Having nepo babies is the greatest legacy you could ask for
Domestic dysfunction, the Freudian couch and cheating on my facialist and getting burnt
Welcome to Global Warming Girl Summer. It’s hot as hell outside (and in!) and it’s making the people act all funny. On Monday, I saw a lone piece of streaky bacon sizzling outside on the pavement, its fat glistening nonchalantly (or was it knowingly?) in the sun. It almost seemed to wink at me. Never has a piece of meat looked so disgusting and delicious at the same time. The sweet, salty spoils of the street; a breakfast of champions the world deserves. In this heat, just about anything goes.
I spent the first part of the week yoyo-ing between pictures of Glastonbury and the Bezos wedding; A hieronymus bosch tableau of dazzling earthly delights. Sodom and Gomorrah, where definitions between high and low culture seem to collapse in beautiful, brilliant decay. I couldn’t decide which looked more lit or lousche: a tyranny of Lorraine Schwarz diamonds lighting up the sinking city vs a constellation of nitrous oxide canisters littering the not-so-worthy farm. The internet is an inferno of conflicting opinions. And now a literal rain of fire has been pouring down on us and the smell of hot sulfury shit rises in the sticky streets.
In a biblical case of pathetic fallacy, everyone I saw or spoke to this week seemed appropriately livid, fevered, anxious or manic. Highly crazed or highly sexed. When you’re wearing this little clothing and sweating profusely, sex is always at the forefront of people’s minds, even if you find the other person repulsive. But maybe we need this, maybe we need to sweat out all our toxins before a global healing can begin? An infrared sauna to purge us of our collective sins. That or get some fucking air con.
What I saw
I was feeling pretty emo by the time I made it to the Yoshitomo Nara exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, but seeing Nara’s strange and childlike characters with their big bulbous heads and eyes like saucers, I instantly felt seen. Like little avatars of his emotions, living labubus externalising his interior state, sort of like that movie Inside Out, each character represents a feeling or a mood: sadness, loneliness, rebellion and rage. A lot of his characters are playful, but on this occasion, it was the darker among them that spoke to me the most, particularly the image of the girl watching her house burn, which seems to be something of a theme this week.
What I also loved about the exhibition were the other people there, my people, weird people. A 50-something-year-old woman in a peptobismal top to match her peptobismal doll, the nymphets in their Nurocks, the girl with the electronic bag that flashed images of bats and skulls, and the boy with the devil-horned hat. This was my Glastonbury.
What I bought
In recent years, I’ve become something of a lounge lizard. I live to lounge. And I love to lounge in style. Which is why I treated myself to a vintage 30s kimono from Demetra Vintage. It’s black (shock!) with beautiful trumpet sleeves and embroidered flowers. Ever since Kate Moss lent me hers at my wedding, I've wanted one to call my own.
Forget Alo sweats and Adanola leggings. This is leisurewear for the woman who loathes sports. Lizardwear for whom lounging is a sport. Comfy, cosy and without a camel toe in sight. There’s something old-world-y about a slinky, kinky kimono. She’s decadent and delusional. A modern-day Blanche DuBois, an ageing influencer beginning to unravel as her follower count starts to dwindle. I can already picture it: Me in my mid-40s swinging from the bannister, margarita in hand, kimono-clad, worn just a *touch* too open, calling to Reuben’s friends that dinner is ready and asking them if they’d like a cool beer. Ah dear.
What I watched
With the attention span of a gnat, all I could really stomach this week was a steady stream of YouTube shorts, a never-ending content bender. Although I do sometimes question: How is it that I lack the capacity for a 2 hour movie and yet can happily, hungrily consume hours-worth of sporadic episodes online? I guess this is what ADHD brain looks like.
Nevertheless, a favourite moment of my recent binge was the Alessandro Michele interview with Bella Freud. I love Fashion Neurosis. And while you can obviously listen to it as a podcast, watching the video is an entirely different experience. I’ve met Alessandro standing up, but I've never encountered him lying down or from a bird’s eye view. Suddenly, it all becomes so intimate.
It’s such a genius concept; the Freudian couch. It completely transforms the relationship not just between the interviewer and interviewee but also with us, the viewer. BTW, have you seen Sigmund Freud’s actual sofa? That’s interiors porn right there. A plain wooden frame swamped by a richly patterned Qashqa’i carpet and heavily embroidered cushions. No wonder his patients divulged their deepest, darkest secrets; I would have lain there for hours.
The conversation itself was great, with two key points to take away:
1. “Being late is a passive way of controlling people.” 100% Agree. But also you only ever have 1 minute to be on time, either side of that and you’re automatically early or late.
2. “Vanity is a strong, productive power…it keeps the world buzzing because it incites people to want to be beautiful and to impress others.” Also true. It is the dirty secret behind progress, an incentive behind power and change. Maybe it's not the most noble of forces, but it certainly yields impressive results. Where would we be without it?
What I read
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder. A story about a young, starving, sexually constipated and spiritually repressed woman who denies herself everything from food and faith to love to sexual desire. She’s even stopped speaking to her mother. When she’s not painfully restricting her diet right down to granules of Splendour (anorexia is a cruel mistress), she’s burning off whatever calories she’s meticulously counted at the gym. It all goes tits up when she falls for an overweight Orthodox Jewish girl who scoops lavish portions of frozen yoghurt for a living. Suddenly, her life becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet. She’s binging on duck sauce, doughnuts, and kosher dumplings, sleeping with one of the actors at the talent agency she works at, and fantasizing about sucking on FroYo girl’s moles because they look like drops of chocolate. What. The. Fuck.
It’s not like anything I’ve ever read. And actually it made me feel sick in places, most places, in fact, pretty much the entire way through, ESPECIALLY during those incestuous fantasies where she’s thinking about fucking a woman she works with, while calling her mommy at the same time, and imploring her to pet her. But I guess that was the whole point. Here is a woman who is so uncomfortable in her body, her sexuality and her self, that it causes a visceral, violent reaction within the reader. All in all, a hard one to digest. Pun obviously intended.
What I did
Where usually I’d be attending the opening of an envelope, this week I wanted to take it easy. I slept, I read, I doomscrolled, dunked my head in ice and tried to think arctic thoughts. I also had the pleasure of reintroducing myself to my children after what feels like a lifetime away.
What I had done
I cheated on my facialist and quite literally got burned. While I may have hit pause on Botox, I am not opting out of beauty culture entirely. In fact, I’m still arse crack deep inside it. After flying to Greece for 24 hours on the weekend, and Paris twice(!) last week, inhaling Vesuvian levels of smoke, and drinking myself into a pickle, my face was practically on the floor.
Soft, doughy, and jowly, I wanted a quick fix. I’d even settle for a placebo. So I decided to get some radiofrequency in hopes of looking (read: feeling - visually there’s basically no difference) snatched. But instead of going to my usual gal, I decided to play around. Full disclosure: I’d been offered a Freebie Philo and didn’t want to go to my regular facialist because I’d seen her so recently, and didn’t feel like being judged. I wanted something casual, anonymous, no strings attached. But the problem was that there wasn’t the usual chemistry, sympatico, or trust between the new girl and I, and my one-night stander ended up burning me on the cheek, and leaving a mark which I sincerely hope isn’t permanent.
There’s obviously a lesson to be learnt here. Be loyal to your day ones, don’t anger the beauty gods, pay attention to medical advice, don’t talk while a charged rod is coming close to your face, practice more self-acceptance, stop relying on quick fixes, drink less, sleep more, stop smoking, and listen to Jessica Defino when she tells you that chasing pretty privilege only leads to trouble. RIP my old face. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.
Best meal
I was wondering when Bev would make an appearance on my subtack. Bev is our beloved nanny who was also my nanny growing up. It’s all very Brideshead Revisited, but instead of Aloysius, I had a disintegrating hankie.
Bev knows where all the bodies of my youth are buried, not least because she helped me bury them. 34 years of calling me out on my bullshit, and we’re still living in dysfunctional domesticity or is it domestic dysfunction?
Anywho, an amazing cook, a taste of Bev’s home cooking and instantly I feel….home, which is what I’ve been craving after a week of airport food and alcohol, the result of which has caused what little healthy gut I have left to cure and calcify. And it’s exactly what the doctor ordered. From her lemon and chicken casserole and spag bol to her banana bread and apple crumble, this is comfort food at its best. “Eating your dinner on the loo? Charming.” A classic Bev zinger. It’s good to be back.
Quote of the week
“If you shave your bush, you’ll go down a jean size” Tom Guinness
Random thoughts of the week
Having nepo babies is the greatest legacy you could ask for
I wish I’d been more rigorous with my dental hygiene in my youth
Is it weird to always wear a seatbelt when Tom’s driving, but be fairly lax about safety in an Uber?
We need a Bev guest post please
That Alessandro Michele interview is 🩷