you the rest of the full updated site within the next month!) Most of the pics represent a topic we’ve covered on the show; click it and it leads to that episode on YouTube.

Best of Nicstalgia: The Newsletter

Though Nicstalgia in its initial form as a video podcast is a completed chapter, it has continued to grow and evolve since then. I’m really proud that I have consistently put out like, hundreds of newsletters over the last couple years. Most of them have been jam-packed (great), but they’ve also been LONG (hard to sustain). Therefore, I’m going to continue playing with format and adding more fun stuff for paid subscribers only. Here were your top 5 favorite editions:

• Which vintage Hilary Duff ringtone are you? (Btw, her not inviting me to the concert and bringing me up on stage to do the “With Love” dance was a huge mistake. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.)

• How to have a Flip Phone Summer

• Nicstalgia Presents: Pop Culture Advent Calendar (a super fun website I made)

• I think, therefore iMac (about my favorite movie microgenre, 2000s Comedies with Prominent iMac G3 Placement)

• I only threw this party 4 u (about Gen Z waiting in line and my before-its-time, could-have-been surveillance app)

Here are five more oldies but goodies:

• I’ll keep you my dirty little [Victoria’s] secret (on what I would have bought at Kathy Hilton’s tag sale, 5 things you didn’t know about Lisa Frank, and the VS swimsuit archive)

• Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving (on my Anna Nicole rewatch, TTPD consensus reality, my Celebrity Age Relativity Formula, and 13 Going on 30: Millennial Edition)

• Stop Being Desperate (on Coachellas I wish I went to, Paris’s fake “Stop Being Poor” shirt, and the Bottled Emotion tween to astrology girlie pipeline)

• They’re Vintage Charlotte Russe Shorts (on Should Social Networking Web Sites Be Banned? (2008), Jewel’s “Intuition”, vintage Y2K, and my “Behind These Hazel Eyes” painting)

• I Saw You Kiss Her (on Sock’Em Boppers Mandela Effect, Bob’s Discount Furniture drama, Limited Too cosmetics, 25 versions of Avril’s “Girlfriend”

Best of Nicstalgia: Beyond

In 2025, I did three readings IRL in NYC, had two essays published in print, presented my Physical Media Renaissance™ project at a symposium, had my collage included in an art gallery exhibition, and co-hosted a newsletter marketing workshop. I can’t wait to do more fun stuff this year! :) I have a lot of ideas and ambitions, and am trying to be patient with myself as I move toward their completion. I WANNA DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW lol, but even so, I’m really excited to continue meeting awesome writers, dancers, artists, etc. to collaborate with.

I’d like to give a special thank you to the people mentioned in the section below…you simply ARE the best. I do all of this work for free (for now…lol) and you generously contribute financially. Angels!!!!!! Thank you for being patient with me as I experiment, test, trial and error, and do the best I can while rebuilding my life, career, and creative practice literally from scratch – in a way that finally feels right for me.

Thank you for watching, listening, reading, and supporting Nicstalgia. Here’s to another four years! 🥂

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

This letter was gonna go out last week, but I was in my new allergist’s office figuring out what the hell is going on with my immune system. (TBD.) Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service” was blaring at full volume when I walked in, which made for a positive and energetic atmosphere, followed by Panic! At The Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and Kesha’s “TikTok”. Meanwhile, on the internet, people started doing a sort-of 10-year challenge, sharing pics from 2016. I NEVER thought I’d be nostalgic about the 2010s – and I’m largely not – but here we are.

For every positive sentiment about 2016, there seemed to be an inextricable caveat or a negative one intertwined. It gives the same vibe as a teenager doing a Christmas haul on TikTok and reminding their audience, “First of all, I wanna say how grateful I am for the privilege of getting these things and thank you to my parents…” It’s a moot point, because saying whether a year was “good” or “bad” is subjective (although after the election, things got worse for a lot of people on a macro and micro level). But what’s interesting about the internet is that commonplace communication is a cognitive distortion. Information is interpreted in terms of all-or-nothing or black-and-white thinking, platitudes, generalizations, rage bait, and context collapse. People walk on eggshells because they anticipate not only that what they say will be taken out of context, but that what they say represents an extremely specific, limited POV that neatly fits in a hashtag-able, SEO-able searchable, algo-approved binary. If they recall positive memories of 2016, someone else will remind them of the negative, and vice versa. Why are we like this? So instead of arguing why 2016 was good or bad and why we should or shouldn’t romanticize it, I would like to focus on how the macro and micro sociopolitical happenings of the time (i.e. broadly and individually) impacted my interior design choices.

Do you want the house tour?

A little backstory: I moved to New York City in December 2014. I loved my 181 square foot, strip club-adjacent Times Square studio apartment. I lived across the hall from a talented opera singer and pretended the nightly 10pm applause for the Kinky Boots performers was for me. I had a cool and fun entry-level job in the fashion industry, where I met great people and traveled a lot. There was only one problem – I ran out of money. I was paying $1800/m in rent on a $45k/year salary, and the math was not mathing. So in December 2015, I moved to a 1 bedroom flex with my dear friend from college, the only person for which I’d concede on my “I must live alone” rule. I called up my boys from Wall2Wall and they set me up with a temporary wall that divided our living room in two. And voilà! I was ready to start 2016 on the right foot.

The walls were stark white and my room on the Southeastern corner of the 10th floor got tons of natural light. I had a wonderful view, including the Empire State Building and Madison Square Garden. (Incredible for selfies, terrible for noise pollution and drunk Rangers fans howling nightly at 11pm.) Pinterest still dominated this era, with my distinct design sensibilities complementing the Millennial-coded macro trends of the time. Let’s get into it…

1. The Clarendon Instagram filter

Ahhhhhh, the filter of optimism. This was the filter I’d use to make everything look better and brighter – not because it necessarily looked bad, but because simply taking a picture in natural hues didn’t do my vibrant life justice.

Clarendon might have been initially used to signal in the Instagram Influencer 1.0 Era that set unrealistic expectations for even the most ordinary people, but to me, it also represents being in your mid-20s and living your dream life in the big city. It’s a mix of naivety, hope, and joy from not being jaded (yet) and realizing, Yeah, my life is kinda like Sex and the City, actually.

2. The deer antlers

Everything was white and gold!! And these antlers were hanging onto the wall for their dear life by a single velcro Command strip. Despite the feminine touch of glitter, its rustic hipster aesthetic is so “Stomp Clap Hey” I can’t stand it. Deer antlers were like my equivalent of a mustache motif or owl necklace. Now, it’s giving Hobby Lobby.

3. The Queen poster

You can tell so much about a person based on their music-themed decor. This is my dad’s poster that he’s had probably since before I was born. I feel badly for cutting it to fit that frame, which I think has been since relegated to my parents’ basement. Super iconique though. This was the only apartment I had from age 22-34 that didn’t have decorative vinyl records on the walls. This was the point where things from my childhood were still considered obsolete and not readily available for purchase (e.g. Britney and Spice Girls vinyls).

4. The world map

I had this poster in my apartments from 2013-2016, which was peak #Wanderlust era. Millennials, getting the shit end of the stick per usual – graduating college during an economic recession, housing market collapse, ZIRP era, unprecedentedly gargantuan student loan debt, etc. – were really sold on the idea of “experiences versus things”. This map didn’t represent places I’d been or could afford to go, but rather the idea of them.

5. The DIY glitter shadowbox

I’d DIY’d a couple different pieces of wall art to celebrate moving to New York City. I don’t think I have this anymore, but to me, it represents how resourceful, driven, scrappy, and self-starting you need to be in order to get by. In your mid 20s, there’s a ‘fake it til you make it’ ethos that comes into play as you climb up the proverbial ladder. As Frank Sinatra (and me in my preschool graduation) once sang, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere!”

6. The motivational quote poster

I originally had a portrait of me done by an artist at the Hermès Manhasset store opening party hanging here (as you can see below), but I replaced it with this one from a now defunct Brooklyn printing company. REMEMBER WHAT YOU ARE. A MOTHER F#*%ING SUPERSTAR. Motivational!

I remember my Grammy seeing this in my apartment and she read it aloud, uncensored, in a matter-of-factly voice. I wanted to do great things, and this poster reminded me I needed to have thick skin in order to get there. I also miss the days before “Fuck” was written on everything. Like you should not be able to get a Rae Dunn mug from Home Goods with that word on it.

7. The Y7 yoga poster

When I tell you I loved Y7, I am not exaggerating. I put my hair in a messy bun, put on some gangsta rap, and handled it. (Or whatever that Pinterest meme said.) This poster was one of their very early pieces of merch, referencing Kendrick Lamar’s song “Swimming Pools (Drank)”. Clever, though the studio would have a fall from grace – at least temporarily, in 2020 – because of their pretty egregious appropriation of Black culture. But from 2015-2016, I was still really into nailing inversions and challenging asanas, feeling relaxed by blaring hip hop music. (In 2017, I got certified in restorative yoga, and now all I wanna do is lay down under a blanket and lay in Supta Baddha Konasana for 45 uninterrupted minutes.)

8. The quatrefoil mirror

Why were these mirrors so popular? The world may never know. Put one of these babies next to a bed with a teal damask curtain or a black and white Paris-themed room and you were the epitome of class, elegance, and sophistication. For some reason, I needed to have every square inch of my walls filled, including this secondary, largely useless mirror. (My full-length mirror and giant Ikea closet is not pictured.)

9. The shitty Ikea lamp

I hated this lamp so much and yet there are still times when I find its simplicity charming. This is probably because I remember that lamps are expensive. Millennials really rode the wave of Planned Obsolescence, where we kept buying more, yet shittier quality, stuff. I should’ve just gotten one $500 lamp and called it a day.

10. The fake flowers and real plants

This was around the time when Millennials started becoming “plant moms” and whatnot. I somewhat understood the trend – we were the first generation to normalize childfree living in favor of plants, pets, vacations, etc. – but I was still too young to be in this life stage myself. I was also too irresponsible and forgetful to not kill my plants. I had a few cacti, as pictured here, because they did not require watering. (Solutions!) The fake flowers were my attempt at looking romantic and darling, but now I prefer real flowers and fake plants.

11. The champagne bottle vase

One thing about me is I’ve always loved prosecco. My friend had given me the print behind the vase. “I only drink champagne on two occasions: When I’m in love, and when I’m not. - Coco Chanel” Lmao soooo me.

The cheap Freixenet bottles were very cute – black and gold was IT in my book – and made great vases for my fake flowers. Their chalky texture matched the human skull decor which I also cherished. (I got it at TJ Maxx in the post-Halloween clearance section. Where was Pluto in 2015-2016?! Something dark was happening.)

12. The gold dinosaur

Another fun DIY project. It’s giving “Rawr XD” and once I got a hold of the gold spray paint, I absolutely could not be stopped. Me spray painting with the windows closed on several occasions explains a lot…

13. The Urban Outfitters record player

I originally bought it in 2012, and my mom asked me a couple months ago if she could FINALLY get rid of it. It was such bad quality, sounded horribly, and probably warped any record I attempted to play on it. However, I thought this tomato red record player was the epitome of style. When my friends saw this, they would know that I was super into music!! (As if me playing music 24/7 was not already a strong enough signal.)

I would not recommend this cheap retro electronic to anyone, but I am fascinated by its nowstalgic purpose. These record players were targeted toward young people – those who had not yet crossed The Chasm™ and realized the full completion of a 20-year trend cycle – who’d never had a record player of their own. Now, post Chasm, I think it’s super charming that kids want iPods. History keeps on repeating…

14. The Buddha piggy bank

I got this from a very cute gift shop in Hell’s Kitchen because it was so cute I refused to leave the store without it. Being a very earnest person, it was probably the first time I truly started to understand irony. 2016 was the last time I was apolitical, and for obvious reasons, that all started to shift post-election. The irony of a Buddha piggy bank is not lost on me now.

15. The minimal amount of books

I’ve read an average of 25 books per year since 2019, but before then? I’m not gonna pretend like I was well-read. I’ve always been into pop culture, fashion, music, art, and biographies of public figures in those spaces – this has not changed. But the sheer lack of volume is hilarious to me now. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why was an extreme hyper-fixation of mine, and I’ve read everything by David Sedaris. But now, I’m glad I actually read books – and engage with them critically and/or enthusiastically – instead of primarily using them as shelf decor.

16. The terrarium

In the same vein as #12, the real plants, I have no idea why I needed a terrarium. Why would I want dirt about 2 inches away from my bed? Reckless. But geometry was in! Honeycomb patterns and geometric shapes were en vogue! (As you can see in the previous picture, I had an empty gold geometric picture frame as shelf decor.) Gold was in; I definitely spray painted that gold teddy bear too. I think it was a gummy bear jar.

17. C. Wonder representation

I got my little Aries and N candles (been an astrology girlie since 2002…) at C. Wonder in Columbus Circle during their liquidation sale after they filed for bankruptcy. Forget sample sales, now THAT’s a deal! The brand was started by Tory Burch’s ex-husband when he was still the Chairman of Tory Burch, which was a problem for Tory Burch (the brand and the woman). I miss when personalization culture was more primitive in this way, when you could just get a candle with your initial on it, in contrast to our phones surveilling our conversations in order to deliver eerily topical advertisements every waking second of every day.

18. The fashion references

While now I find my obsession with fashion (as a concept, not an industry) funny and a bit cringe, then, my environment was ASPIRATIONAL!!!!! I remember getting that “don’t quit your day dream” tree log thing at Housing Works for $2 and sincerely taking that message to heart. “It’s not just the dress but the life you are living in it” (a Diana Vreeland quote) meant everything to me. I was high-key obsessed with Alexander McQueen, Diane Von Furstenberg, Giorgio Armani, Marc Jacobs, and other historical and contemporary fashion designers. I wanted to make a career in fashion, and that’s what I was doing. “She believed she could, so she did!”

19. The Pamela Barsky canvas bag

I didn’t need any more bags, so I filled it with stuffing and made it into a pillow! I still have it somewhere. It says, “new york makes me want to rip off my clothes and dance down the street screaming i love this place and have no intention of ever leaving.” Dramatic and true!! That is exactly how I felt about New York in 2016!!!

I did end up leaving for a couple of years, kicking and screaming, because it was May 2020. I had no idea my previously imagined plans would fall apart the way they did. But now that I’m back (nowhere near Penn Station this time LOL) “I have no intention of ever leaving” rings true once again. I am becoming the truest, happiest, most fulfilled, most actualized, best version of myself, and despite the ups and downs, twists and turns, trials and tribbies, New York is home. 2016 was good and bad, but so is every year.

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!! New year, new look, new Paige.1 Compulsory revisit of my favorite New Year’s song:

Updates from me:

• ICYMI, last week I shared my 2025 Whimsy Report aka. all the delightful, primarily offline stuff I did in 2025. Enjoy!!

• The Nicstalgia Presents: Pop Culture Advent Calendar, which recalled the 20 year anniversary of entertainment and celebrity culture happenings, is fully unlocked!!!! Can’t wait to do more of these fun browser-based projects this year.

• My book of essays, which I intended to be my defining project of 2025, is on pause. Once I started working on it consistently, my writing got better. I realized I could actually get paid to write things, which inspired me to write for Not Here to Make Friends and Are.na Annual. Professionalizing my talents is so uncomfortable, but 2026 is about raising the stakes. No dream is off the table!!!!!!!!!

• As for 2026’s Nicstalgia projects, I will be doing more archiving work (mainly because my phone apps stop working after I’ve used 99.999% of my storage), continuing My Digital Archiving Project from 2024. (Read about MDAP here and here.) Will also update the digital PMR Zine and make a physical version.

• Wanted to show you select niche pop culture/physical media-related items I was thoughtfully gifted for Christmas! I’m screaming and crying because my amazing sister handmade me my very own mini Blockbuster and custom Who Is It? (aka. Guess Who?)!! Gifts from my boyfriend included a Christina Aguilera doll from The Museum of Nostalgia and Don’t Trust The B— in Apt. 23 on DVD. (It was recently taken off streaming. I was so desperate to finish watching, I was this close 🤏🏼 to asking Eric Andre, who was in my fitness class a couple months ago, if he had a copy.)

• I’ve seen several olive green jackets with black suede knee-high boots that tie in the back. We’re so back…to 2016. They must have seen my chart!

🎳 I had such a great time at Everything 90s Podcast’s 90s vs. 2000s All Star Edition!!!! I represented Team 2000s, debating why Nintendo Wii is the superior console to Playstation. Watch the episode to find out who won, and stay til the end for a special announcement from Shaleena!! (Watch Shaleena on Nicstalgia here and revisit 90s vs. 2000s Trends on Everything 90s here!)

🎶 is the sole reason I don’t believe in the myth of musical “taste freeze” after age 33. He made awesome pop + dance, indie/alternative, hip hop/R&B, and overall time capsule playlists for music from 2025. (Linked on Spotify, but also on Apple Music. My favorite Fluxblog playlist right now is 100% Pure Love: Dance Pop 1991-1995!!!!!)

📸 Friend of the letter K.D. Kemp has one of my absolute FAVORITE early internet-inspired websites!! If you are interested in physical media, K.D. Kemp’s Complete Guide to Collecting Physical Media is absolutely required reading!! Take this quiz to find out which K.D. Kemp button you are. I’m the camera!

📼 I’m so proud of JD from titanicfan_97 for surpassing 5,000 copies of Titanic on VHS!! The Titanic on VHS museum is officially open in Tarpon Springs, FL. (Read my highly entertaining interview with JD here!)

👄 I’m obsessed with VHS Dates, even though it’s original scripted content mostly featuring comedians from LA’s famed comedic improv troupe, The Groundlings. That being said…how do I audition for this???

🏍️ I was literally laughing out loud at someone’s realization that the owners of the NYC performance rehearsal space Ripley Grier are in fact real people! Basically, a dance studio owner saw a guy on a motorcycle outside of her building in 1982, and the rest is history!

🚗 The best recent commercials geared toward Millennials: Lil Wayne for Alexa+ and Sisqó for Toyotathon.

🥂 From the Bustle archives: Why “The Countdown” Is The Perfect ‘O.C.’ Episode. I wouldn’t give Oliver any credit, but it truly is a great episode.

💿 My algorithm may over-index this because I’m a physical media collector, archivist, and retro tech enthusiast, but 2026 will apparently be the year – or “revenge of” – analog and physical media. Sounds like a good thing at first glance, but I’m not here to say “I told you so” because I “predicted” it. I didn’t. I meaningfully engage with cultural artifacts during every stage of their popularity (and obsolescence) and clearly recognize the unintended consequences of unbridled performative consumption. It’s fueled by the hyper-acceleration of trend cycles on social media – even if that trend is, paradoxically, about offline activities or objects.2 While some takes on this “trend” are bad, framing physical media and offline life as yet another thing to consume and perform, these ones are good:

• from ’s you’re not a digital minimalist: “You do not need to buy anything to save yourself from the internet. You need to leave the internet to save yourself from the internet.”

• from ’s Why Physical Media Shouldn’t be Treated as a Trend: “When physical media is framed as a trend, consumption risks being further mistaken for creativity….when creativity becomes inseparable from its ability to sell, when cultural signals are optimised for engagement rather than meaning, we have to ask whether we’re witnessing artistic expression, or simply a highly stylised mechanism for capitalism.”

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Reed, Taylor, Alejandra, and Jess! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

In the words of Celine Dion, “Another year has gone by!!!!” Despite the fact that my year reads like a soap opera, I made the most of every curveball thrown my way. I’m going into 2026 having finally reached my longtime goal of breaking out of a creative silo.

I fully embraced my creative practice in its many forms, met awesome new friends and collaborators, did a lot of cool things, and hit the tip of the iceberg as to where it can all grow from here.

Nicstalgia is more to me than a weekly newsletter about pop culture, nostalgia, media, or entertainment – it’s truly a lifestyle.

Having fun will always be my North Star, so this is my highlight reel. Enjoy Nicstalgia HQ’s 2025 Whimsy Report!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for everything and see you next week/year!

Buying a secondhand iMac G3

I finally found my ultimate Wish List item on Facebook Marketplace with local pickup: an iMac G3!!!!!! (I wrote about that experience here, the surprising contents I found on the computer here, and a deep dive into my favorite movie genre, 2000s Comedies with Prominent iMac G3 Placement, here!)

Participating in the Childhood Delusions Film Festival

There’s a home video of me almost hitting my brand new baby sister on her first day home from the hospital with a [hollow plastic] baseball bat. I figured someday it would be on America’s Funniest Home Videos, but I did one even better in 2025: the Childhood Delusions Film Festival at the Kent Theater in Brooklyn! It was equal parts heartwarming and surreal watching my own home video on a movie screen, especially alongside friends I’ve known since high school, and hearing people laugh along. Watch the video here.

Sending Britney Spears Valentines

I sent out vintage Britney Spears foil Valentines cards to paid Nicstalgia subscribers in several states across the country. Sending snail mail was so exciting and delightful!!!

Using a physical calendar

I absolutely do not write on my vintage Britney calendars, and the dates on these particular ones are actually presented in a relatively illegible format, but I LOVE flipping the page every month. It’s the simple things.

Going to karaoke 8 times

I absolutely love singing and I realized that I need to do it as much as humanly possible. My favorite songs to sing were melodramatic showstoppers: “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson, “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and “The Reason” by Celine Dion, “Cry” by Faith Hill, “These Dreams” by Heart, and “All I Ever Wanted” by Mariah Carey.

Being told that I look like a member of The Corrs

Now THIS is how you flirt with me!!!! Meeting a man with as much (actually way more) music knowledge than I have was a tough feat, but mission accomplished! :)

Making guestbooks for my events

For my birthday, I had friends sign a dead-stock off-brand dollar store framed photo of Hilary Duff. For my New York City homecoming party, I had friends write notes, draw pictures, and place stickers on pages in the mini notebook with my high school senior picture on it. I unfortunately always forget to take pictures at events, and this is a really nice way to capture the moment in time.

Getting a permanent bracelet

I got it done by THE SOURCED STUDIO and love it! So subtle and pretty. The owner said I’m like Carrie Bradshaw (complimentary).

Making my Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

The first iteration of my Physical Media Renaissance™ archiving project was featured in Rhizome’s SMALL BATCH: A Dataset Farmer’s Market curated by LARPA. Check out the zine here, more on the project here, and the podcast episode that inspired it all here. (The doc is long overdue for an update, but this project has been going for 3+ years strong! When everyone starts talking about “return of the analog” in 2026, remember PMR!!)

Performing in The Dance Collective’s Adult Showcase

Being a part of TDC community this year was so rewarding, and I was so excited to dance a jazz routine to “Sparkling Diamonds” from Moulin Rouge. Check out more about the experience here, and the article my lovely fellow dancer Michelle Ruiz wrote about performing as an adult for Bustle – in which I am referred to as a “born performer” !!!! – here.

Seeing the Celine Dion bathroom

I’d been wanting to stop at the Celine Dion/Titanic themed bathrooms at The Baroness in Long Island City, and it totally met my expectations. See the full experience here.

Buying a terrycloth sweatsuit

I have been a huge fan of terrycloth ever since the Spice Girls wore terry robes in Spice World. I love the color green and was channeling Paris and Nicole in my matching set. This is the #1 outfit I wore the most often this year.

Drawing in my fashion sketchbook

My friend and I started an Art Club this year where the two of us would meet biweekly and chat about our individual and shared artistic pursuits. (And drink wine, of course.) During one of these sessions, I took out my fashion sketchbook and drew characters from Mean Girls in their best outfits. I’ve always loved drawing and coloring, and having the croquis already there as an outline makes it easy and fun.

Collecting vintage pewter picture frames

My eBay search history is so deranged, but this particular collection was fun to start. Crazy how the most obscure things, like a picture frame, can jog your memory.

Going to a lot of concerts

and I went to a lot of shows this year: of Montreal, Kylie Minogue, Charli XCX, Sleigh Bells, Vengaboys, Scissor Sisters, Kesha, Rilo Kiley, Garbage, Chappell Roan, MARINA, the B52s, DEVO, and Chromeo. Sleigh Bells was so fun. I’m a lifelong fan of the Vengaboys and B52s, and they were AMAZING. Kylie and Scissor Sisters were high up on my bucket list.

Also saw Simple Plan, Avril Lavigne (!!!!!!), Aly & AJ, and Melanie C (!!!!!!)’s DJ set. I’m very mad that there were allegedly 79687 people in front of me in the digital ticket queue for Hilary Duff tickets – because if I’m not going, who is? But even so, there will be many fun concert opps in 2026.

Making a custom Bubblegum Tote Bag

I love making bootleg pop culture merch, and this summer I wanted a tote bag I could bring everywhere. Mission accomplished! It includes dozens of logos of early 2000s bubblegum pop acts: Mikaila, A*Teens, Eden’s Crush, Dream, Wild Orchid, Willa Ford, M2M, S Club 7, Lindsay Pagano, Hoku, Samantha Mumba, Soluna, Myra, Play, Blaque, 702, 3LW, Innosense, Nobody’s Angel, Kaci Battaglia, PYT, and i5.

Hearing Lady Gaga’s The Fame in its entirety

Best date night of the year was at Anything. (Sadly, they close this week.) I walked into the bar/ restaurant and “LoveGame” was playing. Next came “Paparazzi”. I thought, “There’s no. way.” How did they know I was coming??? And just like that, The Fame was played in its entirety as I enjoyed my dinner and cocktail.

Writing “The American flag’s pop culture irony” for Nicstalgia

I’d been sitting on a piece about layers of irony for a long time, and I’m so glad to have finally gotten it out. Read it, and see a collage of all 25 Old Navy Fourth of July t-shirts, here.

Playing “What Do You Meme?”

I went on a girls’ trip this summer (where I only knew the organizer) and had a blast! We played the What Do You Meme? game, and I had fun not just because I won (Aries tendencies), but because it was really fun trying to glean which person picked which card. I love meeting new people and making friends, and this was a fantastic group. To know and be known is the best gift of life, no?

Getting obsessed with Gilmore Girls olive oil

Okay so it’s not technically Gilmore Girls olive oil, but it’s olive oil in one of the towns that inspired Stars Hollow. Every store in New Milford, CT is filled with GG Easter eggs.

Celebrating Kim Cattrall’s 69th birthday

My brilliant friend Kat Thek co-hosted Oh, Honey: The Kim Cattrall 69k in celebration of the inimitable Kim Cattrall’s 69th birthday. I did not take place in the running, because running is not my journey, but I did take part in the viewing party. A pic of me winning a round of SATC trivia was in the New York Post!

Teaching pop culture-themed elliptical fitness classes

I taught 181 classes in 365 days! Though Elliptica has closed, my playlists will live on forever. Check out my class theme archive here. (Sidebar: If you’re in NYC, I will be teaching dance cardio classes in Flatiron starting next week!)

Reading from What Not to Wear at the Lowbrow Book Club launch

I was SO excited to read at and ’s party to celebrate the launch and rebrand! The theme was unhinged and deranged fashion and beauty essays, and I knew exactly what would fit the bill: A book by the hosts of The BBC’s What Not to Wear from 2002.

Taking a cross-country sister road trip

My sister moved away :( but we had our Crossroads moment :) across 9 states or so. We saw a giant Oscar Meyer wiener car at the gas station and a horse and buggy haul ass across a highway overpass. (It was Pennsylvania, after all.) Were we bored over the course of 19 hours? Absolutely not, because we listened to Like Every 2000s Song Ever.

Writing “Gym, Tan, Money Laundering” for Not Here to Make Friends

I was so excited to write a piece for Not Here to Make Friends, the zine about reality TV. “Gym, Tan, Money Laundering” is about Italian American representation on reality TV, particularly RHONJ and Jersey Shore. I mentioned in my piece that the gift shops in New York only make “HUG ME I’M 1/2 ITALIAN” shirts, so I made my own “HUG ME I’M 100% ITALIAN” shirt to wear to the launch event! Read an excerpt from the piece here and buy NHTMF Vol. 3 here.

Reading at Angelica’s Amazing Night Volume III

I was in great company at Angelica’s Amazing Night Volume III, hosted by my very funny, fellow Italian American friend Angelica Pasquini. I read Bottled Emotion horoscopes, which I originally wrote in 2024 as a supplement to the long-lost Bonne Bell fragrance’s epic 90s website. I’ve since been inspired to remake the fragrances myself, but we didn’t get to that this year. Maybe in 2026.

Being referred to as “a Gen-Z person who has a theory”

My Nicstalgia piece, the Halloween Costume Matrix, was mentioned in ’s Substack by the lovely . When I told my sister, she said, “Which one? You have a lot of theories.” LOL.

I’m proud of my age (35), can flex that I haven’t had any work done, and have made really cool friends in their 40s and 50s that make me hopeful for the future and minimally afraid of aging. However, it’s good to know I can pass for Gen Z. Now I know how Alexa Demie feels.

Having my collage shown in an art gallery

My collage, “Obsolescence”, is currently on exhibit at URSA Gallery in Bridgeport, CT. It’s a part of the Parallel Cosmologies show, curated by Helen Kauder, showcasing collages from CT artists. Going to the opening made me so proud; I almost cried when I saw how beautifully everything was put together.

Buying a gigantic non-functional belt

One of my favorite 2000s fashion trends is a non-functional belt, so I got one for myself! I’m obsessed! (Real Nicstalgia-heads remember the Realistic 2000s Fashion episode of the video podcast from 2022! The episode is supplemented by the Pinterest board that includes dresses over jeans, “going out tops”, business casual, thin useless scarves, non-functional belts, very small shrugs/cropped vests, and more.)

Meeting Mona May, my favorite costume designer

Mona May has had a prolific career, designing for Clueless, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, Never Been Kissed, and many others. I was excited to meet her at her The Fashion of Clueless book event in Brooklyn. I didn’t wanna be crazy by bringing all of my DVDs for her to sign (I just brought Romy & Michele), but she says I should have!! They say never to meet your heroes, but she was so gracious and kind. She canonized what she calls a “weird but still cool” (e.g. campy, over-the-top, hyper-feminine, quirky) look that I’ve always admired.

Getting back to dance class

I found my new favorite jazz class!!!! It’s called SLUTTY JAZZ at GOOD MOVE in Williamsburg. I’d been to the studio years ago, and it’s great to be back. Davon is an amazing instructor – dynamic yet patient, with a focus on technique.

Coding the Pop Culture Advent Calendar

I took the School for Poetic Computation’s HTTPoetics course over the summer and was so excited to make some more fun websites. Nicstalgia Presents: Pop Culture Advent Calendar, looking back on celebrity and entertainment culture from 2005, is my favorite thing I’ve made this year.

Writing “My Pool House or Yours” for Are.na Annual

I was ecstatic to write about the swimming pools of The O.C. for Are.na Annual!! The theme of this year’s book was ‘pools’, and I interpreted that quite literally. I’ll share more about the piece with you in the new year, but in the meantime, you can buy the book here and check out my “Pools of The O.C.” Are.na board here.

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Reed, Taylor, Alejandra, and Jess! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

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If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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I’m pleased to report that I’ve been celebrating Christmas as much as humanly possible!!!!! Aside from being the woman who drank the most Black Irish in the city of New York, I also started a “Trees” album on my phone. When all of my travels are done, I will have seen Christmas trees in six states! So simple, yet so whimsical.

I went to see the tacky, over-the-top Christmas lights in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn and they did not disappoint. It’s truly the Times Square of Christmastime. There were multiple full-sized Auntie Anne’s trucks, hot cocoa stands, branded merch, and large groups led by designated tour guides. It’s insane, and I enjoyed every second of it.

I also went to see the Christina Aguilera: Christmas in Paris concert movie in theaters prior to its streaming release, and – as always – I had a lot of thoughts. More on that below. (It’s a long one today! It’ll cut off in your email inbox so make sure to click through to open the whole thing.)

In case you missed it:

• It’s imperative that we stop naming arenas dumb things. Welcome back to The Meadows!!

• Make Mariah Carey Black Irish-themed cocktails, but don’t drink them consecutively like I did!!

• Almost all of the Pop Culture Advent Calendar doors are open!! :) Tell me which one was your favorite!

• There is still time to gift an upgraded subscription to Nicstalgia!! You can also do a one-time gift here. Support a starving artist this Christmas!! (seriously lol) and/or you can share the letter, tell someone fun about it, and subscribe if you haven’t already :)

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I personally love Christina Aguilera’s My Kind of Christmas album and thoroughly enjoy singing it, to the chagrin of everyone around me. In Christina’s case, “My Kind of Christmas” is a melismatic one. Though her signature melisma, growls, and vocal runs deeply permeate (and some say ruin) each song, I consider the album a classic in the Millennial Christmas Music Canon. This year marks the 25th anniversary of My Kind of Christmas, along with the introduction of a celebratory album and concert film, Christina Aguilera: Christmas in Paris. There were three main components of the show:

1. Christina performing on stage at the famous Eiffel Tower landmark, backed by a band, orchestra, dancers, and vocalists

2. Christina performing on stage with female dancers at the Crazy Horse Paris, a cabaret and strip club known for its nude dancers

3. Christina exploring Paris while reciting an emotional monologue, in between every block of 2-4 songs

I’ve seen Xtina once in concert, 9 months pregnant, stretched out on a chaise lounge. It was amazing. After not being engaged with her material for 10+ years (although I consider Stripped God-tier), I was really interested to get into with Christina’s new era with fresh eyes and ears. This clean slate in Millennial audience expectations is exactly what Christina was hoping for, even though none of these are new songs. Sonically, she was fabulous, per usual. Christina is as vocally talented as she has always been. If you’re someone like me who doesn’t want to skimp on high notes and big belts, Christina will always deliver. Sadly, there was no key change in the revamped version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, but I’ll live.

While Christina’s vocal performance is consistent, she doesn’t want the audience to mistake her longevity for inertia or legacy status for a nostalgia play. She repeated that she did not want this concert to be about nostalgia somewhere between 2 and 4 times, despite recognizing that Christmas in and of itself, like any tradition, tends to be high-key nostalgic. I understand the point she’s trying to make though. She has been fighting being pigeonholed her entire career and wants to become a legacy act without becoming a watered-down, washed up, or caricatural version of herself. Seems more like the Streisand Effect to me, bringing attention to her fear of being a nostalgic has-been when no one sees her that way. I don’t!

IMHO, the best part of the show was featuring another legacy artist with relentless energy, dynamism, and talent. I nearly jumped out of my seat and choked on a kernel of popcorn with excitement when living legend Sheila E. played “Little Drummer Boy”!!!12 In addition to Sheila E., she sang “Ave Maria” as a duet with French singer-songwriter Yseult. It was so beautiful!! But Christina is not known for being an easy collaborator. She has always emitted a salty energy, likely due to the fact that she has been pejoratively compared to Britney Spears every day since 1993.3 Literally a dozen celebrities have directly or indirectly spoken out about her being heartbreakingly rude. Mariah spoke of her “questionable behavior”. She even apparently had beef with Mickey Mouse!

Christina included her most famous and contentious collaboration in the Moulin Rouge-inspired part of the show. Although I’m sure that Mýa, Pink, and Lil’ Kim got their bag for that “Lady Marmalade” sample, this solo version’s lyrics were adjusted accordingly.4 The part where Missy Elliott gives shoutouts, “Christina. P!nk. Lil’ Kim. Mýa. Rockwilder, baby. Moulin Rouge. Misdemeanor here.” was replaced by the backing vocalists repeating CHRISTINA. CHRISTINA. CHRISTINA. over and over. I was so amused by this. It was as if Christina was trying to remind everyone that she’s still number one on the call sheet, despite being in competition with no one.

The burlesque subset of songs also included a reworked, oversexed jazz version of “Genie in a Bottle” and “Santa Baby”-ified version of Burlesque’s “Express”. She holds on tightly onto her diva status and sex-positive ethos but still strives to distance herself from her bubblegum baby debut era. Not that she’s a family-oriented artist, or that I am old-fashioned, but the overt sexuality – during a Christmas special – felt like a bit of an overcorrection to me. It’s completely valid to want to be seen and appreciated in her current form rather than reduced and compared to a teenage version of herself, but unfortunately, Christina’s physical appearance has been more famous than her music for over a decade.

In her relentless pursuit of continued perfection – including the ultra-skinny frame and extraordinary financial success of her youth – she has become the Bionic woman: perfectly engineered to meet the media and society’s real and perceived aesthetic expectations of her. I’m not being dramatic when I say her cosmetic surgeon should’ve had a line in the credits. There were so many gratuitous shots of her disruptively large breast implants as she penned a letter in a hotel room, her alleged BBL as she ran in slow motion at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and her chiseled-to-the-bone nose showcasing her flawless profile as she dreamily looked up into the starry night sky.5 I was anxious that her outrageous, nearly floor-length hair extensions would get caught in something as she passed by the famous [metal] locks that lovers and friends had secured on the bridge before her.

I found myself analyzing the movie’s choices in showcasing her body as much as her music. Maybe this is something other viewers would not notice, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how every scene was engineered to make her look as young and desirable as possible. This really got me thinking about the state of body positivity, negativity, neutrality, and acceptance in the current state of the world. (It’s bad.) Post-2010s-era body positivity sentiment has arisen, saying we shouldn’t comment on people’s bodies anymore. I’m actually gonna disagree here. This is not about policing people’s physical appearances, nor is it about celebrity “accountability”, transparency, or obligation to inform the public when they got work done. It’s about instating media literacy and rebuilding a modicum of shared reality. When the words of the year are “rage bait”, “slop”, and “brain rot”, it is imperative that we stop believing what we see at face value. Stars are just like us, in that they have the same insecurities and hangups that ‘normal people’ do. Stars are not just like us, in that they are often financially resourced and professionally required to strictly adhere to a prohibitively narrow beauty ideal.

Christina has had a LOT of cosmetic work done, to the point where I was repeatedly distracted from her talent. Sure, her work is her business and prerogative. But weaponizing choice feminism as a defense for plastic surgery is an ignorant refusal to recognize that we all exist under societal hierarchies, constructs, norms & conventions that make people so insecure and fixated on their appearance they spend all of their time, money, and attention buying things to raise their self-esteem. Aguilera, a female celebrity in an aestheticized industry, is particularly vulnerable to this trap, as society places greater (and more volatile) value on her riches, power, and visibility. Especially in our current political climate, it’s important to work together to dismantle oppressive, unrealistic, unattainable, and physically/psychologically dangerous beauty standards. By these standards, she is an objectively beautiful person. Gorgeous! Stunning! But the fact that she is becoming the blueprint for someone who wants to get a facelift in their forties just makes me so sad.

In parallel to beauty standards in the year 2025, I was also thrown by the seemingly earnest message of it all. Christina has always had High School Bully energy, like the girl who said she’s your “best friend” then talked shit about you immediately afterward. I’m all for growing, learning, evolving, and becoming a better person, but I don’t need her to be “healed”, I need her to make good music. Dressing super cunty in a church and gazing off into the distance was campy and unserious, but this unintentionally imbued the film with comedic heart and landed well with the girls, gays, and theys who were in my New York City movie theater. It seems odd that she brings up faith so explicitly until this artistic choice is placed in broader industry context. Christian and Country were two prominent mainstream genres in 2025, making its listeners part of valuable market segments. Music industry decisions (both creative and financial) based on geopolitics isn’t new though. It’s like how immigration patterns of the late 90s and early 2000s led to America’s “Latin Explosion”, and specifically, Mi Reflejo. (Banger!!)

To the traditionally religious, something like this would seem blasphemous (e.g. Madonna and Lady Gaga using religious imagery, particularly Catholic imagery, which is fabulously grandiose and ornate). But to the average, Middle America person who has a more modern take on religion (i.e. socially conservative), it’s like she’s pandering to reach a broader audience (à la Gwen Stefani). I talked to my friend Colette Shade, author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything about what being a socially progressive person of faith can look like, and while it is absolutely possible, something about Christina’s performance of religion felt too uncanny.

All of her monologues were in a similar vein of late-stage therapy-speak adoption, trying to prove that she is a distinctly different version of herself. Tonally, it sounded like she was doing a voiceover for a MasterCard commercial, supported by a dramatic and sentimental orchestral soundtrack:

“Now, I still have that fire, but it burns differently. It’s steadier, deeper, more purposeful.

Reinvention isn’t running away from the past, it’s honoring it while making space for what’s next. Music has been a constant through every chapter – it’s my language, my diary, my connection to the world.

Though every sound, every lyric, every reinvention, I’ve found new ways to speak my truth. Paris feels like the perfect mirror for that – timeless but ever-changing, rooted in tradition but fearless about the future.

It reminds me that artistry never stops evolving. The city rebuilds itself every day, yet somehow, it always remains Paris.

I think that’s the gift of longevity – learning how to change without losing yourself. To trust your instincts. To keep creating, even when no one’s watching. To follow the spark that started it all.

After 25 years, I don’t take any of this for granted – the music, the audience, the chance to still do what I love. As I look to the future, I feel that same spark that brought me here in the first place – the desire to create, to connect, to keep evolving, because the heart of it all is love.

Twenty five years later, I’m still here, still grateful, still inspired, and still believing that the best chapters are yet to be written.

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, but it left me wanting more for Christina. (Notice I said FOR not FROM.) She wants to continue writing her story, albeit in a chicken-or-egg kind of way. Who will let go of Christina’s past first, the media, the public, or her? As soon as the resentment of being second place – to Britney, to Pink, to younger pop artists, to her younger self – no longer rules her self-perception, or at least the packaging of her “reinvention” narrative, she will be able to move forward as an artist.

Now, she’s still stuck in a transitional phase. What does an original, monocultural Main Character do when access to Main Character Energy has been not only democratized, but obliterated? She ended her concert by saying, “Be good to yourself.” It reminded me of Jerry Springer’s old sign off, “Take care of yourself and each other”, and how now, people are more obsessed with themselves – their lives, their screens, their individualized algorithms – than with her. Aguilera mentions in the monologue above to keep creating, even when no one’s watching. I hope she does, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll have in store.

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Reed, Taylor, Alejandra, and Jess! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

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• Met the lovely Polyester team IRL at their NYC event at Café Forgot to celebrate The Print Anthology Zine 2025. Also breathed the same air as Sky Ferreira.

• Had such a fun Newsletter Marketing for Creatives workshop at DaVinci Art Alliance with !! My first time in Philly was fabulous.

• Speaking of which, I got to see Callie IRL – yayayay!!! My flip phone summer piece was included in her recent video on privacy phones.

• I saw my lifelong idol Melanie C aka. Sporty Spice’s DJ set in Brooklyn!!!! It’s hard being a 5’1 3/4” woman in General Admission, but I made it through. One of my 2026 goals is to have her DJ my fitness class!!!

In case you missed it:

• Have fun making some Mariah Carey Black Irish-themed cocktails!!

• We are already over halfway done with the Pop Culture Advent Calendar!!

• Give the gift of pop culture scholarship and support an independent writer – gift or upgrade your subscription to Nicstalgia!!

America’s greatest bipartisan unifier is dumb stadium names. Everyone across the country has unfortunately yet inevitably had to deal with the selling out of their beloved local sports arena or concert venue to the bloated corporate sponsor du jour. Some names aren’t bad, like Barclays Center or Chase Center, because you forget they’re named after financial institutions and not surnames. Taco Bell Arena, Crypto.com Arena, FTX Arena, KFC Yum! Center, Smoothie King Center, Little Caesars Arena, Canadian Tire Centre, Quicken Loans Arena, Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, FedEx Forum, Wells Fargo Center, Xfinity Mobile Arena, Pepsi Center, Vivitar Smart Home Arena, and Jiffy Lube Live are a different story.

I’m from Central Connecticut, home of The Meadows, one of the largest amphitheaters in the country. Yes, it is the venue featured on MTV News, where 30 “rowdy and inebriated” ticket holders were arrested at a 1996 Pearl Jam concert.

The Meadows was recently renamed “The Meadows Music Theatre” after having been named something stupid from 2000-2025. Despite still being colloquially referred to as ‘The Meadows’, its actual names have been the ctnow.com Meadows Music Theatre, New England Dodge Music Center, Comcast Theatre, and Xfinity Theatre. (I personally think it should be called Dave Matthews Band Northeast Headquarters.) While the change may not be permanent because “a new naming rights deal is being sought”, let’s celebrate its return with a ranking of 10 concerts I wish I attended there!!1

10. Frosty the Show, Man! • 12/17/03

What better way to celebrate the holidays than seeing an absolutely stacked lineup of random singers, most far past their 2000s prime: Fefe Dobson, JC Chasez, Jessica Simpson, Mýa, Simple Plan, and Maroon 5.

9. With Teeth Summer Amphitheater Tour • 6/20/06

Me at the time would not have been ready for this LOL but now, hearing Nine Inch Nails playing hits like “Closer”, “Only”, and “Head Like a Hole” at The Meadows would be sick. And with Peaches as an opener??? “Fuck The Pain Away” AND “Impeach My Bush” during the GWB era??? Iconique.

8. Tournado in support of Move Along • 10/27/06

According to an inaccurate SPIN article saying this date on the tour took place in Poughkeepsie, “The All-American Rejects didn’t want to “Move Along” on tour by themselves, so their taking a quartet of bands along for the ride.” Would’ve been sick to see them with an Gym Class Heroes, the Format, and the Starting Line.

7. Burnin’ Up Tour • 7/26/08

Ahhhh, back when it cost less than $100 to see The Jonas Brothers in concert. They did a cover of Shania Twain’s “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!” (love) and were supported by Demi Lovato. I’m assuming she came onstage with them to sing “This Is Me” from Camp Rock, which was released only a month prior. She’s really good!

6. I Am Music II Tour • 7/3/11

I’m afraid I missed Millennial icon Lil Wayne in his prime. One of the setlists from another date on this tour is thirty six songs long. Incredible. I should’ve pulled an Ilana from Broad City and gone to any inconvenient length to raise money for my Lil Wayne Concert Fund.

5. Don’t Turn Off the Lights Tour • 9/8/02

I love Enrique Iglesias. That’s really all there is to say about that. I imagine people held up their lighters during “Hero”, and I would’ve been singing every word to “Escape” (Although IMHO “Escapar” > “Escape”). The Don’t Turn Off the Lights Tour was when Enrique still had his signature facial mole, which was ultimately removed during his Saturn Return in 2003.

4. Lilith Fair 1997 • 7/24/97

Oh my GOD what I wouldn’t give to have seen Fiona Apple at at Lilith Fair in 1997. Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Paula Cole, Juliana Hatfield, and Autour de Lucie also performed. The best part was that you could still hear Sarah McLachlan’s heartfelt ballad “Angel” without associating it with the extremely sad ASPCA dog commercials (which started airing in 2007).

3. Glow in the Dark Tour • 5/16/08

I really wanted to go to this concert in high school, and as a consolation, my friend who attended made me a mix CD comprising the tour’s setlist. Lupe Fiasco, N*E*R*D, Good Girl Gone Bad-era Rihanna, and headliner Kanye West were 2008 royalty as far as I was concerned.

2. Falling Into You: Around the World • 7/24/96

Céline Dion’s tour is the best setlist in history that is comprised of 38% cover songs. One thing about Céline is that she will out sing anyone to the point where you forget she is not the original singer. A sacred musical vessel! Imagine hearing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”, “All By Myself”, “If You Asked Me To”, and “The Power of Love” for the first time again? Wow.

1. Spiceworld: The Tour • 7/3/98

I remember this day like it was yesterday. I didn’t go to this Spice Girls concert and bawled my eyes out at the kitchen table as the digital clock on my kitchen stove struck 7:00pm. Although, I didn’t find out until many, many years later that this concert was AFTER Geri left the band! The Spice Girls would not perform in the United States in their original 5-person lineup until The Return of the Spice Girls Tour from December 2007 to February 2008 (which I DID see!)

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Chet, Jack, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Reed, Taylor, Alejandra, and Jess! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine

• Check out my Spotify Physical Media Wrapped! I need to buy stop buying CDs and DVDs a new media shelf…

• Nicstalgia Presents: Pop Culture Advent Calendar is in full swing! Thank you to everyone who has decided to make it your personality for the next month!!!!

• I’ll be hosting a workshop about newsletters for creatives with next Saturday 12/13 at the DaVinci in Philly!! :) Donation-based tickets available here!

• Very excited that my piece about the swimming pools of The O.C. will be included in this year’s Are.na Annual!! It officially comes out on Friday! More on that later.

Now…WHO WANTS BAILEY’S Black Irish??1 I couldn’t squeeze in a line item on my budget for Mariah’s Holiday Bar, but if you upgrade your subscription to Nicstalgia ($5.99/m or $59/yr), I will report from there in good conscience next year. In the meantime, I had to take matters into my own hands.

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Nicstalgia Presents: Mariah Carey Holiday Bar

Mariah Carey’s liqueur brand, Black Irish, isn’t super easy to come by in stores. I was very excited to find the bottle in its gorgeous Mariah-adorned packaging. It also comes with a mug with a butterfly handle. Delightful detail!

This Christmas, impress all your family and friends with these Nicstalgia original cocktail recipes!! Enjoy responsibly, and also please note that there are no exact measurements. I do it Aries style – just eyeball and hope for the best!!!

No wonder Mariah Carey has loves Christmas

You may have thought that Mariah’s reign as the “Queen of Christmas” (colloquially, not legally) began when her Christmas album was released, but her story started long before.2 Mariah Carey was initially discovered at the WTG Record Christmas party in 1988, where Brenda K. Starr – who was helping get Mariah, her backup singer, signed to a major label – introduced her to executive [Tomato Mozzarella] and gave him and producer Arthur Baker her demo tape.

Wax Poetics is running an auction for Baker’s copy of this rare demo tape until December 11th. It’s one of the most actively sought-after demos in the world, and one of her only demo tapes in existence. IThey do have a rule that the winner cannot share its contents – 5 of which formed the blueprint for Mariah’s debut album, plus 2 others. Learn more about the backstory below, and if anyone has $15,000 - $20,000 so I can bid, that would be great!!!!!

Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Chet, Jack, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Reed, Taylor, Alejandra, and Jess! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐

Upgrade to paid subscription

If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!

Send a one-time gift

Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine