Girl-on-Girl Violence

Let's work it out on the remix...

Jun 24, 2024

Hello! If you’re reading this, it means I’ve survived my four hour, 5am train from NYC to Boston. I’ll be here until Friday if you have any recommendations.

The ADHOC categories of the week are Attention Seekers, Double Life, Hugo Spritz, Outside In, and Coney Island. This letter is about the relationships between women that are publicized, scrutinized, and twisted for attention or profit. But it’s also about summer drinks and rollercoasters, so take your pick.

A: Attention Seekers

We absorb information on the internet so quickly, and (in my opinion) tend to take things at face value instead of spending two minutes to think about them a little deeper. Two reasons for this: 1) we have short attention spans and 2) we are used to bite-sized, temporarily satisfying, straightforward content.

My friend Chela and I once filmed a TikTok where we accused Olivia Rodrigo of stealing from other female artists, because her new album kind of sounds like old Avril Lavigne and Miley Cyrus. It was completely sarcastic, but the people in the comments were ANGRY! I decided to film another bait-y TikTok the next day complaining about the GUTS tour selling out before I could get a ticket. Again, the commenters were in a fury, even though it was clearly (?) satire. The video got 100,000 views, and only a few people wrote, “Guys, I think she’s kidding.”

I absolutely loved the Tavi Gevinson zine Fanfiction that came out earlier this year. It’s a part-memoir, part-fiction story of Tavi’s friendship with Taylor Swift that starts with their first IRL meeting and ends with a meta email exchange debating what can and cannot go into the final zine. I devoured all 80 pages scrolling through the PDF on my laptop on my bed, faster than I have ever read anything for school. I was awed by the way Tavi blends reality and fantasy, celebrity and relatability. I couldn’t draw any clear lines between Taylor the Pop Star and Taylor the Twenty-Something, or between what was raw memory and what was embellished for the exercise.

Then Annie Hamilton published that GQ article everyone was talking about, which I interpreted as an extension of the bit Tavi establishes in her zine. I thought it was fun, the way she mimics the zine’s format and relationship dynamics to review/publicize Tavi’s original work. But again, the internet got mad. For what, being clever? Following suit?

Girl, so confusing was my first favorite song from brat because of its perfect articulation of complicated friendship. The internet decided that it must be about Lorde, because she and Charli both have long curly hair and used to get confused for each other. Then she dropped the remix. Of course Lorde is on the remix, I thought. It’s genius. It doesn’t matter if their rivalry or reconciliation was real, or if Annie really offended Tavi, or if Fanfiction crossed a personal line. All these women are doing something purposeful and powerful. Play into the bits. Shock everyone by doing the most obvious thing. Revel in the truth in private.

D: Double Life

During my first week of work, the interns had training that ended around 5pm, and once I got off I would meet my friends wherever they were. Often this was downtown, home to a totally different crowd than the cluster of corporate buildings below Central Park.

In both spaces, I was surrounded by people who are the same age (mid-twenties to early-thirties), but seem to be a part of alternate universes. One group wears slacks and blazers and works 12-hour days and says things like “touchpoint” and “circle back” and “deprioritize.” The other wears cargo shorts with halter tops and smokes skinny cigarettes and works freelance and “does a little bit of social media on the side.” There is not only a geographical barrier (midtown to dimes square) but a mental one. It’s funny to have one foot in both places, seeing one during the day when we’re all in line for Sweetgreen and one at night when the heat lifts (slightly) and everyone’s skin glows a little from the streetlights and the setting sun and the wine. I am also aware that I belong to neither, because I am still a student and an intern and I grew up uptown where the only two things I knew (for the first eighteen years of my life) were school and family.

H: Hugo Spritz

I’ll say it: I like drinks that are sweet, carbonated, and not-too-strong. I don’t care if that makes me childish, it’s delicious! I feel like the attitude of people my age has shifted from viewing alcohol as a forbidden substance to party juice to some third thing (as a result of moderation/boredom/health-consciousness). I respect the sober movement and the emergence of millennial-branded NA cocktails, and alcohol is definitely bad for you, but I think culture can swing too far and people forget about the possibility of middle ground. And how that middle ground can be a glass of bright, herbal, fizzy, floral, summery perfection.

Hugo Spritz recipe I found online (though I usually eyeball the amounts):

1/2 ounce St-Germain
1 sprig mint
4 ounces prosecco
1 ounce soda water
Mint sprig, lemon wheel

Serve with lots of ice in a pretty glass!

O: Outside In

*Spoiler Alert*

I watched Inside Out 2 on Wednesday in a packed theater of small children and their parents. I didn’t cry, but it was very sweet. I thought the moral was a little unambitious (we need all of our memories to form our sense of self, not just the good ones!), but the new pubertal emotions were fun and very Gen-Z (especially Ennui, who couldn’t get off of his phone).

The one thing that bothered me is that anxiety turns into a villain and takes up too much screen time. Even though she’s well-meaning, she comes off as overly ambitious, and becomes hostile toward the other emotions. She works to recreate Riley’s core from scratch, but ends up creating one that believes she isn’t good enough.

Feeling anxious is awful and often bodily and all-consuming. But anxiety is also connected to my sense of awareness, my drive to succeed, the way I treat others. I feel careful in my interactions with peers, friends, co-workers, and prepared for situations that are initially daunting. Anxiety has made me perform better on tests, in games, in interviews. It’s made me more thoughtful. I think they could have made the movie more nuanced, but it is a kids movie, and the friends I watched it with all cried.

C: Coney Island

I rarely take the Subway to the end of the line, but on Sunday, my friends and I took the Q all the way to Coney Island for the first time ever.

It was crazy how quickly the city blurred into the salty sandy haze of a beach town. It reminded me of Southern California, with its boardwalks and very American food stalls and families camped out with coolers and beach umbrellas. At the same time, it felt very New York, maybe because the people were irritable and the bathrooms were gross and the rollercoasters were $12 for a ride. But there was something so awesome about looking out at the water and not seeing a single skyscraper.

At the end of the day, I shared an ice cream cone with two of my friends by passing it around in a circle. It tasted way better than it should have.

On the train on the way back, some of us fell asleep and the rest of us looked like we were going to. The ride felt short, considering the distance.

I love writing this letter so I’m going to try to keep up my weekly cadence even though I’m working many hours!!! See you next week!!!