Many Such Takes: Milkmaid Dress, Luigi Photoshoot, Lesbian Landlords, Trump's Haircut, Anora Intimacy

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

Welcome to Many Such Takes! For those unfamiliar, this is a free weekly segment (I also do lots of other stuff!) For Many Such Takes, I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter (and now BlueSky) discourse so you don’t have to. If you see yourself featured here and you don’t like it, simply send me a Substack message and I will happily remove, no matter who you are or what you said. For previous issues of Many Such Takes, see this tab on my main page. Many Such Takes will always be free, so please become a free or paid subscriber to see more every Sunday!

Luigi Photoshoot

Two weeks ago, I wrote a full piece about how Luigi Mangione, the “CEO Assassin” now charged with murder and terrorism for killing United Healthcare CEO in cold blood, can’t seem to escape his photogenic bone structure and hordes of people (mostly gay men, some women) thirsting over him. To be clear, I’m not “simping” for him or his actions. Murder is bad! I just find it funny that the cops, who arguably should want to de-glamorize him, can’t stop publishing accidental Balenciaga photoshoots of him.

This week was no exception. The cops released him being perp walked by an entire SWAT team and perplexingly, Mayor Eric Adams, who clearly just wanted to be involved.

Not sure what they were tying to do here, after taking so many photos of him in prison that they may as well have been Austin Powers purring “Does that make you randy, baby?” while snapping a camera. And assuming they’re trying to humiliate him or send a message that he’s a piece of shit criminal, they’re uh…not really succeeding. He’s simply too handsome.

Milkmaid Dress

This is a real blast of discourse past. One of my first ever articles, back when this Substack was just a hobby, was about Evie Magazine’s viral sundress. That link has more information, but basically, Brittany Martinez, founder of Evie Magazine (which has been described as a right-leaning Cosmo) launched a sun dress. There’s nothing remarkable or controversial about a women’s magazine releasing clothing, but what made it so controversial was that because Evie is right-leaning (although I will say most of their articles are apolitical) there was a fracture within the right about whether Evie is for real “conservative” (aka trad) women. The dress, they complained, was too sexy and not conservative at all. Martinez clapped back with fairly direct mockery of the trad puritans, clearly taking the position of “no publicity is bad publicity.”

Anyway, the same thing basically happened this week when she released their latest dress, the Raw Milkmaid dress (oh yeah, she knows exactly what she’s doing.)

The dress itself (much like the sun dress) is fine. People were getting upset over it looking like something out of Shein, but I actually don’t think that’s accurate. It looks more like something I’d see from House of CB or Reformation, and arguably the only reasonably criticism of its quality or style is the fact that it’s capitalizing on a cottagecore aesthetic that was most popular about four years ago. But hey—you could also argue that a white midi-length sun dress is a timeless classic (although it does come in several other colors.)

Many people took issue with the “sexiness” (or, as trad Twitter referred to it, “whoreishness”) of the dress, and others pointed out that it only appeared overtly sexual because the model has large breasts.

As you can see, when modeled on a woman with smaller breasts, nobody who isn’t Amish could accuse the dress of looking “slutty.” It’s the boobs, not the dress! And I thought you guys liked boobs???

But really, this is just Sundress 1.0 redux (aka, Sundress 2.0.) The issue isn’t the boobs, or the fabric (it’s literally cotton,) or the style, although the $189 price tag probably triggered folks. Ultimately, people got mad because of the way the dress was presented/marketed.

The issue—I think the reason people got as mad as they did—is the fact that Evie’s marketing strategy relies on appealing very directly to the male gaze- think 2000’s-era Victoria’s Secret, instead of speaking to women about fashion and style while incidentally being sexy. In particular, the use of the term “raw milk” was meant to appeal to a particular right wing man (or a woman who wants to attract such a man.)

Unfortunately, women who want to attract this type of man also say things like this:

Ultimately, Evie knows how to ride the wave of publicity, no matter how angry the critics get. As their writers have asserted before, they’re not a tradwife magazine, or even terribly “conservative,” and being sexy is a big part of their content.

And perhaps they should lean a little more left- after all, Hillary Clinton might be able to model their next dress if they do. I’m with her:

Anora Intimacy Coordinator

For those of you who haven’t yet seen the movie Anora, it’s amazing, and I highly recommend it. But we’re not here to talk about the movie, we’re here to talk about the fact that because the stars declined the use of an intimacy coordinator (aka a fake-humping doula) cameramen had to record assault (aka consensual sex scenes.) Open the schools!

This tweet actually had me chuckling audibly:

And this was actually my favorite tweet on the topic, which had my husband laughing out loud:

Ariana Grande

I’ll be honest, I don’t spend that much time thinking about Ariana Grande, at least apart from my week-long obsession with holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity, which I covered on a previous issue of Many Such Takes.

But this week, Lilly Jay, the ex-wife of Ariana Grande’s boyfriend Ethan Slater (Spongebob lookin ass) published a very poignant essay in The Cut where she detailed her divorce from Slater following his infidelity shortly after the birth of their baby, and how this impacted her personally and professionally (she is a therapist, and cruelly her public divorce made it harder to keep/find clients.)

Because Lilly never directly mentioned Ariana Grande’s name (even though it’s fairly obvious the marriage broke up because of Ariana Grande) she did mention her husband’s new relationship with “a celebrity,” associated with the movie Wicked. Ariana Grande Stan Twitter immediately went into damage control mode, with one stan coming up with a creative idea for how Lilly’s essay could be interpreted:

I’m not here to bash Ariana Grande (I’m mostly just saying that because other writers who merely commented on the drama, without actually writing about it, were sent death threats) only report the DISCOURSE. So without me taking a side (please don’t kill me) I will say that the discourse got interesting. Take for example, this absolutely flawless nuke of discourse:

It seems like a great deal of the “Ariana Grande homewrecker” content is specifically coming from Sabrina Carpenter Stan Twitter. *Joker voice* you wouldn’t get it…

Lesbian Landlords

I was so happy to see this on my TL, because it’s just made for Many Such Takes. A Twitter user posted about their landlords, a pair of transmasc lesbians:

Most replies were cheering on the kind couple (although a few asserted transmasc people couldn’t be lesbians- man, who cares,) but some people had thoughts. For example, forget the fact that the landlords are lesbians or transmasc—has anyone considered that you have to kill them?

Then I saw this exchange. I read it several times and I actually don’t know what it means, but I guess the issue is with the term “butch,” because it’s inherently impossible to be butch and part of the bourgeoisie? I guess in that case you’re just a regular old lesbian (the user later corrected herself to say that the lesbians in question, given that they are transmasculine, would not be considered “women” but would be considered lesbians. Most importantly, though, they cannot be butch.)

Responses to the “lesbian landlords can’t be butch” tweet:

Yes. YES!!! See, when I said Bluesky didn’t have assholes, this was the kind of thing for which I was pining.

Trump’s Haircut

Trump got a really bad haircut. Look, say what you will about Trump, but the man has a signature, and it’s his hair. Even if you think his hair looks stupid, it’s undeniably Trumpy. It turns him into an ageless, timeless pop culture figure. But what happens when he doesn’t have his trademark hairstyle, suit and red tie? Uh…this:

Funny Tweets/Other Happenings

• Dan Crenshaw had a smackdown with Catturd:

  

• Toxic femininity:

• This mushroom’s chode:

• Timothee Chalamet entering his Ali G era:

• Some other funny assorted tweets:

• This is almost definitely a parody troll but it’s still funny:

  

Also, a research opportunity for an app in development for married couples:

If you're a married man, Jan Gebauer would like to talk with you for 15 minutes about your struggles in your marriage and how you deal with them. If you are interested, please email wifeguy@sunshineworks.eu

In case you missed it…