It is so weird that I, or anyone I know, would care about Pamela Anderson leaving Instagram, and yet I can’t stop thinking about it. I love that her caption reads like a poem, with its very unhinged line breaks.
“now that Im settled into the life Im genuinely inspired by
reading and being in nature
I am free”
“I am free.” Peaceful and haunting at the same time, especially if I think too hard about the ethos of these words coming from a very wealthy white woman retreating from the world’s realities to her Malibu Barbie mansion. At first I envied her, wishing my career didn’t tether me to the hell hole I am consequently addicted to. It reminded me of that Ziwe tweet,
Losing a titan like Cicely and a visionary like Sophie in one week reminded me how Twitter is such a bizarre place to turn to, to grieve, to be immortalized. I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, but in the sense that it is just wild how we are able to collectively turn to the cold interface of technology to process something as human as death. And… I’m so grateful for it? I’m grateful to bear witness to your experience of another life, whether it is performative or raw, or both. I think the reason I can’t stop thinking about Pamela Anderson is because I’m not sure I will ever be able to give up social media. Maybe I’ll mature out of it, maybe my relationship to it will change, but I think I will always want to see cultural experiences intensified and manufactured for the alternate reality that happens when we all “send tweet.” How different it would be if we were all sitting in a room grieving together, quiet, subdued, maybe even boring.
In an interview, Sophie said making her work felt like the process of making “the loudest, brightest thing.”
“That, to me, is an interesting challenge, musically and artistically. And I think it’s a very valid challenge — just as valid as who can be the most raw emotionally. I don’t know why that is prioritized by a lot of people as something more valuable. The challenge I’m interested in being part of is who can use current technology, current images and people, to make the brightest, most intense, engaging thing.”
I feel like Sophie really understood the digital age when she said this. That whether we like it or not, the sensationalism of social media will always reward the noisiest cultural objects, so why not lean in? Why not transmute your emotions into a surrealist sugary fantasy, with screechy femme vocals or ambient pots and pans? Loud and bright, like a dance beat. Like a saturated Instagram post. Like shiny red hair, or a plastic flower, or a full moon.
Sophie was a testament to the fact that cacophonous waveforms can make a crowded room cry as much as a eulogy. Where deleting social media rationalizes a wiser, earthly existence — deeper, bodily, substantive — for now, I guess I don’t mind the immaterial.
Xx Fran
some things that brought me joy this week
1. I’ve loved returning to Sophie interviews, a woman whose thinking around life and art was deep and resonant. There is such a noticeable disparity between what happens when a trans journalist would interview her versus a cis one. The latter like, “SoOo, what is it like being tRAnSgEnDer in the music industry??!?” and the former like, “Let’s talk about your art.” Imagine that. (All the more reason to hire trans journalists.) My favorite interview was Thora’s, which was one of the few to ask Sophie about her childhood. Sasha’s was expansive and put her work into the larger context of its influence on pop, and Coco’s had a human side I enjoyed. I love how Sophie’s early-career anonymity preserved, up until the last second, the integrity of her work so it could stand alone, far away from the identity factory and artifice of “representation.” And at the same time, she was not afraid to make transness explicit in her work, using trans texts as a point of reference for her songs. Grateful for the catharsis of digital eulogies, particularly Harron’s which was an ode to maximalist dissociation. I also loved Morgan’s cyborgian musings and Travis’s which was sweet and personal. Hari’s made me cry though. How big and small an imprint someone like Sophie’s makes. In the words of Jonno, “It may take years, still, to comprehend her contributions fully.”
2. This playlist was a welcome education on Sophie’s breadth as a producer. Listening to it now, and hearing songs I didn’t even know she produced, made me realize how her signature was so recognizable and irreplicable.
3. Drag Race UK S2 is a god-tier season, and last week’s discussion around nonbinary identity was some of the best work room talk in the history of the franchise. Strongly recommend if you’re looking for a good cry!
4. My friend Alok has been writing book reports on their Instagram, and I have thoroughly enjoyed this unconventional content pivot. Alok is a voracious reader who employs graphic design and the ease of social media to distill complex ideas about race, eugenics, body fascism, gender, and all the things we are often too scared to read about. I love to read but don’t easily make time for it, so I do appreciate these little Cliff Notes for dense texts that I may never get to read myself.
5. Try as I might, I can be a terrible environmentalist sometimes. My kryptonite? Single-use plastic — in particular my Midwestern addiction to ziploc bags. Last year I started using Stashers, a reusable dishwasher-safe alternative, and I haven’t looked back. Not to mention, they’re so cute!
6. I’ve been having terrible back problems, and decided to start doing yoga on Sundays with Sky Ting. Join me!
7. I’m obsessed with Victoria Monet’s single “Jaguar,” but I completely slept on the album. Sultry, short, sweet, cohesive, and I love an album with interludes! Sorry to everyone who wisely listened to it months ago.
8. I’ve already recc’ed them, but I loved Mimi’s newsletter this week, which put so carefully to words the experience of this year and what it feels like to fall in love with yourself, either intentionally or against your will. (Image description in Mimi’s caption.)
9. Jasmin Hernandez’ new book contains 50 profiles on visionaries of color like Tourmaline, Devan Shimoyama, Mobaby Fayez, and Kia LaBeija. It would be a great addition to anyone’s bookshelf or coffee table.
10. On the full wolf moon in Leo, I got a little stoned and wrote a letter to myself through this little initiative. It is scheduled to come back to me Jan 2022 and I would be lying if I didn’t say the experience of writing it was already so cathartic, spiritual, and profound.
11. I love the way Cicely brought drama and elegance into any space. I love how intentional she was about the roles she took on and the dedication she had to nuancing Black womanhood. In one of her last interviews with Gayle King (who else?), Cicely tells the story of a very racist interview with a reporter after her on-screen debut at 31. From that experience, she realized,
“I made up my mind that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress, and that I would use my career as my platform.”
How lucky we are — and how fortunate any industry is — when an artist devotes their body of work to the marginalized, something no one should have to do. What a gift, what a gift, what a gift.
this week’s action
Folx Health is a new LGBTQ+ startup that I predict will be taking the nation by storm this coming year. Their mission is to make things like Estrogen, T, PrEP, and other queer health needs as accessible as possible. They just launched their HRT Fund and it could use a little love.