Also.Also.Also: 00s Rom Comcore Is 2023’s Hottest Trend, Get Ready to Scream “You’re a Wanker, Number Nine!”

PIZZA NIGHT 🍕


Saw This, Thought of You

How To Channel 2023’s Rom-Comcore Fashion Trend. Ok so first of all, as the editor of a website that has somehow covered both Cottagecore and Mermaidcore — I think all of y’all are lying to me and that all it takes is adding “core” to the end of a word to make it a “trend.” But second! And most important! As someone who dressed as a 00s era rom com lead the first time around.. these looks are bad! Trust me, They. Are. BAD. I provide the following scene from Imagine Me & You as evidence:

In a still from the movie Imagine Me & You, two white lesbians hold each other in a hug while laughing. They are wearing classic 00s fashion, including a useless scarf and a short sleeved t-shirt over a long sleeved t-shirt.

Why did we do this to ourselves, as a people.

Sports Networks Will Invest in Just About Anything Before Women’s Sports — Including Pickleball. “ESPN and the likes often take a flier on young sports leagues — as long as they are men’s leagues”

I thought I was the only one who noticed! Welcome to the Shoppy Shop, “Why does every store suddenly look the same?”

Do You Use These Words When You Apologize? It’s Time to Stop. Food for thought!


Queer as in F*ck You

This one goes out to that time in junior year of my Catholic high school when I got a JUG (that’s Catholic school for detention) for challenging my religious studies teacher that nowhere in the Bible does it say Homosexuality was sinful. Lil Carmen knew what the f-ck she was talking about! Pope Says Homosexuality Not a Crime

As Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman’s #1 fangirl, it will not surprise you that I am OBSESSED with this! OBSESSED, I SAY! Roxane Gay in Antarctica: The Things We Do for Love. “Once upon a time, writer Roxane Gay and her wife, the illustrator Debbie Millman, set sail to Antarctica. Here, they each tell the tale — well, their version of it.”

NYC Council Grills Jails Commissioner on Trans Detainees at Rikers. “In a combative appearance, Louis Molina denied there was a problem, despite the collapse of the LGBTQ+ Affairs unit under his tenure.”


Political Snacks

Sorry, Twitter, but Florida’s War on Books Is No Joke. Ron Desantis Wants to Keep Kids From Reading.

And I truly don’t know if this provides any comfort with how terrifying everything is, but Less Than 10% Of 2022’s Anti-lgbtq State Bills Became Law, Report Finds

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

10 Comments

  1. Unfortunately Pope Francis was pretty clear that he still thinks homosexuality is a sin. He just thinks it shouldn’t be illegal. Liberal Catholics love to claim Pope Francis as some kind of progressive hero but he’s definitely not 🤷🏻‍♀️

    • yeah, I don’t get how they think he’s anything other than an awful old dude across the ocean. I mean, he’s literally a part of an organization that routinely covers up the murder of children but like, oh no what if gays got married?

    • Well I mean to be fair, and I’m not Catholic, or Christian, however I’ve read the Bible and other religious texts so I know what I believe and don’t…every day I sin, not just by being gay, but by mixing fabrics and being in a room with other women who may or may not be menstruating. So, a sin is a sin is a sin, it’s like saying I pick my nose and flick my boogers at my sister, I was mean, it’s a sin. Breathing is practically a sin so while yeah, he said it’s still a sin, so is 99.9999999999% of what people do every day. Take the crumbs. It unfortunately matters, more now than ever especially here in the US. 🤷🏻‍♀️

  2. “Go ahead pickleball. Have your day. Just do us all a favor and put some of those women’s matches in the premier windows now that you have a platform. Having a good balance of men’s and women’s games has been a formula for the U.S. Open’s success.”

    I think the headline of this article is p misleading. As McManus admits at the tail end of the article, pickleball literally IS a “women’s sport” (as well as a “men’s sport”). Investing in pickleball does not conflict with investing in women. Women play in the league that ESPN will broadcast. There is no need for infighting between women’s sports!! :-(

    It seems the point of contention for McManus is whether pickleball is a sport at all. McManus aligns pickleball with “poker”, “cornhole”, and “ping pong” in that dimension. I think it’s safe to say that while cornhole and poker, by design, require minimal or no athletic training, the inclusion of ping pong is… ✧・゚:* problematic *:・゚✧ . I can only describe the USA’s widespread perception of ping pong as a non-sport as ignorant at best and racist (specifically anti-Asian) at worst.

    While pickleball, due to its nascence as a sport and an institution, requires less conditioning, less training, and less perfect mechanics than ping pong at the top levels of play, I think it is likewise maligned by gatekeeping sports writers due to prejudices against its older, fatter, and more disabled player base. The public perception of pickleball as a sport that empowers old/fat/disabled athletes to play (or, god forbid!!!, compete) seems somehow offensive to many Americans who demand unattainable physique, raw athleticism, youth, and disposability in our most popular “sportiest” sports.

    TL;DR Super glad ESPN will stream more women and more pickleball. I hope they will stream even more women and more sports in the future. I will watch.

    Also thanks for sharing this article and for all that you do I am just super riled up about the inaccessibility of “sports” in the American death cult and I think pickleball is super fun and what if we can just be happy for them??!!!! !!!

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