🥕Ugh, another 'food trend'🌭
+ Millenialcore, Adele tells us to stop throwing shit at performers, & a France Update 🇫🇷🎀
Good morning my angels! I’m hot off a Culture Vulture record with London Laura where we spoke in-depth about the ‘tortured artist’ trope and how we can’t/ shouldn’t expect artists to sit in their hurt to make art for us - we’re really proud of the ep and can’t wait for you to hear it tomorrow! Other things to update you on… hmm… I’m currently deep in PACKING UP MY LIFE MODE as I’m moving home to Blenheim for a few months before (hopefully) getting my visa accepted and leaping over to Portugal - naturally I’ll bring the Close Friends home with me. Speakin of Close Friends, it was SO cute talking to so many of you last night - honestly if you’re not a Close Friend you really are missing out on a solid friendship that FILLS ME UP!!
Yes! I made a little GIF for housekeeping because I’m a psycho and am obsessed with even the most mundane things being a little bit fun!! Anyway some things you need to know:
The winner of our podcast competition!!
We had so many amazing entries - you all have such GORG podcast ideas and it’s my life’s wish to be able to make them come to life! The winner of the pod equipment ended up being a team of women who are setting up a “Gender Watchdog podcast for the NZ Election (to put a feminist lens across the policies.)” This is something we care SO deeply about, so we felt like it was a great home for the gear. Love you all - you inspire me every damn day.
We’re giving away tickets to the NZ premiere of Barbie in Auckland!!
New competish alert! Keep your eyes peeled for an email today with deets about a giveaway we’re running to give you tix to the Barbie premiere in NZ!! This competition is for supporters only, but there’s plenty of time to become one xxx
A new ‘food trend’ just dropped
🔔Bel Chimes In: On The Best/Worst Cheugy Art invented🔔
What’s happening in France?
Adele concert etiquette
A new ‘food trend’ just dropped
Content warning: disordered eating, 2010s Tumblr…
I went back and forth on whether I was going to write about this, but after my entire FYP served me ‘cottage cheese and mustard’ videos I kinda felt like it was time, so here goes. If you, like me, spend an ungodly amount of time on TikTok then you may have come across TikTok user tiffanyymagee who goes by “TiffanyElizabeth Weight Loss.” On first glance there’s not much to what she does - it’s just her sitting in her car, eating a mix of raw veges, ‘hearts of palm,’ a chicken apple sausage, cottage cheese and mustard. And not to be forgotten - she drinks a cup of ‘watermelon electrolytes’ with every meal.
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Before I get too far into it, it’s important to note that Magee says she eats this diet because she has been diagnosed with Lyme disease - but that context isn’t made clear in each video (you kinda have to go looking for it), and after a little bit of digging I realised that she’s been a weight loss ‘influencer’ for a few years now, hence why ‘weight loss’ is in her TikTok name and people (maybe intentionally) mistake her as a diet influencer.
In her ‘my story’ part of her website:
“I started documenting my weight loss journey publicly on Instagram May 10, 2016 weighing in over 230 pounds. Since then, I have lost nearly 100 pounds and have created a community of beautiful like minded woman who want to start their own journeys to a healthier lifestyle. Weight loss, fitness and lifestyle are my passion. Thank you for being here and being a part of the tribe. Together, we can and will THRIVE.”
Anyway, what's happened is my WHOLE FYP has turned into people recreating this meal - for fun, for weight loss, for content - and I’ve even found myself thinking… should I try this? Should I buy some cottage cheese and mustard? Where do I get hearts of palm? Luckily, as part of my job (and my being) I now interrogate my own thoughts - why do I want to do this? Is this gonna be a healthy thing for my brain? How many other people are being sucked into this? (a lot by the looks of my feed.) And so as of yet I haven’t done the trend. But what I HAVE noticed is the people in her comments are all asking her for the calories, if they can eat it for every meal, how they can get her meal plan, where she gets the electrolytes etc, and after a bit of digging I’m sure you won’t be surprised (like I wasn’t) that she actually has a business selling this stuff to people.
She sells a Live, Laugh, Mustard E-Book
Those electrolytes that you see her sipping with every meal? She sells them too.
Oh, and if you’ve gone deep enough to see the ‘chocolate greens’? Yep - you better beliiiieve she’s selling them.
So it really is in her best interests to keep going viral, and getting my whole FYP to eat this meal.
And if you, like me, were 16 and spending an ungodly amount of time on Tumblr, maybe this awoke something in you too - it was very much giving 2010s ‘thinspo’/ clean eating trends that thrived on that app, and have now made their way to TikTok (think the ‘water recipes,’ ‘75 hard,’ ‘chugging apple cider vinegar,’ making ‘healthy coke…’)
A lot of the ‘buzzy’ and trendy ‘food fears’ appear throughout her videos too - she talks about nightshades, lectins, toxins, oils to avoid - again, things that feel like 2023’s version of the content I used to be served on Tumblr.
Sometime trends I see on TikTok aren’t that deep, sometimes they are - it depends who you are and what affects/ awakens things within you. This one awoke something in me and I’ve started having to click ‘not interested’ on all the mustard and cottage cheese videos I see because now that I’m 25, I can happily say that I am NOT INTERESTED.
🔔Bel Chimes In: On The Best/Worst Cheugy Art invented🔔
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!
Good morning crushes!
Incredible to mark formally entering the second half of the year with a light-hearted take on one of my deep cringe/loves (yes, at the same time), by rewatching the tv show Newsroom from when I was a 20-year-old journalism student using the word 'hegemonic' incorrectly in every second sentence in my essays and rediscovering the phoenixing power of hooning a burger in bed with your bestie whilst watching reality tv... Life's a movie after all!
Lol, this week's Chime comes from some hilar pre-pod chat Luce, Aihe (our gorge sound engineer) and I were having before recording the other week about cheugy inspirational art we just cannot stand but cannot help but love at the same time.
The Best/Worst Cheugy Art invented:
'In this house we.... love openly, laugh often and ALWAYS celebrate 5'oclock'
BEACH THIS WAY (in a suburban house nowhere near the beach)
The letters 'EAT' in the kitchen, most often found on top of the microwave
Office art that has, like, a photograph of an orca whale flipping out of the water and the word MOTIVATION in papyrus font and a definition below it
Neon signs in corporate offices that say quirky things like 'Make Dope Shit'
Neon signs in bars that say anything.
Anything that simply has the word 'LOVE' on it (think, Live, Laugh, Love.)
Any dolphin-related art like bead curtains or book ends or duvet covers (Luce note: or those little glass dolphins we all used to have?). This is extremely nostalgic and incredibly meaningful to me as my first email address was dolphins2themax@hotmail.com
I love you if you hate these and I love you if you have these and it's a complicated world out there and sometimes you just have to be reminded that the beach is nearby and it's 5 o'clock somewhere if you try hard enough.
Ily!
PS. See you in No News Is Good News this week where I'm going to unpack self-belief, serve you up another hot chaotic playlist and meet you in the cutest place on the internet.]
[Luce note: Also, just after I’d edited this I walked into a paper plus and]:
What’s happening in France rn?
Protests have erupted in France after a 17 year old boy- known simply as ‘Nahel’ - was shot dead by police, reigniting long frustrations with police in the country singling out minorities. Nahel was of North African decent, he lived in Pablo Picasso estate in the Nanterre suburb of Paris, and was just one of the 21 fatal police traffic-stop shootings since 2020 where ”most of the victims were of black or Arab origin.”
Since his death, protests have broken out in the cities of Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Roubaix, and Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Nahel was reportedly from, and protesters have:
“targeted public buildings, transport systems and shops with projectiles and Molotov cocktails, leaving 249 members of law enforcement injured and 875 people arrested.”
In response (according to Vox):
“The French government mobilized 40,000 officers Thursday night to quell the unrest, which shows no sign of abating. Nearly 900 people were arrested overnight after another 180 were arrested the night before.”
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron is “pointing the finger” at TikTok and Snapchat for “pouring gasoline on the inferno” but the finger is being pointed right back at him and his counties long-ignored police brutality, and racism against Arab and Black communities in the country.
Adele wants you to stop throwing shit at performers
And fair enough too! Over the weekend Adele cheekily chatted about the fucked up concert etiquette (or complete lack of concert etiquette) that we’re seeing at the moment, saying:
“Have you noticed how people are, like, forgetting f**king show etiquette at the moment? Throwing s**t on stage, have you seen them?”
“I f***ing dare you, I dare you throw something at me, I’ll f***ing kill you”.
Then she picked up a T-shirt cannon and shot it into the crowd as she told them: “Stop throwing things at the artists.”
So true Adele.
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My friends and I once rearranged the pictures at an Airbnb because it was annoying me that the 'Beach' sign with the arrow was NOT pointing towards the beach.
I work with teenagers and just want to contribute that one of them recently has been staying with deadpan perfection in response to dire disruptions “live laugh love this for us.” All live laugh love signs are now ironically hilarious by association, and I want to buy one and put it somewhere with grim vibes.