On Thursdays We Wear Black (Again)
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What to say, Spreaderellas?
The events of the week since we last met here in the safe and wonderful wilds of Spreadlandia have been as grim as we knew they’d be—indeed, somehow unimaginably worse. Sadly, we have not found much in the way of hope; we have not one story or op-ed or writerly moment of contextualizing, troop-rallying genius to share that could make any of this less painful or frightening or plain old nonsensical. Lacking any (borrowed) words of wisdom, we briefly considered pulling our Anne of Green Gables hats down over our eyes and retiring to the Gulf of America. Instead, we’re just gonna keep on doing what we do, and tap-dance extra hard (we are twinkle-toes-ing over here like our lives depend on it!) to give you something else to think (and talk) about. And yeah, we’re also really gonna indulge our love of parentheticals (deal with it).
Last week, what with all the chatter about real life mimicking the movie Her, and an otherwise sane-seeming 28-year-old falling in love with Leo, her ChatGPT “boyfriend”… and with even more chatter about how Babygirl is the new All Fours—the latest cultural lightning rod that womankind-of-a-certain-age wants to parse and unpack with our girlfriends—our little goat-brains started to whir: If women want to talk about BG and to AI… what if we talk about Babygirl to ChatGPT?
We went into this pretty cocky. After all, it’s not all that hard to believe that you can use AI to replicate an anodyne, doting dude who texts you 750 times a day and calls you “my queen” (barf). But use it to replace a lively post-movie chat with a thinking, feeling human lady-friend? A friend like, dare we say, us? Inconceivable. Throwing caution to the wind, we typed: “Do you think Babygirl is the new All Fours?” At first, the answers were disconcerting. (Bear in mind that ChatGPT is a bot of many words, so we condensed its responses.)
If Babygirl captures a similar emotional or thematic depth, it could certainly inspire the same kind of intense, almost cathartic discourse among its audience. It would depend on whether Babygirl provides that same blend of relatability and intrigue that compels people to share and debate their interpretations. What themes or moments from Babygirl struck you as especially conversation-worthy?
Oof, OK, well played, ChatGPT. We volleyed back: “Well, s-e-x. Both deal with women's hidden or unexplored desires.”
Miranda July's All Fours would naturally invite readers into an intimate and idiosyncratic world, where the discomfort and beauty of hidden desires are laid bare. If Babygirl mirrors this by portraying similarly complex inner lives, especially with Nicole Kidman’s performance, it could similarly become a cultural touchstone for women’s conversations about the untold layers of desire, power, and self-discovery.
It was the “if/would” that gave us pause. We pivoted: “What did you think about Harris Dickinson’s dance scene? And btw… don’t you think his name sounds like a law firm?”
ChatGPT: Sounds like a pivotal moment—dance sequences often serve as emotional or symbolic high points in films
SPREAD: So wait, you haven’t seen Babygirl?
Chat: You're right—I haven’t seen Babygirl since it doesn’t exist (at least to my knowledge).
Loyal readers, incontrovertible proof that while you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, and you can even screw your smartphone, you cannot use AI as a substitute for a Spreaditor—or a good girlfriend. Phew.
You following any of this? It’s hard to make a lot of sense when you’re doing the ole shuffle ball change.
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. Oscar nominations dropped this a.m., bringing a big L to all players on Team Challengers, which was unjustly blanked even in the screenplay and score categories. (We’re of course thumping the soundtrack as we type in Patrick’s and Art’s honor.) We would also like to offer our condolences to Nicole Kidman, who did not notch her sixth nod, for Babygirl—we smell ChatGPT in here somewhere!—and our congratulations to Monica Barbaro, who earned a surprise supporting-actress nom for her acoustic-and-yet-electric (sorry) portrayal of Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. Yay also for Demi (called it back in September) and her director Coralie Fargeat (we love it when a woman nabs a directing-category slot, even if her movie is at least 40 minutes too long and, sorry, not exactly a Spreaditor favorite). And though no one was surprised to see Zoe Saldaña score a supporting-actress nod for Emilia Pérez—we’ll save whether or not this was a result of category fraud for a different show!—you know what did surprise us? This cover! Hot dang.

If you liked when Hillary laughed out loud at the inauguration, you’ll love…
Guardian columnist Rebecca Shaw on the cringe-inducing Silicon Valley oligarchs-in-training sucking up to Trump. “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers,” Shaw wrote, several days before we were subjected to Zuck, Elon, et al. in seats usually reserved for, you know, senators and congresspeople at the inauguration. Shaw calls out Zuckerberg’s douchey MAGA makeover (and when he goes all Moondoggie on a surfboard, dear god); Musk’s “clear desperation…to be thought of as cool”; and Jordan Peterson’s “small Kermit’s voice in men’s rights.” Desperate times: Maybe what we really need now is a good, old-fashioned Regina George to get this try-hard high-school-cafeteria vibe in check? Or maybe Meghan Markle will do…
Read it here.
“Harry and Meghan declined to be interviewed for this article.”
For Vanity Fair’s latest cover story, Anna Peele bestows upon us the most scathing write-around we’ve read in years, about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The piece literally likens Meghan to a “Mean Girls teenager.” One of our favorite things to contemplate here is Radhika Jones and co’s back-of-the-napkin calculus about burning this bridge — because y’all, Peele hosed it down gasoline and lit an extra-long match. In one of the wildest anecdotes in the takedown, Meghan floats a divorce memoir to a major publisher, gauging interest in case she and Harry were to get divorced anytime soon. Here are a handful of our favorite anonymous quotes inside the cover bomb.
“I think they don’t know what ‘change the world’ means….They want to be people who are looked at as people who want to change the world.”
“Because she’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are going to be thrown to the wolves at any moment.”
On Meghan’s Spotify podcast, Archetypes: “It felt very Women’s and Gender Studies 101 taught in 2003.”
On the tabloid stories that accused Meghan of “bullying” palace staff: “Oh, any given Tuesday this happened.”
From a fellow Montecito resident: “It’s such a kind of hucksterism…It’s just finding every way she can to monetize something… I still think they’re the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet…They moved away from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, and all they do is try and get in the press in the United States.”
“I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better…But who am I to criticize Meghan Markle? She’s doing great.”
And a bonus quote—congrats to the couple: “They are so hot for each other…Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?”
Read “The Californians”—we’re using the print headline here because we prefer it to the online version and in Spreadlandia we make the rules!—here.
Leave it to cleavage.
We’ve spent way too much time looking at this. For those who’ve been taking a nap since Monday morning—bless you—this is a close-up of Lauren Sánchez’s inauguration top, which reportedly is a bustier (we were just gonna go with “bra”) by Alexander McQueen and of which MAGA Mark reportedly approved and Megyn Beelzebub Kelly decidedly did not. (Sidenote: Good thing they made a movie about Kelly being a #MeToo hero, right!?) It’s possible that we’re coming a bit unglued because, over here on day four, we’ve begun to see something altogether different emanating from the image, like in one of those Magic Eye posters from the eighties. Something approximating an Anna Weyant or Shannon Cartier Lucy painting that’s quietly saying something urgent and political about the state of society and feminism. Reader: What do you see in this decolletage? Please feed us a couple lines of smartypants explainer—we might just print and frame the close-up and hang it on our office wall, since, you know, while we do have goals, we’ll never quite be in the market for a Weyant or Lucy original! Finally: Are we losing our marbles? Well, if you have to ask…
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