Jude Law's Stomach
The Idol (2023), notes on desire, and a what's hot beauty products interview featuring, believe it or not, press-on nails
Sad…and Famous
I’m not going to do two separate reviews of a sad thing and a famous thing this month but rather review a sad thing I watched recently, sad in a broad sense (or within my own parameters of what I find to be sad), which has a lot to do with fame.
The Idol, is a new HBO Sam Levinson show (of Euphoria fame), which has already been talked about to death, as it is the controversial squirmy sex show of the summer. Ostensibly, it is a vehicle for The Weeknd (neé Abel Tesfaye) to transition into acting. Lord knows I love The Weeknd’s music and will sing along to any dirty ole lyric, but as a friend and fellow fan and I have discussed at length, his music (lyrically) is either a true reflection of who he is or who he aspires to be and neither is…great haha. It doesn’t help matters that The Idol is his creation, that he wrote himself a show in which he essentially cosplays as Charles Manson trying to fuck Britney Spears out of her insanity. As an actor he is a charisma zero, filling every scene he’s in like a soft edged rectangular void. Though the show is shot like 70s porn, and is full of pulsating bodies and risqué sex, titillating it ain’t, it’s too thirsty for my horniness. The most recent episode featured a nauseating Lily-Rose Depp (playing the aforementioned Britney Spears character) and The Weeknd dirty talk/blow job scene that had me both make a barf face at the screen and say out loud to no one, “men are gross.”
However, I sometimes enjoy watching things that are messy and/or zeitgeisty so I can think about it. And what I think is interesting in The Idol so far is Depp’s sadness. When reading a review for The Idol, one reviewer said they couldn’t buy Depp as an unstable pop star as she has a cold, rigid face that looks like she regularly puts out cigarettes on people’s hands (lol). I don’t agree, to me, her eyes seem perpetually on the verge of tears. I think she’s a good actress, even in the midst of this hot mess, and I find her struggles to hold herself together believable and compelling. Her life as a pop star seems genuinely miserable in the way it must be miserable to be both a person and a corporation. She wears almost exclusively a series of teeny-tiny tops that cut into her boobs. When she takes her lucite heels off, her feet are crusted in blood, covered in bruises and bandages. Part of this is clear visual metaphor for whatever journey the character is going to go on that will either end with her, powerful, barefoot in a billowing kaftan or, more likely, dead.
It’s more Depp herself that evokes my sadness. Her body is on display here like a pig on spit. She’s being served to us, rotated 360 degrees over the flames, flavor of the moment, we are supposed to drool and consume her. The lust over her body is for men and for women she is supposed to be the latest aspirational dream, the bloom on the rose we will never have or never have again, unless we put snail cream on our face or diet or who fucking cares what. But there’s just something so disposable about the whole thing. This cycle again? She’s so beautiful with her strange, sad eyes. Do we have to turn every woman into a tissue to come into? The tissue just gets thrown away. Another tissue pulled fresh from the box. In The Idol, Depp’s small, hard body is endlessly exposed and contorted and constrained and lingered on and pawed. I don’t want to be Depp, I want freedom, freedom for us both. I feel protective of her. I want to wrap her up in a blanket and take her into a field and release her into the sky like a dove.
This feels boring also, this same old tiny hot body twenty-four year old gets turned into human porn mag stuff. Like is this it for men? Just this same thing forever until the sun explodes? Or like the pressure to conform to this same thing forever? Like when will The Weeknd ever feel masculine enough? Is an entire show where he gets declared King Dick of Hollywood and twists Johnny Depp’s hot daughter up like a pretzel for the whole world to see be enough? Will he be at peace now? Are men ever tired of eating this same meal over and over? What would it take to feel Masculine Enough™? I often feel so tired of it all, tired like it’s dripping off me. Also because it robs me of my own desire, something I think about a lot. The trumpet of masculinity blaring so loudly in my ear my whole life that I often wonder what on earth I actually find attractive fully on my own steam, inside my own mind and body without that noise.
I recently watched Breaking and Entering (2006). It’s one of those movies we were so keen on in the aughties, for some reason, where a bunch of disparate people’s lives slowly collide over the course of a film. This is an Anthony Minghella movie that I’d weirdly never seen before, as I love his other films, and Jude Law might be my favorite actor, I’ve seen most of his stuff, but never this. It’s largely sad, about class and immigration divides in London, but has a really unfortunate pat ending that takes all the bite out. ANYWAY. The point is there is a completely throw away moment half way through where Jude Law is getting measured for a new jacket and it pulls his shirt up a bit and like the hairy stretch under his belly button gets exposed for a sec and I was like— hold the phone.
I keep a watch out for moments like this, moments of attraction that don’t have anything to do with a story I’ve been told my whole life about what I (aka all women) find hot and want: giant hairless beautiful muscle men. I think Jude Law is naturally on the hirsute side and when I tried to find an image of him to accompany this newsletter, what I could mostly find were pictures of him from The Young Pope where he was, boringly, cut to shit and completely hairless in tiny swim bottoms and the headlines were all like “Jude’s so sexy!!!”. I was like NO! this is the opposite of what I’m looking for! What made the moment in the movie hot was the human realness of it, of him, his real body, not like Captain America dehydration abs and an implied ongoing off screen relationship with an aesthetician.
The fucking patriarchy has a fantasy about what men should look like and it gets projected onto me and I am told that it’s what I’m looking for and I hate it. It’s not what I’m looking for. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I hate that I have to peel away all this garbage in my brain to even begin to touch a kernel of what I really like. I have to be randomly surprised by it while watching a Juliette Binoche movie about crime in King’s Cross at the turn of the millennium because it’s so alien to me. I had a dream the other night I was watching an Instagram reel of Andy Samberg, in a remote beautiful mountainous location take a bath in a rain barrel, which I thought in the dream was like the hottest thing I’d ever seen haha. It was nice to experience a non manufactured, non precooked moment of my own sexuality. It’s surprisingly rare and I doubt I’m the only person, man or woman, who feels this way. The Idol is certainly trying to serve us the most instantly microwaveable idea of sexual desire— it’s like, hey! Have you ever heard of a thing called porn? Would you like to see a vulnerable young woman get humiliated and debased on a premium streaming service instead of on your phone at 3am? Tune in!
What I’m trying to say here is that the way sex is presented to us largely turns us away from who we are and points us instead at things to consume so that we can become things we don’t want and that don’t even really turn us on. It’s dehumanizing.
Capitalism! 🎩🪄
Top Three with Kendall Wilson
Kendall Wilson is one of my oldest friends and the most stylish person I’ve ever known. She’s a fashion designer and entrepreneur whose work can be found at ournaturalhistory.com (personal fave is the Ceres wrap in blue check!) or @ournaturalhistory on Instagram. I wanted to try something new here so I chatted with her about her top three beauty products right now and shared my own top three. We discuss color seasons, synthetic fragrances, and the bomb shell of new and improved press-on nails. You can listen to my interview with her or read the transcript below. Here are links to everything we discuss:
Kendall:
Elinor:
Transcript has been edited for ease of reading : )
Kendall:
Okay. Do you wanna hear my products first?
Elinor:
Your products first and then I'll do mine.
Kendall:
Okay. Well, I have to say the first one is not really a product but it's been very important to me. And that is that I accidentally bought this app for forty dollars that does color analysis on you. It's called StyleDNA. I'm not saying that you should spend forty bucks on it, but I purchased it by accident because it had like the monthly price listed, so I was like, oh, this charges you monthly. It doesn't that part is a scam. But then it uses AI, you hold the camera in front of your face to pinpoint all of these mark points on your face and your hair and everything. And it analyzes your colors. And then it also compares, it shows you like the level of contrast that you have in your skin, which is another piece to the color analysis that I did not know about. So we can tell if you're high contrast, if you're low contrast, which is me. But yeah, it was super helpful because I could never figure out my colors. I just couldn't, for years and years I've been thinking the wrong thing.
Elinor:
What are you?
Kendall:
I'm a soft summer. Apparently. And now that I know that thanks to this app, it makes so much sense. I was thinking I was a winter, which is crazy to me now that I know more. But the app is cool because it shows you like your whole color palette, all the colors that look are gonna look good on you. And it works.
Elinor:
Like it actually works when you do it in your life?
Kendall:
Yeah, I think it's actually really accurate because it makes so much sense now that I'm seeing that. I don't think I would've guessed that I was a soft summer, but it's been so helpful. And now I'm going through my closet, like, what was I thinking with this? So summers and winters are if you have a cool undertone. And so you need to wear, obviously, a lot of cool things. Blues, greens, cool greens, stuff like that. But I'm going through my closet and my favorite thing in my closet, which is this Ganni, you know, Ganni, the brand, they're amazing. But I have this leopard print dress. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea, but it is yellow and it's got these bright spots all over it. I love it. But now I'm like, okay, this is why I don't look good in this. I always thought I looked terrible in this. Those are the worst colors for me to wear. I'm not supposed to wear like high contrast things.
Elinor:
What happens to your skin when you wear the wrong colors?
Kendall:
Well, the last time I wore this dress, my friend took a picture of me in it. I'm like, oh, I look dead. I look like a dead body. You know, it just didn't look good. And I just thought it was a bad picture, you know? But now I know, I'm going through my closet. I have stuff that's bright red. Why? I've never liked it on me. So it's been super helpful. Yeah. So I would say, I mean, I know you can get your colors analyzed by a person. And it's really expensive.
Elinor:
I'm gonna get this app. You've already convinced me.
Kendall:
You're gonna spend forty bucks??
Elinor:
Yeah. A hundred percent. Any excuse to spend money. I've been trying to figure out color stuff for a while and this sounds super helpful.
Kendall:
It was helpful because I've tried to analyze myself so many times. And I think a large problem is that you want to be a certain thing. You're like, oh, I'm a winter because like, I don't know, I guess I wanted to be a winter for some reason. And so I think that factors into when you're trying to analyze yourself. So this is just really helpful cuz it tells you, you know, without a doubt, this is what you are.
Elinor:
That's awesome. I am gonna get it. I'm a hundred percent gonna get it.
Kendall:
I'm really excited.
Elinor:
Yeah. And then we can go over the results and compare.
Kendall:
What do you think you are?
Elinor:
I think I'm a deep autumn. I have like a neutral undertone. I did figure that out over the pandemic. Like I learned how to braid my hair and I figured out my undertone. Like my undertone is yellow and green. It's very olivey. And I know when I wear the wrong colors, I look like an unripe banana. Like that is what happens to me. So I think I lean a little more warm than cool.
Kendall:
So I would think you have to lean one way or the other. I've never heard of somebody being straight up neutral. That means you could look good in anything.
Elinor:
I've heard that olive is a little more neutral, but you definitely lean more one way or the other. And I think I lean warm.
Kendall:
Do you look good in olive colors?
Elinor:
Yeah. Like khakis. Not khakis. I said the wrong word. Like army greens.
Kendall:
I think you're gonna be a warm tone then.
Elinor:
Yeah, I think so too. I think gold looks better on me than silver. Silver looks better on you. You have that cool silver winter jacket.
Kendall:
Which I'm mad about because I have tons of gold jewelry. That's what I always wear. It's not like I can never wear my jewelry. But you know, it's just a little bit of insight into what's gonna look better.
Elinor:
Do you want me to tell you one of mine next?
Kendall:
Oh sure.
Elinor:
So my big one right now is the Denman cleaning brush. So Denman is a, I don't know if this is a thing that's in the UK more than America…I think you guys have Denman? But Denman is just like a hairbrush company and they make good brushes.
Kendall:
I've never heard of it.
Elinor:
I think you can probably find it in America too. Anyway, this costs like five pounds so it's not expensive and it's a brush that cleans your hair brushes.
Kendall:
Oh!
Elinor:
You're so surprised. That sound was amazing.
Kendall:
I was shocked.
Elinor:
So it cleans your hairbrushes. So it gets out all of the hair and you know that like linty buildup?
Kendall:
Yes. How does that get in there?
Elinor:
I don't know, but it gets it all out. Like, my hairbrushes look like they're brand new. I find it extremely satisfying and it takes like five seconds to do it.
Kendall:
Oh my God. That would be satisfying.
Elinor:
Then you have these pristine hair brushes. Cuz I read somewhere that when you're brushing your hair with a dirty hairbrush, you're just putting the dirt back in basically.
Kendall:
Oh my god.
Elinor:
So cuz I'm obsessed with my own hair and I'm always looking for ways to improve--
Kendall:
I know you are.
Elinor:
Yeah, I really am. This thing rules. It's cheap. It's really easy to use. It gets a hundred percent of hair and grime out of your hairbrush. Mic drop.
Kendall:
I've literally never thought of such a thing before.
Elinor:
Give it a try. Give it a whirl. You'll have extremely clean hairbrushes.
Kendall:
I clean my hair outta my hair brushes like maybe once a year. It's probably so gross. I just don't think about it. But now I'm gonna be thinking about it.
Elinor:
Well, you know, I'm kind of a clean freak as well, so I think it just satisfies me on many levels.
Kendall:
Oh man. See, you need to come to my house then. Actually no, you'd be horrified.
Elinor:
What's your next one?
Kendall:
Okay, my next one, and you and I texted about this, but it is the Hairstory shampoo. They don't actually call it a shampoo. They call it like a hair cleanser or something. But it's basically a shampoo. Did you end up getting it?
Elinor:
No, I didn't. I don't think they have it here or something. But I wanna hear more about it.
Kendall:
So Hairstory's whole deal is that shampoo is actually just a bunch of chemicals that is ruining your hair. They say you are actually just kind of putting detergent in your hair all the time. Even if you have a pretty clean shampoo. So their shampoo or their cleanser is just like this cream and you rub it into your hair, especially like your scalp. And then it's kind of hard to get out, but you get it out. And I'm telling you when I use it versus me just washing my hair at the gym and using whatever they have, my hair is completely different. It's crazy. I don't know if I told you this, but after I had Julian, half my hair started becoming half curly
Elinor:
You never told me this.
Kendall:
It's so weird. And it's just underneath. The top part of my hair is completely straight. And then the underneath is wavy.
Elinor:
That's so weird.
Kendall:
It's so weird. But I've heard that it happens after you have a kid. It just happened after my second kid though, which is kind of bizarre. But so when I use Hairstory and let my hair air dry, you can see the wave. But then when I'm using the other shampoo, it's completely flat and straight, which is maybe why I didn't notice this wave until like a couple years ago. So that just makes me think maybe that's true that when you are washing with a regular shampoo, it really weighs it down and you are getting a bunch of like, I don't know, stuff in there. You should try it. And then all of their other products are good too. They have like this hair balm, they have different types of shampoos depending on how dry your hair is or if it's just kind of normal. They have like powders that, you know, the dry shampoo that's like a spray? You're not actually supposed to be using those sprays. It's just a bunch of chemicals. So they have this spray that's just basically powder. So I love all their stuff. I love them.
Elinor:
I will follow that with a hair thing as well. This is something I alluded to in one of my previous newsletters. And I said I wouldn't share the name of this hair gel that I bought cause it was too expensive and I was embarrassed. But I love it so much. I am gonna humiliate myself by sharing.
Kendall:
You're gonna have to tell us the price!
Elinor:
I know. It's called Orbie, is the name of the brand. And it's called Curl Gelée for Shine and Definition. And it's a super lightweight gel, like extremely lightweight. And it's really good if you have curls that you wanna have like a little bit of lightweight hold to define them. But you don't wanna have like crunchy eighties hair, you know what I mean?
Kendall:
Oh my God. Yeah.
Elinor:
It smells incredible. Like it's one of the best smelling hair products I've ever used. And I will say this, like, I got it, I don't know, a few months ago, and it's in a big tub and I've like barely made a dent. So I feel slightly better about the cost. And also as a curly hair person, I don't wash my hair very often. Like, I wash it about once a week. So I put this in after I wash my hair to hold the curl. So it's gonna take me a long time. Like if you used hair gel...I don't know. Are there people that use hair gel every day?
Kendall:
I don't know.
Elinor:
This is a mystery, but if you use it all the time, you might go through it fast. But curly hair people, you're not supposed to wash your hair a ton. So if you're washing your hair like once, twice a week, it'll take you a long time to go through this. And I think it was sixty-eight pounds.
Kendall:
Oh my gosh. Whoa.
Elinor:
Horrifying that I would do this, but I do love it. So I'm gonna own my choices.
Kendall:
Well I'm so glad that you paid that much and you like it because if you didn't like it, that would be really sad!
Elinor:
It was a gamble. I rolled the dice on this one.
Kendall:
Okay. That's awesome. I'm gonna have to try that for my underneath hair.
Elinor:
Yeah. If you want a little lightweight hold check out Orbie. We might have some differences in what's available per country, but yeah. It's awesome.
Kendall:
Okay. My final product is that I've recently become obsessed with press-on nails,
Elinor:
Oh my God. I can't wait to hear about this!
Kendall:
It all started one day when I was talking to someone about their awesome manicure. And then instantly right away I started getting Instagram ads for press-on nails. Obviously, because your phone listens to you. And there has been a whole revolution in press-on nails while I wasn't paying attention. There are tons of brands out there that do awesome press-on nails.
Elinor:
No way.
Kendall:
Way! And some of them are even at Target, which is where I got my latest one. The brand is called Olive and June. And I was like, okay, press-on nails, I usually think of like an eighties mom. And I'm like, these are gonna pop off. These are gonna be super embarrassing when they pop off and hit someone in the face. But honestly, okay. After a while they did pop off. I think I put 'em on two weeks ago--
Elinor:
Wait, they last two weeks??
Kendall:
Some of them do.
Elinor:
That's as long as a gel manicure!
Kendall:
Yes. And they were ten dollars!
Elinor:
What? Oh my God. I'm gonna get this too. You're convincing me on everything.
Kendall:
Yes. I was so impressed because the day that I put 'em on, I was like, okay, I have a lot to do. I just do a lot with my hands all day. I had to like move, clean my entire back porch. I put all these boxes in storage, which meant I had to take all my boxes outta storage and put these boxes in the back. I did so much stuff. I did gardening. I, you know, I'm chasing Julian around, picking him up, changing diapers. They stayed on and I was like, my jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it.
Elinor:
That is crazy. That is so crazy to me because I think of press-on nails and I think of like my friends and I doing it before homecoming sophomore year of high school and they didn't even last the whole dance, you know?
Kendall:
Yeah. You're lucky if they last to the end of the day. I think just the super glue has gotten a lot stronger. I mean, let's be honest, you're super gluing them to your nails. But I was surprised, you know. Okay. Here's my tip though. Don't get ones that are too long. Because if they're too long, that's when you're gonna have a problem. I have gotten ones that are too long and I don't know if it was the brand or they were just too long, but they didn't last as long. But I got kind of like a shorter length and man, it was probably a good week before one of them popped off.
Elinor:
That's insane to me. How do you get them off? Like when you wanna take them off, you have to soak your nails or what do you do?
Kendall:
Well, from the ads that I've seen they’ve just shown someone soaking them in a bowl of hot soapy water and then they slide right off, which was not the case for me. Maybe I didn't soak them long enough but I think you can also use acetone and just soak them in acetone. But I wanted to do the soapy water cuz then you can use them again. You just pop them off and you can use them again. I saved all mine. I'm obsessed now. I don't think that I'll wear them all the time because, you know, my nails underneath now that I've taken them off, don't look their best. But I think for any occasion or event or pictures or something, you want your nails to look good, you don't wanna spend sixty dollars, these are a great option. I'm really happy to know about them.
Elinor:
I'm gonna have to try some now cuz I get gel manicures and you know, that's spendy. I'm gonna try everything that you're suggesting. I'm very excited about this conversation.
Kendall:
Okay, good.
Elinor:
Okay, so here's my final one. So this is a, this is not technically for your body, but I guess it kind of is because you inhale the scent through your nose. This is a candle brand. So it's called "cedar." And it's like cedar with a period after it. I don't know if that is helpful when you're Googling.
Kendall:
That means it's fancy and upscale.
Elinor:
Yeah, I think so. I just think these candles are amazing. I'm not a huge candle snob when it comes to where they source their scents from. Like I'll enjoy a synthetic scent candle. But these are essential oil candles. And they're just so good. Every single one I've bought from the brand just knocks it out of the park. The scent is really good. It's like powerful enough that you can actually smell it, but it's not overwhelming. Beautiful brown glass, like thick brown glass jars, some of the prettier jars I've seen and they're just so good. Right now I have one called Selene, which I think is supposed to be sort of like a nighttime lavender one. I have one called Sulis and then one called Amara. And they're just lovely. There's another really fancy candle brand called Eym. And they're all essential oil candles too and they're much more expensive than this brand. And I would say this brand is like just as good, honestly. It's not cheap-cheap but it's not crazy money on a candle .
Kendall:
It's not like a Glade candle that's three dollars, where you get cancer while you're smelling it.
Elinor:
Not a Glade candle, but it's not like a D.S and Durga candle either. It's in an affordable zone. A tip from somebody who's candle obsessed is, if you're using essential oil candles, you need to retain the lid because if you have the lid off, the essential oil start to evaporate. So you need to have the lid on when you're not using it to preserve the smell.
Kendall:
That's a good tip. I've just been learning about synthetic fragrances and they're so awful for you. They're literally in everything. Beauty products, trash bags. I don't get scented trash bags anymore.
Elinor:
I mean, everything is is pretty bad for you that we're doing as humans. I'm not surprised to hear it. I mean, most candles are using synthetic fragrance, even the super fancy ones. Here's another candle thing that I will say and then we can wrap it up, which is that candle brands, like really, really fancy candle brands that are like, I don't know, over sixty bucks or whatever—and you can find candles that are, you know, two hundred or more dollars per candle—they're all buying synthetic scents from the same factory as like Glade. Like it's all coming from the same as like Yankee Candle. They might have their own blends or whatever, but you're not paying for a higher quality of synthetic fragrance.
Kendall:
That's such a good point. So what do you think makes it more expensive? Is it like the name? The wax?
Elinor:
A lot of them use really cheap wax and they front load the candles so they put all the scent at the top. So like what you're really paying for when you're buying extremely expensive candles, I mean, not a hundred percent of the time, but often is you're paying for the packaging, and some of the packaging's extremely beautiful, but…you're paying for like the brand name. So that's another candle truth.
Kendall:
So much candle truth! I've never thought about that.
Elinor:
That's what happens when you're a candle obsessive. You pick up these things up. Should we wrap it?
Kendall:
Oh, sure. Yeah. This was very enlightening. I wrote everything down that you said.
Elinor:
I learned a lot today. Thanks for talking to me, Kendall.
Kendall:
Yes, of course.
Yes yes yes to all these thoughts on desire. I just got another one of those "Your Pin Violated Community Guidelines and Has Been Taken Down" emails from Pinterest. The pin in question was a comic of Tina Belcher, a 13-year-old, reaching for a man's butt. The email told me the pin promoted pornography. None of the grossly actual pornographic pins featuring women who appear to be in pain that I've reported have been taken down. Just the horny cartoon preteen girl.