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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Peril of Not Vaccinating the World</strong> - Absent a concerted global commitment to vaccine equity, the virus will continue to evolve, and humanity may be consigned to a never-ending pandemic. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-peril-of-not-vaccinating-the-world">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Unique Dangers of the Supreme Court’s Decision to Hear a Mississippi Abortion Case</strong> - The most pressing question now may be not whether Roe and Casey can survive but how reproductive rights can be sustained without them. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-unique-dangers-of-the-supreme-courts-decision-to-hear-a-mississippi-abortion-case">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Purpose of Political Correctness</strong> - A conversation with the columnist Nesrine Malik about who makes the changing rules of public speech. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-purpose-of-political-correctness">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Other Side of the May Jobs Report: Higher Wages</strong> - Many American workers are seeing the biggest pay gains in decades. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-other-side-of-the-may-jobs-report-higher-wages">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Is There Any Time Left for Maya Wiley?</strong> - The former City Hall lawyer, who has received the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, considers herself the last progressive standing in New York’s mayoral race. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/is-there-any-time-left-for-maya-wiley">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>What’s missing from the advice column</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="An illustration of a manual typewriter with pages of paper flying out of it." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uX_d1X_h525ojij5dKN9_FqxaEw=/0x0:4292x3219/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69416555/GettyImages_824257738.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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PM Images/Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Author John Paul Brammer on how to rethink the ways we seek and give support.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dblZ14">
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zpKeyM">
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“Are you even qualified to help me?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UD7km2">
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This question, the first in John Paul Brammer’s book of advice essays, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hola-Papi/John-Paul-Brammer/9781982141493"><em>¡Hola Papi!</em></a>, cuts to the heart of his medium. Very quickly, the reader learns that Brammer is far from the pearl-decked, socialite woman long associated with advice columns — he’s a gay, mixed-race Mexican American from the Great Plains who jokes about his unreliable mental health. But this context arrives through his careful weighing of whether he’s a person to rely on in the first place. There’s no follow-up to that tough question, and he has to tackle it head-on: Why come to me?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LEiARX">
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People have <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/6/14/15782712/advice-columns-dear-abby-history">written to columnists</a> for guidance in newspapers and magazines <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/05/the-questions-people-asked-advice-columnists-in-the-1690s/392111/">since the 17th century</a>, but rarely has the (often pseudonymous) writer had their credentials challenged. In fact, when the US saw a <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/6/14/15782712/advice-columns-dear-abby-history">boom in advice columns</a> after 1900, unwavering authority was a given. Some authors were known for delivering curt, definitive replies without elaboration: In 1912, a doubtful 20-year-old woman who asked “Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson” at the <em>Rock Island Argus</em> if she was too young to marry her eager boyfriend got a one-word answer: “<a href="https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/blog/a-brief-history-of-advice-columns/#:~:text=While%20it%20isn't%20immediately,1690%20in%20the%20Athenian%20Mercury.&text=As%20advice%20columns%20began%20to,questions%20about%20sewing%20and%20recipes.">No.</a>”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DfVuTw">
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In the past few decades, many new voices have entered the conversation, and none is quite so frosty. All the same, each tends to speak from a lofty platform; there’s the assumption that they have the keenest, most penetrating insights on humanity and the habits to sustain it. You almost can’t avoid the language of a parent telling their child how the world should be.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PtfRnN">
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Brammer, however — who began writing his <em>¡Hola Papi! </em>column for the gay hookup app Grindr via its online magazine, Into, in 2017 — built a following with the opposite approach. Not only does he escape the largely white, straight, domestic concerns of the advice genre by carving out space for deep thoughts on LGBTQ and racial identities, he also doubts that he or anybody else can solve your problems, or even truly get a grip on them. Instead, he refracts the anxieties of young queer readers through his own life story, from the traumas of growing up closeted in the rural town of Cache, Oklahoma, with a fragile idea of his Mexican heritage, to the search for community, love, and authentic self-expression as an adult. He remembers being tormented as an outsider in middle school, his “coming out” to the male friend in denial about their sexual relationship, and a moment when art raised him from the pit of despair.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="085sg3">
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The result is a soulful memoir, each chapter drawing on an episode of his life to glean a lesson that upends advice as you know it, inviting the reader to take hold of their personal narrative. Rather than hand down edicts and aphorisms from on high, Brammer’s writing suggests, perhaps he can help you help yourself. “Whose gaze is it, and what are you looking for,” he asks a reader who is afraid to dress gayer. “What might it be like to have a lens that is more your own?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tvsgs1">
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Brammer now <a href="https://holapapi.substack.com/">publishes his column on Substack</a> and it’s syndicated in <a href="https://www.thecut.com/tags/%C2%A1hola-papi!/">The Cut</a>; he receives around five letters a week, assuaging people worried about <a href="https://holapapi.substack.com/p/i-think-im-ugly">being ugly</a>, <a href="https://holapapi.substack.com/p/i-cant-stop-cringing-at-my-old-self">past decisions</a>, and <a href="https://holapapi.substack.com/p/does-the-one-exist">meeting a soulmate</a>; his backlog of unanswered messages is now close to 700. I spoke to him about his take on the form and why it represents a necessary change. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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</p>
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<h4 id="kRUcHi">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i78sgm">
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When you began writing <em>¡Hola Papi!</em>, you envisioned it as a spoof of the traditional advice column. What was it about the genre that you wanted to subvert?
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</p>
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<h4 id="P8l5qj">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<div class="c-float-right">
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Author John Paul Brammer holding a bunny on a stoop." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pROQCMOdr0rUmlMkaTym7Ef1Hag=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22636934/JP_Brammer_credit_Zack_Knoll.jpg"/> <cite>Zack Knoll</cite>
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<figcaption>
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John Paul Brammer.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oxZXO6">
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I thought it was so funny that somebody would earnestly approach a complete stranger and say, “Here’s this weird thing I’m dealing with, what do you make of it?” Because I just don’t believe that authority like that exists. Being this long-established phenomenon — the advice column dates back to the 1600s — it’s very storied, there’s something traditional about it. And anywhere there’s tradition, you have the opportunity to run amok and turn everything on its head. It wasn’t like I had real contempt for the advice column. It was more that I saw these rules I could break.
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</p>
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<h4 id="mXpSo8">
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Miles Klee
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||
</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5oitid">
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When you were flooded with letters, you quickly took on the responsibility of helping those in need. Did it seem that something crucial had been missing from the medium all along? Or that it had overlooked a significant audience?
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</p>
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<h4 id="pHlU12">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bEMnAV">
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Certainly. People have touched on LGBTQ issues in the past with their columns, but I did exist at such a unique intersection of technology and the advice column: it was pushed out through the Grindr app. I thought it would be funny to place this “Dear Abby”-type property inside a gay leather club, basically. There’s a certain kind of person who’s on Grindr in the first place, looking for intimacy; you’re probably lonely. I think I was offering, in my own limited way, a chance at genuine connection, of reaching out to someone else and telling them something important, something real — confessing.
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</p>
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<h4 id="coQPI2">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fWv1PT">
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Digital connection is a big topic. You describe a youth on AIM and Myspace. I loved the story of dating a girl you met on Myspace when you were both young teens, partly because of an emotional connection, but also to appear straight, a status you perceived as enviably “normal.” This gives way into adulthood, with apps like Twitter and Grindr — the column was named after the racialized greeting you frequently got on the app. Is the lens we bring to our struggles now inseparable from the online condition?
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</p>
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<h4 id="SwAfp0">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TxBd8f">
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The internet is bringing things into our lives that we could never have anticipated, and I don’t even mean just now — the chaos that Myspace introduced to my young life. We have this second persona that we put out on the internet, and people are interacting with that. Who I was on Myspace maybe wasn’t such a real person. But even when I was with my girlfriend at the time, obviously I wasn’t being genuinely true to myself. So those things are very symmetrical to me. You can still be a projection, a “fake” person in real life, just as much as you are on the internet. I think that chapter does the best job of conveying the chaos of the internet, but also how we bring a lot of it to our real-world interactions as well.
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</p>
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<h4 id="yr3WTi">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zhhBub">
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Your style of support brings your own personal experience to the foreground. Forgoing the abstracted voice of moral certitude, you relate other people’s problems to your own, and to your evolving identity. You recount finding a job making tortillas because you felt you weren’t “Mexican enough,” and the time when a childhood bully, years later, tried to flirt with you on Grindr. What effect does this exposure have?
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</p>
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<h4 id="4vobgy">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4ORvPb">
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Part of the funniness for the column was when someone wrote in a letter that was very serious and intimate, I would then start talking about myself. Because the character of <em>¡Hola Papi! </em>was this egotistical narcissist. “Yeah, yeah, that’s your problem, let me tell you about what happened to <em>me</em> one time.” To an extent, he’s a cartoon character that I can write from, and he has a distinct voice that feels very separate from the way I talk and the way I write anything else. Yet, at the same time, the things I discuss are true to my life, very vulnerable. Anecdotes from my past that … there’s not much funny about it. On the internet as it exists now, it’s hard to write outside of your own experiences because people will pick it apart. What you have a right to do anymore is say how <em>you</em> feel specifically. Here’s how <em>I </em>see it. I’m afraid of overstepping, telling someone whose experience is nothing like mine how to live their life.
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</p>
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<h4 id="gXc0g6">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kx17PD">
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Also in contrast to past generations of advice writers, you aren’t prescriptive. You don’t tell people what to do in extremely specific situations, but you address broader anxieties about how to be<em> </em>— how to live with trauma, or how to express a truer self.
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</p>
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<h4 id="tioMxu">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R0DV5G">
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I’m so lucky that I’m running an LGBTQ advice column. Straight people are starting to write in, which I love, but that’s a recent phenomenon. A lot of those LGBTQ issues are more esoteric, have more to do with teasing things out rather than seeking a definitive answer. “How does my identity work? How can I feel more comfortable with who I am? How can I feel like I belong in this community?” When we’re talking about presentation, how you see yourself, how you make peace with yourself, that’s where I’m comfortable. And I don’t have to give these super-concrete answers, like, “You need to do this, and then do that.” I’m not operating within an established system where there are rules. I’m talking about identity, sexuality, appetites, desires. I really don’t like the ones where I’m saying, “Break up with him, sis.” I feel dumb and incapable whenever I get letters asking, “Who’s in the right here?” Like I’m at a family reunion and these people I’m not even related to are going, “Pick a side.” I don’t know, I want to go home!
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</p>
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<h4 id="UUSfVJ">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CP2poH">
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I was struck by your theme of reinvention. You acknowledge that we change from one moment to the next, and may hardly recognize who we were a few years ago. How does this interior, ongoing narrative shape your essays?
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</p>
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<h4 id="vhkgCN">
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cBiF4b">
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I’m of this belief that we cycle through many personalities, many ways of thinking. One question I get a lot is: “What advice would you give your younger self?” That represents this non-realistic, linear way of thinking — that we accrue wisdom as we get older, and we keep all the old wisdom. But it doesn’t work that way. We lose some things. When I was a child or a teenager, I had a certain kind of wisdom that I don’t have now. Back then, I had to navigate being in the closet, violence, the idea that I could actually be hurt or physically attacked if I expressed my sexuality. There were things that kid knew back then that I don’t know now. He was tougher in a lot of ways. When I go through those different experiences and why I see them as so important, in the act of remembering them, I’m also doing some creative writing. I try to be flexible and adaptable in the way I see myself. It’s a more interesting, freeing way of seeing it than trying to pretend that I know everything.
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</p>
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<h4 id="OW0UzE">
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Miles Klee
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WGHDhQ">
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What’s a common mistake people make when giving advice to friends and loved ones?
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</p>
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<h4 id="UJXirJ">
|
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John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aiopus">
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Sometimes we’re well-intentioned and want to give a solution. A common mistake is trying to fix it. And that sounds really counterintuitive, coming from an advice columnist, who, ostensibly, their job is to help you fix it. I get a lot of letters where it’s like, this has no solution, and they’re not looking for one. They just want to have somebody out there who’s listening to them, and to put into words what’s bugging them. That, in and of itself, is a very powerful act and can be very therapeutic, very healing for a person. I think I’m good at figuring out when that is what someone’s looking for.
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</p>
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<h4 id="1tvTYZ">
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Miles Klee
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||
</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TrKhwi">
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The book is framed by two pieces that wrestle with a tough but central concern — what, if anything, qualifies you, John Paul Brammer, to give a stranger emotional guidance. In the end, you don’t answer a gay man writing from a country where homosexuality is illegal, deciding that “my voice may do more harm than good.” Is rejecting the mantle of authority and expertise in favor of humility the most radical approach we can take to the art of advice?
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||
</p>
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||
<h4 id="AmAhqn">
|
||
John Paul Brammer
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gpaHxO">
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||
I’m going to say yes, because I love me, and I think it would be a cool idea if I was doing the most radical thing. I think we’re constantly being pushed to speak authoritatively on things we maybe don’t have the authority to speak on. This push to be an expert at everything, or the person with the smartest thing to say, is actually pretty poisonous. To write in the book about a time I was silent, and why it was good, is silly. You took a whole book to say that. But there’s a lot of wisdom in silence, a lot of virtue. Not always. But I thought of silence as this neglected altar that could use some more flowers. And I like pairing it with my job, which is “someone who’s supposed to tell other people what to do.”
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>The death of the girlboss</strong> -
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<figure>
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||
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6YZso2QynV010rn_sLqg1bmekfA=/133x0:2864x2048/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69415807/GettyImages_1159114300.0.jpg"/>
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||
<figcaption>
|
||
Girlboss founder and CEO Sophia Amoruso poses in front of “The Heroine’s Journey,” a mural commissioned by the luggage company Tumi, during the 2019 Girlboss Rally at UCLA. | Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Girlboss
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||
</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Girlbosses convinced us they would change capitalism. We weren’t wrong in hoping they would.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ELPSJ5">
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The girlboss is one of the cruelest tricks capitalism ever perpetrated. Born in the mid-2010s, she was simultaneously a power fantasy and a utopian promise. As a female business leader — be she a CEO, an aspiring CEO, or an independent MLM superseller — the girlboss was going to unapologetically will empires from the rubble of rejection and underestimation she faced all her life. As companies grew in her image, so did her mythos; her legacy would be grand and fair, because equality was coming to work. Everyone was supposed to win when girlbosses won.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LNWOLs">
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Hard work would finally pay off.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iEDNwB">
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What set girlbosses apart from regular bosses was pinning feminism to hustle. Women like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and former Nasty Gal CEO Sophia Amoruso — who coined the term — were finally wrangling power away from the men who had held it for so long, which was seen as a form of justice. As the concept was codified, the idea of the girlboss became about the melding of professional self and identity, capitalist aspiration, and a specific (and arguably limited) vision of empowerment.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KWDS3n">
|
||
“Literally every woman that I look up to is unrelatable,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22373865/rachel-hollis-controversy-harriet-tubman-girl-wash-your-face-stop-apologizing-unrelatable">Rachel Hollis, a very wealthy self-help guru, said</a> in a TikTok video in April, describing how she wills herself to wake up at 4 am to conquer her day. <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-hate-the-term-girl_b_13634228">Hollis wrote in 2016</a> how much she hated the term, but quotes like hers crystallize the girlboss mentality.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LiJC1i">
|
||
“If my life is relatable to most people, I’m doing it wrong,” she continued, and in the accompanying caption she compared herself to a slew of unrelatable women she looks up to, including Harriet Tubman.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="f0QVio">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k3hUvT">
|
||
If Hollis’s fetish for relentless, unstoppable work and comparison of herself to the creator of the Underground Railroad is a prime example of a girlboss gone wild, so was the swift backlash.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hUT4YG">
|
||
Hollis’s most generous critics saw her words as a moment of unchecked privilege. Her sterner critics called her out in disgust, pointing to Hollis’s casual dehumanization of her housekeeper, whom she described as the woman who “cleans her toilets,” and her Tubman comparison as examples of typical, wrongheaded girlboss attitudes. People <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/style/rachel-hollis-tiktok-video.html">who worked for Hollis</a> corroborated her off-putting conduct. She was, in their view, just another white woman co-opting empowerment and feminism for profit, with no intention of lifting anyone else up.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sL41c6">
|
||
Hollis is the latest in a recent spate of corporate women leaders — including <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion">Away CEO Steph Korey</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22195549/soulcycle-decline-reopening-bullying-bike-explained">certain founders of luxury spin classes</a> — who create companies plagued with stories of bullying, cruelty, and overworked and underappreciated staff. It now seems as though toxic work environments were a feature of their design and not coincidental bugs. Perhaps working for a girlboss was just like working any other job.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4cmML7">
|
||
As more and more of these stories surfaced, “girlboss” shifted culturally from a noun to a verb, one that described the sinister process of capitalist success and hollow female empowerment. On TikTok and Twitter, girlboss the verb became yoked to “gaslight” and “gatekeep” to create a kind of “live, laugh, love” of toxic, usually white feminism.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4mdIVz">
|
||
“Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words,” one image macro reads.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qk7pyi">
|
||
But it’s not that people wanted the girlboss to fail; it’s the opposite. The concept of the girlboss failed us all.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8SVNrU">
|
||
The girlboss brought to life a way to talk about real concerns and barriers in the system honestly and frankly. It also posited a solution so blazingly simple — put women in charge — that it could never work.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kLjn3z">
|
||
We wanted it to be this easy to buck the whole system. When it turned out women CEOs were just CEOs, we never let them forget it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="eQlIcC">
|
||
The girlboss succeeded because of benevolent sexism
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eZCghIDR80b0ZH1VBi2riDM5q9g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22556934/GettyImages_1124410001.jpg"/> <cite>EyeEm via Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Look at this woman, completely unfazed by the fluttering money around her!
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7IIp1m">
|
||
Girlboss’s slow march toward irony was supercharged when the neologism officially got a name seven years ago.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XXurVd">
|
||
“In 2014, Sophia Amoruso’s memoir, called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/GIRLBOSS-Sophia-Amoruso/dp/1591847931">#<em>Girlboss,</em> comes out</a>. This is where the word comes from,” feminist author and poet Leigh Stein explained to me. Stein is arguably the world’s foremost authority on the girlboss movement, having studied and written <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Self-Care-Novel-Leigh-Stein/dp/0143135198">an entire novel</a> about it. “That same year, Beyoncé performed at the VMAs in front of a sign that says ‘feminist’ illuminated in bright letters. As we all know, anything Beyoncé does is a huge cultural moment.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s3wr7K">
|
||
Stein pointed out that at the time, the idea of bringing feminism, or some kind of feminism à la carte, into the corporate world was inescapable. Beyoncé and figures like Amoruso punctuated it, but it had begun brewing a year earlier, when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg published her <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/12/6/18128838/michelle-obama-lean-in-sheryl-sandberg">lauded and controversial memoir <em>Lean In</em></a> in 2013. The book sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, and established a language to talk about women’s issues in a corporate environment. Amoruso swooped in with the shorthand soon after.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jhKJQB">
|
||
“When you look at the actual word ‘girlboss,’ there may be some internalized sexism,” Alexandra Solomon, a professor who specializes in gender and gender roles at Northwestern University, told me. “Research shows that as women get older, and as women become more powerful, they are perceived as less likable. So by using that term girlboss, there’s a desire to be powerful but a fear of losing likability.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lv2aT3">
|
||
In some aspects, Solomon explained, the girlboss label allowed women to assert power or lean in without threatening or alienating people around them. Calling oneself a “girl” could be seen as a compromise, but it was also a way to maneuver around traditional beliefs and systems that had historically diminished women’s voices.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZByFdx">
|
||
Riding on feminism’s increased cultural cachet (as boosted by high-performance Beyoncé octane), Sandberg, Amoruso, and the girlbosses who came after them seemed to propose (along with the press that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/style/girlboss-rally-sophia-amoruso.html">breathlessly profiled them</a>) that women advocating for themselves and their worth was, intrinsically, a form of justice.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N98iJH">
|
||
In this context, power and money became measures of equality, and rising to power in a capitalist system turned into an empowering feminist victory. It was a way of framing financial success and consumerism as goodness. The implicit promise was that if consumers made these girlbosses successful, it would mean better working conditions for women, and with that, maybe empowerment for all.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oNzPdV">
|
||
“If these women could succeed while upholding feminist values and treating their employees humanely, then maybe the patriarchy was just a choice that savvy consumers could shop their way around,” Amanda Mull wrote in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/girlbosses-what-comes-next/613519/">the Atlantic in 2020</a>, explaining how the girlboss concept had entwined itself with justice. “Maybe people could vote for equality by buying a particular set of luggage or joining a particular co-working space.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nLIJSR">
|
||
That cultural moment seemed to manifest itself in women-led startups such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/15/18184151/glossier-emily-weiss-marketing-strategy-recode">Glossier</a>, a direct-to-consumer cosmetics company launched in 2014; Away, a luggage retailer created in 2015; and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/7/18207116/the-wing-soho-dc-coworking-feminism-gelman">the Wing</a>, a coworking space for women founded in 2016.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EUb9S9">
|
||
The media narrative surrounding these very different companies’ origins was pretty similar: A woman, or a group of women, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/style/away-suitcases.html">has an idea for a company</a> that fulfills a need for young women especially; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/style/glossier-new-store-new-york.html">funding is difficult to find</a> (because venture capitalists underestimate women) but is eventually secured; a unique company is created, one that is an extension of the founders’ backstories and forged by their struggles; the women succeed because they’ve leaned into their <a href="https://www.inc.com/magazine/201910/christine-lagorio-chafkin/wing-audrey-gelman-women-coworking-space-network-community.html">strengths as female founders</a>, and in doing so overcome a specific stripe of sexism.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bBorcd">
|
||
Girlboss language wasn’t just used in the C-suite stratosphere. It trickled down to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/26/21187035/mlms-coronavirus-recruit-young-living-doterra-essential-oils">lower-level workers and eventually multilevel marketing schemes</a>. Tethering feminism to hard work and entrepreneurship with justice fit seamlessly into MLMs, which have their own predatory <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mlm-horror-stories_l_5d952097e4b0da7f66211f35">horror stories</a> and are built on exploiting <a href="https://www.business.com/articles/mlms-target-women-and-immigrants/">tight-knit, predominantly female communities</a> with promises of financial success.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zoHSkv">
|
||
But mythologizing the girlboss didn’t last very long.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TsMya1">
|
||
In 2015, Amoruso’s Nasty Gal became the subject of a discrimination lawsuit alleging it had illegally fired pregnant employees. After it was filed, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelzarrell/nasty-gal-a-horrible-place-to-work-if-youre-pregnant">employees came forward</a> with stories about how Amoruso’s company was a toxic workplace. In 2016, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gTnhrG">
|
||
In 2018, as criticism of Facebook’s handling of Russian election meddling, misinformation, and personal data abuse mounted, Sandberg’s bullying behavior and attempts to discredit the company’s critics came to light in a New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html">report</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LV6byH">
|
||
In 2019, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion">The Verge reported</a> on Away employees’ allegations that co-founder and co-CEO Steph Korey bullied employees, and that the company wasn’t as inclusive or diverse as it had claimed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DumptB">
|
||
In 2020, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/magazine/the-wing.html">former employees</a> of feminist oasis the Wing said the coworking and social space created was only for show, and that working there was an exercise in being undermined. They also alleged that Black and brown employees were mistreated. The Wing founder Audrey Gelman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/style/the-wing-ceo-audrey-gelman-resigns.html">stepped down that June</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SuqbL5">
|
||
The same year, <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/glossier-labor-abuse-bipoc-instagram/">employees at Glossier alleged</a> they faced discrimination from both their company and the customers they served. They said upper management was predominantly white women.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P0HwsR">
|
||
Similar allegations of toxic work environments and discriminatory behavior surfaced at women-led media outlets such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21287045/refinery29-black-employees-man-repeller-cosmopolitan-who-what-wear-vogue">Refinery29, Man Repeller, Who What Wear, and Vogue</a>, as well as women’s clothing company <a href="https://www.today.com/style/reformation-s-yael-aflolo-apologizes-after-racism-accusations-t183582">Reformation</a> and the women-founded luxury exercise chain <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22195549/soulcycle-decline-reopening-bullying-bike-explained">SoulCycle</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K8LWxJ">
|
||
Like their origin stories, these companies’ reckonings had a similar trajectory: The businesses touted themselves as inclusive communities built by women, but behind closed doors, some employees said, was a toxic and sometimes abusive mix of, well, <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/12/19/18140830/gaslighting-relationships-politics-explained">gaslighting</a> and gatekeeping. Those revelations hurt these brands with their consumers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IwjcCS">
|
||
“A huge part of the problem is if you make feminism part of your brand, then your customers are going to say, ‘Wait a second. Are you a feminist company behind the scenes? Or is [it] just optics, like optical allyship?’” Stein told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
|
||
<aside id="17O73h">
|
||
<q>“No one’s in the comment section saying Jeff Bezos is bad at feminism”</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q7xKga">
|
||
Girlboss-branded companies failing to live up to their own standards prompted <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-infantilizing-ways-we-talk-about-womens-ambition">thoughtful pieces</a> about the way we think and frame women’s ambitions, and why these problems seemed to be ingrained into the companies’ design.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="79gSzu">
|
||
In June 2020, Stein herself wrote a viral think piece asserting the death of the girlboss. Her most convincing point was that girlboss failures weren’t some new folly or unique to women; this was, quite simply, capitalism.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eWxYuN">
|
||
“The rise and fall of the girlboss says more about how comfortable we’ve become mixing capitalism with social justice, as we look to corporations to implement social changes because we’ve lost faith in our public institutions to do so,” <a href="https://gen.medium.com/the-end-of-the-girlboss-is-nigh-4591dec34ed8">Stein wrote</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lzBfVd">
|
||
The success these companies achieved in linking gender to their brand belies the idea that women are more virtuous, kind, and gentle; they weren’t supposed to succumb to greed or power, to commit the same terrible abuses male CEOs perpetuate.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TQR7yG">
|
||
“There’s a lens or mentality that a female boss will be more nurturing,” Northwestern’s Solomon told me. “It’s a setup. Her clear boundaries are then perceived as cruel boundaries or punitive. Or it goes the other way, and people perceive her gentleness as weakness.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NEf7Nu">
|
||
Girlboss downfalls, under this line of thinking, aren’t seen as just a failure of business but also as a betrayal of their gender.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="upqD1K">
|
||
The allegations of discrimination and toxic work culture at girlboss-led companies are undoubtedly serious, Stein said. But at the same time, “there’s kind of a trap” when it comes to how we talk about those business failures. She argues it’s possible to have conversations about what went wrong without losing sight of accountability or laying these failures at the feet of women writ large.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="79pYkH">
|
||
“There’s a whole <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/business/economy/amazon-warehouse-labor-robots.html">exposé</a> in the Times about the Amazon work culture and how it sounds like a nightmare to work at Amazon. But no one’s in the comment section, like, saying Jeff Bezos is bad at feminism,” Stein said. “Women are held to account for how ethical and virtuous they are as leaders in a way that men are not.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="w7b9EK">
|
||
Why girlbossing was always going to be an empty promise
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Girlboss Rally June 2019 Los Angeles" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TZWgXcnloH4QeWHyM-c-LdFEoAo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22598826/1159300808.jpg"/> <cite>Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Girlboss</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A notebook for girlbosses to, if they felt like it, document their girlbossing.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GsDNeH">
|
||
In speaking to experts about the rise and fall of the girlboss, the one theme that keeps surfacing is that while the term ultimately flopped, the enthusiasm surrounding it was real. The barriers facing women in corporate structures, the desire to make workplaces better by making them more inclusive, the anger from being overlooked in current systems — it’s all authentic.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S6IkX9">
|
||
Lindsey Bier, a professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business who specializes in gender communication, explained that one of the reasons she thinks the term became so popular and its downfall so magnified is the lack of empowerment women face in the workplace. For more than a decade, she explained, study after study was published about how women in leadership roles were penalized for how they talked to their employees.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="elUtf9">
|
||
“Men in leadership positions are expected to be assertive and direct. Women, however, face a paradoxical situation in which they’re judged if they’re not assertive enough, but then they’re also judged if they are too assertive and direct,” Bier told me. “The data shows that both men and women judge women in leadership in this way.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L6GHWX">
|
||
The girlboss wave of feminist-adjacent corporate empowerment offered an unapologetic promise that women would not be judged or undermined the way they would in traditional corporate settings. The hard work they put into their jobs would finally be rewarded. But the promise became emptier when basic scrutiny revealed that employees at these companies, particularly women of color, still ended up feeling overlooked, overshadowed, or even bullied.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DTVLu0">
|
||
“You’ve changed the bodies of the people who are sitting at the table, but you haven’t changed the table,” Solomon said, explaining that girlboss offered to dismantle the system but opted for cosmetic changes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang">
|
||
<aside id="RqfQLg">
|
||
<q>“You’ve changed the bodies of the people who are sitting at the table, but you haven’t changed the table”</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d47D8y">
|
||
The energy and desire for something better still exists. Both Bier and Solomon told me that younger people and members of Gen Z are more aware than previous generations when it comes to companies’ and brands’ values, and they factor in those values — e.g., equality, diversity, inclusion — when deciding where to spend their money. This is a shift from previous generations, which looked for their government to enact change.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t6SCoA">
|
||
While that sentiment can be reassuring, Stein is a little more cynical when it comes to getting corporations and capitalism to bend to a consumer’s will. Pinning hopes on CEOs to dismantle structural barriers is how we got into this mess in the first place. “I actually don’t want to see more of us, like, yelling at Rachel Hollis to end racism in America. I don’t think we’re targeting our rage into the right place,” Stein told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IYJ9RW">
|
||
Expecting Hollis or Sandberg or Amoruso to fix systemic inequality in the United States is moot when they’re not often given a chance to fix their own companies, Stein says. “I don’t think we’re actually giving them the opportunity to do better,” she told me. “These girlbosses that are 29, 30, 31, 32 when they start the first company, they’re publicly shamed in the press for their failures. Do they get to try again? Are we really saying as a culture, ‘No, they don’t get to try again’? That’s what’s unfair to me.” Fixing their own businesses isn’t as ambitious as solving America’s deep problems, but it’s at least a small step in changing the system.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="ZOb7mu">
|
||
If you laugh at the girlboss, she can’t hurt you
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hcm03UWV3bBDzYI3MBmLBr4s2fE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22556939/GettyImages_85406576.jpg"/> <cite>Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Getty Images has a lot of stock photography of women in offices laughing maniacally.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P5ihzF">
|
||
In January 2021, a sentence appeared on Tumblr: “today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss.” Very much like how the girlboss became a cultural archetype who outgrew her original ambitions, gatekeep and gaslight are terms that, in recent years, <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=gatekeep,gaslight">exploded in popular usage</a>. “Gaslight” has become the trendy synonym for lying — particularly a strain of lying where someone denies an obvious truth — and “gatekeep” has become interchangeable with discrimination.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tjNRUz">
|
||
The three Gs were linked, and the internet ran with it: <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@glamdemon2004?referer_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdk79lclgtez2i.cloudfront.net%2F&referer_video_id=6953812834966834437&refer=embed">TikToks</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/loltay69/status/1351044731942350848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1351044731942350848%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.intheknow.com%2Fpost%2Fgaslight-gatekeep-girlboss%2F">image macros</a>, and tweets were all dedicated to these pillars of a cringe-inducing cultural moment. That “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” neatly traces the business practices of some of the most notorious women CEOs of the past decade may be more serendipitous than pointed. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss functions as more of an ironic “yeesh” at how embarrassingly enthusiastic we all were to jump on the buzzword bandwagon.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R7p7Lb">
|
||
Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss was a vibe.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G9mYjC">
|
||
Yet that hasn’t stopped the term from becoming sarcastic shorthand in interpreting pop culture, which hasn’t yet fallen out of love with girlbosses. In<em> I Care a Lot</em>, Rosamund Pike plays Martha Grayson, a sharp-bobbed antiheroine who scams old people out of their money via legal loopholes.<em> </em>Martha isn’t a bad person, <a href="https://twitter.com/itsgalow/status/1399088867337195521?s=20">she’s just going through her</a> gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss <a href="https://twitter.com/itsgalow/status/1399088867337195521">arc</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eW99fY">
|
||
The marketing for Disney’s new <a href="https://twitter.com/GRIFTSH0P/status/1398379357928894465?s=20">Cruella de Vil</a> origin story, wherein Cruella is an aspiring fashion designer at odds with an even-crueler Baroness, calls to mind ads for Glossier. The phrase has even been tossed at Bethenny Frankel, who in interviews says she hates the word <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/04/how-bethenny-frankel-gets-it-done.html">girlboss</a>. Yet, in her new <em>Apprentice</em>-like reality competition show, <em>The Big Shot With Bethenny</em>, she’s portrayed as a mean and awful boss who’s also supposed to be the protagonist.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4BF3df">
|
||
Recently, the CIA, an organization that’s known to partake in torture, <a href="https://twitter.com/cia/status/1387431636732633089">created an entire ad</a> about how it’s an inclusive place for women to thrive. It’s not torture, the internet replied, it’s just <a href="https://twitter.com/N0ghl/status/1388103515524976642?s=20">girlboss, gaslighting, and gatekeeping</a> with some water.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="2vVzIz">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WednesdayWisdom?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WednesdayWisdom</a><br/><br/>“I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Whether you work at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CIA?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CIA</a>, or anywhere else in the world. <br/><br/>Command your space. Mija, you are worth it.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
— CIA (<span class="citation" data-cites="CIA">@CIA</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1387431636732633089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 28, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eh3h7P">
|
||
Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss becoming a meme that’s now used to point out the hollowness of capitalism or organizations like the CIA co-opting social justice talk feels like the last gasps of the girlboss. As the pandemic brought job losses and shined a light on wealth inequality, many of us may be more cynical and weary about our corporate overlords — no matter what form they take — than we were in 2013.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dz3nGe">
|
||
Solomon, who specializes in gender psychology at Northwestern, pointed me to <a href="https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2020/6/5/on-audre-lordes-the-masters-tools">Audre Lorde’s 1984</a> essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Lorde wrote about how systems like white supremacy and patriarchy perpetuate themselves and how difficult it is to break them apart:
|
||
</p>
|
||
<blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xezqyR">
|
||
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g0Ugr1">
|
||
In the context of girlbosses, putting these women in powerful positions was never going to buck the capitalist and patriarchal system because there was never an intent to change it — just wield it. Solomon explains that a lot of girlbosses learned to navigate and were supported by a capitalist system. The more they were exposed, the better the rest of us got at recognizing that it “sure as hell is just easier to use the master’s tools,” Solomon said.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u3rooR">
|
||
Maybe mocking the girlboss to the point of redefinition takes back a little of that power. Redefined through comedy, she turns into a joke. The girlboss can’t hurt you if you can laugh at her.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sxGjhr">
|
||
Laughing makes it easier to admit that we got played, that we were once able to foolishly hope that a group of women were going to fix an entire system. It’s pretty funny, even if we wanted them to.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>Chrissy Teigen’s fall from grace</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="Chrissy Teigen onstage holding her arms out wide." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kvHZ-TRW6qAjsfOB8ccNSvXV1vA=/0x0:5333x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69415698/1315962735.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Chrissy Teigen at Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, on May 2. | Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The rise and fall of Chrissy Teigen shows how drastically Twitter changed in 10 years.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vQtyqR">
|
||
Chrissy Teigen, the former queen of Twitter, has gotten into a lot of trouble lately on the very platform she once ruled.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2ODoGS">
|
||
Teigen is famous because she’s a model, TV host, and bestselling cookbook author who is married<strong> </strong>to John Legend. (Disclosure: Legend sits on the board of Vox Media.) But her real claim to the widespread adoration she enjoyed until fairly recently came from the fact that she was good at Twitter. Her feed is full of funny, candid, uncensored jokes that underscore her “just like you, if you were incredibly hot and hilarious and married to an EGOT-winner” charm.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GpHSX6">
|
||
If Teigen’s jokes sometimes came at the expense of other people — well, who cared as long as those jokes were aimed at widely despised figures of contempt? Her sick Donald Trump burns were so widely admired by progressives that <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/john-legend-and-chrissy-teigen-cover-story">Trump once went on a Twitter rampage about her, and then blocked her</a>. A friend of Teigen’s framed the tweets that made him mad and Teigen put them on display in her house.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OonAQp">
|
||
Earlier this year, however, TV personality Courtney Stodden pointed out a dark side to Teigen’s refreshingly unfiltered feed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bfCfSx">
|
||
Stodden first became famous in 2011, when at the age of 16 they married 50-year-old acting coach Doug Hutchison. (Stodden is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.) Stodden and Hutchinson are now divorced, and from the vantage point of 2021, it’s clear that during their marriage, Stodden was a child who was being abused by an adult man. But in 2011, Stodden was widely considered to be someone ridiculous and mockable, someone whose feelings you didn’t have to care about. People called them “<a href="https://jezebel.com/courtney-stodden-is-worlds-weirdest-anti-bullying-advoc-5865051">the child bride</a>” and made vicious jokes at their expense. Teigen was not only one of many to make those jokes, but did so in a particularly brutal fashion, directing them right at Stodden.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V0XNjV">
|
||
“I experienced so much harassment and bullying from her when I was just 16 years old,” <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2021/03/28/courtney-stodden-chrissy-teigen-bullying-twitter-negative-2011-old-tweets/">Stodden said of Teigen in an Instagram video in March of 2021</a>. “At a time when I needed help. I was being abused.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vO9i1L">
|
||
Stodden revealed multiple tweets Teigen sent to them at the beginning of the 2010s. “my Friday fantasy: you. dirt nap. mmm baby,” Teigen tweeted at Stodden in 2011. In another tweet, she simply wrote, “I hate you.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2tkLwb">
|
||
“It really affected me,” Stodden said in their Instagram video. “It’s so damaging when you have somebody like Chrissy Teigen bullying children.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4Ar4KR">
|
||
In May, Stodden discussed Teigen’s bullying <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-crucifixion-of-courtney-stodden">in an interview with the Daily Beast</a>, adding that in addition to publicly tweeting at them, Teigen had also occasionally direct-messaged Stodden, telling them to kill themselves.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ojj9Zh">
|
||
The story began to spread. Days later, Teigen’s cookware line, Cravings, <a href="https://pagesix.com/2021/05/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-undercover-bully-chrissy-teigen/">disappeared from the Macy’s website</a>. Macy’s has made no statement as to why the line has disappeared, but figures like right-wing pundit <a href="https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1394136989612625922">Candace Owens celebrated the move</a> as a triumph over Teigen. <a href="https://pagesix.com/2021/05/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-undercover-bully-chrissy-teigen/">Page Six declared Teigen</a> an “undercover bully;” <a href="https://youtu.be/m1Mkm-vCBXc?t=41">Pete Davidson joked on <em>Saturday Night Live</em></a> that “getting Chrissy Teigen out of our lives” was one of the only good things about the past year.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B0WgyU">
|
||
<a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/courtney-stodden-chrissy-teigen-told-me-to-kill-myself.html">The Cut</a> had an overview of the story, and so did <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/chrissy-teigencourtney-stodden-tweets-apology.html">Vulture</a> and <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/chrissy-teigen-courtney-stodden-twitter-apology-explained.html">Slate</a>. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/05/22/chrissy-teigen-cyber-bully-cancel-culture-courtney-stodden/5185634001/">USA Today</a> had an op-ed about it. What happened between Teigen and Stodden was all over the internet.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dpel9I">
|
||
“I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be,” <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1392552701515370496">Teigen wrote in an apology thread on Twitter</a> on May 12. “I was an insecure, attention seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior but that is nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel.” She has not posted since.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ryrCMn">
|
||
Chrissy Teigen looks to be pretty canceled. And her cancellation is notable not only because she used to be so beloved, but because it points to a major cultural shift that seems to have occurred within the very period of time in which Teigen got famous.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m1gWV6">
|
||
Teigen became popular in the first place because she was really good at Twitter in the early 2010s. What it means to be good at Twitter now is very different from what it meant to be good at Twitter then — and if we unpack those changes, we can see just how drastically the culture has shifted in a single tumultuous decade.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="xHyd7L">
|
||
“Chrissy Teigen is sort of the Jennifer Lawrence of the modeling world”: The rise of Twitter’s favorite supermodel
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UEZpFRxAde0XpIPbAC2iVEZH8Gw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22635371/162268368.jpg"/> <cite>Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Chrissy Teigen laughing on the set of NBC News’ <em>Today</em> show in 2013.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E43UiK">
|
||
“Supermodel Chrissy Teigen is funny,” <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a29618/chrissy-teigen-interview-0914/">begins an Esquire profile of Teigen in 2014</a>. “Not funny-for-Twitter funny. Like, straight-up funny. Even in real life.” This is the frisson that animates almost all early profiles of Teigen: a slightly condescending awe at the fact that not only is she a professionally beautiful person but that she can also tell a joke. What are the chances!
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="07EfJ1">
|
||
Plus, did you know she likes food?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9fwIk1">
|
||
“I know it’s a cliché when supermodels say they love food and eat whatever they want and mysteriously never gain weight,” that 2014 Esquire profile continues. “But Chrissy actually adores food.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fv5fhr">
|
||
Today, the celebrity-profile-reading public has internalized the lessons of Gillian Flynn’s <em>Gone Girl</em> deeply<strong> </strong>enough to be cynical about an article that so closely maps onto the archetype of Flynn’s “<a href="https://genius.com/Gillian-flynn-gone-girl-cool-girl-monologue-book-annotated">Cool Girl</a>” —<strong> </strong>“a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2.” In 2014, however, Jennifer Lawrence reigned as the queen of Hollywood, and a Cool Girl was the best thing any young star on the make could be.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZQRWwT">
|
||
Teigen appeared to fit the Cool Girl bill, and the profiles practically wrote themselves.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jv6uJX">
|
||
Teigen has real food cred. She launched a food blog in 2011, discussed her firm food opinions frequently on social media, and would go on to publish two bestselling cookbooks. But Teigen’s bona fides as a foodie were less important to her public image as she came up than the pleasing contrast between her evident love of food and the picture of her <a href="https://swimsuit.si.com/swimsuit/model/chrissy-teigen">on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a bikini</a>. The appeal of that contrast only increased as it became clear that Teigen was also funny, and that her sense of humor was not publicist-approved.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PY3GvH">
|
||
“Sure, her types of jobs may be more Maxim<em> </em>than Vogue<em>, </em>but it’s not just her curviness that makes her different than a typical runway girl,” <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/chrissy-teigen-and-the-rise-of-the-social-supermodel">enthused the Daily Beast in 2014</a>. “She shows a side that’s rarely seen in supermodels: personality. She loves to talk. And she loves to eat.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OHH42j">
|
||
“Chrissy Teigen is sort of the Jennifer Lawrence of the modeling world,” <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a19380/chrissy-teigen-model-interview/">mused Elle the same year</a>. “No, she doesn’t trip a lot (to my knowledge?) but she <em>does</em> toe the line between self-deprecating charm and foot-in-mouth chaos in that J.Law-patented way.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eJTJOQ">
|
||
It was essential to Teigen’s appeal that she make her jokes in public, on Twitter, where everyone could see them. And Teigen really was very good at Twitter: She spent her teen years, she’s said, <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a25421062/chrissy-teigen-a-life-unfiltered/">toggling back and forth between MySpace and the Neopet forum she ran</a>. She’s fluent in the language of the unimpressed cooler-than-thou online. So you would maybe follow her even if she wasn’t famous for other stuff, because she was just that charming.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8oipBr">
|
||
“I always have a note in my pocket that says ‘john did it’ just in case I’m murdered because I don’t want him to remarry #truelove #tips,” <a href="https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-christine-teigen-tweets/">went one tweet in 2014</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wSeCkv">
|
||
“My newborn just looked up at me and said ‘mommy, why is Piers Morgan so unequivocally douchy?’ I didn’t know what to say,” <a href="https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/gallery/chrissy-teigens-best-tweets">went another in 2016</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7r8ChZ">
|
||
“Teigen’s assault of awesomeness starts in person with her ceaseless foodie chatter and continues on her nervy Twitter feed,” <a href="https://www.gq.com/gallery/chrissy-teigen-photos-gq-july-2013?mbid=gqpr">GQ had written early in Teigen’s rise, in 2013</a>: “highgrade funny, third-drink unhinged, often sourced from 30,000 feet. (‘AHHH seated in the danger zone I love it balls in my face balls balls in my face.’)”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nPb7LP">
|
||
Equally essential to Teigen’s allure was that her jokes didn’t always land, that they were frequently dirty, and that they were often right on the edge of what was considered acceptable discourse at the time. That 2013 GQ article asks of Teigen: “Any morning after regrets?” To which she responds, “All the time! But not really a regret that I thought it, just that I said it.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h8vLir">
|
||
Such admissions were part of what made Teigen seem real, and gave her a bit of an edge. Besides, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/eff-that-dude-talk-about-zero-talent">she playfully roasted her husband John Legend more than practically anyone</a> (“eff that dude talk about zero talent”), so to most onlookers, her zingers didn’t seem to be all that personal. Plus, Teigen would candidly admit that being unfiltered on social media sometimes did really hurt her.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7CLIMb">
|
||
“It wasn’t really an accepted thing within my modelling and TV career early on,” <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com.sg/exclusives/chrissy-teigen-august-2017-cover-interview/">Teigen told Harpers Bazaar in 2017</a>. “I would get in trouble, lots of phone calls from agents saying ‘Why did you tweet this? Now we’re in trouble with such-and-such a contract because you were too outspoken.’ I got so much feedback that I needed to watch my mouth if I wanted to work with certain people. And I remember sobbing so much because it was just the worst feeling, letting people down. I definitely lost work because people would shy away from being associated [with me], and I totally get it, too—they have to appeal to everybody.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2PZ5LG">
|
||
Teigen insisted that she always simply refused to listen to those who told her to tone it down. “I’m happy I didn’t because now they look at you for the way you are, and I love being an open book,” she went on. “I feel like everyone knows what they’re getting now and it’s a very comfortable place to be in life.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="igkDik">
|
||
Part of what people were getting with Teigen was a refreshing transparency. In 2017, she wrote an essay for Glamour about her experience with postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Luna. “Phew! I’ve hated hiding this from you,” <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/chrissy-teigen-postpartum-depression">Teigen wrote at the end</a>. Her popularity soared.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EjpPj3">
|
||
Another part of what people were getting with Teigen, as most profiles of her acknowledged, was someone who got into social media fights a fair amount.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NXj6ky">
|
||
“The star seems to be a lightning rod for strong opinions,” noted <a href="https://www.delish.com/food-news/a47319/this-chrissy-teigen-recipe-will-infuriate-you/">Delish in 2016</a>. “Maybe it’s because she’s not afraid to fire back, often replying directly to her dissenters.” Those fights were aggregation-friendly, though; the internet is littered with <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1145081/chrissy-teigen-claps-back-at-body-shamer-after-sharing-swimsuit-selfie">dozens</a> <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1168192/chrissy-teigen-claps-back-at-claim-she-dropped-50-lbs-overnight-or-has-cancer">upon</a> <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a8658859/chrissy-teigen-best-twitter-clapbacks/">dozens</a> <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/chrissy-teigen-thirsty-instagram-post-miles">of</a> <a href="https://www.etonline.com/chrissy-teigen-claps-back-after-body-shaming-trolls-criticize-her-square-figure-145513">posts</a> <a href="https://www.etonline.com/chrissy-teigen-claps-back-at-criticism-over-her-traveling-for-joe-bidens-inauguration-159273">titled</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/chrissy-teigen-weight-cancer-clapback">some</a> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/parenting/2019/07/19/chrissy-teigen-best-and-most-hilarious-clapbacks-twitter-instagram/1641795001/">variation</a> of “Chrissy Teigen Clapped Back at Her Haters and It Was Epic.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QG9AED">
|
||
Endearingly, Teigen was cool enough to know those aggregations were lame. “if I had my choice, not a single story would ever be written about any tweets of mine,” <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/988548493349240832">Teigen tweeted in 2018</a>. “they make people (me) seem like…the most annoying people. the ‘clapback’ wasn’t ‘epic’, it was just a fuccccccking tweet - just please stop with these stupid words.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NNHOoT">
|
||
Teigen was good at trolling on Twitter in the same way she was good at telling jokes on Twitter. And the press was happy to frame that trolling as harmless fun, always directed at people who really deserved it, like anyone who was super mad that she <a href="https://www.bravotv.com/blogs/why-are-people-so-bent-out-of-shape-about-chrissy-teigens-guacamole">put cheese in her guacamole</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m2giF5">
|
||
The press — <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/chrissy-teigen-ivanka-trump-coronavirus-response-twitter">with the notable exception of the right-wing press</a> — seemed especially approving of Teigen when her trolling was directed at Trump.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BcbMKA">
|
||
“We must keep ‘evil’ out of our country!” Trump tweeted in 2017. “what time should we call your Uber?” <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tweets-chrissy-teigen-didnt-blocked-trump_n_59776ac2e4b0c95f375ef8fc">replied Teigen</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DOqKMo">
|
||
“Chrissy Teigen’s Latest Tweet to President Trump Is Epic,” <a href="https://time.com/4661009/chrissy-teigen-donald-trump-tweet/">announced Time magazine</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qne9GY">
|
||
<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tweets-chrissy-teigen-didnt-blocked-trump_n_59776ac2e4b0c95f375ef8fc">Trump eventually blocked Teigen in 2017</a>, after she tweeted, “lol no one likes you” at him, but he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. In 2019, Trump would go on a rampage after John Legend mentioned Trump’s latest criminal justice reform bill on a late-night show but didn’t give Trump as much credit as he preferred. “Guys like boring musician <span class="citation" data-cites="johnlegend">@johnlegend</span> and his filthy-mouthed wife are talking now about how great [the bill] is – but I didn’t see them around when we needed help getting it passed,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/09/trump-chrissy-teigen-john-legend-twitter-criminal-justice-reform">Trump tweeted</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cUNJfy">
|
||
<a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1170914148919590914">Teigen’s response trended across the platform</a>; bemused and adoring press coverage ensued.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="ZxlJE4">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
lol what a pussy ass bitch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.
|
||
</p>
|
||
— chrissy teigen (<span class="citation" data-cites="chrissyteigen">@chrissyteigen</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1170914148919590914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 9, 2019</a>
|
||
</blockquote></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iNjggb">
|
||
“Donald Trump brought a knife to a social media gunfight and came off looking weak,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-chrissy-teigen-twitter-feud-lopsided-it-revealing-ncna1051706">opined NBC News</a> — “and at the hands of a woman of color to boot.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bQeNyv">
|
||
Teigen wasn’t a johnny-come-lately in her trolling of Trump, though. She’d been keeping him apprised of her general disdain for him for years before he took office, and strikingly, she did so in the same way she kept letting Stodden know she hated them. She seems to have held both Trump and Stodden in the same category in her mind, and she tended to use the same tactics on them both.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0ZEIG5">
|
||
“hey! been a while,” <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tweets-chrissy-teigen-didnt-blocked-trump_n_59776ac2e4b0c95f375ef8fc">Teigen tweeted at Trump out of the blue in 2012</a>. “I fucking hate you.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4yEky3">
|
||
There is of course a difference between tweeting mean things to the president of the United States and tweeting mean things to a 16-year-old. There is also a difference between tweeting mean things to Donald Trump in 2012, when he was just a racist billionaire in his 60s and held no public office, and tweeting them to a 16-year-old. But that difference seems to have been hard for Teigen to see in 2012.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="eRikNE">
|
||
The Chrissy Teigen backlash has been building for years
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gHa7NAMw8zkPyMEZOTPWxppA7_Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22635019/488766513.jpg"/> <cite>Mike Coppola/Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Chrissy Teigen and John Legend at the 2014 Met Gala.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5b6ki3">
|
||
A backlash against Teigen has been mounting for a while now. No one can be <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a25421062/chrissy-teigen-a-life-unfiltered/">declared</a> “the internet’s funniest (and frankest) person” without courting overexposure. Moreover, Teigen’s status as one of Trump’s most vocal celebrity critics has made her a favorite target of the right-wing spectrum of the internet. (<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/chrissy-teigen-deletes-twitter-qanon-1143259/">She’s been extensively harassed by QAnon followers</a>.) So hisses of incipient anger have been brewing around her every post for years.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LDQXHj">
|
||
In 2017, the popular celebrity gossip blogger Nicki Swift put together a video called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRvDkC-518Q">Shady Things About Chrissy Teigen Everyone Just Ignores</a>.” Many of the offenses listed in the video are fairly benign, like Teigen’s tendency to discuss her and her husband’s sex life in more detail than a lot of other celebs would offer. But some of them tellingly foreshadowed the tweets to Stodden that would resurface in 2021: Teigen calling then-22-year-old <em>Teen Mom</em> star Farrah Abraham “a whore” who “everyone hates” in 2013; Teigen writing of then-9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis in 2013, “i am forced to like quvenzhané wallis because she is a child right? okay fine.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5PFTbA">
|
||
In October of 2020, the Chrissy Teigen backlash began to simmer. That month, Teigen suffered a stillbirth, one she announced publicly with black-and-white photos of herself in the throes of grief. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kpgng/chrissy-teigen-stillborn-photos-are-a-way-for-parents-to-grieve-a-complicated-loss">Some onlookers jeered at the photos</a>, arguing that they reduced a personal tragedy into a tacky bid for attention. “Chrissy Teigen is so distraught over her miscarriage that she took the time to pose for a photo of herself crying, in black and white for dramatic effect, then shared that photo with the world along with her words. Stop it,” said one commenter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qEEx2L">
|
||
A counter-backlash eventually emerged in that case, with <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kpgng/chrissy-teigen-stillborn-photos-are-a-way-for-parents-to-grieve-a-complicated-loss">multiple</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/02/i-have-huge-respect-for-chrissy-teigen-sharing-her-pregnancy-loss-when-she-knew-what-would-happen-next">outlets</a> arguing that taking photographs can be an essential part of the grieving process for the parents of stillborn children and that Teigen’s public vulnerability could lessen the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss. Teigen herself turned the whole incident into the fodder for <a href="https://chrissyteigen.medium.com/hi-2e45e6faf764">a raw and vulnerable Medium post later that month</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="923b">
|
||
“I cannot express how little I care that you hate the photos,” Teigen wrote. “How little I care that it’s something you wouldn’t have done. I lived it, I chose to do it, and more than anything, these photos aren’t for anyone but the people who have lived this or are curious enough to wonder what something like this is like. These photos are only for the people who need them. The thoughts of others do not matter to me.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dwCuQs">
|
||
The backlash died down, but it hadn’t been fully averted. In February of 2021, Teigen <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1357036681770110976">started a Twitter prompt thread</a> on an apparently anodyne subject — “what’s the most expensive thing you’ve eaten that you thought sucked?” — and paired it with a jokey anecdote about having once accidentally ordered a $13,000 bottle of wine. <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/chrissy-teigen-wine-story-twitter-controversy">Her followers erupted into an eat-the-rich fury</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RwfBzJ">
|
||
“I don’t think I have ever had 13 thousand dollars at one time, but great story Chrissy!” wrote one.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4clg2w">
|
||
“is someone forcing you to tell the world these things,” tweeted another.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M8vjIr">
|
||
“Chrissy Teigen” began trending worldwide on Twitter, signifying that Teigen had become that day’s <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/twitters-main-character">main character</a>. “worst nightmare,” <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1357075243903242241">Teigen tweeted in response</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y0eHt4">
|
||
People were starting to get bored with Teigen, and it sure seemed like many of them were looking for any excuse to turn on her. Teigen was too savvy to the ways of the internet not to see it coming. In 2019, she told Vanity Fair she’d turned down an offer to host “a high-profile nighttime talk show” for fear of overexposure.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NQuNry">
|
||
“It was just too much attention and focus on me,” <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/john-legend-and-chrissy-teigen-cover-story">she said</a>. “It’s almost like the more things you do, the closer you are to getting canceled. It’s so scary to me — to have the world turn on you and hate you.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yDrOjw">
|
||
Teigen is well aware of how cancellation works on Twitter. In 2020, she was central to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/5/11/21253740/alison-roman-chrissy-teigen-feud-fight-explained">the cancellation of food writer Alison Roman</a>, who lost her New York Times column and (Teigen-produced) cooking show after criticizing Teigen and Marie Kondo in an interview for “selling out” with their product lines. Teigen publicly announced her hurt feelings, and the Alison Roman backlash took off.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="3KkOrZ">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iF4V71">
|
||
In that case, <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1260016124072083456">Teigen accepted Roman’s apology</a> and made a point of noting that she didn’t support the swarms of her followers who had attacked Roman. She added that she identified with Roman.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PrwbFo">
|
||
“I remember the exact time I realized I wasn’t allowed to say whatever popped in my head-that I couldn’t just say things in the way that so many of my friends were saying,” <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1260016721219338241">Teigen tweeted</a>. “Before, I never really knew where I stood in the industry, in the world. Eventually, I realized that once the relatable ‘snarky girl who didn’t care’ became a pretty successful cookbook author and had more power in the industry, I couldn’t just say whatever the fuck I wanted. The more we grow, the more we get those wakeup calls.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OclVPH">
|
||
So Teigen could see her cancellation coming. But it wasn’t until<strong> </strong>May 2021, when Stodden revealed how Teigen had bullied her, and it became clear that Teigen had done something genuinely horrible and not just a little cringey, that her cancellation truly arrived.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="fBfUwF">
|
||
The targets of Teigen’s Twitter bullying were all people who the pop culture of the 2000s treated as acceptable targets
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NA7KXwkSpDMKu4u4Itvc10bREyU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22635543/1192249085.jpg"/> <cite>Michael Tullberg/Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Courtney Stodden at the Hollywood Museum on December 5, 2019, in Hollywood, California.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wKp6ap">
|
||
In the wake of Stodden’s video post, news outlets have unearthed other old Teigen tweets that, it is now clear, were in dismayingly bad taste. “Lindsay adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees emma stone,” <a href="https://pagesix.com/2021/05/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-undercover-bully-chrissy-teigen/">Teigen tweeted in 2011 of Lindsay Lohan</a>, who has admitted to struggling with self-harm. Those Farrah Abraham tweets from 2013 that made the rounds in Nicki Swift’s 2017 video are now circulating again.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4uyc2I">
|
||
Teigen’s reputation-damaging tweets all share a certain essential DNA. They are all tweets mocking girls and femmes whom the pop culture of the late ’00s and early ’10s had made it clear were fair game for mockery: People who read as girls (Stodden did not come out as nonbinary until 2021), and who the culture at large considered to be too trashy, too slutty, too showy. Girly, but not in the right way. (<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22350286/2000s-pop-culture-misogyny-britney-spears-janet-jackson-whitney-houston-monica-lewinsky">Not that there <em>was</em> a right way</a>.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="TUml2J">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RTGBuv">
|
||
What Teigen said on Twitter about and to those people was genuinely horrible, and it is clear that she targeted them because pop culture had given her permission to do so. Even outlets like Jezebel, “a supposedly feminist website,” <a href="https://jezebel.com/no-headline-5957165">were mocking Stodden</a> in 2012. Doing so was part of the snarky ethos that defined Jezebel and its more famous cousin, Gawker.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L1E5E2">
|
||
So in the early ’10s, these tweets didn’t hurt Teigen. Instead, they were part of what made her seem real and funny. Then, as now, Twitter rewarded cruelty, as long as it was directed at those the in-group considered to be “the right people.” But then, unlike now, “the right people” could include teenagers trapped in abusive relationships with adults.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Id8kVw">
|
||
The attributes on display in the tweets that have led to Teigen’s downfall appear to be some of the same attributes that made Teigen so widely beloved for so long: her lack of filter, her love of roasting people widely agreed at the time to be terrible. What’s changed is that now, it’s clear that the way she wielded them was fundamentally misdirected.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZE5yun">
|
||
Our great reckoning with how we talk about women and femmes over the course of the Me Too decade has changed the way Twitter works. And in the process, it’s bringing down the woman who used to rule it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>India’s limited-overs tour of Sri Lanka to be played between July 13 and 25</strong> - It will be a rare occasion that two India squads will be playing in different countries at the same time</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>England bowler Ollie Robinson suspended for abusive tweets</strong> - The tweets he posted when he was 18 and 19, which were racist and sexist in nature, resurfaced during the first day of the New Zealand Test and Robinson was close to tears as he issued an apology</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Head of Brazil’s soccer confederation suspended by ethics committee</strong> - Brazilian news reports said Rogerio Caboclo was accused of sexually harassing an employee. The CBF gave few details.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Zverev downs Nishikori to reach French Open last eight</strong> - Alexander Zverev progressed to the French Open quarter-finals for the third time in four years on Sunday with a crushing 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 win over Japan’</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>After loss to Oman, Stimac hints at different style of play against Bangladesh</strong> - A winless India must beat Bangladesh on Monday if they want to jump to third spot in Group E standings and keep themselves afloat for a direct berth in the Asian Cup third qualifying round.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ECI can probe poll-time bribery charges, says Meena</strong> - Action can be recommended if complaints are found true</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>803 new cases in Alappuzha</strong> - Test positivity rate at 11.76%.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Man arrested in ‘gold missing’ case</strong> - Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers have arrested one person in connection with a case of gold missing from police custody. Kiran Veerang</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>West Bengal board exams cancelled in view of COVID-19 pandemic</strong> - CBSE and CISCE have recently cancelled 12 board exams in the wake of the pandemic.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chief Minister to decide on more incentives to ginning mills, says Minister</strong> - ‘350 new mills have come up after formation of Telangana’</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Merkel’s party wins final Saxony-Anhalt vote by big margin</strong> - Germany’s centre-right CDU defies opinion polls with a strong win over the far right in Saxony-Anhalt.</p></li>
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||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Greek islands aim to go ‘Covid-free’ to welcome back tourists</strong> - Milos is among those aiming to become “Covid-free” by vaccinating all residents and workers.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Norway police say body on shore is Kurdish-Iranian boy who died in Channel</strong> - Fifteen-month-old Artin had been missing since the boat his family were travelling in sank last year.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Covid-19: Portugal travel delays frustrate Britons</strong> - Airlines offer more seats but holidaymakers report difficulties in getting pre-departure Covid tests.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine’s Euro 2020 football kit provokes outrage in Russia</strong> - A shirt showing Russian-annexed Crimea is denounced as a “political provocation”.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Jeff Bezos says he will fly into space next month</strong> - “You can buy Soyuz seats; it’s not what drives me.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1770426">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Woman in Motion tells story of how Star Trek’s Uhura changed NASA forever</strong> - “If they let me in the door, I will open it so wide that they will see the world.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1770220">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ancient electric cars meet modern EVs at Amelia Island show</strong> - Where else can you see a 1.5 hp 1895 Electrobat next to a 1,000 hp Hummer EV? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1770326">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Here’s why TSMC and Intel keep building foundries in the Arizona desert</strong> - Fresh water supply isn’t the only consideration for chip fabrication. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1770161">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>24-inch iMac review: There’s still no step three</strong> - It’s not Apple’s best for power users, but it’s a nice fit for everyone else. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1768133">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>Most of the posts here are medium.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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||
They aren’t rare and they are definitely not well done.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
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||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YeetusFelitas"> /u/YeetusFelitas </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu3trv/most_of_the_posts_here_are_medium/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu3trv/most_of_the_posts_here_are_medium/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Went for a walk with my new girlfriend</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
and we saw dogs mating.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
She said: “How does the male know when the female is ready for sex?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I replied: “He can smell she is ready . That’s how nature works.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
We then walked past a sheep field and the ram was mating the ewe.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Again my girlfriend asked: “How does the ram knew when the ewe is ready for sex?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I replied: “It’s nature. He can smell she is ready.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
We then went past a cow-field and the bull was mating with the cow.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
My girlfriend said: “This is odd. They are really going at it. Surely the bull can’t smell when she is ready?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I said: “Oh, yes; it’s nature . All animals can smell when the female is ready for sex.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Anyway, after the walk, I dropped her home and kissed her goodbye.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
She said: “Take care and get yourself checked out for Covid-19.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Surprised, “Why do you say that?” I asked her.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
She replied: “You seem to have lost your sense of smell.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/orgasmic2021"> /u/orgasmic2021 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ntmjp4/went_for_a_walk_with_my_new_girlfriend/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ntmjp4/went_for_a_walk_with_my_new_girlfriend/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>What does a vegetarian zombie eat?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Graaaaains
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/tcjaeger"> /u/tcjaeger </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu2jlu/what_does_a_vegetarian_zombie_eat/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu2jlu/what_does_a_vegetarian_zombie_eat/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Jack and John decided to go skiing.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
They loaded up their mini van and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they were caught in a terrible blizzard. So they pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door,if they could spend the night.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“I realize its terrible weather out there and I have this huge house to myself, but I’m recently widowed”.She explained " I’m afraid the neighbours will talk if I let you in".
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Don’t worry” John said. " We’ll be happy to sleep in the barn and if the weather breaks, we’ll be gone at first light".
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The lady agreed, the 2 men slept in the barn and left at first light. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
But about 9 months later, John got a letter from an attorney and it took him some time to figure it out. He determined it was from the attorney of the widow they met during their skiing trip.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
He dropped in on his friend Jack.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
John: Jack, do you remember that good looking widow that we met on that skiing weekend?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Jack: Yes I do.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
John: Be honest with me Jack, did you pay her a visit at the middle of the night?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Jack( looks a bit embarrassed now) : Yes John, I did.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
John: Now tell me this Jack, did you give her my name and address instead of yours?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Jack( his face now beet red with embarrassment) : I’m sorry buddy, I’m afraid I did. Why do you ask?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
John: She just died and left me everything.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/rhshi14"> /u/rhshi14 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nub4pt/jack_and_john_decided_to_go_skiing/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nub4pt/jack_and_john_decided_to_go_skiing/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>If a mini quiz were called a “quizzicle,” what would a mini test be called?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
A quiz. Get your mind out of the gutter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/dwide_k_shrude"> /u/dwide_k_shrude </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu5o27/if_a_mini_quiz_were_called_a_quizzicle_what_would/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/nu5o27/if_a_mini_quiz_were_called_a_quizzicle_what_would/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
|
||
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