After nearly four years of writing essays every week on Substack, I am still so often gobsmacked by what resonates with people. I truly almost killed this week’s essay about Banff (which was not at all an essay about Banff, as it turns out) because I thought it was too raw. Then someone said it’s their favorite essay of mine that I’ve ever written. I couldn’t believe it.
I was talking to my friend Claire (who is part of the same disillusioned-marketer-turning-into-a-therapist pipeline that I’m in) about the stark differences between millennial vs. Gen Z branding when it hit me that I think these aesthetic trends are expanding to online content as well. Whereas the 2010s girlboss era was all about minimalism, clean lines, blocky text, and performing “perfection,” the 2020s are messy. Polish is out, raw authenticity is in. Bright colors, collages that feel like the Tumblr era, and female rage are in. (We may do a podcast about this because we could both talk about it forever; TBD.)
The album of the summer is literally called “CONFESSIONS.” Slayyyter got a last-minute upgrade to a bigger stage at Lollapalooza this weekend because her latest album—called “a hellish universe” by Stereogum—has catapulted her into the spotlight this summer like Charli did with BRAT two years ago. Meanwhile, Charli’s new album is full of gritty, 2-minute navel-gazing bangers that made me laugh or gasp or cry, especially when I watched her absolutely insane Lollapalooza set (via livestream, tbc). Gracie and Olivia are both kind of losing their minds this summer, and Ariana called her latest album “a little feral” and written from a place of “unfiltered rage.” This feeling is everywhere if you know where to look.
As a child of the perfectionist era, I’m trying to train myself out of striving for the polish I thought was necessary for anyone to take me seriously. Normally I would have spent several more hours editing my Yesteryear essay, but I decided maybe it would hit harder with rougher edges. I did work on it constantly for over a week but then gave myself only an hour to edit it and press send. As Madonna says, I FEEL SO FREE.
Voice notes are back this week if you want to hear a little bit more about this week’s essays on Banff (i.e. my continuing financial/emotional crashout) and Yesteryear. There’s also more below about the collapse of Substack (gulp) and the Alix Earle / Alex Cooper feud.
Happy August! xx
1. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. If you missed my 3,000 word review of Yesteryear on Friday, allow me to remind you of its existence! I fucking loved this book and I could write so much more about it but I’ll spare you 😇
