Gawker - Meghan v. Meghann

By Claire Carusillo

Assessing the pop star’s most recent displays of good girl faith and tight skirts

I can’t imagine that getting dressed is easy when cameras follow your every move and your stans interpret each and every layer of outerwear as the answer to a years-long sex riddle. I feel for Taylor Swift in this way. But all too often, when Swift is left to her own devices in getting dressed, they come with prices and vices and she ends up, often, in fashion crisis.

Recently, in the lead-up to Swift’s massive Midnights promotional tour, the singer has gone for a heavy ’70s aesthetic with occasional lapses into mirrorball glam. It’s mostly rusty reds and coppers, enormous trousers and tiny skirts, heavy tweeds, and pointy collars. It doesn’t always work, and it’s all a bit Harry’s House.

I’m starting to think Taylor might actually be the problem. Let’s go back in time and analyze.

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By Olivia Craighead

Elon Musk continues to prove that he has no taste

Anyone familiar with the stable of Coca-Cola sodas knows that there is a hierarchy to how satisfying each product is. At the top of the pyramid is full-strength Coke from a fountain, specifically one located in a McDonald’s. Following that is Diet Coke, either from the aforementioned McDonald’s fountain or in a freezing cold can. Towards the bottom of this list are two-liter bottles of any Coke product, all of the weird Diet Coke flavors (except lime), and the scary zero-sugar Coke energy drinks. Then there are several tiers of shit, maggots, and scum. And finally, at the absolute bottom, there’s caffeine-free Diet Coke.

Caffeine-free Diet Coke is what helicopter parents give their children when they think Sprite is too sugary and LaCroix is too spicy. It is for old people who eat dinner at 4 p.m. and barely tip their server. It is for boomers who claim that caffeine after noon will wreck their delicate digestive systems, but will still crush three to five Sam Adams lagers on a Monday. It is what your loser uncle-by-marriage brings to Easter and leaves in the garage fridge, never to be touched again until your parents downsize to a condo in your suburb’s “downtown” district and have to throw it away. Ultimately, it is for freaks and losers, so it’s no surprise that Elon Musk apparently can’t get enough of the stuff.

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By Claire Carusillo

Meghan hands Andy his tight ass a few times in return

I’ve been listening to Archetypes with Meghan for twelve long Tuesdays. Nearly every second of the show was boring and condescending and the Duchess couldn’t stop talking about her dear friend Glo(ria) (Steinem). It was the worst part of every week. But just as Meghan threw in the monogrammed towel on season 1, she blasted off a final episode about “guys,” and I was back in. I love guys! And you know which guy I love the most? Andy Cohen, executive producer of the Real Housewives franchises on Bravo and the host of Watch What Happens Live, a Bravo late-night show where Andy mostly discusses Bravo and plays Bravo-centric drinking games.

Natch, the man-centric episode, titled “Man-ifesting a cultural shift” was her husband’s (Prince Harry’s) idea.

Meghan sat down with her first guest Andy to discuss how his empire has reinforced stereotypes about women. But first: she lets Andy know she’s met him twice. Once, she met him at a Bravo/USA upfront in Los Angeles right before Suits premiered. Another time, two or three seasons into Suits, they met in New York again. She tried to get booked as a guest on WWHL.

“I just couldn’t get booked, Andy,” she tells him.

WOW! That must have taken some real humility to admit. Throughout these excruciating weeks, I’ve heard Meghan attempt to be self-deprecating, but she isn’t that good of an actor. Without much conviction, she’s talked about being a loser in high school, a pedantic dork, and a frumpy, dumpy Montecito mom “covered in dog hair.” But never has she addressed that she wasn’t all that famous or sought after before her ascent to the Harry of it all.

Andy is audibly uncomfortable with Meghan’s booking follies, and thrillingly, she keeps going.

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By Kelly Conaboy

The breakout star of ‘The White Lotus’ should be a bona fide leading lady

Meghann Fahy is the breakout star of season two of White Lotus. For Meghann Fahy fans, this comes as no surprise.

Fahy has been a source of joy and warmth for the Fahy Fanatics since her turn as Sutton Brady on Freeform’s The Bold Type. There she was a young fashion magazine woman dating an older suit man, and we loved her. She was sharp, effortlessly charming, effortlessly beautiful, magnetic; the kind of woman who really should have the respect of her fashion boss at the magazine, even if she sometimes messes up planning a photo shoot, and who really should be able to convince her older suit man to stay with her, even if she doesn’t want children and he does. (And even if, when they got married, she wore an uncharacteristically hideous wedding dress; oh my god it was so bad.)

According to her IMDB, she also starred in the Hallmark Channel’s Just Add Romance, a show I have never heard of. “When Carly and Jason, exact opposites, compete on a famed cooking show for the chance at their own restaurant, what will matter more — their culinary careers or their potential love?” is the description, and goddamn if that doesn’t sound like something I want to watch right now. Meghann Fahy can do no wrong.

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By Kelly Conaboy

The dictionary has chosen “gaslighting” as 2022’s word of the year

“Gaslighting” — well, that’s certainly quite a modern term, isn’t it? Merriam-Webster has chosen it as its 2022 word of the year, and that makes perfect sense to me. The term “gaslighting” doesn’t remind me of anything other than the events of this past year, and I’ve certainly never heard multiple Real Housewives use it in a way that suggests it reached its saturation point several years ago … No, babe, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Nobody was using “gaslighting” before Joe Biden was in office. Should we get you to a doctor? Honey, shh …

Scene. That was me gaslighting you; if it didn’t work that’s only because I’m pure of heart and incapable of lying. The quite useful term derives from the title of the 1944 film Gaslight, and it at one point meant manipulating someone into questioning their perception of reality to nefarious ends. Then in 2016, thanks in large part to a viral Teen Vogue essay about Donald Trump by writer Lauren Duca, it came to mean, “anything bad that anyone was doing.” (This behavior now falls under the term “psy-op.”)

Although 2016 was six years ago, and use of the term “gaslighting” was inescapable during America’s Trump era (and was in fact the subject of a 2020 The Chicks song called “Gaslighter”) Merriam-Webster somehow claims a 1,740-percent increase in lookups for the term in “the year of our Lord” (to use another phrase I’m glad has fallen out of use) 2022.

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