confessions of a 20 something year old drama queen
+ Democrats protested Trump's address to Congress, and shit you should COOK about is BACK baby!!!!!
Hi my besties, you’re gonna laugh because I’m actually writing this AS SOMEONE FROM THE GUARDIAN IS PHOTOGRAPHING ME!! We wanted the *action shots* of me typing to look authentic so I decided that I’d make it as authentic as possible by literally writing the newsy. Two birds with one stone!!
Also how full circle is it that I went from not showing my face at all, to inviting The Guardian into my LITERAL BEDROOM for pics??? That’s on growth.
I’ll share the article when it comes out obv!! Love you xxx
Look at how Democrats protested Trump’s address to Congress
Yesterday, during Trump’s address to Congress, Democratic Women's Caucus members wore pink and other Democrats held up signs calling out Elon Musk for the DOGE-fueled federal mass firings in a form of protest. Meanwhile, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) got escorted out of the House chamber after heckling Trump just minutes into his speech (and many people reckon other Democrats should have followed suit if they actually wanted to make a stand.)
Here are some pics:
Shit You Should Cook About is our weekly recipe column written by 🌞Lovely Laura🌞 our resident ray of sunshine. She’s just had the first ever SYSCA baby (my niece), is chief of romanticising literally everything, and will definitely ask you all what your love language is at some stage.
Kia ora honeys!!!!
We are BACK baby (just like our girls Haim)!!! I have been procrastinating writing this as it feels vvv daunting to try to sum up the past year in a single newsy segment 🥹 I think we will have to do it in bite-sized pieces over the next wee while… so it’s a good thing Luce is bringing Shit You Should Cook Anbout back to your inbox every week. Yay!
The headlines / highlights of my last year include:
a move across the world (again!)
a new job (!)
and last but not least…
the first ever SYSCA BABY (and Luce’s favourite niece 🥰🥰🥰)
That last bullet point has meant that I’ve been in a dreamy yet all-consuming newborn daze that I am really only now starting to drift out of. I find myself saying a lot atm that my ‘brain is mush,’ thanks to sleep deprivation etc etc, so it’s so nice to feel like I have some crumbs to offer this space (and gently meet you all again!) Please bear with me as I try to remember a) how to type and b) how to cook things that aren’t baby puree.
On that note, I have SO much to say re food from this past year. As you know I have always loved food as a mechanism for bringing people together, but the past 12 months have really illuminated for me so many other things about food: not least to mention how it heals, how it fuels and also how it grows. I spent the summer in a small coastal town north of Tāmaki Makaurau and had access to a gorgeous garden (which, after coming from London and putting my name down at an allotment where I was told there was a 32-year waiting list) felt like the purest joy.
I planted things I knew I would cook with every day, tomatoes, lettuce, courgettes, cucumbers, basil, spinach, parsley, and dill and would walk down with the baby most mornings to see what had ripened and pick fresh tomatoes or a few sprigs of herbs that I would turn into whatever we ate that night for dinner. The supermarket was a fair drive away (and our baby *hates* the car) so I would try to cook seasonally, making meals with whatever I could grow or find locally (roadside corn stalls, fresh peaches, fish from our friends). It meant a lot of repetition - you are going to see a loooooot of zucchini recipes - but it also felt kind of incredible to eat small, seasonally and locally (something again that made me feel very very far from Tesco & Hackney)!
Anyway, all this to say I have a summer’s worth of meals I can’t wait to share with you, which hopefully will offer a glimmer of sunshine for those enduring the final weeks of northern hemisphere winter, as we lap up the last of the summer over this side of the world. Love love love this space and am so happy to be back.
All the love, (not so London) Laura xxx
I feel the need to tell you about my favourite movie of ALL TIME
The other night I made my flatmates watch Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen with me, (because
hadn’t seen it which is CRAZY bc it’s integral to understanding me.
Then I remembered that I rewatched it and wrote about it back in 2022, so I figured I’d re-publish it here for you all, and maybe encourage you to watch it as well!!
*Rewind to 2022…*
Yesterday I had the sudden urge to go back and watch one of my favourite movies of all time: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Now, as someone with a constant need to ‘keep up,’ for me to re-watch something that I’ve already seen maybe 50 times?? Well, that in itself is a testament to that thing. I still remember the first time I watched this movie… I went to Video EZY, rented the DVD, and from then on my life changed. This became my comfort watch, and it soon lived on my iPod touch so I could watch it on every long car journey or camping trip. Why do I love it so much? Well, where do I start? The fashion. The music. The fandom. The TALENT. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen has it all.
It’s about Lola Steppe (Lindsey Lohan) AKA the most main character-y main character to ever grace the planet. She moves to New Jersey and is wildly in love with her favourite band Sidarthur (at one point in the movie they end up at Sidarthur’s party and it’s like every fan's dream… kinda) There’s also a romance, a pretentious ‘it girl’ (played by MEGAN FOX), a best friend (Ella, we love you) a musical (so there’s theatre drama AND singing) and idk if I’m selling this to you but it’s just the best. Maybe it’s the nostalgia or maybe it’s because she loved Sidarthur the way I loved the Jonas Brothers, or maybe it’s because I always wanted to be a theatre kid and never was, but I felt so SEEN by it!! Also the soundtrack!?! Atomic Kitten, a Bowie cover, 2000s hit after 2000s hit and the best fictional band you’ve ever heard.
Looking back on it, I reckon Lola was who I wanted to be - or maybe who I thought I could be (Lola, Luce - it’s nearly the same already!) She wore what she wanted, said what she wanted, did what she wanted… she even met (and made quite the impact on) her favourite boyband. Lola was who I wished I was (even if she had some underlying stuff to reckon with… don’t we all), and now that I’m older I love that I had her to look up to! Because now I really do feel like I’m living my Lola - all that’s missing is me meeting Harry Styles and making a huuuuuge impact on his life. Baby steps tho.
AND ON ANOTHER NOTE, LOOK AT THIS GROSS REPORTING
During my ‘I need to consume everything there is to consume about this film” rampage, I opened a 2004 article in Rolling Stone titled “Lindsay Lohan: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.” It was written by a dude called Mark Binelli, and the lil subtitle says: “Forget those rumors about her breasts. This young lady has risen to the top of the teen-star crop by keeping it real.” Not the best start, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt I guess. Then, I scroll down and the first line is:
“LINDSAY LOHAN HAS BEEN EIGHTEEN FOR JUST UNDER A WEEK when she tells me her breasts are real. I did not ask (gentlemen never do), though my reporting (discreet visual fact-checking, a goodbye hug) seems to confirm her statement.”
I’m not one to get enraged on here (tbh I feel like the internet has, or needs to, move on from the enragement = engagement style of writing/being, but that’s another story) but this… this is something else. It takes me right back to Britney being photographed on her childhood bed in her bra (also for Rolling Stone.) Actually, Binelli brings up Britney later in this interview, saying:
“But you also seem to be less coy than, say, Britney Spears, who’ll be naked on the cover of a magazine but insist she’s not using sex to sell her records.
Lindsay: I mean, I look up to sex symbols: Madonna, Marilyn Monroe. So it doesn’t bother me if people call me that.”
So there’s also that.
And then there’s this:
“There comes a time in the life of every teenage girl who works for the Disney Corp. when that girl realizes she has suddenly – how shall we phrase this? – “broadened her appeal.” For Annette Funicello, back on the original Mickey Mouse Club, that point came when boys began to notice the tightness of her regulation Mouseketeer sweaters. In more recent years, fallen Mouseketeers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera recognized that music videos involving school uniforms and/or nude body stockings would exponentially increase fatherly, big-brotherly and creepy-uncle-y tolerance for music that’s pretty much unlistenable if you’re not a thirteen-year-old girl.”
And then this:
“For Lindsay Lohan – or, more accurately, for Lindsay Lohan’s breasts – the tipping point came somewhere after the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday. Lohan has been a charming screen presence in kid-friendly fare such as The Parent Trap (another Disney remake) and the subsequent Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. But suddenly, this year, it became socially acceptable to note that the redheaded child actress was hot.”
BREASTS ARE ALL WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT FOR THE FIRST 4 PARAGRAPHS. SHE’S 18.
I don’t think I even have to do any analysis here. In fact, I don’t really want to. But if you’re interested in seeing how the media looked in 2004 (and maybe understanding why Disney Stars had such a hard time growing up back then) you can check it out.
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Wow that article on lilo is HORRIFYING
Mark Binelli 🤢🤮 that's gross even for 2004 (the rest of your post is gold tho!)