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obseshes

Welcome to My Obseshes

Here in “Obseshes” (RIP Girl News) we will talk about some stuff to like, to love, and to be obsessed with, for real but just for right now. Well, maybe for longer, but that doesn’t matter. OK? OK.

Some things that I like/love/am emotionally huggled by are forever: gelatin-based candy products, touching my hair, Charlie Rose, maps (but not for art; don’t do that), texture of any kind, freedom. Some things are, in keeping with my generation’s tendencies toward fleeting preoccupations and quicksilver affections, only if wildly interesting for a half-minute. And there will be among these “things” some themes and constants that emerge, but, here in “Obseshes” (RIP Girl News) let’s talk about some stuff to like, to love, and to be obsessed with, for real but just for right now. Well, maybe for longer, but that doesn’t matter. OK? OK.

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MORE SHOPPING

Obviously Christmas and the following day-et-ceteras of Boxing Week are rilly, rilly unappealing and the bitterest mall-culture molasses. I am an extraordinary apologist for a lot of gnarly mainstream concepts/habits, because it/they makes me feel cozy and at home in an after-school-innocence kind of way, but I will not abide the thing of going on purpose to a parking-jail and then a room-jail and then a lineups-jail and then you use your crispy fresh Xmas cash for crumpled cardboard products because they are “off”? And then probs get some gum or whatever with the change? Like, no. But, but: I still feel the serotonin valley of entering icy daylight after a week or more of a present-oriented vacation (and, look, I barely even get presents because I’m an adult-person and maybe the deservedly least popular person in my family) and am also weak so am instituting a new thing where January 1st is for – it is for – silent, contemplative online shopping where you are to consider and purchase what you want for you, without the horrible tremors of other people’s ideas of you, and without the instant paper-gnashing gratification, and without the beautifully lit retail influence of what you might want even though you don’t. (Shopping websites are still ugly in that they are still “websites” (all websites are ugly; don’t forget) so it’s easier to know what’s what.) OK so that’s what I liked doing this year and what I will do next year is buy a something-something for my own self with whatever non-amount of money I have left and then three days later it shows up and I can convince myself that real life does not exist for one, two, three seconds longer.

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SNAPCHAT

The little ghosty Snapchat guy with his little tongue! I mean: ??? If he had his own brand of cereal I would totally buy it. Can you just look at him for a second and then come back? Also: yellow. What? What is yellow? Let’s look at him again. Is he why kids like Snapchat so much?

SWEATSHIRTS WITH STUFF ON THEM

Totally, recently dubious about those Balenciaga jobbies with the galaxy-spaceship-outer-space-sci-fi-metal-band-logo vibers, because every time I’ve seen a girl wearing one she looks sad and pissed and like she is in on a joke all by herself. (Is anything sadder?) However, I feel differently about those Kenzo tiger ones (they’ve been out for a while, or were out and were quickly revived, I dunno, but let’s make amends with each other about judging novelty fashion for being three minutes—but just three minutes—past ubiquity or expiry, OK?) (especially because novelty fashion via the Opening Ceremony BFFers who did them for Kenzo is more likely than most collabos/takeovers to be pretty good; consider Vision Streetwear/Chloe Sevigny).

But so anyway. They are so cute! And the notion of a printed, embroidered, whatevered sweatshirt proper—not a Bedazzled hoodie or screen-printed t-shirt or a ripped-up tank, which at this point has in its stylistic devolution become the clothes equiv of just vomiting and leaving it there, maybe rubbing it in a little—is so wise and nice. What is more transformative after so much torn-up punk simulacra than a sixth grade puffy-armed sweatshirt with a thing on the front? Can you just feel your bike seat under your butt, all warm from the sun it got while you were in math? Those tight cuffs and those crew necks and, oh, that formlessness (!) is like biting into a strawberry marshmallow over and over and over again. Into it. Into it so much! Since I live in Canada I might take it another step and wear it over a heart-patterned turtleneck, what do you think?

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JENNIFER LAWRENCE

Um have you seen this bitch on TV? A funny thing to do is to flip between interviews of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton because they are both entries in the emerging canon of eighties-supermodel-babes-come-lately, and will surely/finally be doing something in the culture (In The Culture! Gross!) to skew away a bit from the dominant protein-shake-ripped body style of the Victoria’s Secret ladies—just for a little flavor variety; no need to tell anybody how their body should be or not be, Christ—and laugh and laugh because Jennifer Lawrence is so pointedly, excitingly better at talking than anybody else in her nichey post-teen goes-on-TV schema.

Also: consider her outfits. No exhausted “off-duty” bullshit, but, like, tall and icy smoothies made of long skirts and fitted leotard-tops and tank dresses, like, if the 70s revival had happened in a way that wasn’t confined to the poor fabrics and compromise cuts of a F------ 2- or whitiver.

Also her face is gigantic; her cheeks are like plums cut in half. She is just so dreamy and great and for this week anyway, our once and future favorite.

13 is already lucky. I think this year is the year of the snake? Is that good stuff or bad stuff? I think—know!—that 2013 will be so good for everyone I know and don’t know and that we will transmogrify between now and a year from now into perfect versions of ourselves because the fuck why not? No really why not? No, why not?

Follow Kate on Twitter @KateCarraway