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[PREVIEW] Pay The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders! Jul 01, 2024

Show notes

Watching Netflix’s new Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders docuseries, “America’s Sweethearts,” is like diving under the water to check out what a swan’s feet are doing as she glides elegantly across a glassy pond. The frantic but hidden exertion underneath, all in service of creating an apparently effortless movement forward, becomes suddenly, jarringly visible once you peer under the surface of the water. That’s the ultimate challenge of meeting the traditional high-feminine ideal: The work, no matter how demanding, must expand to include the work of making itself invisible. A Dallas Cowboys cheerleader is an elite athlete, a brand ambassador, a pageant-ready beauty, a sex symbol and an ever-ready helping hand. She works tirelessly and accepts the meager pay as an honor. She also makes it all look easy. It’s part of the job.

As non-cheerleaders and American football heretics, we were both seduced into an unfamiliar world by this series, which goes deep into the 2023 season of the DCC from audition tapes to the post-playoffs banquet. In the process, it exposes the tension between the seamless conformity and perfection expected of the cheerleaders, and the herculean physical exertions, mental discipline, and authoritarian leadership that are necessary to produce them.

Showing how much is asked of these women, of course, only deepens their allure. We fell in love with so many of the cheerleaders — legacy veteran Victoria, whose tragedy is caring too much; effervescent and God-fearing rookie Reece; seasoned leader Kelcey, who is back for her last season before retirement. We wept with incredible performers like Anisha, an orthodontist who practices her moves between patients, and Ari, who moved to Dallas to train all year after getting cut in 2022, when they narrowly miss making the final squad. Their artistry and athleticism is enrapturing; their pursuit of excellence is inspiring.

And yet it also left us troubled. “America’s Sweethearts” shows what an immense toll this work takes on the women, whose bodies are shredded by the physical demands of the job and who are under relentless pressure to perform emotional labor and care work in the role — and who are making, when all is said and done, very little money. It also shows the blasé attitude of the Dallas Cowboys organization, which is making plenty of money from the cheerleaders, toward this inequity. (Charlotte Jones, the daughter of Jerry Jones and the EVP and chief brand officer of the Cowboys, appears in the series pointing out that the women don’t have many other opportunities to dance at a high level, apparently justifying their low wages.)

In this episode, we dug into the labor exploitation of it all, focusing on the devaluation of women’s work and the expectation that women will demonstrate their virtue through a willingness to donate time and effort. We also discuss the rigid beauty standards and casual objectification faced by the cheerleaders, and the upholding of a very specific feminine ideal through this brand. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] Brats, Moms, And The Rest Of Us Jun 24, 2024

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Reading the comments on The Cut’s Instagram page is not for the faint of heart. Things tend to get weird and heated and even more weird, but sometimes they also get interesting, like they did after writer Shannon Keating wrote an essay about her confused ambivalence about having children.

The piece ran with the eye-catching headline “Should I Be A Mom, or Should I Stay A ‘Brat’”? (‘Brat’ is a reference to Charli XCX’s latest album, on which she has a song that contemplates motherhood.) After The Cut promoted this essay Instagram, people began to pop off almost immediately. The rather innocuous essay spawned a whole lot of diametrically opposed anger. Women with children expressed anger at the idea that women couldn’t be moms and brats (they can!), while women without children expressed anger at the idea that not being a mom means you’re inevitably a brat (you aren’t!). One commenter railed against the idea that “having kids is the only way to feel like you have a purpose in life, while another disputed the idea that “you have a baby and suddenly morph into an ultra conservative MOM with no other personality but MOM.” (Others just wanted everyone to stop talking about moms and brats and parenting and ambivalence altogether. Lol.)

A quick perusal of these comments made one thing clear: Women of child-bearing age are feeling a whole lot of defensiveness about their choices surrounding having children — regardless of what those choices are. What was behind this?

And then we read “What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice” by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, a new book that examines just that. Berg and Wiseman examine the rising sense of child-having ambivalence many middle and upper-class Gen X, millennial and Gen Z women report feeling. They come at these questions from a philosophical and literary point of view, positioning this widespread ambivalence within the dual rise of the anti-abortion/pro-forced birth tradwife contingent on the right and nihilistic, anti-natalist attitudes on the left. (As pro-choice feminists, Berg and Wiseman are most interested in interrogating how we discuss these topics on the left, rather than lingering on the well-worn and obvious critiques of how motherhood is weaponized on the right.)

This idea made the chaotic comments section make sense; the way that women seemed to be responding both to the pressure to have children in order to justify their worth as women and the idea that being a mother is an inherently selfish and irresponsible decision that does not deserve collective support. Both feelings, in short, are awful, and neither serve us. And, of course, we are all more than one thing; our identities should not have to hinge on Mother or Not. Maybe we can all be party-loving brats sometimes.

In this Rich Text episode, we get into our own knee-jerk defensiveness on these topics, our reactions to the book, whether the left has been talking about parenthood in the wrong ways, and the enduring power of FOMO. Hope you enjoy! Xo

Dearest gentle readers, the end of Polin season is upon us at last, bringing with it relief from weepy eyes and gasping breaths. Colin and Penelope’s love story climaxes in several senses during these final four episodes: with a declaration of love, with a long-awaited sex scene featuring a mirror, with his discovery of Penelope’s nom de plume, and with his eventual acceptance of her full self. Oh, and they get married. (Details, details.)

But alongside the story of their friendship and love growing deeper and more complete, this season is telling another story: the story of how an intrepid gossip girlboss gaslights and gatekeeps her way to the top. This season — rarely with subtlety — has been paying special attention to how the relatively powerless women of the ton can wield power and find a voice, and Penelope is their grande dame, the woman who has most transcended her circumstances. An overlooked wallflower from an unimportant family, she has built a fortune by wrapping the ton around her gossipy little finger. Other women in her orbit — Cressida, Lady Featherington, Eloise, even Francesca — can only dream of amassing such clout, and this season also explores how these other women, often in unsympathetic ways, struggle against the strictures of their positions. Penelope, like her mother and Cressida, has not always used her power kindly. Still, female empowerment: we love it!

We discuss all this, plus how the queen coopts the subversive power of gossip and turns Lady Whistledown into an arm of the state media, the show’s welcome explorations of queerness in Benedict and Francesca, and the inimitable Featherington ladies. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] On 'Summer House,' 'VPR' + 'The Valley,' We Watched Everything Break Jun 07, 2024

Show notes

Bravo shows tend to be their most interesting and most depressing when we’re watching something dissolve, whether that’s a longterm relationship or the remaining space between reality TV cast members and their audience.

“The Valley,” “Summer House” and “Vanderpump Rules” all ended their seasons with something fundamental shattering. On “Summer House” it was Lindsay Hubbard and Carl Radke’s engagement. On “The Valley,” it was the marriages of Michelle and Jesse Lally, and Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright. (Hopefully the latter sticks.) And on “Vanderpump Rules,” the fourth wall was shattered after Ariana Madix decided to walk away from an on-camera conversation with her ex, Tom Sandoval.

There is always an element of voyeurism when it comes to reality television — that’s in fact kind of its fundamental draw — but all of these finales (and for VPR, the three-part reunion) provided an even greater peek behind the curtain. Watching these people, who we have come to know (in a parasocial way) for years, navigate the boundaries of acceptable behavior provides a way for us to negotiate our own boundaries and norms. As Danielle J. Lindemann put it in her book “True Story,” “part of what tantalizes us about these freak shows is that the freaks are ourselves…The experience of watching these shows, like looking in any mirror, is interactive. We see ourselves, and then we groom ourselves accordingly.”

In this Bravo check-in we discuss the Ariana vs. Lala discussion during the VPR reunion, why Brittany may have “woken up” to Jax’s terrible behavior in this moment, the weaponization of parenthood we saw across several shows, and the calculations both Carl and Lindsay made during their breakup. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Anyone But You' Is Not The Mid-Budget Rom-Com Blockbuster We Asked For May 24, 2024

Show notes

The great rom-com stars make it look easy. Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore: When they fall in love on-screen, their charm pulls us in and the transparency of their emotions enables us to feel every moment of yearning and every thrill just as their characters do. But a rom-com lead can also, we recently discovered, turn in such a limp performance that it makes the sheer difficulty of being a rom-com lead obvious. Sydney Sweeney is a good actress, and she was surely trying to put in a rousing performance as the female lead ofthe recent film “Anyone But You.” It just doesn’t work.

A lot of things don’t work about this movie, which nonetheless has become a runaway hit. Basic elements of the plot don’t quite hang together; the characters, even the two leads, are thinner than tissue paper; the movie is lit and staged like an ad for a hotel chain; several scenes, including a crucial one revolving around a giant decorative wrench, approach (presumably unintentional) self-parody. A woman confuses a giant tarantula for a mole on someone’s butt. A man uses a marine search and rescue organization as a taxi service. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell are semi-nude or wholly nude throughout much of the movie, as if to distract us from the finer workings of the plot with their tempting physiques.

But if this movie, flawed as it is, helps us bring back the mid-budget, wide-release romantic comedy, it will all have been worthwhile. Even Shakespeare, whose perfect rom-com “Much Ado About Nothing” was shamelessly pillaged for this bland, low-energy adaptation, would surely agree.

In our recap, we discuss Sydney Sweeney’s damp dishrag of a performance, her character’s vast wardrobe of white and beige separates, the profusion of plot holes and absurd details, the missing motivations and character details the leads should have been blessed with, and much more. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Bridgerton' S3 Is Sexy, Uneven, And Really Working For Us May 17, 2024

Show notes

Dearest gentle reader…

In the words of our dear gossip-monger Lady Whistledown, “Diamonds are not the only gems that sparkle.” On this season of “Bridgerton,” we are given an emerald, in the form of a no-longer-citrus-clad Penelope Featherington. The former wallflower is in full bloom, catching the eyes of both naturalist Lord Debling and her old friend Colin Bridgerton, newly returned from his travels around the continent.

Will these former friends become something more? And how will Lady Whistledown’s true identity complicate the whole affair? These are the main questions hovering over the third season of Netflix’s hit period rom-dramedy.

There’s a lot to love about “Bridgerton” season three: the friends-to-lovers trope, the escalating tension between Penelope and her former bestie Eloise (in some ways the true beating heart of the show), a relaunch for Francesca Bridgerton, the comic relief provided by the Featherington sisters, and some really hot sex scenes.

But not everything sparkles so brightly. The dialogue is (at times) wooden, the balls feel repetitive, and there are several storylines that seem more designed to fill space than further any real character development. (Also… why do Cressida Cowper’s costumes make her look like she arrived straight from The Capitol?)

In this Rich Text episode, we get into our full review of the season, including our thoughts on the central love story, the significance of Pen and Eloise’s friendship, potential future queer love stories for the Bridgertons, and more. We hope you enjoy!

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[PREVIEW] 'Selling The OC' S3 Is An All-Villain Affair May 10, 2024

Show notes

“Selling the O.C.” has always distinguished itself from its older, cooler sister “Selling Sunset” by being slightly worse in almost every respect: the fashion, the characters, the politics, the drama. In season 3, that continues. The “Love Island”-inspired, Shein-designed outfits, the flatly unpleasant people, the thinly veiled bigotries, and the warmed-over storylines make for an uninspiring season. Still worse, the biggest central stories now seem irrelevant, given how many key characters have left the show since this season filmed.

But “Selling the O.C.” does offer one thing “Selling Sunset” does not: sheer villain volume. Everyone who has briefly won our sympathy on this show immediately loses it (except perhaps Brandi, who has effectively sidelined herself from the drama this go-around). The most likable characters onscreen often turn out to have the most heinous politics, and even the more sympathetic figures often have pretty unpleasant vibes themselves. There’s not a Chrishell in this bunch, folks. It’s mean girls and asshole bros all the way down.

In this episode, we discuss the alarmingly flammable-looking fashion; the abysmal race, class and gender politics; the Alex Hall-Tyler Stanaland will-they-won’t-they flirtation that just won’t end; and the gay panic that appears to have blown up the cast. We hope you enjoy!

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[PREVIEW] 'VPR,' 'Summer House,' & 'The Valley' May 03, 2024

Show notes

Are we in the golden age of friend-group Bravo shows? After doing a major binge of established shows “Summer House,” “Vanderpump Rules,” and new addition “The Valley,” we think that answer is a resounding yes. So naturally, we had to get Gibson Johns of Gibsonoma back on the Rich Text pod to do a little state of the Bravo union.

All three of the aforementioned shows track the semi-glitzy, semi-depressing, utterly entertaining lives of 20, 30 and 40-somethings in Los Angeles and New York City. (“Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard” and “Southern Charm” do something similar in Massachusetts and Charleston.) And when you watch them all in quick succession, some themes emerge: men in perpetual arrested development, the dissolution of longterm romantic partnerships, and a meta-commentary on what living your early adult life on television does to the shape it ultimately takes.

“Vanderpump Rules” has a post-Scandoval hangover, but is muddling its way through this season before the cast gets a well-deserved pause in filming. And “Summer House” is having what is possibly its best season ever, mining not just the slow collapse of Lindsay Hubbard and Carl Radke’s engagement, but conflict between married couple Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula, and a budding romance between Ciara Miller and newcomer West. (West, a 28-year-old, blonde, recently-laid-off journalist, is a truly unlikely new Bravo heartthrob.)

And then there’s “The Valley.”

We have to admit that when “The Valley” was first announced, we didn’t have high hopes. It was framed as a “VPR” spinoff that followed “a group of close friends as they trade bottle service in West Hollywood for baby bottles in the Valley all while they navigate bustling businesses, rocky relationships and feisty friendships.” But… did anyone really want Jax Taylor back on their screens?

And yet, seven episodes in, we are hooked. (Brian Moylan even wrote a whole mea culpa over on Vulture.) Kristen Doute is spreading chaos, a very pregnant newbie Janet is planting little gossip seeds all over Valley Village, and Jesse Lally is a bad enough partner that his bad vibes rival even Jax’s. What more could the dark corners of our reality-TV-loving hearts desire?

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[PREVIEW] 'The Tortured Poets Department' Is Taylor Swift's Messiest, Angriest Work Yet Apr 26, 2024

Show notes

Taylor Swift’s 11th original studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was released last week into a world feverishly gripped by anticipation for a Taylor Swift album. Some were primed to adore her latest work, which Swifties broadly expected to be a thorough excavation of her relationship with her ex-partner of six years, actor Joe Alwyn; others were primed to mock and flame it. We, two rather casual Swift fans, were drawn in by the sheer intensity of the gathering discourse — not to mention our own anticipation of another album. And after almost a week of listening and relistening to the album, following the critical reactions to it, and stewing in the public debates raging about it, we decided we were ready to wade in.

But not without help! For this conversation, we’re joined by writer, critic, and Taylor Swift scholar B.D. McClay, (BDM ),who has written some of our favorite pieces of Swiftian criticism. You can find her work at outlets like The New Yorker, The Baffler, and Commonweal, as well as on her Substack, Notebook, which we highly recommend. Her Substack piece on “TTPD” is excellent, and helped us clarify our own reactions to the album:

There’s no doubt that “TTPD” is a huge amount of music to sift through — and that’s before accounting for the lore, the Easter eggs, the references, and how the entire work plays with and against her ubiquitous public presence and well established brand. At the moment this album came out, after months of being on top of the world, selling out massive shows for her international Eras tour and holding a nation rapt with her public romance with Super-Bowl-winning tight end Travis Kelce, Swift was overexposed and hovering at the precipice of an almost inevitable backlash. Then she announced “The Tortured Poets Department” by working it into a Grammy’s acceptance speech, a move widely perceived as crassly commercial. The name of the album and the promotional materials around it (including an odd library installation in Los Angeles featuring Spotify-branded, faux-aged papers with misspelled lyrics draped over typewriters) fed into a narrative that the album would be cringe, a long-form dark academia TikTok full of adolescent pretension. There was so much discourse about this album before it even dropped.

When it did drop, the reactions were far from uniformly laudatory. Many critics have noted that the album is overly long, unedited, a bit shapeless perhaps. The lyrics can veer into the goofy and embarrassing. The musical motifs seem to echo her recent past albums. There’s merit to a lot of the critiques. And yet… we found a great deal to love on the album as well. And the longer we sit with it, the more we relisten, the more we find irresistible hooks hidden away in the back halves of songs, glimpses of dry humor, and moments of profoundly lovely lyricism.

In this conversation, we tried to cover as much ground as we could in just a couple of hours, discussing our favorite songs, what we think about the angry and vulnerable Taylor who appears on this album, what stories and themes she’s exploring in it, whether it’s fair to read her newer works as emotionally stunted songs about boys and bullies, and why she keeps flooding us with so much new music.

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