Glossed Over

According to Allure and Michael Kors, I Am Not a Woman

Have you read Michael Kors' "Ten Things Every Woman Should Have," from the October issue of Allure? This list did not please me, and it’s not because I only own a single thing on it. 

For starters, there's the concept. Be real, Allure: This is a shopping list. Ninety percent of this list is stuff you can buy in a store--including, shockingly enough, multiple items bearing Kors' name! Presenting this as essential advice on womanhood is flat-out lying. 

Then you've got your standard being-a-woman-is-expensive song and dance. Apparently being female requires owning luxury goods. Oops! I guess I am not a woman!

Throw in the icky paternalistic implications of a man dictating how to be a woman and a smarmy, classist tone, and what do you get? 

Pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Here's the list:

1. A red T. Anthony duffel bag. What does the T. stand for? "The Owner of This Bag is Female," obviously, because there’s no better marker of womanhood than a $375 bag. Right?

2. Michael Kors python ankle boots. Indeed. Every woman should have $1,345 to spend on boots! And then she should take that cash and buy, like, 17 pairs of boots instead. 

3. The Audrey Hepburn Couture Muse collection of DVDs. Being a woman involves emulating another woman, apparently. (Also? This is "required viewing" for Kors' employees.)

4. White roses, which he says are the "LBD of flowers." At last, a fashion trope more annoying than "[color of the moment] is the new black"! Kors orders from a fancy florist, but allows that the "corner deli is fine" for the rest of us. Isn't that generous?

5. Clarins Radiance-Plus Golden Glow Body Lotion. Because real women look like they've just returned from a tropical vacation. Duh.

6. A Slim Aarons photography book. I had no idea what the picture of a 1960 Stowe, Vermont, ski lodge included in the article had to do with being a woman until I looked up Slim Aarons in Wikipedia and learned his modus operandi was "photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." Which sounds suspiciously like a fashion magazine, does it not?

7. A Michael Kors silver cuff, for the woman who "can’t afford an amazing piece of modern sculpture." Wow. Between the "corner deli" crack and this, he’s making a real case for a peasants' revolt (not to mention promoting that fashion-as-investment nonsense). But wait! It gets better worse!

8. An African safari. Kors says, "The circle of life is not just in a Broadway show." How would we plebeians know? Has this guy seen the price of Broadway tickets lately? But seriously: this is shocking, disgusting snobbery.

9. A sense of humor. Yes! I agree! I wish men had one too! Especially when they’re asked to make lists about how women should be!

10. Another $$$ Michael Kors product that I can’t even be bothered to type out.

You know, there's been a lot of talk about class war lately. I'm no economics expert, but I have to consider whether lists like this contribute to the growing divide in the United States between rich and poor. When it comes to Michael Kors, that divide goes beyond the stuff he's selling, the visible markers of affluence. Even allowing that his comments about the "circle of life" were surely intended to be cheeky and his note about deli flowers meant to be inclusive, condescension is a critical part of the package. He's positioning luxury items not as fashion accessories but as indicators of exclusivity, superiority, and sophistication.

Adding that to the "Things Every Woman Should Own" conceit only makes it worse. According to this article, being a woman requires buying luxury brands and looking down my nose at those who can't or won't buy the same. Is that really the best modern womanhood can aspire to? Michael Kors, I will never be your woman.

The Fifth Annual September Vogue Liveblog

Good morning! Welcome to the fifth annual liveblog of the September issue of Vogue. Five years! 

The rules: I have not opened this issue, nor have I read any blog posts/articles/embittered rants about its content. I will, however, admit to watching Racked try to smash snack foods with this sucker. It's heavy! The liveblog goes in chronological order; refresh the page to see the latest updates.

Oh, and one more thing. As I mentioned in the video, I will be tweeting during the day using the hashtag #vogueliveblog, and I would love for you to use that hashtag too! As a small token of my gratitude for all of you out there reading along with me, I'll be giving The September Issue on DVD to three randomly selected people who tweet a link to this site and the hashtag between 10 a.m. today and 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday. (This is not a sponsored giveaway, just me spending my own money to send three lucky people a movie. US and Canada only, sorry.) Remember, your tweet must include both a link--you can use http://bit.ly/vogueliveblog11--and the hashtag #vogueliveblog to be eligible to win.  [Contest now closed, winners declared.] Thanks for being here!

Now let's get going.

Cosmopolitan Finds the Worst Possible Men to Give You Advice

Over the years I’ve had plenty of suggestions for Cosmopolitan, but I think this might be a new one: Maybe, O sagacious editors of the only publication that reads like a parody of itself, the next time you seek out men to advise women on matters of sex, you could attempt to find guys who aren’t total dirtbags. They exist!

Instead, in September’s “Guys Answer Your Sex Questions in 20 Words or Less,” Cosmo managed to assemble a bumper crop of judgmental, objectifying men to advise their readership of young women.

Sure, you could argue that these men are just relating their own opinions, and that Cosmo is actually doing its readers a service by including these jerks’ full names, professions, and photos with their comments. You could also argue the moon is made of green cheese.

On to the article! First we have one David Good, who’s written a book entitled The Man Code: A Woman’s Guide to Cracking the Tough Guy. (I hope to one day write a book called The Bullshit Code: A Woman’s Guide to Rejecting the Guy Who’s Seen Too Many James Bond Movies and, As a Result, Is Overly Invested in Stereotypes of Masculinity. Literary agents, email me!) Here’s what Cosmo asked and how David answered:

Are unshaven legs (or other body parts) a turn-off?

Hell, yes. Shave that. It’s not 1973 anymore. --David

Yeah! It’s not 1973 anymore. Back then, when a person went into puberty, surging hormones caused hair to develop in certain areas, and now that it’s 2011--oh wait. That still happens. Will someone please notify David?

If it’s been a while since you got it on, can just seeing a woman in a tight shirt give you an erection?

It could be an XXL, and if a guy’s horny, he’ll find something about any girl to turn him on. --Patrick [Meagher, host of Cosmo Radio’s Cocktails with Patrick]

I originally read this as Patrick referring to the hypothetical woman as “it” and “an XXL” and almost had a rage blackout. But then I realized he’s referring to the shirt. Still, Patrick is really pushing bro-code boundaries here. First, there’s his admission that a woman needn’t be clad in tight clothing to arouse a man, which is something one would never figure out from reading the fashion pages of Cosmo. Then there’s the statement that he can find “something” about “any girl,” which is supposed to be reassuring and instead sounds patronizing. “There, there, little Cosmo reader, some man will find you attractive, if he’s desert-island desperate!” It’s like he thinks of women as objects who exist solely to provide him with aesthetic pleasure, and that is such an original viewpoint for a radio host!

If a woman has sex with a guy early on, does he assume she is like this with every guy?

He probably assumes you are. But if he likes you, he doesn’t care. --Wilder

Wow! How is this guy, Wilder Weir, still “single-ish”? (No, really, that’s what the description says.) I mean, he’s clearly such a prize and all, what with his amazing ability to forgo judging the sexual proclivities of women who’ve deigned to sleep with him. If he likes you, that is. Ugh. (No word on why he’d be sleeping with you if he doesn’t like you, even though there’s an under-20-words answer for that, too.)

Look, I get that some men believe things I find objectionable. So do some women. That fact isn’t a problem. But it is a problem when a magazine that proclaims itself the official publication of the “fun, fearless female” parrots sexist, judgmental nonsense to its readers. And it is a problem to peddle harmful, outdated viewpoints about sex and gender using the not-so-subtle implication that these guys are experts and women who don’t conform to these men’s ideals will remain single forever. (Never mind that it completely ignores the women who--clutch my pearls!--aren’t even heterosexual.)

Admittedly, dropping the how-to-please-a-man mumbo-jumbo would require a major overhaul of the magazine. But getting rid of the men-are-from-Mars nonsense would be Cosmopolitan’s most fun, fearless act yet.

Vogue Liveblog: Wednesday, August 24

Wikipedia says I do this every year, so it must be true! Glossed Over’s fifth annual Vogue liveblog will take place Wednesday, August 24, at 10 a.m. Eastern. Here’s how it went in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

The 10 Worst Fashion Moments in September's Glamour

So much of Glamour’s content is smart: in this issue, the Hillary Clinton profile, the article about gendered workplace dynamics, and even the Rihanna interview are solid.

But when thoughtful articles meet impossible fashion, Glamour starts to seem less like a manual for a sophisticated adulthood and more like an anthropological study of an alien life form. Is this what women are supposed to be like? Am I supposed to be this way/want these things/care about this stuff?

I’m no fashion expert. I admit it! But I take issue with the way fashion is continually presented not as a way to express individual style but instead as a series of expensive, men-love-this-but-not-that necessities.

So here’s a list of the things in Glamour’s September issue that really chafed.

1. The Lancome ad touting “the first doll lash mascara”

Doll lashes: the new, impossible standard! When actual human lashes (or Latisse-enhanced lashes, or fake eyelashes, or the millions of existing mascaras) just won’t suffice.

2. This actual headline: “Clothes You Can’t Move In: Do or Don’t?” 

This is a real question? Glamour answers in a series of Johnnie Cochran-style rhymes, with the upshot being it’s cool to wear binding clothes if you have some bulky dudes to carry you around. Anyone know where I can get a few of those?

3. On page 154, Glamour asks Jennifer Lopez to provide style advice for a law student who wants to be taken seriously.

Like Jennifer Lopez would know how to dress for a conservative office environment? That makes as much sense as asking the Kardashians how to dress tactfully.

4. Oh, wait! Glamour did just that! (That’s page 190 if you’re following along at home.)

5. Here’s designer Rachel Roy on riding bikes: “I usually still wear dresses and my Indian thong sandals. Reserve sweats for working out.”

Yes, how dare you wear athletic clothes for an athletic activity! To paraphrase a friend, “My biking shirts wick moisture and have three pockets to keep my hands free. Why aren’t they perfect for everyday?”

6. The very concept of “This Man Will Make You Sexy” on page 162

Apparently sexiness is a quality bestowed upon you by a male fashion designer when you buy something incredibly expensive. 

7. And, on a similar note, “The Clothes I Love On Women Now”

What’s problematic here is not that a man is being touted as an expert--he is a fashion designer, after all--but the messages he assigns to clothes. A white collar for “preppy innocence”? Show “some skin, not too much”? Barf.

8. ...and still another in this series of Men Telling Women How to Wear Things They’ve Never Actually Worn Themselves! Page 170 brings us “How to Look Sexier in Your Heels.”

A story I could actually use is more like “How to Walk Comfortably in Your Heels So You Can Think About Maybe Trying to Feel Sexy Instead of Concentrating on Remaining Upright, With Extra Tips for Negotiating Subway Stairs in a Pencil Skirt and Heels” but no such luck. 

9. “5 New Things to Do With Your Eyes!”

In case you were getting tired of traditional ocular functions like seeing.

10. In “London Calling!” Glamour quotes a Kanye West lyric to describe a coat: 

Something about this classic always looks luxe. “Look at this peacoat, tell me he’s broke!”

The coat on this page is made by Gucci. Good thing they clarified it looks luxe, because I sure wouldn’t expect that from a $4K designer piece.

Lowest Common Denominator: Lucky, September

981: According to the cover, the number of “ways to look amazing this season”

Gazillions: Approximate number of words in this issue. For better or worse (and, in the case of the never-ending article about drunk shopping, it’s definitely worse), there is now actual text in this magazine.

24: Items retailing for less than $50 featured in “Classic Pieces for Every Day”

116: Page on which Jessica Alba’s “Post-Baby Shape-Up Plan” appears, almost entirely devoid of context. I know Lucky is new to this whole writing-complete-sentences-and-forming-paragraphs thing, but they couldn’t follow up on Alba’s statement that she drinks a lot of water because she’s “starving”?

$60: As listed in “City Guide,” the price of a “Carrie Bradshaw-style pink tutu” sold by a store in Los Angeles, like a “Carrie Bradshaw-style” anything is a good thing.

$375: Price of a satchel that is, according to “How To: Wear Color,” the “easiest way to add a shot of color.” 

Zero: Explanation of how “easy” it is to spend $375 on a neon bag.

1, apparently: Words left out of the headline “Dress Like a French Girl. No, Really, a Real French Girl.” That word? “Wealthy,” unless it’s being French that somehow enables one to purchase a $550 dress and an $860 jacket. In which case, vive la France!

$250: Price of a cat-ear hood that Lucky suggests wearing “with a dose of irony, for the downtown hipster.” Behold the amazingly awkward exchange that ensued when I tweeted @LuckyMagazine about this ridiculous headgear! Veronica, aka @duncandesign, joined in to keep the conversation on track.

3: “Stylish New Yorkers” plucked from “the sidewalks of Soho” to model fall fashions in “Style on the Street.”

100: Percent of those random New Yorkers who are conventionally slim and pretty! Surprise!

Not 2: According to Jean Godfrey-June, the number of people permitted in the dressing rooms at Gilly & Hicks, Abercrombie & Fitch’s lingerie store. She says:

(You can’t both go in [the dressing room]; the surroundings are so...provocative...that liaisons are rumored to have occurred in the dressing rooms, hence, a ban.)

Infinitely: How weird it is that Godfrey-June would mention this, considering that in the story she’s shopping with her daughter.

2: Cover lines on the issue of Lucky Kids stuck inside the back cover that are uncomfortably reminiscent of the controversy over 10-year-old model Thylane Blondeau: “Dresses So Pretty You’ll Wish They Came in Your Size” and “I Want My Kid’s Hair Color!” (Related reading: this article about fashion brands using child models to normalize eating disorders.)

0: Interest I had in pulling Lucky Kids out of the magazine--until I needed something to shield my laptop with during a sudden downpour. 

InStyle Makeover: Rita Hayworth's Ethnic Makeover Was "Worth It"

When I meet someone new and tell them about this blog, the responses I get usually fall into two categories. Most often I hear, “Oh! Totally! I stopped reading those magazines years ago.” And sometimes I get, “Well...what kinds of things do you write about, exactly?”

From now on, when someone asks the latter, I’m just going to hand them “The Hollywood Hot Machine” from InStyle Makeover’s September issue. This single page manages to include pretty much everything that’s wrong with women’s magazines: obsession with the male gaze, extreme beauty regimens, impossibly strict diets, and a dash of shocking ignorance. Handy!

The article features six actresses who’ve made major adjustments to their appearances to launch their showbiz careers. We aren’t talking about going from a side part to a middle part here, you know? If the fact that these women had to dramatically change their hair, faces, bodies and even their names--or at least felt they had to--isn’t maddening enough for you, maybe you’ll hate the breezy tone InStyle uses to describe their transformations. I sure did!

For instance, the article says Joan Crawford (née Lucille LeSueur) used “rigorous diet and exercise” to become “sleek.”

Reportedly, she even chewed gum in an attempt to sharpen her jawline.

Apparently no celebrity plastic surgeons were available to comment on the merits of Orbit as a cosmetic technique. Try it at home, readers!

The article goes on to mention haircuts and wardrobe changes for Marilyn Monroe and Diana Ross, and says of Jane Fonda:

Fonda’s first husband, Roger Vadim, directed her schoolgirl-to-sex-kitten makeover. He’d done the same for previous wife Brigitte Bardot.

And a man habitually directing his wives into “sex kitten” makeovers isn’t creepy or predatory at all!

Oh, and what about Jennifer Aniston?

Yoga, hairstylist Chris McMillan, and a salad for lunch almost every day for 10 years helped Aniston morph into this honey-dipped goddess.

So we again have a man to thank. And of course there’s that salad-a-day for a decade thing. Is that a healthy diet, a reasonable approach to eating, or just something Aniston’s publicist made up? Who cares? The real message here is that she’s whippet-thin, as anyone who’s seen her wearing scanty underthings in Horrible Bosses can tell you. 

But I’ve reserved the bulk of my outrage for the Rita Hayworth entry, which reads:

Painful but worth it: In two years, Margarita Cansino raised her hairline almost an inch with electrolysis. And when she went red, a star was born.

“Painful but worth it”? WHAT THE HELL. Do InStyle’s offices not have access to Wikipedia? I have to assume that’s the case, because obviously no one at the magazine knows why Hayworth had that electrolysis: at the behest of Columbia Pictures, to make her appearance less Hispanic and therefore more marketable. That’s also why she dyed her hair red and bleached her skin. 

(Incidentally, that second link has a context-sensitive ad for a skin-lightening treatment that reads “InStyle Award Winner!” Wow.) 

Celebrities change their appearances for all kinds of reasons, but praising a racially motivated, excrutiatingly painful cosmetic procedure as “worth it” is, at best, insensitive. (And at worst? I really don’t want to break out the “r” word.) Did Hayworth look better than Cansino did? That’s subjective. But there are some ugly, ugly implications attached to glorifying a makeover designed to hide Hayworth’s heritage. I mean, what’s the reader takeaway supposed to be here? That everyone looks better as a white person? That the agony Hayworth must have gone through was “worth it” to not look Hispanic?

This is tricky territory, and InStyle could have provided context or sidestepped those implications entirely. But they didn’t, and that’s the problem. Articles like this propagate the idea that beauty is pain--and that beauty is determined by men, and it requires expensive, painful treatments, and it demands extreme, restrictive diets, and that only certain kinds of women (namely thin white women) are beautiful. Perhaps expecting InStyle Makeover to acknowledge as much is ridiculous. 

Still, it’s been more than 80 years since the picture of Lucille LeSueur on this page was taken. Eighty years after LeSueur tried to reshape her face by chewing gum, and Jennifer Aniston eats arugula every day. Eighty years. That’s a long time for so little to have changed.

Magazine Covers Putting the Faux in Fitness

Can someone please tell me which cover is worse?

Is it the Shape cover featuring Audrina Patridge, who is perhaps best known for hawking Carl’s Jr. burgers that she pretty clearly doesn't eat, and who appears to have lost the entire right side of her body to the Photoshop bandit?

Or is it the Seventeen issue with Nina Dobrev, because it’s a publication telling 12-year-olds how to acquire a rockin’ bikini body? (Let’s not even get into the missing chunk of her torso.)

I can’t decide, see, because I started trying to figure out why these magazines ostensibly devoted to fitness couldn’t find someone with serious muscle definition to put on the cover, and then I looked up how many professional women’s athletic leagues exist in the US, and then I learned there are more than 170,000 women playing college sports, and then I thought about Jillian Michaels and Glee’s professional dancer/actor Heather Morris (both of whom are famous enough to have landed magazine covers recently) and, for that matter, the women on Dancing with the Stars, and that I would consider any of them a more compelling fitness role model than Lauren Conrad’s neighbor from The Hills, and then I tried to figure out why major media outlets would forgo women like that in favor of these two as the best examples of a healthy lifestyle, and I realized--of course!--it has more to do with newsstand sales than actual fitness, and that’s more or less when my brain exploded.

People StyleWatch! Is! Really! Excited!: Five Fast Facts About the World’s Most Enthusiastic Magazine

1. They love exclamation points. They loooooove them. The first time I bought PSW, I was in a terrible funk. I flipped through an issue at the newsstand and saw the exclamation points, the pink arrows, and the pages almost entirely devoid of text, and I was like, “How cheerful!” Except that when everything concludes with an exclamation point--there are ten on the cover of the June issue alone, four in a tiny blurb about a juice drink--it comes off less like genuine enthusiasm and more just plain manic. (Yeah, yeah, I use a lot of exclamation points, too, but I use them sarcastically. Glass houses, etc.)

2. They also love irrelevant actors. This issue is packed with the likes of Camilla Alves, Emmy Rossum, and Rachel Bilson. And they! are! excited! about Camilla Belle, who I’m convinced is a publicist’s fabrication and not an actual human being. Has anyone ever seen her in a movie? Doesn’t matter, because PSW has devoted an entire page to her clothes and is looking forward to her upcoming roles in Breakaway and Zebras. Both of which are real movies, I’m sure.

3. They think they have moneybags readers. And perhaps they do. But foolishly, I’d expected PSW to be a low-end counterpart to Lucky. What was I thinking? There’s no advertiser payola in that! While the magazine does feature a decent mix of affordable styles (“Under $25!”), there are also the typical tone-deaf suggestions like “Celebs Love a Deal.” I’ll grant them Kirsten Dunst’s $50 dress from Express, but I refuse to budge on Vanessa Hudgens’ $71 scarf. Come on! It’s a scarf. Did kittens weave the scarf from their own freshly shed fur? No? Then no deal.

4. They run the worst celebrity ads ever. Admittedly, I’m behind on my reading what with moving across the country and job-hunting and all, so perhaps these ads (“celebrity mom Brooke Burke” for Suave, Patricia Field for U by Kotex) are in all the mags. But I want to discuss this Jessica Szohr ad for Dove antiperspirant: it’s THREE PAGES of her in the most awkward, armpit-revealing poses ever committed to print. In addition to pictures so bad they’re not even comical, the ad includes obviously fabricated quotes about the preposterous outfits she’s modeling. For instance:

My hip fedora tips this knit tank bohemian.

Did you have to read that sentence three times before you figured out which word was supposed to be the verb? Me too! Also:

Rocking sleeveless styles makes me feel powerful and feminine.

Uh, it’s a sleeveless top. Where does the power come from? Your hairless underarms? I am so confused by this conflation of armpits with, you know, ACTUAL EMPOWERMENT. I could go on, but I’ll just say this: Dove is merely a deodorant. It’s not a substance that magically confers equality when you apply it. Feminism will not emanate from your powder-scented armpits. Okay?

5. They employ hilariously meaningless statements about fashion. It’s the Lucky syndrome: when you have to describe everything, you’re backed into some truly absurd statements. And I know whereof I speak: in a former job, I had to describe 75 different pieces of lingerie every month, without using the word “sexy.” Try it at home some time. You’ll want to beat your head against a wall, or make friends with a thesaurus, or both!

About a pair of J. Crew espadrilles:

They’re so easy to slip on and off!

Good, because putting on and removing shoes is usually so challenging!

About a JC Penney elephant-pendant necklace:

Adds a unique, global touch!

Because nothing says you’re independent and cultured like wearing a $10 necklace from a national department store chain.

And on Taylor Swift’s tunic:

A drapey top worn off the shoulder adds a flirty, offhand touch.

Offhand? Is it supposed to look like you didn’t try at all? Fashion, you confuse me.

So that’s the June issue People StyleWatch, in approximately the same amount of words that actually appear in the magazine. I’ll save you the trouble of counting: I used twelve exclamation points in this post, not counting the title, and only three of those appeared in quotes from the magazine. Use the comments to castigate me as you see fit.

Link-Packed Filler Post, Plus a Brief Discussion of Cosmopolitan's Hayley Williams Profile

Hi! So I’m a little frantic right now. I’m moving out of my apartment on Saturday, I’m hyper-caffeinated to work on a writing project with a looming deadline, I’m getting on one-way flight to New York on Wednesday, and I may or may not have spent all afternoon reading my high-school journals. (I’m moving! I have to go through my stuff!)

All of which should suffice as an overdramatic explanation for why posting will be slow around here for another week or two. 

I did manage to read the most recent issue of Cosmopolitan, which featured Hayley Williams of Paramore. 

Let’s discuss that Cosmo article, shall we? In particular, the passage about how William’s bandmates (male, of course) used to pull up her pants and write “Shave Me” on her legs. Which is indescribably awful, but you wouldn’t get that from Cosmo’s retelling, which relates this oh-so-charming anecdote as part of a “Hayley Williams becomes a woman” narrative, instead of in a “Who the hell are these guys to try to physically enforce beauty standards on a professional colleague?” way. 

The punchline, if you can call it that, is that Williams now has a tattoo of a razor on her leg “as a little reminder.” And if I have to explain how many millions of kinds of twisted that is, well, are you sure you’re reading the right blog?

So probably nothing I read in the next, like, fifty years is likely to top that, but here are some good things I’ve read in the last week. Hopefully, I’ll regain my normal thought processes once I arrive in New York on the 27th. 

• Anna Wintour wore hideous clothes in the 90s. Here’s proof.
  
  
• “‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted’”: Smithsonian magazine on the rise of gender-oriented colors.
  
  
• Cosmo embraces kink with its typical brio (along with a dose of slut-shaming and terrible advice). The Evil Slut Clique breaks it down.
  
  
• It’s that time of year! Allure has once again convinced a handful of vaguely famous women to pose nude in the interest of self-promotion -acceptance. Popsugar has the pics.
  
  
• The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority responds to accusations that a Miu Miu ad model was unhealthily thin, determining that her gaunt appearance was actually due to makeup and lighting.
  
  
• Comma ‘N Sentence has a lovely reflection on the first bare-legged days of spring.
  
  
• The Hairpin’s take on Marie Claire’s man blogger made me LOL. (And, BTW, their Friday Bargain Bin posts are pretty much my favorite thing on the internet right now.)
  
  
• And finally, my Twitter, where I share articles like this and other important things, like which painfully outdated song I’m currently obsessing over.