Is it just me, or has January felt as long as the long balls I was unwittingly subjected to seeing on Twitter last week? (If you search for them and find them I am truly sorry but not legally responsible.) This month has felt as eternal as Arwen Undómiel before the light of Eldar left her, but it's finally drawing to a close, and not a moment too soon. For this letter, I thought it would be nice to look back on the first month of 2024 and cover any lingering topics I may have missed or have more on which to elucidate.
This is your Mall Goth January Round-Up: The Good, the Bad, and the Busted.
Oscar Nominations
Charles Melton, you will be avenged! Otherwise, these played out mostly the way I expected. Anyone shocked that Ryan Gosling received a nomination for Barbie while Margot Robbie didn’t…were we watching the same movie? Ken was given the stand-out role while Barbie mostly played the straight woman in her own movie! I am giving the Academy a huge side eye for snubbing Greta Gerwig as director, but she’s still nominated for (adapted) screenplay (with her male partner). And again, this was the biggest movie of 2024! It’s not an underdog, it made all the money in the world! Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie do not need you to ride for them, put that energy where it belongs: streaming May December again in protest.
Mean Girls
In the weeks since seeing it, my feelings on the movie have not changed much, but y’all seemed to really want my thoughts when I asked in the Substack chat (a feature I would love to use more often). I went into this movie expecting it to be utter dogshit, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was bad in a mostly inoffensive way, and still managed to have a good time. But the worst crime Mean Girls the Movie Musical based on the Mean Girls musical based on Mean Girls is that it isn’t mean! So much of the cutting humor of the original has been, well, cut.
Gone are the fat jokes, the body shaming, the queerphobia, and with it any edge the story had to present a brutal yet realistic depiction of teenage girlhood. This film was so afraid of being offensive, and yet the entire plot supposedly centers around girls are being mean to each other! In 2024, Gen Z prudishness has made studios and streamers so scared of offending anyone that they’ve forgotten a basic tenant of storytelling: depicting something is not endorsing it. In the original film, the movie didn’t approve of the Plastics calling Dawn Schweitzer a fat virgin, but we laughed because at some point we’ve all been called fat virgins, and it was at least half true!
But in the remake, Regina has been so sanded down that her worst sin is, what, kissing her ex-boyfriend when her new friend tries to make a move on him after being explicitly told not to? And because so much of the language has been sanitized, Cady’s “too gay to function” comment ends up being the meanest burn in the Burn Book! Others may harp on the lackluster performances, mediocre singing, and dismal costume design — all of which I agree with — but I just cannot get past how not mean these girls are. They’re rude at best!
Wavy French Bobs
I have found it true that once you cut a significant length from your hair you either immediately regret it and frantically massage your scalp with rosemary oil to speed up the regrowth process, or you just want to cut it shorter. I experienced the latter after getting a shoulder-length cut in the fall, and in a single week in January, I got two haircuts, one merely a bang trim and the other taking my hair to Velma Kelly length. My inspiration was the myriad women with wavy French bobs on TikTok, whose ranks I have now joined. In the week since the chop I am still getting occasional bobscare (like jumpscare, but occurs when you see yourself in the mirror with a bob you forgot you have), but for the most part, I love how short and femme the cut is. I don’t plan to maintain the length — the cut was mainly meant to remove any leftover bleach-damaged hair from my ill-advised (and short-lived) blonde era this spring — but I’m thoroughly enjoying it for the moment! Now I’m trying to figure out how I’d look with Dua Lipa’s black cherry color…
Nicki vs. Megan
As I’m not familiar enough with the players involved I will keep my commentary light, but let me say this: “Bigfoot” sounds like something I would have seen performed live at Metropolitan on Monday night circa 2013, but “Hiss” sounds like something I would have seen lip-synced to on Monday night at Don Pedro circa 2013. If you know, you know.
The Traitors
Sometimes I miss out on cultural moments purely out of spite, because I don’t catch them at the beginning and the more people tell me I have to join in, the more I don’t want to. This was my initial stance on The Traitors, but a rainy Sunday trapped inside has changed me on a subatomic level. The Traitors is, quite possibly, the best reality TV show ever made. For anyone who hasn’t watched, the concept is pretty simple: a group of scheming reality stars are whisked away to a castle in the Scottish Highlands, where they must compete in a series of challenges while being undermined and taken out by a few secret traitors who pick them off one by one. It’s Clue meets Survivor, and now I’m thinking I need to finally watch Survivor, or at least the seasons featuring Parvati, who immediately jumped out as one of my favorites. The show is so camp, not least because Alan Cumming hosts while wearing a series of sickening ensembles and playing a mixture of his roles from Spy Kids, Josie and the Pussycats, and Cabaret. Floop is a madman, help us save us!
See you next time!
feel you on the haircuts--went short, then shorter, and now patiently rubbing my scalp and singing to my hair to grow past the stupid midlength phase. 🙄
i wanna get into traitors but i don’t know anyone on season1 from other shows so im finding it hard to follow. … yet ill pursue 🫡