Stop Being Desperate

Paris's infamous shirt, Ashanti & Nelly engaged & expecting, Bottled Emotion, SATC, Coachella 🎡

Apr 18, 2024

Happy Thursday! What’s going in Nicole’s World….I recorded my very first IRL episode of Nicstalgia (!!!!!), added new songs to my Manic Pixie Retail Girl playlist, found a treasure trove of 2000s nearly-vintage watches (Paul Frank, Teletubbies, etc.) in a souvenir shop, joined a club where we write and read erotic poems in a three-story Burger King, drank prosecco and ate lobster ravioli in an old-school Italian restaurant, and finished

Natasha Stagg

’s Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019. My fav essays were the ones on internet culture, Abercrombie, micro-trends, thongs, 2010s EDM rave culture, the Kardashians, and influencer culture.

In this issue:
🎡 Coachella peaked in high school: expressing my nowstalgia for the music festival I never attended during its heyday in the 00s
💋 Stop being desperate: how Paris Hilton’s infamous photoshopped shirt disrupted the order of media fidelity and set the precedent for a post-truth internet culture
👃🏼 There’s a definite pipeline from tween enthusiast of Bonne Bell’s Bottled Emotion fragrances to astrology girlie
👠 How archetypes of womanhood evolve each decade in correspondence with a different Sex and the City character. Is it Charlotte’s turn?

ICYMI, last week’s issue primarily focused on the moral implications of MySpace, Jewel’s 2003 ‘sellout’ hit “Intuition”, “vintage Charlotte Russe”, my “Behind These Hazel Eyes” painting, and more.

Support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription for less than Carrie Bradshaw’s Judith Leiber rhinestone-encrusted swan minaudière. Bday special on annual subs lasts through Aries season (aka. tomorrow 4/19 is the last day)!

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Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, and Aleena! 💐💐💐

🎡 Coachella peaked in high school

Coachella is in its flop era; maybe a nostalgia play could help its reputation. Seems like there was a lot of intergenerational crossover going on this year, which is fun. J. Balvin and Will Smith performed “Men In Black”, Renee Rapp brought Kesha onstage to perform “Tik Tok”, Olivia Rodrigo made an appearance during No Doubt’s set (I thought vocally “Bathwater” was not the best choice for her, but whatever), and Lana Del Rey sang “Video Games” with surprise guest Billie Eilish.

I’m from New England, so going to Coachella in Indio, California was never really an option. The only music festivals I’ve been to are Boston Calling and Governor’s Ball, both of which were a reasonable commutable distance from my apartment. (Wait, actually I also went to Jazz Fest in New Orleans, where I saw Christina Aguilera, 6-months-pregnant, perform her set on a chaise lounge. Chic!) With Coachella, it seemed like you had to spend a fortune to fly across the country only to drive in insane traffic for hours then camp in the middle of the desert. (This is an accurate read.) My preferred camping experience paralleled that of Paris Hilton’s on The Simple Life: She went to a hotel, pitched a tent inside the room, and put a log-burning fireplace simulation on the TV screen.

I loved the 2019 Vogue article that interviews photographer Christy Bush. She took previously never-before-seen Polaroids of Amy Winehouse, CSS with Paris Hilton, Jenny Lewis, Lily Allen, Peaches, and even members of Tilly and the Wall at Coachella 2007, “When It Was Actually Cool”. By the time I came of age and was out of college in the early 2010s, festivals started becoming more of a spectacle. I always joked that I like music too much to enjoy music festivals. “Festival dressing” became its own occasion category. Flower crowns, those braided headbands that went across your forehead, gladiator shoes, knockoff Wayfarer sunglasses, heart-shaped sunglasses, American flag and sunflower motifs, etc. had a chokehold on our entire generation.

Ireland Baldwin (L) and Alessandra Ambrosio (R) at Coachella in 2013

Everything changed when Instagram hit its first peak of popularity in 2015-2016. You could see a huge shift in how people dressed and behaved, because they started performing for social media. (I partially blame Revolve for this.) By the mid 2010s, Coachella became the epitome of who’s who in influencer culture and an egregious example of 1. how desperate influencers are for attention and validation and 2. how desperate sponsors are for access to the influencer’s audience. There was controversy about how some Coachella influencers didn’t even go to the festival; they staged fake photos to make it look like they were there so they could posture on IG. By 2018, Coachella was already considered “corporate” and sparked concerns around surveillance. Not even Beyoncé could save them.

This article and this photo clearly depicts the vibe shift from 2007 to 2016.

I long for the simple days!!!!!!! (Although I do not reclaim the festival style that blatantly appropriates Native American culture, to be clear.) If I were to have gone to Coachella (past lineups here), these are my top 5 years and the performers I would have wanted to see based on my musical tastes and the cultural zeitgeist of the time.

2014: Zedd, Girl Talk, Ellie Goulding, Chromeo, Haim, Bastille, Grouplove, Kate Nash, Muse, Lorde, Foster the People, Pet Shop Boys, MGMT, Empire of the Sun, Fatboy Slim, Nas, Kid Cudi, CHVRCHES, Capital Cities, Solange, Washed Out, Banks, Calvin Harris, Disclosure, Lana Del Rey, Alesso, The 1975, Krewella (lol), The Naked and Famous, AlunaGeorge, Jhené Aiko

2010: Kings of Leon, Robyn (!!!!!!), Cut Copy, Afrojack, Marina and the Diamonds (!!!), Miguel (!!!), Empire of the Sun, Scissor Sisters (!!!!), Two Door Cinema Club, Yelle, Kanye West, The Strokes, PJ Harvey, Death From Above 1979, Nas & Damian Marley, Wiz Khalifa, Jimmy Eat World, Chromeo, Neon Trees, Best Coast, Jack's Mannequin (!!!!), CSS, Tinie Tempah, Ellie Goulding

2006: Daft Punk, Ladytron, Imogen Heap (!!!!!), Lady Sovereign (lol), Head Automatica (lol), Madonna, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, Scissor Sisters (!!!!!!), Sleater-Kinney, Phoenix, Minus the Bear, OneRepublic, Youth Group

2008: Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, M.I.A., Kate Nash, Stars, Mark Ronson, Minus the Bear, Santogold, St. Vincent, MGMT

2007: Björk, Lily Allen, CSS, Fountains of Wayne, Jack's Mannequin, Regina Spektor, Peaches, Of Montreal, Tilly and the Wall, Amy Winehouse (all of these warrant like 50 exclamation points each!!!!!!)

The general pattern here shows me that as time went on, I liked more artists, less. I’d rather see a couple artists I’m completely obsessed with than a bunch that I think are just ‘good’. Do you agree? Were you there? Comment below or email me back and tell me your story!

💋 Did “Stop Being Poor” disrupt the order of media fidelity?

I don’t see the difference between these two pictures.

This week in 2005, Nicky Hilton’s clothing line, Chick, debuted at Nordstrom at the South Coast Plaza. The launch was celebrated with a fashion show, with Paris as one of the models. She wears the tank top pictured above that says, “STOP BEING DESPERATE.” This might look unfamiliar to you, as a more popular version of the image depicts her shirt as saying, “STOP BEING POOR.” In the 2000s, although other tabloid darlings were dangerously and relentlessly targeted by the paparazzi, one could argue that no one was photographed - for better or for worse – more than Paris Hilton. The internet was an entirely new place for the media, and now the general public, to harass her. This image was used as evidence to fuel the common assumption that Paris must be insensitive and classist due to her unearned financial and social privilege as an heiress and socialite. “Stop Being Poor” reinforced Paris’s alleged vapidity and superficiality, long before her ‘baby voice’ was accurately recognized by the public as a (hilarious) satire and troll.

It wasn’t until 2021 when Paris Hilton revealed in a viral TikTok that her “Stop Being Poor” shirt was photoshopped. So who did it? Not a paparazzi agency, just a kid on the internet with Photoshop. Jubilee, now a digital artist, told The Daily Beast that she came across the original photo on Tumblr in May 2013. “The juxtaposition of her flamboyant ‘ta-da’ pose and message on her shirt was hilariously contradictory, so I wanted to push that a little further.” Jubilee never thought that people would even believe the photo was real, let alone take it and run with it the way they did. Paris had Jubilee on her podcast, This is Paris, to explain the whole story and set the record straight.

The thing that strikes me here is that “Stop Being Poor” set a precedent for a post-truth internet culture. The Daily Beast article linked above is now specifically categorized on the site as ‘Fake News’. As Nicstalgia guest Ruby Thelot stated in Everything is default fake, “As we introduce media forms with higher fidelity—written accounts, images, videos—we not only come to expect them but to equate them with reality itself.” In 2013, when the fake picture came out, we weren’t (yet) incessantly consuming videos and photos of news through the internet. Photoshop was not widely accessible or utilized by the general public. Meme production was rudimentary and in no way granted the social currency it does now. But by 2021, when the validity of the photoshopped picture was officially debunked, the order of media fidelity had changed. A first-hand account (i.e. Jubilee going on Paris Hilton’s podcast to explain what really happened) is closer to the truth than the picture itself.

Before “Stop Being Poor”, if you saw an image on the internet that seemed shocking, your default assumption was, “That’s fake because it’s on the internet.” Back then, we placed more trust in video footage aired on the local news than what randoms said online. But now, news is primarily consumed online, and democratization to a platform gives basically anyone an opportunity to ‘break’ news, regardless of authority or authenticity. Ever since “Stop Being Poor”, the default assumption has been, “That’s real because it’s on the internet.” This collective mindset shift will continue to have major, global sociopolitical implications. At the end of the day, people are just looking for some kind of truth as digital reality eclipses viscerality. I suppose “Stop being desperate”, as Paris said best, is one fundamental truth we can all agree on.

👃🏼 The Bottled Emotion tween to astrology girlie pipeline

In 1998, teen cosmetics company Bonne Bell, parent company of Lip Smackers, launched a collection of fragrances called Bottled Emotion. This collection included body mist, solid fragrance that could be worn as a necklace, shower gel, body lotion, and scented clear nail polish and retailed from $2.95 to $4.95 per item. Drunk Elephant could never.

I love looking back on Bottled Emotion because it’s very nostalgic and one of the few things I’d genuinely forgotten about. Bottled Emotion feels emblematic of the last era of product marketing (pre-e-commerce) that could use ‘emotions’ as a central branding pillar, symbolizing individualism without actually being entwined with identity politics. Bottled Emotion is VERY reflective of the times. It’s the late 90s-early 00s backwash from third wave feminism, with the ‘Girl Power’ narrative supporting neoliberal and capitalistic structures, appealing to young millennial girls who’d grow up to become super-consumers, and making the aesthetic labor of putting on cosmetics *~giRLy & FuN!~*

Sidebar, speaking of identity marketing: There was a commercial on at the nail salon yesterday where the guy says, “Have you ever thought, ‘I’m the kind of person who gets their windows done’” or something to that effect. WHO CENTERS A PIECE OF THEIR IDENTITY AROUND THEIR WINDOW INSTALLATION? This has gotten out of control!!!!!!!! I’ve been seeing SOOO much lately (and spoke on this a few weeks ago) about how people are expected to behave like corporations (Monetize! Monetize! Monetize!) and corporations are expected to behave like people/are humanized as people behind a corporation. Enough is never enough.

I had the purple Crazy scent with the spaceship on it LOL.

Bonne Bell had an epic website in the late 90s outlining all of the Bottled Emotion fragrances, their notes, and “your personality” archetype for each. (Btw, The words below are theirs. I live for this 90s copywriting!) Other scents without descriptions include ☎️ Hopeful (omg lol with the phone) 🪂 Daring, and 💪🏼 Powerful.

I also think these personalities VERY strongly correspond with astrological archetypes! There’s a definite pipeline from tween enthusiast of Bonne Bell’s Bottled Emotion fragrances to astrology girlie. Funky = Aquarius, Flirty = Gemini, Lucky = Capricorn, Playful = Taurus, Sassy = Scorpio, Pretty = Cancer, Hip = Leo, Shy = Virgo, Romantic = Libra, Crazy = Sagittarius, Hyper = Aries, Hopeful = Pisces. I’m a Hyper sun, Pretty moon, Hip rising, Funky venus!!! Which are you??

🌀 Funky

Your Personality: Heads turn, when you enter a room. You could walk onto the set of MTV, and be a VJ. You're on the pulse of life and go by the beat of your own drum. Your friends would say you're a super-fly, but never plastic.

Scents of: bergamot, mandarin, waterlily, melon, quince, raspberry, rose, lily of the valley, orris, musk, amber, sandalwood

👄 Flirty

Your Personality: You crave romance and a storybook ending to every love interest you have. You dig poetry and mushy songs. You're not afraid to bat an eye to get that special someone's attention. Your passionate nature allows you to see the beauty in others around you. You don't take life too seriously, fun is number one! You're sensitive when it comes to the matters of the heart, but you're strong on not getting hurt, no one better push you around. Your friends would say you're courageous, chatty, and a solid sister!

Scents of: bergamot, orange, apple rose, jasmine, nutmeg, sandalwood, musk, mossy notes

⭐️ Lucky

Your Personality: You seemed to live quite a charmed life. 9 times out of 10, things will go your way. You are a strong believer in fate and that everything happens for a reason. People entrust you with important jobs because you're responsible and always see projects through. Your friends would say you are the most likable and dependable one of the group. You are told many secrets, and can keep 'em!

🪁 Playful

Your Personality: You are a free spirit, and if something feels like work, you'll definitely put it off. Your upbeat attitude towards life, often makes you the center of attention. People love your sense of humor, but sometimes you use it to hide your true feelings. You always manage to make new friends wherever you go, which makes you quite a guy magnet too. Your friends would say you are a fun-loving, pleasure-seeker with a soft side.

Scents of: spring floral, muguet, lilacs, Italian orange, peach, pineapple and bergamot cyclamen, jasmine, gardenia and rose, musk and orange flowers

😺 Sassy

Your Personality: You love to shock and amaze your buds by catching them off guard. You'll wear a fluffy, pink boa with army boots, just because. Your friends would say you're a loyal, lovable, free spirit, who speaks her mind, with energy to burn.

Scents of: water lily, vibrant citrus, white peach, pineapple honeydew, exotic lotus blossom, black currant, rose, jasmine, sandalwood, maguet, amber

🌸 Pretty

Your Personality: You see the world through rose colored glasses. The glass is always half full and you're ready to take a big gulp of life! You love to surround yourself with beautiful things, from flowers to your new fave earrings. You can't stand two-faced people and won't tolerate talking behind people's backs, it's just too ugly for you. You have only true-blue buds. You however, tend to rush into guy relationships both feet forward and if they don't work out right away, you're out too! Your friends would say you're modest, clear-headed and always the sweet one.

Scents of: Black Currant, Rosewood and Bergamot, Bulgarian Rose, Jasmine, Magnolia and Honeysuckle Vanilla, Soft Woods and Musk

🕶 Hip

Your Personality: You are on the cutting edge. You're always the first to try the hottest trends. People copy your style and love to be around you. Your friends would say you are a wonderful, way-out chick, with a heart of golden glitter.

Scents of: Bergamot, Mandarin, Freesia, Water Hyacinth, Jasmine, Rose, Water Lily, Sweet Honey

🦋 Shy

Your Personality: You are quiet and soft spoken. Your aloofness is sometimes mistaken for snobbyness. You might feel awkward in crouds, but when you're with close friends and family, you've gots tons to say. Only they know the true you!

Scents of: Bergamot, Blue ozonic, Lily pad, Greeness Jasmine, Garden of muguet, Rose petals Musk and Sandalwood

💖 Romantic

Your Personality: You are a day dreamer and if you could travel off to foreign lands you would in a heartbeat. You can get so lost in a good love story that you almost become the characters. You're smart, witty and an excellent communicator, but you fall in love easily. You usually know the best way to deal with problems, but are rarely the first one to speak up. You love getting all dolled up for special occasions. Your friends would say you are sweet, sensitive, and keep them grounded.

🚀 Crazy

Your Personality: You are the ultimate risk taker and love to try new things. You would be the first to cliff dive or approach that hot guy you're interested in. Too much time alone totally depresses you, you'd rather be in the spotlight. You like off beat clothes and dancing to loud music. You have a very tight group of friends and they would say you are unique and a natural born leader. Your unconventional style will steer you towards a career in the arts.

Scents of: pear, dew fruit, mandarin, plum, magnolia, muguet, hint of vanilla, musk, sandalwood

☕️ Hyper

Your Personality: You have oodles of energy and you love a challenge. The only problem is you are short in the patience department. Shy, you are not! You know what you want when you see it and then go after it with gusto. You often take on several tasks at once, which ultimately pulls you in too many directions. Your friends would say you are sincere, confident and an awesome chicadeeda to party the night away with!

Top Note: green floral, lily of the valley, violet, ozone (not to worry that's just it's name), bergamot, lemon, honeydew and apple

Middle Note: hyacinth, gardenia, white rose and jasmine

Base Note: sandalwood, musk and amber

👠 I couldn’t help but wonder…is it Charlotte’s turn?

Four women laugh together over martinis in martini glasses at a party. They were strapless dresses and bracelets. People chat in the background. — This night out would cost you like $1200 in NYC now lol

It feels extremely different watching SATC now as a 34 year old woman. I’m the same age as Carrie in season 2, which is absolutely wild. When I first watched the show in college in the early 2010s, I didn’t have enough life experience for the show to be considered unrealistic; it could still be aspirational. (And tbh, my life in NYC kinda was like SATC, minus the fact that I could not buy a 4-bedroom Upper West Side apartment like Miranda.) Plus, not enough time had elapsed since it went off the air for it to be considered dated; the SATC movies were at their peak.

The entire show centers around the question of whether these women are worthy because they are single and in their 30s. (They are.) When you don’t take that to heart because you like to think that we have made SOME kind of progress in the last 25 years, it’s a great show. One of my top ones of all time. I started rewatching it last week on Prime and let me tell you – I was screaming, squealing, snickering, scoffing, shrieking, chirping, chuckling, clamoring, guffawing, roaring, bellowing, and laughing at the screen with reckless abandon. Though everyone was disturbingly skinny and the dialogue and characters (or should I say caricatures) were very of-the-times, I loved seeing people make plans with their friends, date, work, and LIVE without cell phones. Steve is my favorite character, for anyone wondering.

Sex and the City has been a topic of cultural conversation lately because it is now available on Netflix, and various media articles’ takes are sooooo lame:

❌ Gen Z is just discovering SATC. DVD box sets, syndication (albeit censored) on E!, and streaming via Prime Video and Max have enabled continuous viewing access for the past two plus decades; this is not the first time they are hearing about this extremely popular show.

❌ Gen Z doesn’t like sex and demands inclusivity. The SATC reboot And Just Like That flopped because the show tried way too hard to course correct, pandered to Gen Z’s alleged prudishness and intolerance for political incorrectness, and were extremely self-conscious and awkwardly self-referential doing it. To that point, maybe we shouldn’t remake every show (!!!!!) and just accept that every piece of entertainment is imperfect, dated, and emblematic of its own cultural zeitgeist. Maybe we shouldn’t assign morality to TV shows or actors, and maybe we should also not hire or idolize monsters just because we like their work. (Few are ready for that conversation.)

❌ SATC isn’t for the internet generation. Millennials memed SATC first. Yes, the memes are extremely cringe, but SATC has a steadfast online presence. Now, with videos > photos, you’ll see a lot of SATC edits. Edits are when someone takes screen grabs of the show and sets them to music. This style of video (especially when ‘shipping’ a couple) is very popular within fandoms. The actual issue here is context collapse, where time-inappropriate and genre-inappropriate music are used that either detract from, contradict, or erode the original meaning of the character/situation. Like clearly someone born after the show originally aired made these. That being said, I find them very funny. My fav edits:

This baddie montage set to the Spongebob trap mix by TikToker Glorb
“SATC tried to gaslight us into thinking these were the hottest men in NYC”
A girls night baddie edit to Rihanna's “Breaking Dishes”
Charlotte’s “I’m worth a million” to Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right”
Miranda’s “I drink coffee, and have sex, and buy pies, and enjoy battery-operated devices” to Nxi’s “Chain$aw (Remix)”
Big and Carrie edit to LDR (then Elizabeth Grant)’s “Ridin’”. Speaking of the monster conversation, this creator captioned the video: “NOT A CHRIS NOTH EDIT!!!! AND IF YOU CAN'T SEPARATE THE CHARACTER FROM THE ACTOR I'M SO SORRY FOR YOU BC I CAN 👍”
More glamorizing Big and Carrie’s toxic relationship – to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”
Samantha’s “Who is this?” to Beyoncé’s “Partition”
Natasha’s “You’ve ruined my lunch” to Mckyyy’s “Nightcrawler”
The now-famous Kat Dennings’s very minor supporting character hahahaha

Still, everything I’ve read about SATC is coming from the wrong angle. A MUCH more interesting story would be depicting SATC as an example of how being a single 30-something has changed (or not) in the last 25 years. However, since our society places the utmost value on youth, the thoughts and opinions from women who have experienced The Chasm™ don’t matter – it’s Gen Z’s thoughts and opinions that are newsworthy, even about a stage in life they have never experienced. Why is no one interviewing 30-somethings? Is that what all of these extremely embarrassing essays in The Cut are supposed to accomplish? That there’s no hope for us (in this economy?!), but there still might be for the 20-somethings? We spent all this time looking up to these women, but it seems like we aren’t allowed to enjoy this life stage once we finally get to it ourselves.

It reminds me of Carrie’s monologue in the episode where they go to the Hamptons. Charlotte lies about her age to appeal to a younger guy, Big is dating a much-younger Natasha, and Samantha’s power is momentarily usurped by a younger PR girl:

“What was the allure of the 20s? Pn one hand, there’s great skin tone, the thrill of fresh experience, and the sense of a consequence-free life full of seemingly endless possibilities. While on the other, there are horrible apartments, sexually inexperienced men, and embarrassing errors in fashion judgment. Should we fear these freshly minted single women as a threat to our very survival or pity them as clueless half wits about to get their dreams dashed and illusions shattered? 20 something girls: friend or foe?”

The current SATC news cycle is playing the exact same generational divide: 20-somethings vs. 30-somethings, though now it’s Millennials and Gen Z vs. Gen Z and Elder Millennials.

I’d like to pose a model that explains how the expectations of womanhood manifest themselves in archetypes (or stereotypes, you could argue). Based on the evolving sociocultural and political norms and conventions of our society, the archetype changes each decade (roughly) and corresponds with a different Sex and the City character.

1950’s: Housewife. Charlotte was born and bred for domestic bliss. I mean come on, she’s a tennis-playing WASP from Connecticut!

1960’s: Flower Child. Carrie is simple, idealistic, and values peace. This decade ushered in a lot of sociopolitical change that would’ve given her quite a bit to write about. She’s always going back and forth between what she knows, even if it’s not right for her (Big) and what’s next on the horizon.

1970’s: Disco Queen. Samantha Jones was probably one of Andy Warhol’s muses tbh. She could release her inhibitions at Studio 54 and

1980’s: Working Woman. This generation of women breaking boundaries at work paved the way for Miranda to make partner at her law firm. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

1990’s: Girl Power Feminist. I’ve come to realize that Carrie’s always just along for the ride LOL. This decade you didn’t have to be too political, probably because you could still afford to buy a house.

2000’s: Paparazzi Princess. Samantha’s G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S style ruled the “upskirt decade”. This was the time of conspicuous consumption, the McBling aesthetic, and a more is more attitude. Well, at least until the financial crisis of 2008.

2010’s: Girlboss. Millennial Pink Feminism, lingering meritocracy, relentless hustle culture, and unforgiving burnout. We Should All Be Mirandas couldn’t have come out at any other time than this. (Btw I did once see Cynthia Nixon at a deli counter in 2015 and we both ordered the lunch special!!!)

2020’s: Who’s to say? I don’t think it’s gonna be the ‘thirty-year-old teenage girl’. Maybe ‘Mother’. Charlotte’s “I’m worth a million” accurately sums up the Gen Z ethos at the moment. Only time will tell.

📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world

My fav things from the internet rn:
💍 Giving “Awww Baby” a new meaning!!!! Ashanti is pregnant, and she and Nelly are engaged! With the way millennials freak out over this R&B power couple, it’s like a real-life version of The Parent Trap.
‼️ This person bought a grill off an auction site that incidentally was once owned by her childhood idol, Aaron Carter.
🎶 Charli XCX and Troye Sivan announced their tour, SWEAT!!!!!!
💿 Cindy Lee released her new album Diamond Jubilee on a Geocities page rather than on streaming services. I’m obsessed with web 1.0-inspired websites (ummm have you seen nicoletremaglio.com?) and I can’t wait to build more.
🎬 Celine Dion announced the release date for her Amazon documentary (6/25). I will be seated and ready.
🐶 Missy Elliott and Miss Fendi Dior are stunning in new photo!
🍸 Raven The Science Maven, whose full name is Raven Baxter (à la That’s So Raven!), discovered Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours while 2 margaritas deep.
🎽 “An innovation” that a Gen Z girl “discovered”: two layered tank tops. I distinctly remember on the last day of school in 2004, I wore two dELiA*s tank tops: a white one with turquoise polka dots and a solid turquoise one underneath. It was quirky, it was fun, it was chic. I’d do this trend again. I’m also very close to buying a gigantic non-functional belt.
👟 “What do you guys think about the new boat shoe trend?” I called this one at the end of last year and talked about how boat shoes are the cicadas of shoes two issues back LOL. This is one trend I will NOT be participating in ever again. New Balance releasing a (cursed imo) boat shoe-esque loafer that looks freakishly similar to the Sperrys I ~~had~~ definitely did not have in 2010.
👚 “Me in 2010 literally thinking i was going to be a fashion major” Lmaooooo here to report that we fashion majors in 2010 dressed like that too.
📲 My new fav people I found on IG: Harke, who explores my three favorite things: music, retro tech gadgets, and nostalgia; and Jonny, an interior decorator who does incredibly amazing kitschy DIY projects (AND lives in Connecticut!!!)
🗣 I love

Anne Helen Petersen

’s

Culture Study

on people incorrectly using the word resonate, especially in a hyper-online post-2016 world. I personally VERY much noticed this and have been thinking about it often for the last 8 years LOL. Resonate in this context means to land or make an impact; therefore, something resonates with you when it makes an impact on you. You do not resonate with something. I understand language changes over time, but this example is a perfect microcosm of the macrocosm of misinformation proliferated on the internet.