🐀Rat Girls & Uncommonwealth Games🤼‍♀️

+ Some vintage poetry from 7 year old Luce, & a US soldier is being held in North Korea 😳

Angels! Hi!!!! I’ve just spent a quick 24 hours in Auckland where I saw Barbie and holy shit - I’m not just saying this, it was really fucking good. It’s smart, it’s SO funny, and America Ferrera has a monologue in there that I want tattooed across my entire body. Every dude in the world has to go and watch this and that’s ALL I’LL SAY.

I got home to a gorg wintery day in Blenheim and decided to shock my body into thinking I’m mentally okay by going for a very quick swim in this:

and then I got into some archiving of all my old diaries (did you all write diaries when you were younger? I wrote in a diary every day from the age of 12-17.) While I was doing that, Dad pulled out a book I used to write in when I was 7 (or 7.8 as I wrote in there - I definitely had no knowledge of what .8 meant at that time tho) but LOOK AT THE SHIT I WAS WRITING AS A 7 YEAR OLD:

this is the shit that close friends get to see

 “being young isn’t easy 
it ain’t no walk in the park 
the world is big and scary 
when you’re right back at the start 
there’s so much more to learn 
tell me now - where’s it gonna fit? 
I need some help to rest”

Someone please tell me what made me write this at 7 years old, and more importantly, why it’s even more true at 25??? Ugh, I need some help to rest…

• 🔔Bel Chimes In: On The Rise of the Rat Girl🔔

• Speaking of Rat Girls - have you been girlrotting lately? Feral girling? Are the girls ok?

• A US soldier is being held in North Korea after crossing the border without authorisation

• The Australian state of Victoria has pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games

• Our August Book Club pick is out!!!

🔔Bel Chimes In: On The Rise of the Rat Girl🔔

This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. She also writes our Sunday newsletter ‘No News is Good News’ which all our paying supporters receive. Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!

Hey crushes! For NZ subscribers, I hope you had a gorge Matariki ✨

I went off the grid, had a sick time with my besties mincing around in hoodies and a soft pant, tried to learn all these things we should have grown up knowing, and collectively deciding that resetting the year mid-way through is something we will formally be undertaking.

This week, I wanted to wax lyrical about my favourite trend/phrase for the last year so far, which is related to the above: the rise of the Rat Girl. I've written about this in No News Is Good News, mentioned it here, but I feel like the people need to know.

The rise of the Rat Girl is important because it's a total rejection of the incessant pressure to live an aesthetic, self-optimised life. 

Embracing being a Rat Girl life is simply just admitting you're real and imperfect and leaning into it, wearing shit clothes when you need to, asking for help when you can't handle, not washing your hair all the time, not having heaps of things to post about, having Who Cares Moments and not having a bedside table with a swirly lampshade you can take flat lays of etc etc. It's a bold reclaim of Real Life Living. And I just feel like that's what we need right now.

If you're feeling non-adjacent to 'Euro trip hauls' and 'here's how I make my perfect morning in my perfect house' TikToks and podcasts of tech bros talking about how they get up at 3am to get ahead of the day and meditate, then I happily prescribe you a Rat Girl Era (all genders invited, ofc). 

Wishing you all a Rat Girl Week, and to see you this Sunday for 💌No News Is Good News 💌

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Speaking of Rat Girls - have you been girlrotting lately? Feral girling? Are the girls ok?

Feels like the perfect time to recommend that you go and read this piece by my newsy crush

kate lindsay

in

Embedded

which looks at how we got from Girlbossing, Hot Girl Walking, and gorgeous gorgeous girling, to girlrotting, ferar girling, and rat girling (as Bel has just explained.) Off you go!

Are the girls okay?

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A US soldier is being held in North Korea after crossing the border without authorisation

Yikes - dominating the headlines this morning is this story about a US soldier being held in North Korea after crossing the border from South Korea to North Korea without authorisation. According to CBS News: “the soldier was being escorted back to the US for disciplinary reasons before he turned around at the airport and joined a border tour.”

While on that tour, he crossed the concrete demarcation line that separates North and South Korea, but no one knows yet if he intended to defect to North Korea, or if it was just reckless impulsivity.

A person who said they witnessed the event and was part of the same tour group told CBS News that "this man gives out a loud 'ha ha ha,' and just runs in between some buildings."

More on this odd story here.

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The Australian state of Victoria has pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games

Gathered this story by watching the good old 6pm news with my Dad last night! How old school of me! The future of the Commonwealth Games is up in the air atm, after the state of Victoria made a shock decision to pull out of hosting duties.

At the end of the day, Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews said it came down to cost:

“What’s become clear is that the cost of hosting these Games in 2026 is not the $2.6bn (£1.3bn) which was budgeted and allocated,” he said. “It is in fact at least $6bn and could be as high as $7bn.”

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Chucking this in here because the Aug pick is probably gonna be one of the BEST books I’ve read this year and you should all come and hang out in the Book Club bc it’s SOOOOO cute and has PULLED ME OUT OF MY READING SLUMP FRRR

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