This week we delve into the relentless and perverted mind of Catherine Breillat, the French filmmaker and novelist who has disturbed audiences for 50 years. Broadly consideredcinéma du corps,Catherine’s movies explore the grotesqueness of sex and the body, depraved sexual longing, petulant, manipulative, and erratic women, and fraught and often violent sexual encounters.
In this episode, we explore Breillat’s ability to craft characters we can’t stand, invert the expected power dynamics between men and women, and engender such a visceral response from her audience. We also review her many capital-c Controversies and discuss how her insistence on women’s manipulative tendencies works so well in art and… less well in real life.
Plus! More on Ripe / Dead psychology, a rant on Margaret Qualley from Holly, and a rave on Eileen Kelly / @killerandasweetthang from Linnea Grace.
Mentioned:
CRUSH Rachel Antonoff SS 2014 short (Margaret Qualley prototype foreshadowing…)
Movies by Catherine Breillat:A Real Young Girl(1976),36 Fillette(1988),Romance(1999),Fat Girl(2001),Sleeping Beauty(2011),Abuse of Weakness(2013),Last Summer(2024)
“Catherine Breillat’s Unselling Cinema of Desire” Victoria Uren (2025)
Catherine Breillat’s response to allegations of sexual misconduct
“State of Grace: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer” interview with Grace Byron inScreen Slate(2024)
This week we go back to basics and investigate what one of the world’s hottest young women has to teach us about our own self hate (!). We revisit the classic STARGIRL paradigm of Ripe vs. Dead and examine the latent Threat of Dead beauty, and traverse Lily-Rose’s metaphorical potential as a descendant of Hollywood Royalty, ready and willing sex object, and generational leader in her own right.
We also revisit our conversation about the simultaneous crumbling of and longing for trusted institutions via a few current events: the LA fires and David Lynch’s passing, the TikTok ban fakeout, and President Trump’s inauguration.
Plus! A Rave on classic and beloved Stargirl Sky Ferreira, from Helen <3
Discussed:
Addison’s Rolling Stone cover story
Kelela new music (?) announcement
Lily-Rose Depp on the Happy Sad Confused podcast
“Extremely Overanalyzing Hollywood’s Nepo Baby Boom” New York Magazine (2022)
Lily-Rose Depp provided pale skin brown nipple representation on screen discourse
The Power Notebooks, Katie Roiphe (2020)
Today we travel back in time to the early 2010s and delve into the moody, mysterious soundscape of Kelela, the singer and dance music producer who soundtracked my early twenties. We explore her evolution from Muse to a handful of forward-thinking, UK-based producers to an Artist in her own right, why she stands above the scores of more famous Alt R&B artists (FKA Twigs, Solange, SZA, Tinashe, etc.), and the ways she’s employed more Narrative Control in recent years by explicitly defining her audience and who she will and won’t work with. We also check in on the Club — the rules of it, who it is and isn’t “for," and whether or not it's meaningfully alienating... anyone in 2025.
PLUS! This episode features exclusive voice notes from my husband, weirdo music nerd, and former club kid, David <3
Mentioned:
Kelela interview with Tanya Bunter (2023)
Raven review/profile in NYT (2023)
Interview in Dazed(2022)
Happy New Year!
In this episode of The Body Series, I share my entire fitness journey: Growing up as a ballerina to college weight gain, inactivity, and depression, finding weightlifting and getting my sh*t together, getting injured, experimenting with different styles of training, and eventually becoming a personal trainer.
I also explore the various mindsets and motivations I’ve had with working out, examine online fitness content vs. IRL gym culture, and opine on how we could make the gym feel sexier with different tropes, narratives, and interior design :)
I believe that getting fit is a site of huge personal transformation. Doing so completely changed my identity, helped me build self trust, and even made me a stronger and more original thinker.
I have a few more 1:1 personal training spots open for both in-person (NYC) and virtual clients. Book a free 30-minute consult call with me to learn more!
If you’re into these ideas, check out the following:
My guest episode on Nymphet Alumni
My interview in Fast Company on the rise of body-centric imagery in consumer products
Happy Holidays! In this Christmas Special, we enter the timeless, charmed world of Dame Julie Andrews and my favorite movie of all time, The Sound of Music. We explore how Rodgers & Hammerstein evolved and elevated the musical as a form, the grand folk ideal of Maria von Trapp (vs. the self-conscious twee heroines of the 2010s), the actually-very-adult lessons of The Sound of Music, and the Dream / Threat of Unassailable Goodness.
My word for 2025 is Majestic — see you there ✨
Discussed:
The Sound of Music (1965)
“Audrey and Her Sisters” Wayne Koestenbaum in London Review of Books (1997)
“Maria von Trapp: The Preeminent Manic Pixie Dream Girl” Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic (2015)