Written by Abriella Guertin
Art by Lillian Anderson
Disclaimer because my editors made me: These are my opinions. If you don’t like them, close the tab. I’m just words on a screen. Don’t send me an email saying you disagree. I don’t care.
INs:
Bold lip, no mascara
- Just try it. Get a nice fall shade. Effortlessly cool, chic, and fun.
Hiking boots
- With dresses, with skirts, with shorts, or actually hiking. Makes you feel like a little explorer all the time.
Dinner parties
- Have you ever gotten your friends together over a home cooked meal (not the McDonalds drive thru at 1 a.m.)? You will all be a bit closer by the end. Cook something, like you’re a person. Put the Doordash down. You’re too old to not know how to cook.
Sending letters (& stamps in general)
- Send a letter to a lover or friend with a cute stamp or a sticker. Say what you feel unabashedly.
Robes
- After a shower, lounge around in a robe. Read in bed. Maybe have some mint tea. Don’t you feel a bit better now?
Autumnal stews
- Get all the vegetables that are about to go bad in your fridge and make soup with them. Put in some beans too, for protein. Embrace the season.
OUTs:
“Cyber syglism” tattoos
- So overdone and always so large! Also, “cyber tribal”? The TikTok tattoo trend cycle will be the downfall of our society.
People cutting up their grandmother’s wedding dresses to make two piece sets
- Always such a disappointment. I’ve never seen one of these videos and been like “oh they made the dress better”. It’s a beautiful heirloom gone to waste, and I know their grandmothers are FURIOUS.
Starbucks Pumpkin Cold Foam Chai
- When will we stop pretending Starbucks chai is good? The pumpkin cold foam does not save it, instead making it sickeningly sweet. I thought a shot of espresso might balance it out and save the drink, but this gave me the worst stomach ache I’d had in quite a while. Ever since I graduated high school, Starbucks just doesn’t do it like they used to. It makes them super easy to boycott when they illegally block their stores from unionizing or speaking out on political issues!
“Girl dinner/ math”
- I originally thought the girl dinner trend was cute and fun–women returning to their gathering roots to make silly smorgasbord meals. Quickly, the same old sexist jokes crept in and took over: haha, women don’t eat, right guys? Less silly when you remember that by seventeen, 90% of girls have dieted. Less silly when you remember not only your personal experience with disordered eating, but also how it affected the girls around you growing up. Girl dinner was a marker of our society and the trend cycle: nothing can escape the bounds of sexism, not even something made by women for women. Girl math, though, has nothing to say for herself. Let’s think critically about this, for once. What is the joke of girl math? Often it’s people saying that buying themselves a little treat for under 20 dollars doesn’t count, girl math. Or if something is bought in cash, it’s free, girl math! So what’s really the joke here? Women are bad at math and don’t understand money? Your mom probably lived in a world where women weren’t allowed credit cards (the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 gave women the right to open credit cards). Not having a credit card in this country also means you can’t buy a car, a home. You cannot make a life for yourself without credit history, which women were not granted, instead needing to rely on their husbands and fathers. There is some weird trend happening where women are going back into the home, citing not wanting to work, and telling young girls that this is the way, this is what they should aspire to. Now, I don’t want to work either, but to tell a young girl to not go to college or get a job after high school, instead learn homemaking skills and find a husband to have babies and live happily ever after with, is to trap that girl for the rest of her life. With their McMansions and the ring at 23, and three kids by 27, these women present their lives as the best possible option. While they sure look nice, these women are trapped. If they wanted to leave their husbands, they wouldn’t have the money to do so. In this capitalist society, money is power. “Girl math”, coupled with this romanticization of the homemaker, takes women back decades,. and the best part? It’s all on Tik Tok, for young girls to see and internalize. They don’t know what womanhood is yet. They’re learning that it’s hunger, pain, and immobility. It’s being a wife, a homemaker, someone who nurtures others while starving herself. Let’s think a little harder about what we perpetuate on the internet. Did you guys not take a media literacy class in middle school? I’m worried for you.
The New York Times
- Every headline is lazy, uninteresting, or uninformed, and I still haven’t forgotten about the crossword on the first day of Hanukkah. That being said, I do play Connections daily.
Noah Kahan
- So, so, so tired of sad man music. All his songs read like the poems of a guy in your high school poetry class who is rude to teachers.
The Trader Joe’s pickle bag
- Get the sardine or waffle one. Cuter designs and cuter colors. How many people have you seen successfully style this bag? Honestly, I’m done with pickles as a whole. Why are we putting them on clothes? Just eat them and be normal.