How Do You Throw a Kate Hudson-Themed Oscar Party?
The Andie Anderson and Isla Gordon of newsletters is popping corn, meds, and hopefully not our ACLs. Plus: Tyra Mail!
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Twinkling Spreadstars,
Because we are nothing if not completists, to kick off Oscars week we finally got around to watching Song Sung Blue: a mess of a “movie of the week” treatment about two Neil Diamond “interpreters” that precipitated Kate Hudson’s performance of a lifetime. Yes, we’re talking about her work as Claire Sardina, a hard-working Milwaukee mom with a heart of gold and a dye job that says “Clairol Nice ‘N Easy Frost & Tip,” which proved once and for all that Kate can belt ’em out, she can tinkle the ivories, and she can handle real drama. But we’re also talking about the moment Hudson found out that, twenty-five years after her supporting nod for Penny Lane in Almost Famous, she’d been nominated a second time for an Academy Award. In this video of the moment, there is screaming, there’s rocking, there’s a rumpled bed—all of which generated in us more goodwill for a nepo baby than we thought possible.
Kate: You know and we know that you’re not going to win this thing—and that’s a feeling your Spreaditors know a little something about. But damn, it’ll be fun to dress up. In your honor, the Spread is officially dedicating its Sunday night viewing party to all things Kate. Consider it our love letter to underdogs everywhere, and to Penny Lane, Andie Anderson, hell, even that young woman you played in The Skeleton Key (underrated!)
Rachel will be donning her best yellow satin halter gown for the occasion; Maggie a shearling-trim suede coat and purple Yoko shades. We will both be acting adorable, charming, and wildly body positive, while frosting ourselves liberally—icing, not diamonds, unless you want to send some our way?
It’s all happening,
Rachel & Maggie
Smizing Through the Apocalypse
One of your Spreaditors may have side-hustled as a dating correspondent for the Tyra show circa 2008—but she’s not the only one mainlining Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. The three-episode series, which has been the subject of much chatter these last few weeks, goes deep on the sins of Tyra Banks’s Real World-meets-American Idol mashup, which for 25 “cycles” starting in 2003 took normal girls who aspired to make it big in fashion, and ritualistically demoralized them for our entertainment. Exactly none of the show’s hundreds of contestants went on to become a legit top model.
Reality Check features interviews with a handful of the most traumatized hopefuls: Shandi, who was filmed while a guy from a photoshoot had nonconsensual sex with her while she was black-out drunk. Danielle, who was forced to undergo a permanent orthodontic procedure according to Tyra’s aesthetic whims. Shannon, who, recovering from an eating disorder, was weighted and called heavy on camera. Also: conversations with the panelists Banks hired and fired (creative director Jay Manuel, photographer Nigel Barker, runway coach Miss J. Alexander, who the Times recently profiled post-stroke) and something far from a mea culpa from Banks herself (“different times” is an excuse proffered more often than a weave on makeover day).
What’s the point of all this Monday morning quarterbacking? And what do we want from Tyra in the here and now? Two of our favorite critics, Wesley Morris, in perhaps the best installment of his Cannonball podcast yet (bring back guest Michaela Angela Davis, please!), and Sophie Gilbert, in the Atlantic, wrestle with the show’s legacy. This is Gilbert’s kingdom—last year, her book Girl on Girl zoomed in on the hyper-sexualization of young women in pop culture in the early 2000s. “Top Model and shows like it were intoxicating because they compelled each woman who watched to imagine herself as a virtual contestant, and to internalize the idea that beauty wasn’t a pleasurable pursuit but a grind for self-optimization and profit,” she writes. “The world we live in now, with its casual parlance of Botox and blephs, glass skin and looksmaxxing, was built on the foundation that Top Model helped set—the idea that if you simply work hard enough on your physical form, blessings will surely flow.”
Listen to “Tyra Banks Is (Kinda) Sorry” here.
Read “What America’s Next Top Model Was Really Selling” here.
Hugh Who?
Former Teen Vogue and Them content director and Out editor-in-chief Phillip Picardi is leaving his we-imagine-to-be-enormous chief brand officer job at Weight Watchers to run Playboy as chief brand officer and editor in chief. Picardi is an inspired choice to reinvent the OG girly mag for this Heated Rivalry moment. We’ll take a supersize popcorn with extra butter for this show.
She heard a pop, her knee buckled, and she crumpled in a heap. Her joint felt “creepy” and “gross,” she says, as if the lower leg had detached from her body.
The biggest issue (other than concussions) in the $40 billion business of youth sports is one no one talks about: the torn ACL. It’s happening in every country where kids play serious sports, and mostly to girls: Young female athletes are three to six times more likely than boys to tear an ACL—and it’s especially common among girls who play on year-round teams. Craig Welch, usually an environment writer at National Geographic, was motivated to investigate for the New York Times Magazine after an incredible 19 of his daughter’s current and former soccer teammates busted their knees. Was this some kind of mass hysteria? (Well, no: It’s hard to fake a floppy leg.) It’s partly due to improved diagnosis of ACL injuries, partly to “exploding participation in youth sports, especially among girls.” But it’s also largely because no one’s doing the simple 20-minute training regimen that has been proven for 25 years to cut the risk of this injury. One Spreaditor (the one who was told last week she is officially “knee replacement old”) has already scripted an email to the local rec department, asking them to make this required reading for all coaches.
Read it here.
We Are All Regina George
Hot on the heels of David bar cofounder Peter Attia’s national demotion in light of his well-documented Epstein palship, a new class-action lawsuit alleges that the media elite’s protein snack of choice are—kid you not—packed with more calories than they their packaging claims, causing devotees to gain weight. That’s right: The fashion flock has been housing Kälteen Bars. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.
