i'm every woman (except for the ones into new age-y fascism! don't love that!), it's all in meeeee
On the concept of the divine feminine, rage and makeup, my Nina Simone obsession and how the people on TikTok can't be normal about anything
Let’s be gross and sentimental to start: I just wanted to thank everyone who is getting this over email right now. I’ve been trying not to study the subscriber list too hard, but just seeing flashes of names — including people who have been dear to me at different stages of my life and maybe steered me to become who I am now more than they realize — made my heart very full. Sometimes you just gotta sit down and state the obvious: it’s lovely when people care. So thank you!
Seeing so many names that made me smile also had me envisioning a schedule for what future newsletters will be about, and it has me thinking we’re going to cover mostly pop culture stuff at least through the beginning of next year, just so you know what to expect. I thought about really delving into the last few years of my life — how even without The Thing that happened on a global scale, they’ve been joyous and painful and transformative for better and worse — but I also think the wounds might be too fresh to dive in deep right now. Frankly, it also had me thinking about how public a forum this is; the people who may have made less than graceful exits from my life deserve the grace from me to not air out their dirty laundry here. In some cases, they still slot uncomfortably into in my life right now and I’m not in any position (yet) to untangle myself from them, and I think time and perspective will serve each story when I finally tell them. I will tell them eventually, because they shaped me and how I act and react to the world around me, which I have this compulsive need to express to other people. Very melodramatic, which is very typical of me (in case you’re new here).
Anyway, until then, let’s get to the axe I have to grind about this: TikTok spirituality.
I have my beef with TikTok that I won’t fully air out here—in case someone reading would like to hire me to run their social media because I would love to do that!—but my issues are the obvious shortcomings that I think even regular users can suss out: there is very little room for nuance, and young, impressionable children go tap-tap-tap with their fingers and believe a bunch of bullshit because the bullshitter has the same format and marketing resources as the expert. I was the same on all of the social platforms around when I was their age, but TikTok is so massive that even people who aren’t terminally online are privy to their shit (you can read my recent rant on how this affects women artists and the well-meaning young women who are being taught to believe their own internalized misogyny over at Polyester), which I don’t believe can have any positive outcome.
Most of the time, I scroll past the screenshots I see on Twitter, shaking my head and forgetting about it. However, one screenshot I saw the other week kind of solidified my problem with the way The TikTok People talk about spirituality/esotericism/occult subjects:
Listen: tragically, I’m interested in this kind of shit. Maybe it’s true that I’m one of those lost assholes running around with my head cut off who needs “guidance” regarding my identity, and that’s why I have fun with learning astrology stuff, seriously devoting myself to learning tarot (which I think I’m good at, actually, since I have real client testimonials I could share — a story for another newsletter) and yes! Occasionally I dabble in a secular form of witchcraft! I do believe that something somewhere guides me, and it’s probably not a man in the sky, but it’s probably not just a void of nothingness either.
Therefore, I allow myself to engage in rituals that I feel honor the parts of myself I celebrate; they’re more like gentle reminders of my own worth rather than “spells,” maybe. I’m not trying to locate a baby’s blood and an ox tail for a spell, girl. I live in the most densely populated part of North America and there’s no place to bury shit and I’ll probably never own any land, so forget that too. For now, my holding my own sacred objects and imbuing them with power works for me. In fact, a few weeks ago, I lost a pentagram witches’ rosary I carried everywhere with me and had whispered into, “prayed” over, and incorporated into spells. The second it was gone? I lost a major job opportunity, lost another trinket that was important to me, had an injury I thought I had mostly gotten over come back and had a major miscommunication come up between me and another potential employer, all within a few days. Tell me it’s bullshit, I don’t care. I think it’s something.
However, I don’t completely buy into most historical sects of pagan witchcraft - mostly because so much was cribbed from indigenous healing practices, and because its power has never really seems to have been steeped in its woman leaders. I respect many people in the Wiccan tradition—I don’t mean to offend them and I don’t want to generalize—but during its resurgence in the 60s and 70s and then onward, it seemed many influential covens were run by men (for a fictional example, go see The Love Witch), and it seems like a lot of those groups promoted this specific interpretation of the “divine feminine.”
I know about the concept. It exists in most mythology. Aphrodite was its incarnate symbol in Greek myth, etc. I’m not here to dispute its cultural meaning, or even this person’s interpretation of it, necessarily. There are several things I want to point out though. One: this conflation of passive vs. active energy and masculine vs. feminine needs to stop - I’ll get further into my experience with that in a second. Two: the “traditional” values of the occult or non-religious spirituality have always attracted the alternative right. There is an excellent paper here that you should consider reading if you want to know more about this. Basically, because it falls back on the conservative idea that there was some “Golden Age” at one time that we should “return” to, they use shit like this to argue that women were better off when they were “in their natural state.” That might sound enticing, but their version of that means docility, not any form of freedom. It also ignores that while the desire to express one’s gender is certainly a human activity, gender is something we made up. That’s why transphobes’ argument that someone’s gender is tied to their sexual organs is bullshit. That’s why the argument that cis women, because most of them are able to procreate, are imbued with some inherent personality trait is bullshit. This is all taught. This is all learned through (often harrowing) experience.
Do I think young people like the one who made this TikTok think they’re spouting conservative rhetoric? No. I think she feels power from harnessing the same inner turmoil I wish to harness and making it something bigger than any single human form. I don’t blame her at all, actually. Being a woman is not considered “powerful” unless you’re just acting like most men are taught to (Google why people aren’t fans of the “girlboss” thing for context). I understand why she might think her power lies where she’s decided it does - where she’s told it does. It’s like this thing where young girls complain that they have to work rather than being cared for…conveniently forgetting everything else that came along with that. I think there’s immense power in emotion, don’t get me wrong. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that that’s our “traditional” default, rather than something we are shoved into. I don’t think I should give certain men in my life an out when it comes to being empathetic because he’s taught it’s not “natural” to him.
I think the one thing I can actively comment on and argue is this: sure, those first two rows do convey typical opposites. Ignore the header if you want, they are opposites. However, I’d argue that the traits in the third row — “emotional/intuitive” vs. “focused” — are not.
I wrote about this briefly in an album review that I thought it was relevant to earlier this year, but I’ll say it again here. Femininity at its core, to me, is violent. Not just because of the violence enacted on women and feminine-presenting people at large, but in the violent joy they express as well. It has almost nothing to do with outward appearance. Emotions exist in an active, brutal state. That could just be the drama of youth talking, but my creativity exists in that state too. To be truly creative is an act of beauty and anguish in equal measure. If creativity is, in fact, a traditionally “feminine trait,” why is it so bloody? So sacrificial? Why is it often so angry? Why am I so involved and focused on it that it becomes my burden? My intuitive sense is clear enough that focus can’t help but come into it.
If creativity is a feminine trait, why did only men get to express it for so long? In reality, each side of the masc/femme binary is balanced within us — which is why it’s truly a spectrum, because we each exist at some point along it. I think that masculine side of me certainly exists, but does that mean the bloodshed is a part of it? Or does the the closed-off part — the inability to express myself at certain times — stand as what is masculine in me? Is it my straight-laced side, when it rears its head? When the men in my life growing up exhibited rage, it felt different from mine. It often felt empty, like it’s their right to do it, so they might as well. Like they didn’t even have to hesitate to make it their primary outlet. As a result, they held nothing. They still hold nothing. It’s a light, airy bout of rage, really. Cute, almost. When I break, my scream could collapse the floor beneath me, it contains so much. I’ve been lucky enough to meet plenty of men since who don’t kid themselves about both sides of that spectrum existing within them. Notice their rage isn’t as frequent. They don’t feel entitled to what they perceive as their superiority. Notice they’re not constantly running way from a monster they’ve created within themselves.
I am angry every day of my goddamn life. I think the way I was brought up to think about myself and others grants me the right to that anger. I am bewildered by the things certain other people think they are just as angry about. They don’t know the dull ache of it sitting in the center of your chest in every waking moment. I don’t know the intensity of the anger people who have been done even more wrong by the world around us feel; if my pain hurts this badly, and theirs must be at least ten times worse, how can they be expected to go on? These men who lack self-awareness deal solely in frivolity, performance. Didn’t the conservative punchline say those were feminine traits too? Gender expression itself is just that — performance. So why are they lauded and we told off?
Notice the girl in this TikTok is not the wild feminine archetype we’re taught we should fear. Notice how she’s made up. Is that inherently linked to the divine as well — or just tradition as we're taught it? I hope she’s wearing it because she loves it, because I think makeup can be tied to divinity. I love wearing makeup, so I’m not shaming her for it. What I have no interest in is using anything traditionally feminine about myself to attract others. I do not find my own version of divinity in playing what a girl is supposed to look like for others’ benefit.
If doing your makeup is a ritual dedicated to the preservation and upkeep of the self, then it will remain that way for me — not for anyone else’s approval. I want to be wanted, but not because I made myself palatable to a person who has never had to doubt themselves. In fact, discovering the history of drag makeup when I was younger was the key to get me into makeup at all. It was a “that’s what I’m supposed to look like” moment. If I’m forced to hold this rage, can’t I express it in a way that I feel is suitable?
I was embarrassingly bold with it sometimes in middle and high school, but I’m glad I was. I remember every snide comment made, both by kids my age and adults in my life who should’ve known better. I held them in an aching fist for years until those same people started doing their own makeup like I had a decade ago, grasping at straws to be “different” now that there was a safety in it. I was experimental at times. I was outrageous without even realizing it. It was selfish in the best way. I want to hold that girl to my chest now, because she was just as angry as I am, but had misidentified it as sadness. Sadness is what happens when you accept your anger idles in vain. I want her to know the sharp, rocking pain of both joy and spite are coming. It’s not better, it’s just another sensation. And I want her to know.
Aren’t we taught that women are meant to be selfless? I rebuke that unwritten rule’s champions. Reject it. I am at a point in my life where I have people who love me, but few honor me in the way that I need. Who will honor me if I don’t? I would argue that the fourth row in that screenshot fails to represent opposites as well. I would argue nothing shows more initiative than to go out of your way to nurture another human being. To argue that one thing is a “feminine” (meaning often derided and demeaned) trait is bullshit. I choose to nurture myself if no one else will. The world is difficult and I often feel very alone in it. If I need to be violent in order to protect myself, that is not me exhibiting a “masculine” trait. That’s me being a person.
Purity has nothing to do with it. Holding my anger like it’s sacred has everything to do with it. There is divinity within that. That’s my little spiel.
As I sit here rattling off this life manifesto, I’m thinking about the list of people who embody this “divine feminine” figure, if I’m using my own definition. Who is the person I feel truly divine power from, who knows the human condition so well that they somehow exist on another plane entirely? I mean, that’s easy. It’s Nina Simone. Was she perfect off-stage? No, but so many other people purposely play-acted who she was. She was this performer. She was brutal and tender and beyond what the average spectrum of human emotions can even fathom. I don’t use the word genius ever. She was probably our one true genius, or at least one of a few.
I’m not sure David Bowie was a true, pure genius in the way she was, but he certainly knew what he was talking about when he told Nina Simone, while she was going through a major creative and financial slump: “The first thing I want you to know is that you’re not crazy—don’t let anybody tell you you’re crazy, because where you’re coming from, there are very few of us out there. […] What’s wrong with you is you were gifted—you have to play. Your genius overshadows the money, and you don’t know what to do to get your money, whereas I wasn’t a genius, but I planned, I wanted to be a rock-and-roll singer and I just got the right formula.” A friendship grew out of these conversations the pair had shortly before the video below was taken.
While playing in Switzerland, where Bowie was living at the time to record most of Low, Simone demands to know if he’s there. He is not. After confronting the audience and confirming he’s not there, she shows her antique Greek necklace to the audience, allowing them time to clap for it. “It is meant for a queen, and I am a queen,” she declares as if there has never been a more factual statement before getting up and bowing. She laughs deliriously as she sits. “I know you are jolted,” she continues, “because suddenly, it occurs to you it might be true!” Nervous laughter ensues from a fraction of the audience; the rest remain silent, confirming her statement. She sings the first few lines of Janis Ian’s “Stars” before calling out to a woman in the audience: “Hey, girl, sit down!” Silence. They think she’s kidding. “Sit DOWN!!!!” she demands several more times. Then, she resumes one of the most devastating, haunting live performances I’ve ever seen. Spellbinding doesn't even begin to describe the whole affair as it is laid out here.
This next video from 23 years later is probably my favorite musician interview of all time. I’ve narrowed it down to the final two or so minutes, where she confirms she attempted to murder (?) a record exec who wouldn’t pay her, talks about how all men are afraid of her and probably should be and makes the interviewer list where she obtained her doctorate degrees. She is our one true high priestess. None of us should even attempt to brush the stars in the way she has.
Okay, Elise, we’re playing your wrap-up music…
Other things I’ve done since I last talked to you? Not very much! The day before I wrote/launched the first newsletter, I saw Bones & All—a movie so targeted towards me that I’m actually a little suspicious about it—in theaters. A lot of people are overselling the gore. I’ve personally had to fight really hard to keep from saying “me and who” every time someone has asked me about it. It was gross and tender in equal measure and I recommend it.
Most of my time has actually been spent working on a fairly major interview that will probably not be out yet by the time I send this. Anyway, I’m excited for that and obviously can’t say anything else about it, though I would like to include the words of encouragement I received from the one person I told. She’s subscribed, so I know this will make her laugh. The specific capitalization and emoji placement here made me laugh out loud over a message that was definitely meant to be half-earnest. Both the earnest and non-earnest halves are appreciated.
I’ll see you all next time when I break down my favorite albums of the year — I have the bones of it finished and it’s probably gonna look like this: ten (or maybe 11, depending on when the SZA album comes out, let’s be real) albums that I really, really loved this year, with substantial blurbs. That will be followed by two-ish sentence reviews on 50-ish other albums I feel the need to tell you about. There will be lots of hyperbole and lyrics typed out to look like I’m yelling them that I can’t include in blurbs I’m paid to write. Personally, I’m very excited for you to read my barely coherent ideas, because of course I am.
To close out, here’s my official December playlist (it won’t let me embed for some reason—hopefully it works in January, I’m tech support here and I’m hopeless so don’t know what to tell you). We might be seeing some artists from next edition’s list on it…who’s to say? Enjoy it at your leisure. <3