July 01, 2025

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Saying Goodbye to Your Single Self

When one of my best friends told me she was engaged, it felt like a milestone moment. In the 15 years we've been friends, I've been single for exactly zero. She, on the other hand, has been single (not by choice) for 13--and several before that. Sure, there were plenty of talking stages, situationships, and even the occasional three-to-sixmonth run with a boy that made it past the smokescreen phase. But, nothing seemed to really last--until now. For the last two years, they've gone from friends and dating to living together, and now a wedding is in the offing. When we catch up over drinks so I can hear all about how `it' (the proposal) happened, there are plenty of gushing details. But right at the tail end, she simply says, "So long, single life! I'll miss you!" It's an intriguing sentence; one I wasn't expecting from her after all this time of "unhappy" singlehood. I have many friends who are single and they love it--they wouldn't trade it for the world. But she has never been

Making of a Bombshell in 2025

I've never ever been happier," said Sydney Sweeney's Cassie in season two of Euphoria (2022). It was a dramatic proclamation, her face flushed with tears and flashy makeup accentuating her misery. From the get-go, Cassie had become a sex symbol. She is able to pleasure herself and reach orgasm in public. She allows her boyfriends to film her during sex. She weaponises her conventionally gorgeous body--her breasts especially--to lure male attentionYet, there is nothing joyful, honourable, worthy or aspirational about her quest to seem like a willing sexual paramour to these seemingly terrible men. Her desperation erases any power she could have, solidifying her as a victim even in moments of presumed agency. You would not be privy to this if you haven't watched the show. But in either case, you have been subjected to her stunning cleavage through the clips that circulate on Reels, or her sultry red carpet appearances where she evokes the bombshell legion. As if, longform storytelling could have anything over images in our Insta-economyWho is a bombshell? It is a slang term, for one. Many writers are unlikely to slip that word into their arguments. She is a hypersexualised woman who is there for us to ogle. She could have interviews, nuanced roles, businesses that would have raked her millions that would make the obvious case of her being more than that. Yet, for the general public, men mostly, she is nothing but the sum of her two coveted parts: Breasts and buttocksJean Harlow was the original bombshell. Marilyn Monroe is its most ubiquitous avatar. Pamela Anderson (before her sans-makeup era) and Anna Nicole Smith drove a frenzied conversation around breast enhancement surgeries in the 80s and 90s. The Kardashian-Jenner clan, reality television royalty, took this to a feverish extremeSweeney makes a fascinating, if a Monroe, for all her inviting lips, heavy buttocks, and big breasts, had a charming innocence to herfrustrating case in this study. We have become obsessed with her body, her breasts specifically, which have had the power to launch op-eds into the world about how crudeness is in, and "wokeness" is dead. There is a but. Her prestige roles, whether as a spoiled and hypocritical college girl in HBO Max's The White Lotus (2021-), or as a nun who is caught in the cobweb of mysterious and terrifying encounters in Immaculate (2024), render her as a competent actor--one who has flair for layered characters that are able to entail commentary. Even in an ensemble cast, as is the case with her HBO shows, which are star studded with the likes of Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Connie Britton, and Jennifer Coolidge, she is able to stand out. Yes, a disproportionate amount of chatter becomes about her cleavage when she promotes these ventures, yet she has the ability to spur something undeniable: She is an Actor. You don't lose sight of that, even as she launches a soap made out of her bathwater, called Sydney's Bathwater Bliss (it's sold out, FYI)You don't lose sight of that even as she laughs at her own expense, saying people think that she is an intelligent woman with big ti*s, when she is actually a stupid woman with big ti*sYou don't lose sight of that even