Love, ABBA, and a Treatise on Sophie's Favorite New Rake
Dames Nation, you are making us feel so loved!
You typically make us feel this way, but the opening of our ~*official*~ Two Bossy Dames store has brought it home even more delightfully than usual. It’s so fun seeing which products have been popular. So far, the carry-all pouchesare the runaway favorites. Given the lust in the hearts of We Your Dames for these pouches, their popularity with you, our Kindred Subscribers, is only natural-- they are just so useful, you know? Even more fun, though, are the one-off purchases. Someone bought a pack of three Two Bossy Dames notebooks, we hope for a SCANDALOUS three-volume diary. Another person got an art print-- to be the focal point for their Two Bossy Dames shrine?? WE CAN ONLY ASSUME! Thanks, again, for showing up for us at every turn. And if you want to tweet us about how you’re using your TBD merch, WELL, we are dying to know.
Livetweet reminders! Paris is Burning
UM, probably because it’s only 9 days till our next livetweet! We will be watching the classic documentary Paris is Burning, which introduced much of straight America to drag balls and voguing, as well as such now-everyday concepts as realness, reading, and shade. It’s smart and sharp and forever timely and poignant as hell. It’s now on Netflix & we can’t wait to watch it with you!
When: Sunday, April 9 at 8pm EDT (GMT-5)
Where: Twitter - follow along using #parisdames. We'll be tweeting from @MrsFridayNext (Margaret) & @twobossydames (Sophie).
How: Netflix or a handy DVD
Madonna just WISHES she could.
Miscellaneous and Mirthful: A Motley Crue of Links
Would you just look at how proud and happy the Boy ABBAs are to sing the same syllable over and over again?
A little over a week ago, Dame Margaret realized that _somehow_ she’d lived nearly 32 years on this planet without ever watching a single ABBA music video, so she set out to rectify this EGREGIOUS ERROR and learned the obvious: G U Y S they are amazing? The best thing to come out of this, other than the sheer joy of the music videos themselves, was learning-- thanks to cherished Dames National Kate-- that ABBA’s outfits may have been so outrageous because of Sweden’s tax laws. Unless a piece of clothing was COMPLETELY impossible to wear something on the street, it could not be written off as a business expense. Hence: white cropped bell-bottom OVERALLS and gold cult-leader caftans. So, Abba: outlandishly great pop musicians _and_ idols of fiscally responsibility. They really can do everything.
On the subject of hilarious clothing, did you happen to see @spookperson’s 100-tweet long roast of Trump adviser Roger Stone’s inauguration outfit? Because we have revisited it countless times and it only gets better. “my guy looks like he drives a cartoon donkey cart with a cage full of missing children on the back”!! “my guy looks like a czarist mr. peanut”!!! “my man looks like he crawled out of a haunted who framed roger rabbit vhs”!!! SERIOUSLY THE HITS JUST KEEP COMING.
In further fascinating minutiae, while, um, admiring the Moonlight cast’s Calvin Klein underwear ads, did you happen to pause and wonder about how said ads' presentation of the stars’ black bodies related to the history of underwear advertising? No? WELL, that’s okay! BuzzFeed’s Pier Dominguezis on the case and, unsurprisingly, it turns out the answer is pretty nuanced and fascinating.
Speaking of delights to the eye, have you been following long-time #Damesfav Kady Yates’s excellent project, By The Cover, where she applies her formidable design and paper cutting skills to make new covers for books she loves? Some of our favorites so far include her take on The Westing Game, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Homegoing. We can't wait to see which books she covers next.
As non-sportsers, we usually only learn an athlete's name if they do something egregious, adorable, or admirable. Which made this New Yorker article on the history of political athletes a particularly informative read.
And while we are praising New Yorker articles, we would be remiss to overlook two particularly hilarious Shouts & Murmurs pieces they recently published. First, there’s “Sorry for the Delayed Response”, which catpures with discomforting accuracy all the terrible reasons We Your Dames tend to leave emails unanswered too long. Second, there’s “Some of the Ways TV Critics Have Tried to Get Me to Watch ‘The Americans’”, which spoke directly and simultaneously to Dame Margaret’s Critical Consensus Refusnik tendencies and her overzealous cultural evangelizing tendencies. Truly, quite a feat.
If, like Dame Margaret, you find yourself with more taste than money, you have surely thought about how nice it might be to have a wealthy older lover who generously enabled you to have a fabulous lifestyle. Which means that you, too, would have been utterly helpless in the face of the information that Eternal Dames Beloved Taffy Brodesser-Akner had written an article on sugar daddies. Taffy’s writing is just as good as you expect, and the realities of the sugar baby lifestyle are about as tawdry as you’d fear….
… but if someone offered Dame Margaret a vacation to Henry VIII’s honeymoon castle in exchange for "companionship", she’d consider their offer longer than she’d care to admit before reluctantly declining.
And finally, perhaps you can resist the headline “The Time a Ghost Had His Day in Court", but we surely cannot.
Whaaaat is the Deal With Dimples McGee?: A Brief Harry Styles Primer For Young Olds, by Dame S, Joyous One Direction Trash.
The face of an unrepentant murderer.
Trust me, you’re going to need this after next Friday, when his single “Sign Of The Times” has been released. He is going to be EVERYWHERE (on SNL, countless chat shows, and doing promotional interviews for the forthcoming & guaranteed harrowing Christopher Nolan WWII drama, Dunkirk, and on the cover of Rolling Stone and what have you) and there will be no escape. (A longer segment on 1D fandom generally will appear in our April 28th issue, thanks to the good offices of DamesPals Syazwina & Alicia.)
So here we are. For what does this newsletter exist, but to contexualize major cultural moments for even the most idly curious, making sport for our neighbors, and laughing at them in our turn? If I can plummet down this rabbit hole, so can you (and judging by the number of people privately asking me to help them do exactly that, I suspect you’ll enjoy it). Let’s gooooooo!
Hi. This is Harry Styles.
Yes, he is snuggling with Sir Ian McKellen. Seconds before, they were flirting. This is pop stardom in the 2010s.
Harry is a pop star, having first come to public prominence through his work in the British-Irish boy band One Direction. From 2010-2015, they recorded five albums, headlined four global tours, sold a million fafillion dollars’ worth of music & merchandise, and inspired fanfiction with word counts reaching into nigh-uncountable totals. The band went on hiatus at the end of 2015 and now they’re all releasing solo music. Harry is on the verge of releasing a 70s Brit-rock-inspired solo album, with his debut single slated for release next Friday. He released the cover art for that single, “Sign Of The Times”, this morning. The fandom went bananas, myself included, with some paragraphic yet breezy thoughts.
How did we get here, and why does it matter? Well, here’s one way & one reason. I liked 1D & their singles just fine, in that singing along on the radio but not seeking them out sort of way. Then one day, shortly after the Inauguration of President Cheeto, I heard their song “The Story of My Life” on the radio, and this song, which had previously been in the This Is An Acceptable Ballad column in the great musical spreadsheet of my mind, was suddenly pasted into the OMG THIS SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT MEN SINGING ABOUT DEEP EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT AND CAREGIVING IS THE GREATEST THING OF ALL TIME column. In Trump’s America, garden variety healthy masculinity can sound like resistance (and honestly, we should all be so lucky as to have the taste & cultural criticism acumen of really smart teen girls). Your path may vary!
So. Herewith, a brief, link-drenched summary of the types of thoughts you might have while learning about this tuneful, funny, adorable Northern Scamp (stop me if you’ve heard this one before):
Oh, snap, Rob Sheffield, my second-favorite pop critic of all time, loves Harry. Like, super-loves him & 1D as a whole. HUH.
Harry’s definitely going to do a good job with his role in Dunkirk, and I know because he was so funny as Marcel, the [Ed Grimley-ish] Marketing Guy in the video for “The Best Song Ever” (you’re not hearing things, it definitely does quote “Baba O’Riley” at the top).
Ok, so “Baba O’Riley” is woven into the top of “Best Song Ever”. Let’s play Spot The Musical Reference, shall we? “My Best Friend’s Girl”, by way of “Stacy’s Mom”, is a grandpa of “What Makes You Beautiful”. Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me” is a clear antecedent of “Wolves”, while you can hear their “Sara” and “The Best of My Love” by the Eagles in “Night Changes”. My favorites of all are lining up “Getting Better” and “The Village Green Preservation Society” with “Olivia”, and “The Coast” by Paul Simon with “Walking In The Wind”. TWINSIES! Some listeners may wonder, “gosh, can’t he get his own style?” To them I say, listen, proficiently aping the styles of your musical heroes is a great education, for both the musician and the listener. Also, everyone has influences, lighten up!
There really is something different about this one - this band as a whole, and Harry, in particular. The combination of his deep investment in babies (to be fair, they are all very into babies, and Louis & Liam are both fathers now), his Dad Magazine-style penchant for terrible jokes, the unending rumors that he is or was in a romantic relationship with his bandmate Louis Tomlinson, his nonchalance over being the subject of most if not all of Taylor Swift’s magnum opus 1989 (and the pointed, if fairly gracious, sonic riposte of “Perfect”), his beautiful blouses (his whole look, carefully catalogued here), that time he comforted a fan having a panic attack, his mutual lovefest with Ian McKellen- it all adds up to something combining globally dominant stardom with a queer-friendly, not remotely macho take on masculinity and a certain...poutine-loving gooberishness that is close to irresistible.
Finally, please enjoy this list of hilarious tags people use to describe him on Tumblr. They really love that leggy Twix bar.
Tag yourself, I’m #boticelli farmer realness
I’m not going to get more involved in explicating the dramatic & skillful album rollout tactics of the past week, but know that they show he’s been paying close attention to Beyonce’s BOOM, HERE IT IS PR methodology. He’s not at her level, but he’d clearly like to be, and the enthusiastic response of the fandom indicates that he may get there someday.
Come yell with me on Twitter about young Harold & his purple crayon by which I mean new music, novel take on 21st century manhood, and whether or not he uses a bullet journal to stay organized in his quest for world domination (he definitely does, I have decided). You know you wanna.
Winner, All-Cheshire Bruce Springsteen Impression Contest