*~I aM aNy0nE u WaNt mE 2b~*
Dollz Mania, Corporate Fetish, Free People comments section, Irish Wish, obscure Gaga 👱🏻♀️
LOTS to unpack here today*, but first and foremost, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Aries season!!!! Happy astrological new year! I have an Aries szn special for you: get an annual subscription to Nicstalgia for $42! (Because my bday is 4/2!) Normally it’s $59. You don’t have to pay to read this newsletter or enjoy any of my content atm, but I very much appreciate those who do support in this way. I am excited for Aries season, eclipse season, and Mercury Rx (yes all will be happening simultaneously) to shake things up!!!!!
In this issue:
👗 *~I aM aNy0nE u WaNt mE 2b~*, my Dollz visual project about identity & work
💼 The Corporate Fetish trend as it relates to aestheticized industry work
👖 My favorite comments on the (now deleted!!!) Free People denim micro shorts post
🎹 Girl(s) of the year: VÉRITÉ and Allie X’s convo about nonlinear career journeys and sustainable creative pursuits
☘️ All of the parallels between Irish Wish and Mean Girls
👠 The obscure, unreleased Lady Gaga song that inspired the Dollz project title
ICYMI, last week’s issue primarily focused on figuring out how I can nominate Dorian Electra for a Tony Award after seeing their Fanfare tour. Very fun fact, friend of Nicstalgia
interviewed Dorian for TIDAL in 2019!!!!! Also, my friend wore an iPod hair clip to the Dorian show, and what do ya know, it went viral right afterward. Mom it was never a phase!!!!*This email is jam-packed, so if you’re reading this through your email rather than a browser window, it’s gonna cut off before the end. In Gmail, it’ll say [Message clipped] View entire message, and if you click that link, the rest of the email will show up. You can also view this newsletter and past versions directly through the Substack website.
Support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription for less than a vintage (so adorable) Burberry pleated skirt.
Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, and Mitra!💐💐💐
👗 *~I aM aNy0nE u WaNt mE 2b~*
╰☆☆ 𝕀 𝓶ⓐｊσⓇεᗪ ⓘℕ ƒ𝒶ｓ𝐡ⓘσ𝓝 𝕄𝒆Ř¢𝒽𝒶ℕ∂Ꭵ𝕤ιℕᎶ 𝔞ｔ Đᗝ𝐋𝕝ℤ Ǘᑎ𝕀𝓿ẸⓇⓢίту. Ⓜч ℱᎥ𝐫s𝕥 ĴσⒷ Ⓦ卂Ｓ 卂т 𝓉𝔥ｅ ∂𝓸Ļℓ𝕫 Μ卂ⓝᶤ𝔸 𝓜𝓐Ł𝓵. Ⓘ Ｍㄖνє๔ 𝔱σ 𝕟Ｅ𝕨 Ўᗝŕⓚ 𝐜ί𝓉Ⓨ 丅𝓞 ω𝑜𝓻Ҝ 𝐚t 𝕋𝓱€ 𝔡ⓞ𝕃Ｌ乙 ℍＥ𝔸𝔻Ǫ𝓤𝕒гｔẸʳ𝕤. Ⓘ Ａ𝐌 𝓽н𝐄 𝕕𝐨Ⓛl ｉ 𝔞𝔩ώ𝔞𝓨𝓼 ｗᵃŇ丅Ⓔ𝕕 ᵗό Ｂ𝐞. Ꭵ ℃ᵃŇ ร𝕖𝓵ㄥ 𝕒𝓷𝕐𝕋𝓗ⓘ𝕟Ꮆ. ι ⓐᵐ 𝓹尺𝕖Ŧｔㄚ. 𝓲 𝓪𝓶 𝓼𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓷𝔂. Ⓜү 卄𝐚Ⓘ𝕣 𝐈Ş ⓅᗴяŦ𝐞ς丅. мⓎ η𝕒ⒾˡŜ 𝒶гᵉ 𝐩𝔢ｒғⒺｃ丅. Μｙ 𝕊ҜƗ𝐍 丨𝐒 ρ𝑒ＲＦ𝕖𝐜𝔱. Ⓜ𝓎 ⓞｕ𝓉𝔣ⓘ𝐓 丨𝕊 𝐏єŘ𝐅𝐄𝔠丅. ᵐⓨ 𝕝ⓘⓕ𝐞 𝓲𝔰 𝓅ⓔⓡᶠєĆ𝓣. 🎀 𝐼 𝒶𝓂 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒻𝑒𝒸𝓉. ☆☆╮
I majored in Fashion Merchandising at Dollz University
My first job was at the Dollz Mania Mall
I moved to New York City to work at the Dollz Headquarters
I am the doll I always wanted to be
I can sell anything
I am pretty
I am skinny
My hair is perfect
My nails are perfect
My skin is perfect
My outfit is perfect
My life is perfect
I am perfect
My earliest memory on the internet in the early 2000s was playing Dollz Mania. Dollz originated in the online game The Palace, created in 1997. They started out as pre-made avatars for anonymous gamers in the chat and evolved into full-blown websites where users could modify the original art to create their own doll. Dolling was an early internet art form and became a new digital mode of self expression, especially for Millennial girls.
Dollz are comprised of three pieces: a head, a body, and accessories. They have proportions similar to Barbie – tiny waists and outrageously large breasts. The outfits varied, leaving the doll either scantily clad or in a ball gown, still with a sexualized undertone. Like a slightly NSFW version of Cinderella. (Yes they were created by a man…) The internet was still nascent at this time, so there wasn’t widespread moral panic about Dollz like there was about Britney Spears, for example.
As a young girl, I wasn’t thinking about the implications of being sexualized, despite inherently knowing I already was. It’s the same as the Barbie convo. It’s not the Dollz or the Barbies themselves that are the problem – it’s the real-life adults reinforcing and perpetuating society’s norms, conventions, and broken systems. I just wanted to dress up the girlie pops in cute outfits!! (Still do, actually.) Fast forward to young adulthood, I did become that doll myself. A fashion industry drone. The epitome of “stressed, depressed, but well-dressed”.
This is not to say I didn’t meet wonderful people throughout my career thus far. I’m also not saying I’m never going to work in the industry again, because I’m a completely different person now and finally understand my “place”. But it took a lot of growth (and therapy) to get here. The past four years have been incredibly humbling and challenging. TLDR: I voluntarily left my corporate fashion job on 3/6/2020, worked for myself (it wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be lol), and worked for a startup and got laid off.
Since my layoff, I’ve been thinking a lot about the neoliberal drive and meritocratic outlook that my belief system was rooted in: Am I allowed to feel good about myself if I’m not working, constantly making money, optimizing my productivity or maximizing my earnings potential? Even if I can lead a happy, healthy life during this transitional phase, will others look down on me? I’m the age of a stay-at-home wife or stay-at-home mother, but not the life stage. Leaving the workforce, even temporarily and by no doing of my own, isn’t acceptable for a stay-at-home….woman?! I looked inward and wondered why I felt shame asking for help and guilt over a reduction in workforce that was out of my control. Channeling my energy into something creative – and even more importantly, having friends and creative peers who did not judge me or see this stage of my life as less meaningful than one when I worked a full-time job – helped me start making the mindset shift from defeated to determined.
Putting this all out into the world is edgy for me, and though it seemed to resonate, even making this meme made me feel vulnerable:
I’ve had to process, accept, deconstruct, reevaluate, and rebuild my entire belief system around work. I’ve faced my biggest fears – loneliness, rejection, disconnection, and exclusion – and I’m breaking this cycle once to start a new, more aligned one.
*~I aM aNy0nE u WaNt mE 2b~* depicts 100 Dollz to represent 100 job applications I’ve submitted since getting let go from my job at the end of last summer. 100 versions of me. I tailored my resume to every single position. I took parts of my experience and Frankenstein’d them so that I could maximize my appeal to a potential employer. Using a doll maker, I constructed each doll in a different outfit and placed them on 20 backgrounds. These settings are places that I’ve lived and worked. The accompanying music is the Nicstalgia podcast theme song sped up. I wanted it to sound like a video game, like we are all pawns in a capitalistic game. Like we are totally disposable and replaceable. Because we are.
This project helped me understand my role as a product, upholder, and critic of the environment that shaped my identity and career. It symbolizes the exhaustion of keeping up appearances, literally and figuratively, the inevitable burnout from chronic self-commercialization, and commodified aspiration in an aestheticized industry. In other words, it represents how far you will go to to achieve career “success” when your job, in an industry like fashion or beauty, is to look a certain way. At its core, it’s about the bottom line – selling as much product and making other people as much money as humanly possible. Of course, this is technically everyone’s job under capitalism, but the difference here is representing yourself as a part of the product package. To be able to fulfill the requirements of your job, you must personally embody feminine ideals rooted in patriarchal beauty standards and exploit customers’ self-discrepancies and insecurities in order to SELL the IDEA of an ideal lifestyle, status, and identity. I’m not going to get into body politics’ impact on mental health here, although that’s another layer of complexity in my story.
The piece expresses my frustration with having reinforced the status quo rather than challenging it, the depleted energy from fighting ethical or political battles I’d always lose, the existential crisis of looking the part but never actually fitting in, the physical and mental toll of extensive aesthetic and emotional labor, the lack of reciprocity for my cult-like devotion to my employers, and my complete submission and overwhelming eagerness to give away pieces of my identity as a condition of my employment. It also represents pretty privilege as cultural currency, the societal rewards of conformity, and the dichotomy of accepting and resenting these very power structures from which I directly benefit. Ultimately, for all of the mistakes I’ve made, I accept those early years of my professional life and am ready to move onto the next chapter. Now I’m better equipped for whatever comes next.
Expressing this creatively feels very cathartic. Thank you to people in my network who have been rooting for me. I am massively proud of myself for creating Nicstalgia – the show, this newsletter, and its POV – and am extremely excited to see how the expression of my creative projects continues to unfold from here. The visual is available to collect on Zora too!! 💓
💼 Corporate Fetish
writes , the hottest business newsletter!!! I always love her takes and insight, especially when she talks about Connecticut, and I thoroughly enjoyed her Corporate Fetish piece recently syndicated in Dirt (my other favorite publication). Corporate Fetish is a marketing trend that glamorizes offices of a bygone era. Kim Kardashian in a suit on the cover GQ’s 2023 Men of The Year issue is the prime example, which is ironic because she more closely resembles a multi-billion dollar corporation herself versus an actual office employee or working-class person. In parallel to creating the Dollz project, Corporate Fetish similarly roused my curiosity in examining under the surface of my ‘glamorous’ fashion career.
In-person experiences for aestheticized professions
In contrast to industries with non-aesthetic work, employees of aestheticized industries – whether client-facing or corporate office-based – work primarily, if not mandatorily, in-person. There is no choice for remote work, because your ability to sell is contingent upon your physical presence and aesthetic presentation. Even in the midst of the pandemic, as industries were shifting to hybrid models, pretty much everyone I knew in fashion went back to the office for the majority of the time.
The piece states, “The office was once a place you put yourself together for and performed at.” I completely agree, and I *loved* socializing, looking cute in body con dresses and heels, and drinking like 3 cups of espresso a day because I would flirt with my coworker at the espresso machine. (Would not recommend this level of continuous caffeine consumption btw. Flirt at your own risk.) In fashion, you don’t usually get to flip that switch. Especially if you work in retail, you are groomed (for lack of a better word) to have your hair, nails, makeup, etc. look a certain way. There is a handbook that states what is and isn’t acceptable – and those rules usually reinforce existing systems of inequality. You can get fired if you do not adhere to said rules.
Shifting attitudes around mental health and professionalism
I do think that Corporate Fetish is allowing people to examine the past through a contemporary lens and project today’s ideals about work onto a problematic past. Like if American Psycho and Office Space were satire, we’re now in a fully post-ironic phase of hustle culture. Millennials were raised by raging capitalist Baby Boomers, and Millennials’ defense and proliferation of #hustleculture and #Girlboss culture is the result of that meritocratic drive. I unsuccessfully tried to fight this and was all about mental health, work-life balance, flexibility, and emotional intelligence back in 2019. People in my bureaucratic corporate office likely thought I was certifiably insane. Gen Z openly embraces these values, but they’ve been called unprofessional, overly sensitive, overly casual, and overly reliant on therapy speak like ‘boundaries’, ‘toxic’, etc. The Corporate Natalie drama, where she was absolutely annihilated on TikTok due to her response to a Gen Z “employee”, who was actually an actor doing a skit and not her real coworker, is the perfect example of this generational conflict exacerbated online.
Nowadays, and for Gen Zers who have not had a consistent in-office experience, I don’t think it’s so much about unprofessionalism and being overly casual as it is society’s post-pandemic hermit tendencies and overuse of technology. This, combined with lack of social agility and interpersonal communications skills, is a bad formula. Who cares if you go back to the office if you don’t even wanna talk to anyone at the water cooler anyway? The office is about politics and whose ass you have to kiss (hopefully just figuratively) to make your way to the top (hopefully also just figuratively). Especially for women, aesthetics play a role in that.
Corporate Fetish is still a lot of work
“All of the office imagery feels like a healthy dose of adulthood after months of being pushed “girlhood”. Interesting point about the contrast of Corporate Fetish in opposition to the ubiquity of bows, Barbie, and ‘30-year-old teenage girls’. But for women in aestheticized industries, you always have to be Barbie – maybe just Career Barbie™ or Executive Barbie™. There are still high expectations for aesthetic labor, hence why you can wear sweatpants on the days you work remotely but not in-office. Or you can wear a suit with a masculine silhouette but are still expected to present as feminine and wear full makeup. It’s not called a “power suit” for nothing.
Corporate Fetish, like everything else, isn’t new. I see the recycled themes of faux-empowerment (aka. girlbossery), exhaustion, mundanity, boredom, and masochism, all in the name of capitalism. Call it what you want – going to work to make money never goes out of style.
👖 Stop Trying to Make Micro Shorts Happen
Last week, Free People put up an Instagram post promoting their new micro shorts, which I guess are like 70s hot pants but denim. They said something along the lines of “We’re wearing micro shorts this season.” Oh no, we’re not, the people said.
The problems here:
• Free People’s target client is not headed to the discotheque. They’re 30/40-something year old Millennial and Gen X women. Lots of moms. There would be no realistic place to wear these, or for any reason.
• These aren’t the girlie doodles going to Coachella. If the brand is trying to cater to Gen Z or a younger customer, they’re priced out of Free People anyway. These shorts alone are $128.
• The target demo was victimized by 2000s low rise jeans and insidious, pervasive diet culture. Even if a woman has the healthiest possible relationship with her body, I don’t know too many women above 30 who want to walk around in what is essentially denim underwear.
• This is also tone deaf in a political atmosphere where women of child-bearing age are at high risk of losing rights to body autonomy. Am I supposed to feel empowered, sexy, etc. wearing these when really I would probably get harassed the moment I step outside in these? Is this supposed to be choice feminism? And in an election year? Jenna Lyons (formerly of J. Crew, now of Real Housewives fame) said all these women who showed up in the comments section better show up to vote! This is the most united American women have been in recent memory.
The comments section agreed and did not disappoint!!!!
However, Free People DELETED the post as damage control and posted a new one with the caption, “Back to regularly scheduled programming…” Lmaoooo. The shock of deletion!!!!!!! This is why digital archiving and preservation is critical!!! I can only imagine the friendships made, group chats started, mom’s clubs that flourished, and women’s support groups formed due to that comments section. RIP. I think deleting the post was the wrong move. That one post had substantial engagement and actually got people talking. Everyone’s so afraid of being ‘canceled’ (a subject for another day), they are not capitalizing off of a cultural moment – even if it was an accidental and unintended misstep. Don’t worry, the denim micro shorts are still available for purchase on their website.
🎹 Girl(s) of The Year
I very much enjoyed VÉRITÉ’s Anatomy of an Artist podcast episode with Allie X. Anatomy of an Artist is about “people, the art they create, and the business behind their art”. VÉRITÉ is very much at the forefront of musicians leveraging technology to advance fan connection & experience and is the perfect artist to facilitate these meaningful conversations. The show’s transparency challenges society’s preconceived notions and norms about career paths in music and creative industries, which is critically important at this stage of the internet’s evolution.
Allie X’s song “GLAM!” – which IMHO is one of (if not the most) perfect glam pop songs in existence – details the prototypical leave-your-hometown-for-the-bright-lights-of-LA pop star journey. But nowadays, when everyone monetizing their creative practice at any level is to some extent required to hop on the content creation hamster wheel, “Will you…love me forever?” sounds like a plea for sustained relevance to an algorithm rather than a fandom. Eerie.
The lessons discussed very much speak to the intricacies of having a nonlinear career journey and a sustainable creative practice. Here are my main takeaways from their convo, paraphrased in my words since my notes app is intelligible:
With creating, there often is a feeling like you always have to keep up. It’s nice to have the luxury of time.
Working by yourself, there are learning curves (i.e. learning new technology or production techniques). Don’t forget to stop working so you can gain the perspective needed in order to finish the creative project at hand.
A critical part of the creative process is letting go of old ideas of who you were supposed to be and what you were supposed to do. You have the opportunity to envision a different kind of future. There’s a disillusionment of yourself in a traditional industry when you have a nonlinear journey.
It can be powerful and painful to try to do things your own way and play your own game. But what happens when dreams die? This is when you can trust yourself and move forward.
The future is in building a fully immersive world & experience and subverting the traditional artist <> fan relationship. When the norm is people having no attention span, artists stepping into their power wherever they can is important.
Some parts are up to luck, an algorithm (unfortunately lol), and being in the right place at the right time. When you plan, have a budget, take creative control, and employ the right people, you have the best chance at being healthy and having something sustainable.
☘️ Omg, Danny DeVito, Lindsay Lohan, I Love Your Work!
I’ve sincerely been enjoying Lindsay Lohan’s press tour, especially her recent Bustle interview. In a promotional clip with her IRL brother, who was also in Irish Wish, they clarify the pronunciation of their last name – “Lo-in” being the Irish phonetically-correct version vs. “Lo-han” being the ‘we’ve been saying it like this forever anyway’ American pronunciation. (This is the “Tre-mah-lio” vs. “Tre-mag-lio” plight I can relate to all too well.) I personally loved the movie and saw several [what I am personally interpreting as] Easter eggs calling back to the Mean Girls wardrobe.
And it wasn’t just the outfits. Getting cut off mid-sentence when a bus comes on-screen was very… *Regina gets hit by bus*. “Isn’t there supposed to be an earthquake or something?” seems like a nod to Freaky Friday’s earthquake scene. Lindsay’s character giving the speech at her wedding paralleled Cady’s “it’s just plastic” prom speech. Not to mention, everyone fighting at the wedding mimicked the animal world’s response to “Will you please tell him his hair looks sexy pushed back?”
👠 Dress Me, I’m Your Mannequin
The title of the Dollz project, “I am anyone you want me to be”, is a lyric from Lady Gaga’s unreleased song “Fashion”. I think it was on one of the playlists at a store I worked, and it somehow made its way to my iTunes library. The Fame is my favorite Gaga era – unapologetically hedonistic, ambitious, bratty, fame-hungry, and glitzy, in a strung out, one fake eyelash hanging off, lightning bolt drawn on your face kind of way. I was totally, unironically obsessed with this song.
I am, I’m too fabulous
I’m so fierce that it’s so nuts
I live to be model thin
Dress me, I’m your mannequin
To me, “Fashion” – with its uninhibited materialism, impulsive desire for consumption, and pure devotion to designer labels – represented exactly what it was like to be a teenage girl and fashion student in 2009. You have the greatest forms of cultural currency, beauty and youth, and you are willing to be whoever the world wants you to be in order to maintain that status and acceptance.
No it’s not on Spotify. Please enjoy this very 2009 lyric video:
🧨 Spice Up Your Life
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Again, do we have the same brain? I have a YouTube playlist called "Not on Spotify" and that Gaga demo is on it. Thanks for the shout out btw! Loved this week's edition.