Tears n' Vows & Vows n' Tears
YOU GUYSSSSSSS!
Your response to our JUST ONE WEEK OLD Patreon campaign has been GOBSMACKING!
We keep trying to figure out which makes us cry more-- seeing a friend's name among our supporters or spotting a stranger's. The answer is BOTH make us cry more and EVERYTHING makes us cry more.
We are WELL ON OUR WAY to achieving our $500-a-month goal of creating Two Bossy Dames merchandise for you all, something we thought we wouldn't achieve for...well, months.
SHOWS WHAT WE KNOW.
We'll just stick to links and leave the UNIMAGINABLE GENEROSITY to you all.
Dame Margaret is doing this one alone, so it's shorter than usual and MIGHT HAVE MORE TYPOS, but she hopes that you will forgive her in advance. It's the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting and she has SO many hugs she has to dole out.
Dame Margaret's Top Five
Staring out emotional this week!! Stand-up comedian Cameron Esposito (an established Darling of Dames Nation since issue #2 of TBD) interviewed her very Catholic dad about how he came to terms with her queerness despite his conservative upbringing and whoooooo boy, will you need tissues as you read this through. This link isn’t the most recent-- the interview was published in February of 2015-- but since Dame Margaret missed it until #Damesbestie Kerry emailed it to her last night, she thought it might be new to many of you as well.
Official #Damespal Meryl Williams wrote a really beautiful essay about the summers she spent as a hotel housekeeper in Ohio for official #DamesfavThe Billfold. Sharing it was a true inevitability.
Another deeply inevitable share: Noted genius Sulagna Misra’s Oscar Issac gif-laden “How the Internet Picks Its Boyfriends”, a piece that was also shared in Elizabeth Minkel and Gavia Baker-Whitlaw’s ~~brand new~~ fandom newsletter, The Rec Center, along with a “cute fic about [Brooklyn 99’s] Captain Holt and his husband deciding to renew their vows,” so, yes, this is another newsletter you’re going to want to subscribe to ASAP.
In terms of her white privilege, Dame Margaret finds “the right to be understood always in the most charitable light” one of the hardest bits to consciously surrender. She engages in a lot of playful hyperbole and performative boldness in a way that often presumes a kind of “we’re all trusted friends here, every circle is my inner circle” mindset. She loves the way this presumption of intimacy often fosters genuine intimacy, but she also dwells on how her ability to engage in it so casually has a LOT to do with her position in the Privileged Class of most rooms she’ll ever enter. These feelings came to the fore again while reading “What Goes Through Your Mind: On Nice Parties and Casual Racism” by Nicole Chung, a piece that illustrates with incisive detail just what it’s like to be in those aforementioned rooms as a potential “other.” It made Dame M. want to abrogate her own privilege more by focusing her social influence on building environments that are safe for all comers instead of merely intimate for those already comfortable.
And finally! Dame Margaret presumes that you’ve already seen today’s gorgeously insufferable Vows column (as she’s been crowing about it over on Twitter for hours). But, because you aren’t lucky enough to be Facebook friends with #Damespal Kady MacFarlane, you probably haven’t read its perfect corrective: A Willington, Delaware couples Vows-esque profile entitled “They met when he hollered at her from a garbage truck.” So, YOU’RE WELCOME! Come tweet us all your favorite bits ASAP.
This Week in Hamilton:
Monday, Monday, Mondaaaaaaaaay! January 11 will be the 261st anniversary of the birth of our favorite Founding Father. We’ll raise a glass in his honor!
Last week’s Ladies of HAMILTON #Ham4Ham makes both your Dames want to stand up & shout HOT DAMN every time they see it. Gender-swapped HAMILTON speedily & in our days & let us say AMEN.
It has already inspired some gorgeous fan art of actress Morgan Marcell’s Hamilton, including the image opening this section-- currently Lin-Manuel’s Twitter avatar!!!
Dame Margaret is still DEEP in her previously mentioned Rose Lernerobsession and the free short story Lerner just released featuring the hero of her novel True Pretenses conning Aaron Burr is NOT helping.
We’re not crying, YOU’RE CRYING: How AJ Curry got engaged in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Dressing Room at the Richard Rogers Theater (aka How We Fell In Love Again With Lin’s Dad, Luis Miranda).
Cutest Broadway Couple Anthony Ramos & Jasmine Cephas Jonesrecorded a mash-up of “Higher Love”, “Rather Be” and “Human Nature”, which, though it’s a little adult contemporary for our taste, nonetheless has us longing for an album of duets by these two.