Powerful Thighs, Hackable Lives
It is serotonin booster time again, friends! Here are this week’s gems selected from your incredible submissions to our handy dandy Google Form.
Have we shared this video of Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers before? I strongly suspect yes. But as video submitter Karin Kross correctly points out, it is “one of the greatest musical numbers of all time on film. Cab Calloway is incredibly beautiful, and the Nicholas Brothers are absolutely superhuman.” Moreover I suspect that even watching the Nicholas Brothers drop themselves into splits from which they then RAISE THEMSELVES BACK UP WITH THE MUSCLES IN THEIR LEGS ALONE— multiple times over!!!!— has made my own thigh muscles stronger, so great is the power of this move.
For our Canadian submitter who worried this media literacy ad from the 90s would not delight people, like this tragic American, not lucky enough to grow up with it, let me reassure you in the strongest possible terms that the peanut butter footprints and soft nests you found so charming have exactly the same overwhelming impact on a brand-new viewer. Am now desperate for an infestation of house hippos.
And finally, for good measure, because the mere phrase made my entire brain suddenly feel perfectly smooth, I share with you “a whole channel where someone makes elaborate desserts in near silence”— once again, courtesy of Kait the Great.
Further Adventures in Damesing: Study Emma with Dame M
As we approach the one year mark for the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of a small, restrictive life are weighing heavily on my mind— and drawing me towards a close study of Jane Austen's Emma. While the connection a global pandemic and snobby Emma Woodhouse may not jump out immediately, the smallness and seclusion of Emma's life is notable: she is the only one of Austen's heroines who completely ignores the axiom Austen articulates in Northanger Abbey— “If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” Unlike her brethren, over the course of the novel Emma never leaves the village of Hartfield, despite frequently feeling the limitations of its society. And in Emma's character and self-understanding, we see how the loss of perspective such seclusion creates can damage our character if it is not checked by productive self-reflection and what costs we incur when we allow ourselves to become blind to the perspectives around us. ALL OF WHICH made the idea of actually studying Emma, with a group of likeminded participants— a group of likeminded participants that could include you!— seem low-key genius. Because, thanks to Not Sorry Productions, thinking “huh this could be fun?” is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from talking yourself out of naming your class on Emma and the pandemic... “Pand-EMMA-ic.” Come and reward my rare moment of restraint as we develop our empathetic understanding of others by correcting for Emma Woodhouse’s narrative solipsism.
Dame Margaret and Her Hackable Life
Martha Stewart is not directly connected to my hackable life, no. But if I can ever pull off an outfit as cute as the one Martha reports wearing as a stock brocker in the 1970s in this excellent Harper’s Bazaar profile, I will know I have fully hacked it.
Truly hacking the shit out of my life, though, is this trio of tips:
Other iPhone users may have known this for quite some time, but only two weeks ago did I learn the breadth of things Apple’s Screen Time utility could do. For years I thought it was just a COP that told you how many hours a day you spent on your phone, which is CER-tain-lee information I would rather not have. In fact, in addition to being a COP, it can also make certain apps unavailable at certain times of day, or only for certain amounts of time— which means I can make spending an hour doomscrolling Twitter when I first wake up a tiny bit more difficult to accomplish. Do recommend!
Similarly, the Forest app and extension on Chrome lets you make your phone or laptop functionally useless for all except the tasks you want to tackle for set amounts of time.
Apparently, you have been able to group tabs in Chrome since MAY but I only learned about it last week and, as a tab addict, I can think of few things that have been more game-changing than being able to open 17 tabs worth of vintage Norwegian porcelain on my lunch break and then shunt them all away to “Shoppies” when I have to start my work day again. It’s clutch.
And finally, really digging into the world of soothing simulated rooms on YouTube has been a productivity treat. I wrote this newsletter while pretending I was in Twin Peaks’s RR Diner on a rainy night and I cannot endorse this choice hard enough.
Sometimes I shave my legs JUST TO FEEL SOMETHING and on those days I’ve been using Aveeno spray oil to moisturize them after and the results, friends? They’re wonderful even if only my sheets ever know it.
I certainly thought that, three hundred and fifty one days into functional house arrest, I had learned all there was to know about truly excellent loungewear. Like, Nigella Lawson and Florence Pugh own fancy dressing gowns from the sameline where I got mine back in March— THAT’S what you call ahead of the curve,. But at our Valentine’s Conifer Gift Exchange last Friday, my beloved roommate Malloryintroduced me to, arguably, the best sweatpants of all time: Lou & Grey’s signature softblend sweatpants. They are incredibly soft and just a little structured and surprisingly chic— every day I have worn something other than them has felt like a mistake.
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
The staunchly resolute but also somehow lightly chagrined expression of this dog,
We appreciate you, readers of Dames Nation!
Every time you tell a friend to subscribe, some woman, somewhere, rewatches Lady Bird with friends and remembers that it really is a perfect movie.
Help us build Dames Nation by upgrading to a paid subscription on Substack
Share your saucy opinions with us on Twitter whether jointly as your @twobossydames, or in single size servings as @MrsFridayNext & @sophiebiblio!
And! You can catch Bossy Extras on Tumblr.
