Las Mujeres Ya no Lloran, Las Mujeres Facturan
Women No Longer Cry, They Cash In— Shakira
The TGIF programming includes pop culture news that sincerely piqued our interest with frivolous diversions during these unprecedented times— without celebrity worship culture but a hearty side of snarky candor or critique pieces on pop culture and societal mores. This week we rounded up the latest for The Pop Culture Cold Brew and Shakira vs. Piqué. Get into it below.
🧊 Pop Culture Round-Up
Harry Styles takes the Taylor Swift route and will sue online sellers of fake merch from sites like Amazon and Etsy via Rolling Stone— despite fans’ creativity being better than the official Styles merchandise.
My eternal blueprint, Chloë Sevigny, talks to ES about newly married life now two years in, her Bones & All co-star Timothée Chalamet, Blonde, Julia Fox & the next-gen of cool girls, and possibly retiring to Provincetown.
Chloë Sevigny and Petra Collins for ES. On Blonde: (‘I thought there were so many beautiful things about that movie — she was insane, the cinematography was amazing — but [...] the trauma porn of it was very hard for me to swallow’).
Next-gen wanting to work with her: ‘It was interesting during the pandemic. I was approached by a lot of, like, cool girls. There’s just this generation of girls who are kind of cool and on the up and up, looking at me and wanting me to direct for them. Like Julia Fox is interested in me for something.’ Which is? ‘Well, her project, unfortunately, was a real exploration into addiction, and I’m just not that interested in that enough to devote the kind of time and energy that needs. But I dunno, we’ll see.’
For more CS, read The Evening Standard Magazine. It’s a great read on someone everlastingly cool and authentically still themselves.
Conversely, someone who used to be definitively cool, but Gwen Stefani has settled nicely into delusion with her latest interview with Jesa Marie Calaor, a Filipina American journalist, for Allure. Asking Gwen how she felt toward the backlash since her 2004 Harajuku era centered around her solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby.— where she used Japanese and Japanese American girls and renamed them Love, Angel, Music, and Baby as backup dancers while embodying their culture for profit.
"That was my Japanese influence, and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic [with] so much attention to art and detail and discipline and it was fascinating to me," she said, explaining how her father (who is Italian American) would return (from working at Yamaha) with stories of street performers cosplaying as Elvis and stylish women with colorful hair. Then, as an adult, she was able to travel to Harajuku to see them herself. "I said, 'My God, I'm Japanese, and I didn't know it.'" As those words seemed to hang in the air between us, she continued, "I am, you know." She then explained that there is "innocence" to her relationship with Japanese culture, referring to herself as a "super fan."
While it’s okay to be inspired and enamored with other cultures, saying that you’re Japanese is completely different— especially doubling down post-interview. Remember when Gwen Stefani was a definitive cool girl, before now shelling a pseudo-MLM venture with her GXVE Beauty— maybe her marriage to Blake Shelton is making more sense now. Gwen’s a former cool girl who peaked and is now an alleged local Pyramid scheme girl.
Vogue announced the official hosts for this year’s Met Gala: Michaela Coel, Penelope Cruz, Dua Lipa, and Roger Federer would serve as co-chairs alongside Anna Wintour. It was announced that the gala would honor the late Karl Lagerfeld as it finally returns to the first Monday in May. However, it seems a bland choice, as I wrote back in October— coming from someone who lives in mostly all-black or dark aesthetics. As chic and impossibly French as the theme is to most, the real theme should have been the inclusionary visionary André Leon Talley. Especially after Madame Vogue— Anna Wintour— and her famous bob fumbled the Met Gala’s legacy by stunt casting influencers and picking YouTuber Liza Koshy— in lieu of ALT back in 2018. ALT shadily mentioned the influencer currency exchange in his memoir, The Chiffon Trenches:
This was clearly a stone-cold business decision. I had suddenly become too old, too overweight, too uncool, I imagined, for Anna Wintour.
Anna Wintour’s gamble proved an underwhelming choice, similar to Koshy’s chosen Alessandra Rich look— nothing against the dress, but there should be more for an occasion. Nothing against Koshy but everything against influencer culture; the Met Gala has never seemingly been the same since 2018. The last time the Met Gala truly impressed us with its Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination theme. ALT and Anna Wintour allegedly made up before his passing one year ago, and regardless of the theme— as an avid Met Gala observer since my teens, I’ll eagerly be awaiting to dissect.
Kim K continues to gather artifacts from passed-on celebrities like a Hard Rock Cafe curator for accessories. Michael Jackson’s apparel, the Marilyn Monroe lock of hair, a Jackie Kennedy watch— all for what, Horcruxes for her beige mausoleum of a house that reflects her devoid of personality. This time it’s a $197,453 cross necklace famously worn by Princess Diana. Sotheby’s says it’s one of Princess Diana’s favorite pieces; the amethyst Attallah cross is a pendant created in the 1920s by court jeweler Garrard. Kim’s morbid fascination with borrowing or owning historical pieces of departed women, most of which were sadly commodified by the patriarchy, as if attaching herself is just so Kimberly.
🎵 Why are we the ones who suffer?
Despite so much outside authority over women’s behavioral expectations after a breakup, Shakira spoke freely to Lulu Garcia-Navarro for Elle (see below) back in September. Her answers were rather diplomatic as then Spanish reports alleged that parents Shakira and footballer soccer player Gerard Piqué agreed they’d never appear publically with their new partners during the first year of their separation, among other stipulations.
LGN: I do want to ask about the dissolution of your relationship. Your ex-partner has been seen in a new relationship. It sounds like you did not want your relationship to end, and it was a surprise to you that the relationship was over. How did you come to understand that you weren’t going to be together anymore?
S: I think that those details are somehow too private to share, at least at this very moment—everything is so raw and new. I can only say that I put everything I had into this relationship and my family.
The duo has since been getting messy. Predictably, emotionally immature men choose violence— or someone in their work orbit, and Piqué did both with a Molotov cocktail.
Piqué chose a close friend’s wedding to go public with a new love two months after announcing his and Shaki’s nearly twelve-year relationship was over, after various Spanish reports of his philandering ways— while still very much together. Channeling the devastation she mentioned to Elle into her art as artists do, Shaki obliterates her ex-boyfriend without saying the soccer star’s name by going for the jugular in a joint #53 with producer BZRP for his Music Sessions.
Naming his bougie love for luxury cars and expensive watches with lyrics like “traded a Ferrari for a Twingo” and “a Rolex for a Casio.” My favorite is “Las mujeres ya no lloran. Las mujeres facturan,” which translates to “Women no longer cry, they cash in,” and “una loba como yo no esta pa’ tipos como tu” is translated to “a (she)wolf like me isn’t for guys like you,” referencing her hypnotic 2009 banger, She Wolf. The memes have been inescapable from petty behavior aimed at Piqué and his mother-in-law, who’s been feeling the wrath consequences of his actions with the fire of a thousand suns in incendiary musical form.
Women are expected to ensure we’re the wiser, bigger person from supposed lessons learned or silently move on from our grief— to not be bitter/jaded by anyone’s authority except our own. The double standards have been crystal clear, with men heralding Piqué as some aspirational deity and Shakira labeled as bitter, petty, emotional, etc. Meanwhile, the sleazy footballer is learning the PR ropes as Casio is the new sponsor of the Kings League Fantasy, whom Piqué is president of, while also seen driving a Renault Twingo— petty, thou name is Piqué.
Reminding herself of who she is, Shakira’s art throughout the past year reflects her pain processing as Piqué moved on rather seamlessly and triflingly. She also asserts her boundaries by boldly and cheekily mentioning the alleged philanderer’s flame’s name (PR student/socialite Clara Chia Marti) in the play on words “clara-mente,” which translates to “clearly,” as Shakira even dares him to bring her around. Shakira was left to pick up her broken pieces allowing herself to fall apart and rebuild herself, just as Piqué quickly stitched up his pieces with assistance from a co-worker while continuously disrespectfully embarrassing her, the mother of his two children. Hell hath no fury, as Shakira scorned as her impressive strawberry jam sleuthing led to her finding out Piqué was cheating— which she slyly portrayed in the Te Felicito video with Rauw Alejandro last August via Jezebel. Further hoping Shaki channels her pain into art, I’m daydreamingly visualizing Limonada, a dream collaboration with Beyoncé— which will feature part II of Beautiful Liar and Irreemplazable, or Irreplaceable— a girl can dream.
Shakira is giving legendary Angela Bassett energy from a movie so engrained in my childhood due to my mother’s love of romcoms although The Bodyguard is my mother’s favorite besides Coming to America and Pretty Woman— which says a lot considering she’s the only non-film-loving person in the family. We’d watch the films over and over as kids, never knowing our mother learned English because of her only love for genre. Anyway, here’s the eruptive scene below— Bernie and Shakira doing what they needed to do.
The Bassett film quadfecta was so hard to pinpoint to four but: What's Love Got To Do With It— she was robbed of an Oscar and I will die on that hill despite loving Jane Campion’s The Piano—, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and Malcolm X.
The Houston film quadfecta: The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale, The Preacher’s Wife, and Cinderella, in that order. Runner-Ups are the films she produced: The Princess Diaries and The Cheetah Girls.
✨ Get Into It
Rebecca Black is a beloved internet Diosa and a breath of fresh air with relatability online. Taking complete ownership over her public autonomy like never before, Rebecca Black is the moment. I’ve been quietly but healthily obsessing over her music — which I’ve added to my playlist rotation. Fortunately, she’s returning with her third single, Sick To My Stomach, from her much-anticipated debut album, Let Her Burn, out on February 9th. Proving that versatility and vulnerability are powerful tools to help transform and transmute art— whether an entrancing dance-pop banger with Crumbs or the intimate beauty of Look At You, she’s someone to watch out for.
Of the single Rebecca explains, “I wrote Sick To My Stomach days after running into my ex for the first time in months and finding out she was seeing someone new. The punch in the gut that comes with the revelation that you’re no longer the centre of someone’s universe is forever one of the most painful blows, so this song is as petty as it is devastating.”
Stream Sick to My Stomach HERE.
This is my current version of the “In/Out” list, and y’all know I love a list.
Loving:
Taylor Russell’s style; I can’t wait to see what she effortlessly wears or portrays next— Bones & All was a fantastic love story and captivating horror film.
Abbott Elementary season 2.
COS Rx skincare and devoted time for self-care since making time for oneself are crucial to surviving with whatever little things spark joy.
Jennifer Coolidge finally getting her flowers.
Hating:
Margot Robbie’s bad taste, at least she finally was in something non-Chanel. Still can’t get over the unnecessary addition of red lace to the already striking 1995 Versace couture gown, originally worn by Carla Bruni. Also, add Ana de Arma’s continual boring style collaboration with Louis Vuitton— free Ana and Margot from their stylists’ clutches.
Gossip Girl 2.0’s cancellation.
The Waffle House defending itself from some “menu hack,” as seen on TikTok. The Waffle House and its delicious chaos are perfect, particularly after those super late nights out dancing and partying until your feet are rubbery and then having to work a full-time job the next morning— not that I would know or share.
Jennifer Lopez alleging that she was supposed to be the second kiss Madonna back at the 2003VMA, then confusing Christina Aguilera for Christina Applegate— who is she trying to convince?
Jamie Lee Curtis’ insufferable campaign to be nominated for best supporting actress for EEAAO when Stephanie Hsu deserves a bigger crusade.
Industry’s Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse for the upcoming biopic, Back to Black, somehow not yet convincing any of us yet.
Con Amor,
Naomi x