AFTER THE BLONDES OF SUMMER HAVE GOOONE

A recap of the annoying blondes of summer, ft. Jocelyn from The Idol, Taylor as Barbie, and good old Carrie Bradshaw

Annoying BLONDES doesn’t mean yellow hair only— the umbrella of “blonde” I’m working under is more broadly defined— but I can’t help the fact that this was a very BLONDE summer. What to make of this transition from hot girl summer to blonde girl summer? Is this a saturn’s return to the Paris Hilton-helmed 00s?

Because that was probably the last time I saw a body like Lily-Rose Depp’s on television— television, not Instagram! Allow me to ask the question many will be mad at me for asking: Have you ever seen such a skinny legend in your lives? The kind of body to give EmRata an insecurity. My god! I’m not condoning this type of hot girl representation, but it’s extremely hard to look away from pop star Jocelyn, protagonist of the MAX runaway flop The Idol, impeccably styled in her hot pink Nusi Quero breastplate.

It felt like I was finishing The Idol for months, all five painful episodes of it, but I am glad I did because otherwise, I would have missed out on this important moment in “bad art” culture. My cousin Kate insisted the show was worth watching by the end, and she was right!

I’m not a good TV watcher, and I’m not used to watching television that feels so unplanned and meandering. A miniseries without cliffhangers at the end of each episode— who would dream that up? Sam Levinson, I guess. And Abel Tesfaye/The Weeknd, who people have really been antagonizing this year, tho I think he’s just A Guy. The ups and downs and stops and starts I experienced getting through FIVE episodes— you can’t even imagine the number of times I swore it off, then found myself sucked back in. The mystery of the missing 6th episode?! It had its own lore! It was like a novel that I was glad I’d read but didn’t exactly enjoy. I appreciated how it did not feel the need to spoonfeed me anything at all (not even plot… lmao), but trusted I’d stick around for the sex and the Jocelyn serves. I did. And I’m here to tell the tale. So… what was The Idol trying to SAY?

The very last scene in The Idol - spoiler alert!

Theory 1: Abel the Whistleblower

The Weeknd from inside the music industry, making a statement about the illusion of pop stardom, and how it’s something you’re buying + will continue to buy, even though it’s twisted and f’d up and rotting from the inside.

Theory 2: Abel the Elite’s Compadre

It’s The Weeknd from the Inside again, trying to illuminate the hypocrisy of the pop industry to fans of it, in a cautionary sort of way, because they’re all so sick of us putting them on pedestals and creating fandoms out of their personas, and he wants it to stop.

Theory 3, which I think is the most likely: Abel the Crazy Ex-Boyfriend

The Idol is The Weeknd’s magnum opus about how Bella Hadid got way more famous (and turned into a sober queen) after their treacherous, twisted, cocaine-fueled relationship. It’s The Weeknd getting the last word, communicating something like “You dumped me… but I MADE you.” And that’s why Bella Hadid went missing from the public eye all summer. I imagine she was rightfully offended… like, how dare The Weeknd trigger her Lyme disease with this trash. Idk. I think I am on to something.

But these theories… they don’t matter. I think we are all sick of art being dissected with the question “What were they trying to SAY?” But that’s the age we’re in now! I’m just another armchair intellectual. So here I will pose a more profound question, about another one of MAX’s summer shows: Why is And Just Like That 2 so crazy?

The Idol really drove home the fact that culture is in its “KILL OUR IDOLS” period. There’s no use propping up people in positions of power hoping they’ll shield us from the sun. Like Jocelyn, they’re a hot mess, messier than us, and hotter… there’s just no use. And Just Like That seems to know this intimately. The IP is so valuable HBO would be stupid to “kill” our city girls just yet. So they’ll just humiliate them while they can. We see Carrie come to terms with her entire career being kind of a joke. We see Miranda being whipped around by “complicated millennial” Che Diaz—who has become almost lovable in Season 2nd, in a Donald Trump way— while dynamiting her marriage to Steve. Charlotte York-Goldenblatt is out here in her good fur braving a blizzard to bring her teenage daughter condoms so she can lose her virginity! Our girls are flailing. The show might as well be called AND JUST LIKE THAT: WE KILLED THEM.

Everyone loves to talk about how AJLT is so bad, but if you think about it only as a response to SATC, I actually find it to be very…hear me out… good? Lmao. The creators understand what SATC was and how the culture was changed by it. SATC was always direct in its messaging, and AJLT is clearly trying to right SATC’s dogma at every turn. In many ways, and often desperately, it succeeds in doing that, and I find its meta-ness worthy of praise… even if we have to watch the creators voodoo these beloved characters, who sort of deserve to get voodood anyway.

Some wild Photoshop I found attached to a Guardian article

Speaking of preachy!!! We’ve got Taylor Swift, and we’ve got Barbie. I’ll Venn diagram them because there are too many parallels between Eras Tour Madness and the Barbie Movie not to.

I wrote earlier this summer about my experience being on the lawn outside Soldier Field when Eras Tour came to Chicago. I waited patiently all summer for my show on August 9, her last night at SoFi and the last show of this leg of the U.S. tour. The entire experience was madness: stringing beads like a camper at my friend Amy’s house, where she’d set up an epic friendship bracelet-making station in the middle of her living room (“Look, I know this is manic,” Amy admitted, while we sat there together crafting bracelets to trade.) The $25 Shake It Off Margarita. The news that Karlie Kloss was in the audience. The 70,000 people who sang every single word to every single song for three and a half hours. Taylor’s commitment to cosplaying the Beyoncé walk and falling short, god bless. Her stamina was impressive though— no breaks!

The show was very fun, don't get me wrong. But it was just a slice of the tour I watched on TikTok all summer long. I had already seen pretty much every single moment of the entire 3.5-hour show on the app, more than once, from various angles, in every city, all summer, to the point that the only part of the show that felt like a surprise was the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) announcement and the two secret songs. That was, for sure, the wildest part of the whole experience, realizing that. I’m not just trying to make those who didn’t get tickets feel better. I just deeply believe that the real show was made up of moments like her swallowing a bug in Chicago; her Speak Now-era ex Taylor Lautner showing up in Kansas City; and the Foxborough show, when she played all the way through a torrential downpour so bad it destroyed her piano.

Who would you say is the Blonde of the summer: Taylor Swift or Barbie? And is Taylor Swift America’s new Barbie? Tall, blonde, shiny, and powerful- with an existentially fraught inner life to boot. Do you want Taylor to be in a secret relationship with Karlie Kloss? Do you want to guess what album she’s dropping next based on the unhinged Easter eggs you see on the inside of your eyelids while you sleep? Imagination… life is your creation! I wonder if Taylor herself senses these parallels. If I showed you a photo of teen Swifties at the concert, and then another of teen girls wearing pink at Barbie, and photoshopped out the background… I guarantee you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

What a trip Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was. Literally— a bildungsroman that follows Barbie’s journey to enlightenment after she has a panic attack mid-dance party. The plot of Barbie was like a confusing version of the Matrix or Wizard of Oz — the plot only loosely made any sense, but principles? It had many, all of which were overshadowed by the soundstage, the costumes, Ryan Gosling! I laughed, I cried, I forgave America Ferrara’s well-meaning but cringe monologue. it was a blast. Mattel would be happy to know that the movie made me appreciate the fabulousness of Barbie as a toy. I struggle to say anything new or insightful about a movie that is, at the end of the day, very successful branded content. So if you do want to read smart things about Barbie, my friends at BPOFD said it all— and said it well!

Anyways, thanks for reading. Hoping to be back on a more regularly scheduled program this fall ~:) <3