Mystery Box!
Courtney Love v. Taylor Swift, cultural appropriation, and shitty ex-husbands
Say what you will about Courtney Love, but she is the queen of no fucks given and she always has been.
If people try to put me in the crazy box–‘crazy fucking Courtney’–go ahead. But if you think you’re going to stop me from where I’m going, you’re not going to do it.
She will forever have a place in my heart based on the fact that Live Through This is a perfect album and it was in heavy rotation during a formative period in my Gen X life. And, as it happens, I just rediscovered it. In fact, not too long ago, I spent literal hours creating a palette for Croning based on the cover art.
Anyhow, I guess she decided to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this perfect record by adding Taylor Swift to her truly epic list of celebrity beefs? Oh, Courtney. If this were anybody else, I would suspect that this was a cry for attention. Coming from Love, I’m pretty sure it’s just her opinion—although I do wonder if Dylan Jones asked her about T Swizzle specifically.
As someone who once aspired to be a rock journalist, I feel compelled to share my thoughts about Love’s thoughts. I don’t think that she’s wrong to say that Taylor Swift is a “safe space for girls,” but I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Everybody shits on art made by women, especially when it’s art made by women for women. Love certainly knows this but, again… Courtney Love is gonna Courtney Love.1 Her appreciation for Lana Del Rey is clearly sincere—there are three songs by Del Rey on the final episode of the BBC’s “Courtney Love’s Women.” It took me a long time to pick up what Lana Del Rey was putting down, but I’ve grown to like her. My feelings about her cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” are not as strong as Love’s, but I do find that track slightly mystifying and hearing it once was quite enough for me. Then there’s Beyoncé… Personally, I find Love’s comments completely uncontroversial. Love appreciates that Queen Bey is taking up space—a lot of space—in a genre in which Black women have not been welcome, and Love doesn’t like Beyoncé’s music. That’s fine.
Myself, I am freaking ecstatic that Beyoncé has laid siege to the country music charts and I tip my Stetson to her for creating a documentary—“Call Me Country: Beyoncé & Nashville’s Renaissance”—while creating Cowboy Carter. As is always the case, there are songs I like more than others—I could write a dissertation on “Ya Ya” and it’s a fucking banger—but it’s a body of work that feels important now and which will, I believe, stay important. While she’s doing all this, Beyoncé is giving a lift to a whole lot of artists. (If you don’t know Rhiannon Giddens yet, please do yourself a favor and fix that.) The aforementioned dissertation aside, I feel like my opinions about Cowboy Carter don’t matter much and almost certainly should not. For an opinion that does matter, I recommend Doreen St. Félix’s review for The New Yorker. Here’s some more on the genius of Beyoncé over at Culture Study. And a historian’s perspective on Cowboy Carter.
Did you know that Croning has a soundtrack? It does!
If I learned anything at all during my career in marketing, it’s that everybody loves a BOGO. Rhyming is also pure gold when you’re writing copy. So this sale is obviously a winner. If you’re interested, head on over to the Postmodern Witch storefront. If you’re not, please forgive this commercial break.
This is a free post. If you’ve been enjoying Croning, please share. You will be my new BFF.
I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with Cherie Dimaline when her first novel for adults, VenCo, was released last year. It’s available in paperback now, and you should read it. You should also read my interview with the author, because it’s a good one! We talk about cultural appropriation in witchcraft, Indigenous sovereignty, and respecting our elders.
Once I opened VenCo, I was propelled through an entire night of charmed reading. Cherie Dimaline creates a world utterly fantastical, yet real. VenCo is funny, tense, and cracking with a dark, divine energy.—Louise Erdrich
I have links for you!
I started researching ADHD when my son got diagnosed. This led to me learning more about how it presents in women, and this led me to think, “It me.” When I posted about this in a private Facebook group, a lot of women shared that they had a similar experience. My son is also autistic, and not too long ago I said something to him like “…and I say this as a very not autistic person.” He looked at me and asked, “You sure about that?” I have not felt compelled to explore where I might land on the spectrum—not because I’m afraid, but because I’m not sure how I would benefit from a diagnosis—but I have appreciated Esmé Weijun Wang’s thoughtfulness and candor as she has gone through an autism assessment at the age of 40. She just posted the final piece in the series, but I recommend starting with the first. She also recently wrote about how her little brother ruined her Star Search dreams, which I share because I suspect a lot of crones had Star Search dreams once upon a time…
Speaking of real-life drama unfolding on the small screen, I don’t watch reality TV anymore, but I love listening in when my friends talk about their shows. Adrienne Gunn is one of those friends. In her latest Substack, she transforms some insights about Love Is Blind into a beautiful meditation on the mythology of marriage and the stress of co-parenting with a piece of shit who is not actually doing any parenting.
Speaking of co-parenting… I am a parent. One of my jobs as a parent has been to decide what is and is not appropriate for my child to exposed to. (I say “has been” because he’s 17 and that’s not really my job anymore.) I do not, however, get to decide what’s appropriate for other children.2 Over the past several years I have had ample opportunity to learn how pissed off it makes me when parents fight to take something away from all students because they don’t want their student to have it. “Parents’ rights” sounds great, but it’s a misnomer. People advocating for “parents’ rights” are, in my experience, robbing me of the freedom to give my kid access to materials and ideas I want him to have access to, while also asking schools to do their parenting for them.
A public school in Michigan is canceling its plans to teach an optional mini-lesson about pronouns to a class of elementary students after staff have become the target of online harassment.
Superintendent Shanna Spickard of DeWitt Public Schools on Friday apologized to those who welcomed the lesson planned for first-graders at Schavey Road Elementary School and said the decision to cancel was not made lightly. But as a result of online backlash, she added that multiple staff members are “afraid to go to school.”
To quote Ms. Swift, I hate it here.
I’m still undecided about product endorsements in Croning, but I feel like I need to offer something light after that rant. So, here’s this T-shirt, which I bought because I saw it in an Insta ad. This was one of those moments when it felt like the adbots were looking directly into my soul. The 1997 live performance of “Silver Springs” may be my Roman Empire. I am not alone in this. Obvs. This is my kind of rock n roll beef.
I bought it on Etsy. There are plenty of places to buy it. You can google.
I would like to thank my friend Glenn for hosting our private, two-person Taylor Swift study group. I mostly refrain from talking about her in public because I don’t need that heat. ↩
I’m fudging a bit here. I sit on the school board in my city, so… Yes, I do make decisions about what other people’s kids are exposed to. However, I do not create curricula, and when it comes to approving curricula, my default setting is to trust the professionals—teachers, media specialists, etc.—because I know that they have training, experience, and knowledge that I do not have.