Feminine Chaos

Kat and Phoebe talk about Prince William, pretender to the throne… of sexy baldness, that is. Is Prince William the world's sexiest bald man? Heck, is he sexy at all? And speaking of sexy, Naomi Wolf is kind of a weirdo these days, but does this mean that her 1990s feminist polemic, The Beauty Myth, is no longer good? Finally, we foray briefly into the weird, wonderful, and sometimes deadly world of gender reveal parties.

Links:

Stop trying to make 'sexy Prince William' happen - The Spectator

A tweet thread explainer: how the "sexiest bald man" study came to be

Does Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth hold up? What I think of it now that she's an anti-masker.

Naomi Wolf's Book Corrected by Host in BBC Interview

What Would Phoebe Do?: The Beauty Myth, Part I

Plane Crashes During Gender Reveal, Killing Two 3/31/2021

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Kat and Phoebe discuss Oprah's big wild interview with Meghan and Harry, formerly of the British monarchy, now just a couple of normal dudes... sort of. Also: can the endangered species known as the Basic Straight Girl survive when there is literally one good man available to be mated with?

Links:

11 things we learned from Meghan and Harry's interview

I'm OK -- You're a Racist

Kat at Unherd: Hollywood's Cinderella has spoken

Phoebe at Hedgehog Review: Straightness Studies | Who Do We Think We Are? | Issues

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Kat and Phoebe discuss the mother of all privilege disclaimers and the cancellation of Mandalorian actress Gina Carano.

Links:

Ashley Judd's hospital interview

The BBC interview 

Neglecting Yourself Doesn’t Make You a Better Mother

Behind Disney's Firing of 'Mandalorian' Star Gina Carano

Gina Carano and Crowd-Sourced McCarthyism

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Kat and Phoebe get together on the day of the Capitol coup attempt to talk about the most important political and cultural event of our lifetimes: the Bean Dad Thread. And speaking of cans of beans, how about that cheerleader who said the N-word?

Links:

The original Bean Dad thread, screencapped: https://twitter.com/ManiacalV/status/1345870405085573122

Bean Dad apologizes: http://www.johnroderick.com/an-apology

The NYT cheerleader story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.html

Kat's essay on The Word: How Could She Not Know?. Language is a moving target, but some… | by Kat Rosenfield | Jan, 2021

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Kat and Phoebe discuss the controversy over a "vitriolic, violent" Twitter thread that resulted in a YA author's cancellation (no, not the worms guy), before answering burning questions from listeners about who's causing all this drama, the impact of young adult fiction shenanigans on the culture at large, and the craziest MeTooing Kat ever witnessed in her years on the YA beat.

Links:

• The inaugural article on all things YA Twitter:  The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter
• Kat in Refinery29: How The OwnVoices Movement Is Changing YA Literature
• Another rundown of the Jessica Cluess/ Lorena German beef: What is #DisruptTexts?
• The Sarah Dessen controversy: Sarah Dessen & Brooke Nelson Twitter Controversy, Explained
• One book blogger's writeup on the Tristina Wright debacle: 

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Kat and Phoebe discuss the jailbird-journalist love affair between reviled "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, and former crime reporter Christie Smythe. (Production note/apology: Kat's mic went wonky at about 30 minutes in, this slightly tinny result is the best we could do on short notice.)

Links:

• The original Elle story
• Christie Smythe's Twitter account
• Followup interview with Smythe at Elle
• The Cut story on Shkreli's harassment of female journalists 

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Kat and Phoebe are joined by Jessa Crispin, literary critic and culture writer, to talk about dewy ingenues, the young-adultification of literature, and why that one guy on Book Twitter was screaming about worms.

Links:

• Jessa on age gaps in the Boston Review: Pathologizing Desire
• Jessa's essay on the Underground Railroad vs Normal People, both for children
• David Bowles' epic "disgusting worms" Twitter meltdown
• Kat's 2017 (but still relevant) primer for understanding YA's internecine conflicts: The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter
• Jessa's website 

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Phoebe and Kat discuss Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, now cancelled for intellectual pick-up artistry. Is putting your best foot forward a violation of consent? Will the stigma against duplicity-in-dating usher in a new era of unwashed, farting suitors who start every relationship by confessing their worst sins? Then, the ladies talk about the liberal feminists who are forcing women everywhere to endure lousy sex, and the murder mysteries that soothe the soul in the midst of dreary quarantine.

Links: 

The Obama-as-predator take that broke Twitter

Refinery29: We Need To Know Who The “Ethereal Bisexual” Woman Was In Barack Obama’s Memoir

Louise Perry at Unherd: Is casual sex immoral?

Phoebe at The Globe and Mail: Surviving the pandemic with murder mysteries

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Kat and Phoebe discuss the cultural appropriation controversy surrounding a Toronto-based broth bar, and whether having your lunch made fun of in fourth grade is a source of permanent trauma. Then: is this equal pay controversy between two LA Times food critics as simple as it seems? (Spoiler: Nope, it never is.)

Links:

• Phoebe on the cultural appropriation of broth: No Soup For You. Can you even culturally appropriate… | by Phoebe Maltz Bovy | Nov, 2020
• LA Times Responds to Accusation of Paying Discrimination

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