5 things i thought about this week
my skin sucks, creative backstabbing, tube girl on TikTok & confidence
ALEXA DEMIE, TUBE GIRL: CONFIDENCE IS A PRODUCT
Alexa Demie, most known for her role on Euphoria, is a testament to the idea that if you do something with enough confidence – someone is bound to like it. Her song Leopard Limo is mid as hell. Actually, fuck it, it’s bad. But I still find it intriguing. In the music video, Alexa, dressed like a superstar from the golden age of Hollywood, sways back and forth, turning this way and that but never failing to make intense eye contact with the camera. Alexa’s overproduced voice is not off key, but it’s not …. not off key. The link is below so you can judge for yourself. And yet! And yet, she delivers it with so much confidence that I have to stop myself and wonder: am I missing something? Is it actually good? Far more than the song, her confidence is what I’m buying.
My favorite new confidence queen: the tube girl on TikTok. Sabrina Bahsoon quickly took over the platform with her videos filmed on the London tube. She films herself dancing in abandon on the train, other passengers and their judgement be damned. Her confidence became infectious and now it seems that all of TikTok is just girls and boys claiming their “tube girl energy.”
Meanwhile Sabrina herself has already appeared on BBC news, did a brand collab, and walked a runway show.Tiktok failed to load.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserNot to generalie too much, but our generation is obsessed with the idea of being famous online, while simultaneously being embarrassed by the mechanics of online fame. We cringe at the idea of a couple setting up a camera, pressing record, dancing in the rain and then pushing the stop button, but then admire those who “make it” in the social media world.
PETRA COLLINS AND CREATIVE BACKSTABBING
Petra Collins is very famous amongst those of us who spend their time glued to Instagram. Collins is a Hungarian-Canadian photographer who rose to prominence for her distinct aesthetic which centered the “female gaze.” Well, turns out Euphoria showrunner Sam Levinson wanted a piece of Collins’s creative pie. In Collins’s recently resurfaced interview with a Hungarian publication, the prominent photographer and director shares that Levinson first hired her to direct the series and fired her 5 months later for “being too young.”
Collins says that Levinson reached out to her and said “ I wrote a show based on your photos. Will you direct it?” Petra proceeded to build an entire world in the Euphoria universe, only to be subsequently fired.A year later she looked up to see a billboard for Euphoria that was a copy of her vision. Collins said: “That series was an exorcism to me. I had to change my style because of Euphoria. Lots of people started to take photos in that style and I haven’t felt any more as mine and I felt disconnected from that. I need to find myself again.”
I feel so bad for her. Establishing your own aesthetic is very hard especially in an age when anyone can just rip off what you are doing. Purveyors of style don’t really own anything and creators are not always rewarded for being the first one to come up with a specific vision.
I feel like Petra wouldn’t be happy even if she was fairly compensated for her work (she might have been) and then still saw Euphoria’s style continue to exist without her involvment.
I feel like it’s just the sad reality of any creative field: Ideas are stolen all the time and those who execute on them faster and have more money to do so on a bigger scale get to claim them. I feel so bad for Petra bc even in the world of memes – a medium based entirely on ripping each other off – you sometimes cant help but feel that one particular joke is just too close to yours….ugh….MY SKIN SUCKS!!!!
Every few months I fall down a terrible skincare rabbit hole and start obsessively researching different treatments. The truth is that my skin is not horrible, but it’s just not great… And there is absolutely no way that dirnking 7 coke zeros a day has anything to do with it. I don’t have a lot of breakouts but my skin is always dehydrated and easily irritated. And there is absolutely no way that drinking 7 coke zeros a day has anything to do with it. Most importantly, I am personally irritated. The reality is that I’m so overwhelmed by the amount of products you’re supposed to use.
It feels like every single fucking ingredient is important. “Vitamin C is absolutely essential, but wait, are you seriously not using salicylic acid? That’s crazy. Omg, and no retinol? Forget about it.”
I’ve gone to dermatologists who vaporized my skin with lasers, applied masks, and sold me their $300 specially formulated skincare. And nothing, I repeat, NOTHING has made my skin glowy or baby smooth a la Instagram. Mostly it’s the redness that drives me crazy.
All that being said, I’m not entirely giving up. I just need to start from somewhat of a beginning. The only person who is actually making any sense is Dr.Shereene Idriss. I can actually vouch for her because I’ve gone to see Dr.Shereene before. She is truly a thoughtful practitioner who doesn’t put profit above her patients’ wellness. I stopped going to her bc we had aesthetic differences, but I still trust her opinions. So please check her out:
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