good morning bitches 9/20/19
Ahh…the weather is cooling, the leaves are turning….which means a fan favorite section from fall 2018 GMB is BACK! I give you the return of Buzzfeed’s cringiest article of all time:
Unfortunately there was a large subset of GMB readers last year who actually enjoyed the 2018 edition…..but the writer truly outdid herself this year:
(All of these will definitely be used by girls in pyramid schemes)
Okay it’s over thank God onto our regularly scheduled programming aka…
🖤 Podcasts 🖤
I’ll keep it incredibly short this week, both in the length of this section and the length of the episode I’m recommending:
This podcast solely posts audio from found tapes picked up across the country from thrift stores, estate sales, garage sales, etc. The result is a fascinating slice of anonymous life, where listeners hear everything from voicemails, to voice lessons, to a man telling his family about his AIDS treatment. The voice lesson one is hilarious by the way — it’s just four minutes of some guy getting absolutely destroyed by his vocal coach while trying to sing “Unchained Melody”.
Let’s talk true crime
While there will always be a special place in my heart for true crime podcasts and documentaries, I have become increasingly uneasy about the nature of these works in regards to how they tend to exploit and monetize the trauma of victims and their families. See tweet:
(shoutout good morning bitch Lucy Shanker for sharing that with me)
Things also get dicey when podcast hosts try to mix comedy in with grizzly stories of death and despair. Many of them get it right, many of them get it wrong….and pretty much all of them have effed up at some point. Against all odds, my favorite comedy murder podcast was created by three comedy bros who record in Brooklyn and have no shortage of bathroom humor and crude jokes. I hate myself for liking them, YET HERE I AM.
I can usually get over the questionable jokes because every single episode is impeccably researched, and they devote hours upon hours to their heavy hitters. Oh, and did I mention their most recent series?????????
Give me a five part series on MORMONISM and I am in heaven (which according to Joseph Smith means my own personal postmortem planet—nice!). It’s a five part series and it is just….so good.
Well, I just said I have been shying away from true crime but hear me out on this one:
(This show needs to have the biggest possible trigger/content warning for sexual assault and rape.) It is based off the horrifying Pulitzer Prize-winning true story of a woman whose rape was handled so poorly by the police that she eventually recanted her entire statement, causing her to be shamed and ostracized by her entire community. It’s heartbreaking, and unfortunately not uncommon. I am only a few episodes in the series but it seems to be evolving into a woman-centric cop drama about dismantling a broken system for catching rapists. I love it, and Merritt Weaver and Toni Collette give amazing performances. Fair warning: it will leave you incredibly sad and depressed and I do not recommend watching the first episode at night. Also: lock your doors and windows.
It’s beauty time, bitches!
To my complete surprise, last week’s most-clicked link was the before and after photos of dry skin falling off people’s nasty ass feet…so I’m going to take that as a sign you do love beauty recommendations, so I will keep giving them!!
Good news for bitches on a budget: this week is all about my newfound Aveeno obsession. The drugstore darling recently launched their “Positively Radiant” collection, and I may or may not have bought four products in about thirty seconds. I DO IT ALL FOR YOU!!!
The winners:
It’s a serum! It’s a primer! It smells amazing! I would recommend this one specifically to people who don’t like to use a ton of different products in the morning. If you don’t have super dry skin, you can just use this serum and be plenty moisturized to put on makeup. It’s one of my favorite products of 2019, for sure.
I have long been an advocate of micellar water on this newsletter because of its magical ability to whisk away eye makeup with the flick of a cotton ball. But, sometimes ya need a good old fashioned face wash. Goodbye, liquid eye liner! Adios, foundation! This gets it all off in one step—which is the only thing I ask for out of a face wash, really. And it ALSO smells amazing!!!
Of all three products, this one is definitely the least necessary….but damn, I love it. See that part at the bottom that looks like a beaver tail? All the product comes out through a little hole on that silicone applicator, and you just gliiiiide it all over your face without having to put your hands on your delicate lil’ skin. You leave this product on overnight and wake up as soft as a baby’s bottom. It’s wonderful. And yes, it also smells amazing.
The loser (kind of):
I love a sunscreen, but I can’t fully endorse every product I come across. I bought this with the best of SPF intentions, but then I remembered I work at one in the freaking morning, and the sun don’t touch this porcelain skin until 9 hours after I wake up. So, for me it’s pretty useless. But for those of you who walk, bus, or train to work…it would be great! It’s lightweight (smells amazing) and absorbs quickly. SPF 30 is life!!!
Celebrity news that has absolutely shaken me to my core:
Zooey Deschanel + Property Brother Jonathan Scott. Oh, and it gets worse:
Now, let’s be fair here. There isn’t a straight woman alive who has watched Jonathan sledgehammer cabinets and pick out backsplash and not thought to herself “God I could spend the rest of my life with that man.” But just……read this article about the Property Brothers Cruise and your opinion might, um, change:
Highlights from the article:
A woman literally skipped a kidney transplant to attend
Lots of jabs at the forgotten Scott brother, JD
Jonathan’s failed magic career (!!!)
A woman boarded the cruise wearing a peach dress because she had a psychic vision that she would marry Jonathan in a peach dress (spoiler: she doesn’t)
So Facebook Dating is a thing now…
And I tried it solely for the benefit of this newsletter. You set up your profile like any other dating website—putting extra care into the selection of photos, writing an alluring About Me section, answering questions to make you sound smart, funny, and adorable….only to be matched with dudes like this:
Um, a lot, actually.
Don’t sell yourself so hard, Tyler!
Mysterious!
Honestly, Kevin? I can relate.
Not to mention the men who flatter me so well:
Needless to say I haven’t found love in an extremely hopeless place quite yet…but I’ll keep you updated.
Badass woman of the week:
Pregnancy never looked so powerful, y’all! Gelman is a co-founder of women’s co-working space & business network, the Wing. It’s a dope company, and I wish I had a reason to buy a co-working membership just so I could spend time at the stunning Chicago location. But alas, the WGN newsroom and our variety of vending machines will do.
Newsletter that combines two of my favorite things in life:
Politics + Graphic Design = Yello.
One of the first editions of GMB was written the week after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic primary win. I was struck not only by her historic accomplishment, but by her unique approach to campaign branding.
Many 2020 Democratic candidates are following her lead. This article beautifully dissects each candidate’s branding, and how it represents their campaign platform. It’s so nerdy and wonderful I could cry!!!
Longform journalism meets internet drama:
No, I’m not going to talk about Caroline Calloway. You’re welcome. Instead, I present to you the Buzzfeed News profile on former Twitter politics sweetheart Lauren Duca. It’s….a lot. And it’s extremely entertaining, even if you don’t care about politics at all. Essentially, it tells the story of one woman’s unabashed attempt to corner her own niche of internet politics while being wildly messy in the process. Enjoy!
This week on Twitter:
If you ever watched Reba in the early 2000s I absolutely insist you click on this tweet:
And now for some #PersonalNews
I wrote an extremely honest post on Instagram about losing control of my physical health while facing extreme amounts of stress. It was very difficult for me to summon the courage to write about it, and now I want to kick myself that I was every scared to be honest about a struggle so many women face. I have been flooded with comments, DMs, and texts from dozens of people who feel exactly like I do. It truly feels like magic when vulnerability on the internet leads to so much support. I wasn’t going to put it in the newsletter, but I want as many people as possible to know that their value does not come from their bodies, their clothes, their measurements, or a number on a scale.
Feeling v loved and seen after the response from that post. Thank you to any of you who contributed to that. 🖤
See you next week.
xo,
Lily
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