Hi! Welcome to my silly little newsletter and my first(!!!) post.
My name’s Mia and you’re probably reading this because we’re friends in real life. Or maybe we’re not! Maybe we’re enemies. Or acquaintances? Could be any of the above. Regardless, thanks for joining me.
To be honest, I’m creating this newsletter for somewhat selfish reasons. I need motivation to write. I recently graduated from a very nice writing program and, in the year-and-a-half since, have struggled to draft much of anything besides emails. I did create a blog— linked here, if you care to read my half-baked thoughts and some meager attempts at food writing— but I told maybe two people about it and rarely posted.
You might be wondering: what’s so different about a Substack? Well now, instead of being a little WordPress blog that exists in a vacuum, I’m imposing my writing onto you. And basically forcing you to be an accountability tool. Sorry, I’m already using you and it’s only my first post. This is an admittedly rough start.
But, okay, there are benefits to me using you! Like, you get to use me for my smart, funny, entertaining stories along with some of my oh-so-intelligent insights on the world. If I publish a questionable/controversial/bad take, you get first stab at canceling me. Really, I’m the one getting a raw deal.
Anyways I’ll mainly publish thought-out personal/opinion essays with some informal writing in between. Informal writing being: recommendations, quick takes on pop culture and the news, and more~.
You can expect little ‘ol me in your inbox about 2-3 times a month. If you’d like a bit more background info, you might find what you’re looking for here.
For being my very first subscribers (and reading to the end of this email), I thought I’d give you something in return:
Recommendations!!!
If you know me, you know I love acting like an influencer. I will be a shill for whatever product, media, or (insert thing here) that makes me feel marginally smarter, prettier, or just generally superior to others. I’m sure I’ll dissect this tendency in a future entry.
As a rule, I’ll try to keep most of my recommendations to media. I may include a product (be it furniture, clothes, makeup, etc) from time to time, but I don’t want to be another publication (yeah, this newsletter is a certified publication) that encourages rampant overconsumption. Long-winded way of saying that I’ll do my best to promote things that don’t necessarily destroy the environment. Or, at least, they don’t seem to destroy the environment (are podcasts carbon neutral?).
I’ll eventually come up with some clever name for this recommendations section. Email me if you have any ideas. Now, let the tastemaking begin:
This podcast is so good. Hosts Maia (aka Broey Deschanel) and Hannah Raine explore internet villains and archetypes in the first two seasons. As their tagline goes, it’s “the podcast about the social media phenomenons that strike a nerve in our culture, only to be quickly forgotten - but we think are due for a revisiting”.
They dissect subjects like Caroline Calloway, gatekeepers, himbos, and everything in between. Maia and Hannah are incredibly smart and illuminating and thoughtful and every episode is so very well-researched. I’m obsessed with this podcast and I think you will be too.
I have a bad habit of promoting things I’ve only just discovered, and this is one of those things. BUT I swear it’s great and that you will like it (or at least I hope you do). The Unpublishable is Jessica DeFino’s newsletter about the beauty industry and how it’s an absolute scam.
DeFino is a former beauty editor and she’s out to reform the industry. Her newsletter lays bare how the beauty industry is basically just a hodgepodge of classism, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism (among other things). It’s made me rethink a lot of the beauty rituals and products that I consider to be a given. If I’ve piqued your curiosity, then this entry of hers is a great place to start.
I will recommend this book to literally everyone. I randomly bought my copy at a secondhand shop in LA and I’m so glad I did. It’s a razor-sharp (ouch!) and hilarious satire about race in America. Beatty is also a poet and so naturally every sentence in the book is exquisite. Because I’m barely the writer that Beatty is and unable to do justice in describing his book, I’ll drop two quotes from it below:
“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”
“Both dudes wore khakis whose baggy leggings spilled over two pairs of Nike Cortez sneakers so fucking new that if they had taken one shoe off and placed it to their ear like a conch shell, they'd hear the roar of an ocean of sweatshop labour.”
All this to say: you should really read it.
That’s all for the inaugural issue of overthinker! Thanks again for joining me on this little adventure. Do you have any recommendations (books, TV shows, restaurants, concepts, etc) you’d like to share? Feel free to reply to this email with your recs (or else I’ll shame you for gatekeeping, at least in the way that TikTok commenters define it).
Hope you have an amazing rest of your day.
xoxo Mia