The Girl Year in Review

Hey y’alls, so, this is the last “Girl News” (Ever? Maybe? Maybe not ever. I don’t know. Do you know?), because I QUITTED. Instead, I’m going to do a thing called “Currently Obsessed.” Or maybe “Obseshed”? (What do you think, “Girl News” fans?) Whatever, you get the point for now. It will be about the stuffs that me and you and everyone else (probably more girls than boys though because we have a nice little thing going on here, don’t we baby girl, uh huh uh huh uh huh (strokes your face with a rabbit foot keychain)) likes. Not just likes—like-likes. But yeah it’s still mostly what I like, that you should maybe like, too, if you want to, which you should. Maybe not “like” but more like "respond to, emphatically." Let’s call it “Responding Emphatically.”

Until next time, though, we have some matters to discuss, so let’s get licking some pencils and into it. Sharpen them things up. 2012 was a year. Was it our year? Was it my year? (No, no, decidedly not). But it existed. I could go on like this for hours, days… years. At least one year. Years in Review are a fallacy to begin with, and I hate them; more on that in a second. Oh yeah also beyond the past month I can’t remember what was “this year” and what was “actually 2008 or 2010” or whatever, so just don’t worry about it. (And why would you? Why would you care/invest your gold-dust brain-dollars in something like my individual cultural memory? Don’t. Don’t email me about shit I “missed.” Do learn about “subjective.” OK, sorry. Let’s keep going.) Also, I am on holiday right now so let’s rip these on out like some Christmas Day icy-parking-lot donuts, shaaaaalll we?

YEARS IN REVIEW

Generally, it is a more male-nerd-skewing need to catalog and characterize events and items by when they happened or were issued or whatever. “Year in Review” is essentially male, a) which does not mean women are necessarily less interested, and b) which does mean that men tend to want to memorize ISBNs and be weird completists more than women tend to.

(Nota bene: I absolutely believe that while “Nerd” is no longer a designation with real meaning, as has been well-established by everyone who is mad at everyone else for liking their thing and for being “cute” about being “smart” (HORRIBLE CONSTRUCTS ANYWAY), it is still useful for women to use for themselves in that “nerd” has for a much much much shorter time—if it even is now—been a complete persona or characterization ready for employ in a girl-identity or girl-life. A lot of Chiquita Banaynays who are still getting comfy or just a little bit deep with their own intelligence and interests require the personality superstructure that “nerd” provides even if it is mostly worn-out as a Useful Thing on the dude side. So let’s just understand “nerd” going forward with that in mind.) (I’m telling you this because as an abstract and impressionistic thinker and “fan” or whatever, I do not happen relate to other “nerd” types who do have this need to taxonomize every single nut and bolt of the culture, and it has been the worst part of being a writer, having to ref-battle about this shit with boys I usually care for very much who shapeshift into Rerelease Reviewing automatons, and also never is this more clear than right the fuck now. December is annoying, basically.)

I was going to add Azealia Banks here because she seemed to have a lot of funnn and is our #1 crush—not in a faux-lezzie way, in a blisteringly relatable-wantable-haveable way—and she did a lot of good hair colors this year, and she put out a new thing that was good, but since she technically broke in 2011, I can’t have her on here or else some balding pedant with codependencies will ragesplain about how that isn’t strictly accurate. December: so annoying. December: reviewed!

THE GIRL YEAR IN REVIEW

And taken another way, 2012 was a year of so much girl-ness (fine, fine, woman-ness too) that all 12 months have been kind of pulsing with hot purple blood and Y-shaped wisdom, you know? (“Wysdom”) Out of several unbelievable election-related media flash-floods about and around the Girl Experience came a never-ending cultural conversation about what we are LIKE and what we might WANT and what we are ABOUT. Obviously there were hilarious lows and encouraging highs and so forth—and even some nuance, really—but that is someone else’s boring column to write. So let’s just focus on how basically every single day there was actual news in the world that had to do with women’s jobs and lives and futures and it was like a terrible camping trip, like, horrible. But also in retrospect, you’re glad it happened? Like aren’t you right now just exhausted but more satisfied than before, maybe?

GENERAL AND DIFFUSE EXPERIENCES OF DEPRESSION AND LET-DOWNERY

I dunno you guys, 2012 was really really really really awful for me. You too? I was so depressed that I woke up every day for about seven months being literally/90 percent sure I was inside of a nightmare and then was like “Oh so this is 'awake'?” I’m done with that, though. It’s cool it’s cool it’s cool. Also I think my point here is just that I believe this to be astrological and did that happen to any other Capricorns?

GOSSIP GIRL RIP

<3 akhk;ahg;fafj;ahfaf;af (that’s a fairly accurately rendered sign for “Serena’s Hair”). Miss you too, B.

THE RIHANNA/TAYLOR SWIFT BINARY

We don’t believe in binary constructs especially as they relate to what a girl is, or is considered to be, BUT where Ri has been doing a shirt wrapped around the waist, Tay has been doing prep-school sweaters and white lace dresses and Peter Pan collars and doctor bags and kitten heels. Where Ri has been holding hungry and thirsty people in cool-hostage on her plane, Taylor has been holding literally everyone else happy-hostage with perfect, stupid-bad, amazing songs. (This constitutes a binary.) I don’t know what to do with these two other than submit to them. (Oh ALSO? Complicating this and other equations is the Nickelback cover that Avril Lavigne did. Excuse me, it is so teeth-grindingly good, it gives me agita of everything.)

INSTAGRAM

Since Instagram is how girls best documented their days and interests in 2012 in ways that were secret and over-revealing and vulnerable and savvy, and now it is being taken out and sold from under us (OK not really but it feels that way), what is our next thing? Like at what point do we return to ICQ? Where is a place for all our stuff, all at once? And would that save iPhone battery life???

YVES SAINT LAURENT ROUGE PUR COUTURE VERNIS À LÈVRES GLOSSY STAIN

It makes this singular POP when you open it up, it’s made like a toy, and unlike any other product I’ve used in 20 years of makeuppery it is more akin to painting—like, painting for real, I’m not being cute—your mouth the way you paint a house. After you put it on, you’re going to do a little scream. “AH!!” like that.

JENNY SLATE

Year of Jenny Slate you guys! So she’s going to be on Parks and Recreation, fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine and she was on Girls of course and Marcel the Shell whatever-whatever but her Twitter presence, taken together, is the only place in the universe where girl-weird takes itself as seriously as boy-weird. Also, she seems very KIND and that is what my 2012 is peeking around the corner at in a very real way.

ISABEL MARANT

“I like sexiness, but I don’t like the first degree of it.” That is the quote of the year, even if I feel like “DISAGREE.”

LINDSAY LOHAN

I have a feeling I haven’t adequately over-told the story about the time my friend and I parallel-shopped beside Lindsay Lohan and her friend (or most likely assistant) at Opening Ceremony in LA? It was some special magic. My report is that she smells better than anyone else smells, even if half the smell was cigarettes, and she is tall as hell. I still think about her IRL face every single day, I mean, how could I not? It was so exciting.

ROYAL BABY

I guess?

BEING EMBARRASSING

OK obviously any lady who has 1,000,000 kids but also travels constantly to refugee camps in a real-looking way and definitely has sex with her man is our kind of lady, but what was the score with Angelina-Banina’s leg situation at the Oscar’s? It was pretty good when Jim Rash did her pose when he got his best-writing award and everything, but let’s return to the source and consider what she thought about first. Like how premeditated was that? Did anyone find it legit sexy? Is “posing” every sexy? Did she think, Here is how I am going to pose, like… this! and practice? Or was she just feeling the mid-afternoon breezes in a normal way? I need to know!

BEYONCÉ

OK so it was also the year of Beyoncé.This is too Yeah I Know Already to even include but like I said I’m on holiday so shut up. Queen B, significantly, acquiesced to her nation of superfans (literally every person on the planet qualifies as a nation unto itself) by GETTING  A TUMBLR, I MEAN, AND DOING IT PROPERLY, IIIIII MEAN, AND NOT STACKING UP HER INSTAS WITH SOME BEE-ESS-ES. She even does that stuff right, y’alls. Beyoncé had her beybaby (bebebe, more accurately) Blue Ivy Carter in January, so we collectively meditated on that for a minute, and then she showed up all over the place looking like she did (Oof, she is hot) and then there was the Marfa photoset and nobody could handle it, nobody could. I feel irresponsible for having typed all of this and diverted our attention away from our work and relationships and self-care. I’m sorry.

GIRLS

Girls.

WHAT’S NEXT

So yeah, see you on January 4, which will be the first thinger of our new co-enterprise (by which I mean I will be making it and you will be reading it and then dreaming of me in a heart-shaped cumulus cloud and probably clasp your hands under your chin and make a big sigh like “Aaaaaaah, Kate!”) (jkjkjkjk). But really, see you then. And also, my birthday is the next week, so that will certainly be about what I expect to get. And before all of that it will be New Year’s Resolution-times and mine is, like, um, mine is mine is mine is… I mean, not having Road Runner-cortisol-chaos-runny-nose-ten-minutes-late-already vibe-times when I leave the house, ever again, is my real resolution. When I can float out the door like a French-lady cartoon (picture an invisible poodle) I'll feel like I’m done, like I’ve finished something. It’s good, you know?

Follow Kate on Twitter @KateCarraway

Previously - Girls and Prezzies!!!!!