#15: Always Amusing, Never A Muse
A generation of empowered women plus over-indexing on collabs, anxiety, and tennis!
Helloooo and welcome back to Left On Read. Articles/thoughts/themes that I kept coming back to this week:
PEAK COLLABS
In 2020, MSCHF (the art collective behind those Big Red Boots, among other theatrics) launched this website waggishly examining the incestuous nature of brand collaborations. I loved it. I think about it often, especially this week following the Baggu x Sandy Liang collab I wrote about and Amanda Mull’s article in the Atlantic, “Make the Collabs Stop.” She laments the hollowness of these partnerships and their ugly bi-products: “This sort of branding chicanery is an exercise that creates value on paper, but rarely ever gleans anything meaningful in reality.” I agree! Half of the collabs nowadays seem like their sole purpose is to add buzzy content to a few marketing slides for shareholder meetings.
I think what’s missing from Mull’s analysis is consumers’ obsession with merch, especially bonkers novelty items that generate a lot of quick $$$—often proving too enticing for marketers to resist. But there’s a fine line between quirky (insulated fanny packs to store Red Lobster’s cheddar bay biscuits) and absurd (Kraft x Juicy Couture velour tracksuits) so I still endorse an infusion of just because we can, doesn’t mean we should energy to brand management meetings. As MSCHF foretold, “When collaboration becomes the rule of an industry, rather than the exception - when brands cross over like the fumbling, arbitrary results of sex dice - they serve to smooth the entire retail landscape into an even gradient.”
PEAK ANXIETY
WSJ published an article this week, “The Booming Business of American Anxiety.” It’s more a survey of the many and varied treatments available to alleviate anxious thoughts and behavior rather than a criticism of the systems that keep perpetuating this epidemic. I touched on this last week: there’s a lot of profit to be mined from malaise by organizations who don’t care about the root cause. They have a vested interest in keeping anxiety high because they have more opportunities to introduce new solutions. As someone who’s tried… a lot of these products, nothing so effective for me as consistent diet, exercise, hydration, SLEEP!!!!, reading, and spending time outside. It’s unsexy but true.1
PEAK POP STAR
Given the amount of media attention Addison Rae is receiving for her rebrand as a TikToker-turned actress-turned punchline-turned pop star, I checked out her EP this week. It’s fun! But one listen was enough. Here’s what I kept thinking, though, as I bopped along to Addison mewling, “I’m obsessed with me as much as you / Say you'd die for me, I'd die for me too / And if I lost you, I'd still have me, I can't lose”: Is pop music the only acceptable place for women to express extraordinary self esteem for a mainstream audience?
Heroines in books and films project similar confidence, yes, yet their messaging often preaches to the choir, a.k.a their largely female audiences who have self selected as readers and viewers. Pop music, on the other hand, is inescapable. Grocery stores, sporting events, coffee shops, retailers, bars. No radio is immune to pop records if they’re a good time! There’s obviously a lot to dig into with the packaging of pop stars and how their messaging is cheekily (or hypocritically?) delivered and accepted because of a veil of sex appeal. Still— these women are given massive platforms to exhibit radical self confidence and encourage the general public to sing along and feel the same. Where else is that happening? Idk what to do with this information, probably others have examined more thoroughly. Just something I’m thinking about a lot!!!
PEAK GIRLHOOD
Speaking of girls! To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls, Elle published an essay by the ~seminal text’s~ author Valorie Lee Schaefer. Savvy of Elle given the legacy of Care. I can’t scroll TikTok or Twitter2 without seeing an homage to the American Girl-published guide and its impact on my generation. Today, tweens have the internet to answer any questions they have about their changing bodies (scary). On the flip side, they also have more diverse stories and perspectives available to them through social media, books, movies, and television (uplifting!)
In her essay, Schaefer mourns the shifting political landscape that’s left today’s girls with fewer rights than those of 1998. Another crushing development since publication—in my opinion—is the erasure of preteen culture.3 Perhaps that’s why Care remains relevant. It makes a fuss about a neglected period of adolescent development! It was written by someone who wasn’t chasing clout on the internet! It’s a reminder that a brand can actually care about its young consumers, just as they are, without thrusting them into adulthood.
PEAK TENNIS
Because of the ongoing writers and actors strikes, Challengers, starring Zendaya and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) got pushed from its original September 15 release date to April 26, 2024, approximately one month before the French Open. This is good news for brands who might capitalize on the film’s sporty subject matter. Tenniscore has been floated as an aesthetic sensibility the past few summers (makes sense given its proximity to Stealth Wealth) but I think we might hit Peak Tennis next summer thanks to Challengers.
It’s the perfect time to invest in the sport; two of the greatest players have retired, ending their unprecedented reigns, and we have a bunch of talented upstarts eager to establish similar legacies. I, for one, really enjoy watching because men and women play the same tournaments concurrently and publicly respect the hell out of each other’s game. Refreshing in the world of sport!!! Should we witness such a surge, the Carrie Soto fangirls will be ecstatic.
Circling Back
Viome, a microbiome startup, just raised $86.5M and landed a distribution deal with CVS. Let’s gooooo, gut health
Coraline re-release earns $5M over 2 days. And Lady Bird heads back to theaters on August 27 for National Cinema Day. Keep up the re-releases, please
I just started Ann Patchett’s new novel, set in Traverse City, Michigan
Job landscape is so dire that people are sliding into dating app DMs to…. network? Proof that dating is in full disarray
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Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in checking out more Left On Read, the archive is just this way :)
Kind of like how my overindulging in Korean skincare ca. 2016 brought me the worst acne of my life (and hurt my bank account). A round of Isotretinoin and switching to a deeply boring routine of drugstore cleanser, moisturizer, and Purito Daily Sunscreen (ordered from my beloved oo35mm) cured all ills. Something to consider!
I refuse to refer to as X, SORRY
Which is wild to me, given the extension of teenagehood into 20-something years aka “new adulthood,” but that’s a separate essay. Maybe messy, muddling, middling years aren’t lost, they’re just coming later?