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Table of Contents
Hi friends!
I want to know the deal with the trucker hats with patches on the front with an animal and word accompanying it. Are you seeing these in your cities, or is this a primarily New York thing? It feels very Midwestern.
I’ve never seen a woman wear these, only young men. It evokes the same vibe as when a male who doesn’t look particularly geeky wears some garment with the Naruto cloud graphic or when dudes used to slit their eyebrows. They feel like ways to flag I may (think I) look like a manly man, but I’m actually very sensitive. The animal patchwork is intricate enough, and the word that accompanies them is either the animal itself (ex: Stallion, Cock) or a quality associated with the animal (ex: Cash for a cow hat, Bad Boy for a Rottweiler). It does feel gamer-adjacent, like a way to customize your avatar.
I’m not sure if I like them or not. They’re definitely a trend. I learned through my Googling that the brand is called Goorin Bros., a hat manufacturer since the 1890s that actually started in Pittsburgh. They have all kinds of hats, but these are the only ones that stand out to me. They feel like hats for influencers or the guys that you always see at the gym. I’m not sure if they’re masculine or the girliest thing I’ve ever seen.
Men should be allowed to describe themselves through style, though! It’s like girls wearing necklaces that say Princess or their name. Have you ever seen a guy wear something with his name on it that isn’t a jersey? It would look weird, right? This is almost a socially acceptable way to do that.
These hats also feel indicative of our political moment because they feel political but with an ambiguous affiliation. It’s almost like how men who champion men’s mental healthcare can either be woke leftists or alt-righties. You can get a hat featuring an eagle with Freedom, yes, but something about these hats feels queer to me…maybe because these feel like hats for men to impress each other with instead of attracting women. Seeing a guy wearing this doesn’t seem to have a political affiliation other than very online. I guess we know what direction that’s been pointing in lately, though.
Anyway, do you know what I’m talking about? What do you think of them? You know that if you use the web version of Beehiiv you can comment and tell the world your thoughts. I especially want to hear from my male subscribers or people who are dating men that either bought or debated buying one.
Do you know these hats? What do you think of them?
After what has felt like endless weeks of travel diaries or weekend recaps or really just public journal entries, I finally have the realest news I’m capable of: cultural conjecturing focused on reality TV!
A new, uncomfortable phenomenon
I don’t follow many celebrities on social media, but I do follow drag queens. I was shocked upon my Sunday morning Instagram scroll last week to see one of them post RIP to Jiggly Caliente, a contestant on season 4 and All Stars 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a judge on Drag Race Philippines.
Bianca Castro-Arabejo, 44, was at the prime of her career, starting her reality tenure as the butt of every joke and metamorphosing into a glamorous queen with an international fanbase. A few days prior, Jiggly’s family shared that she had to get her leg amputated due to an infection. It just sounds like an especially terrible way to go — and so young. In the subsequent days, it seems like every Drag Race girl shared a story about how giving, inclusive, and hilarious Jiggly was.
All deaths are sad, but add on her 1. age 2. goodness 3. cause of death and, the most, 4. her rising stardom. Drag Race is producing an all-Asian all stars season, and I read plenty of Reddit comments hoping that Jiggly would host or at least guest judge. Death is inevitable, but it’s tragic when the inevitability comes sooner than you’d expect.
The sadness is compounded by the January death of The Vivienne, winner of the first-ever Drag Race UK season and only non-American cast member of the all-winners All Stars 7 season. This is another instance of a larger-than-life, legendary queen gone too soon (who also happens to be one of my faves). The U.K.’s Drag Race convention was a week after her death and featured a memorial area where her booth would’ve been for fans to mourn together.
As toxic and frustrating as the Drag Race fandom is, I do think we’re pretty good(?) at honoring and grieving the queens who have passed (six total: three from the U.S., 2 from the U.K., and one from Thailand). I think that it’s a part of being queer that’s lingered since the AIDS crisis trying to preserve the memories of so many of your friends, especially when the rest of the world might not do the same.
Then again, there are 15 Drag Race franchises and over 1,000 queens who have competed. Even if you just care about the U.S. seasons, that’s still 224 queens so far. Having two in four months was haunting and yielded the uncomfortable thought Damn, this is unfortunately just the beginning!
Grief is weird, and I’m luckily not an expert yet in mourning. It’s on my mind, though, because I just finished the memoir of grief expert Carole Radziwill, whose husband Anthony Radziwill died of cancer 3 weeks after her brother-in-law and best friend — JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy — died in a plane crash. I wanted to read the book because I’m watching her on the Real Housewives, a franchise that hasn’t had any of its stars die yet, which Redditors occasionally worry about when that will change.
As the definition of fame evolves and more people have access to large audiences, grieving reality stars will be different than how we process deaths of conventional celebrities. I have no idea how, so let’s break it down:
How do we handle conventional celebrity deaths?
It’s weird to mourn someone you’ve never met. Mourn also feels like a strong word. For most celebrities that die, we read a headline and maybe look further into it, whether that’s scrolling through socials or reading whatever preliminary information the press has. The most we express is usually an Aww to be shared with friends, maybe even an Instagram story with a great picture of them and a heart emoji.
Amplify these feelings if the person 1. was young 2. was beautiful 3. died tragically 4. made media you connect with. We don’t think much of them again aside from revisiting their work or watching some sort of In Memoriam compilation. It’s usually passive. Sometimes, there are a few celebrities you think of long after wishing you could see how they react to something current (I feel this way about Joan Rivers).
Sometimes, the feelings are bigger, especially when the celebrities are bigger. I think the first massive celebrity death with ripple effects I remember was Michael Jackson. People cried! Whitney Houston and Robin Williams also occupy this space for my early cultural consciousness. Sorry to link a Buzzfeed listicle in 2025, but they do a job only a site like Buzzfeed can do of ranking which pop culture human deaths mattered the most.
My personal saddest celebrity death was Mac Miller. I was in a journalism class my sophomore year of college when I found out, and I shed a few tears in a College of Communication bathroom. Mac and I are Pittsburgh Jews with some similar favorite spots and went to the same summer camp (I only went for a year, but he was a regular). One of my sharable fun facts is that I had lunch with his mom when I was in middle school while my mom worked for a local magazine spotlighting his rise (she was super cool, obviously). He was one of the first rappers I obsessively listened to as I grew alongside his eras: from local delinquent to international playboy to total lover to introspective icon. He was big and was only getting bigger.
He remains relevant, and I think of him frequently enough. I had tickets to his concert that would never come. His songs are still great; his F*** you, Donald Trump statement resurfaces on a few Instagram stories. I never listened to the posthumous album because that’s not really my thing.
Some people’s saddest celebrity deaths feel even sadder. Our most recent examples were found in parks around the world where Liam Payne fans would sob, sing, and pile art onto makeshift memorials. I wasn’t in Pittsburgh when Mac died, but I bet I would have joined the masses at Blue Slide Park remembering him.
When we mourn, it’s a mix of who that person was and how they made us feel. With celebrities, I think we are more saddened by the latter, since we didn’t know them fully and truly — just whatever version filtered out to the public eye. Pangs of nostalgia for the media that shaped us, gratitude to those who made it for us without knowing us. Celebrity deaths evoke more feelings about us than about them because of how far away they are from us.
Most reality stars, however, live lives closer to ours. We see heavily produced versions of them, too, but the hope through reality TV is seeing something — something! — real, which the best shows achieve.
The differences between reality stars and conventional celebrities
Proliferation: The decades of performers, athletes, and moguls are no match for the aughts-and-beyond’s fecundity of reality shows and their casts. Survivor alone has over 730 contestants over 48 seasons in a show that’s only existed in this millennium. In the reality universe of successful shows, early-out cast members get way more fan attention than random movie background actors.
Accessibility: It can be a lot harder for reality stars to achieve longterm wealth and fame. To remain relevant, many continue mining their vulnerable selves by being available, usually through social media. It’s much easier to get a Cameo from Kori King than a few minutes with Saorsie Ronan.
Respectability: Most traditional celebrities are famous for their skills. Although some reality shows require talents, many don’t — and many thrive off of people who possess negative talents. Reality television is perceived as much tackier and lowbrow than legacy media. Because highbrow institutions look down on reality TV, these shows are not honored and remembered the same way important games or shows have been. Side note: I just learned through Google that there’s the American Reality Television Awards, which has actually existed since 2012. Comedian, Snatch Game judge, and Ramona Singer impersonator Heather McDonald hosted this past year.
Who are some reality stars that have passed?
Obviously, I think of my favorite shows first. I think there might be more from America’s Next Top Model, but the two I’m thinking of are Jael (Cycle 8) and Mirjana (Cycle 21). Both were pot stirrers on their seasons and invited contoversy, but I liked them. Jael struggled with addiction but was sober for over 5 years when she died from breast cancer. Mirjana was murdered a few years after the show aired. These two were what the modern reality celeb death looks like: young and tragic while they still had a social media audience from the show.
I wish I knew more about Mob Wives to know the impact of Big Ang’s death. She was a multi-season star of the show with her gravely voice and plastic surgery, living on through memes to those of us unfamiliar to the show. The show was over at the time of her death from lung cancer.
I passively watch Dancing with the Stars, and a few years ago one of their judges died. Len Goodman was a proper ol’ Brit that got on the stars about their form and elegance. I’m not sure I would consider him a reality star because judges have a different form of celebrity. The show renamed their winner trophy after him during the season following his death. The dancers performed something they choreographed in his honor. He was revered institutionally in a manner reserved for conventional celebrities.
I also am not sure whether to categorize this here because I don’t consider her a reality star, but you’re more likely to know her: Christina Grimmie. She was a finalist on The Voice, but I knew her before that because she was massive on YouTube, especially for one superfan at my middle school. This girl in my class had met Grimmie multiple times, and she seemed like a really kind, giving person to her fans. Unfortunately, one crazed fan took advantage of that and shot her at a meet-and-greet. Unlike most other reality star deaths, her celebrity is what led to her demise.
I took a British television class when I studied in London, and my professor spent time telling us about Jade Goody. Jade was an early Big Brother star in the U.K., but star might be a strong word. She was once called the most hated woman Britain. Her first BB run was in 2002, clearly the stereotype of an uncouth, dumb Essex girl. In this pre-social media world while reality TV is still quite new, she was one of the first notorious reality stars. I think this brought her into a celebrity category because of how well-known she was, and she had her own shows eventually. She returned to the house a few seasons later and was in a group that was racist towards an Indian castmate, ending her run in disgrace. She was apologetic and was filming for an Indian reality show when she found out she had cervical cancer. Her public battle softened her in the public eye and encouraged more women to get cervical cancer screenings before her death in 2009. All of these moments were obsessively covered, and the media milked her beyond her death. Here’s an opinion piece in The Guardian about how class prejudice contributed to her perception. In a way, she is the ultimate reality star death but not for a modern audience because social media prevents any celebrity from being as big as they were in the early aughts.
Is Steve Irwin the first reality star death? It’s hard for me to put The Crocodile Hunter in the same category as Bad Girls Club. Also, Irwin was a true celebrity. He might, however, be the ultimate case of celebrity mourning almost 20 years after his death. His son was just teased as the first contestant on the next season of Dancing with the Stars, which his daughter won a while back. His commitment to wildlife conservation, one of the most digestible forms of advocacy, cemented his heroic status. Again, this is much harder for a reality star to achieve.
So how will we handle it?
My prediction? Unfortunately, as always, as most things are…it depends…on:
Age and cause of death: Survivor has had a few cast deaths, but a lot of them were the older contestants from older seasons, which makes sense as death will come for us all. Obviously if someone is younger or dies in a strange manner, this will hurt differently.
Show relevance: Do we know if any of the contestants on A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila have died?
Relevance within show universe: In a competition show, is this a winner? Someone beloved? Someone who’s come back for multiple seasons? In a show with a similar cast each season, is this someone who stayed for many seasons? Carried the plot forward? Showed us a lot of themselves?
Reputation out of the show: Did they fall down an antivaxxer pipeline or use their show experience to catapult them into a more authentic stage of their career? Were they kind to fans?
Notice I didn’t say someone’s reputation within the show. A mature reality fan knows that shows are heavily edited, and someone’s behavior in a show is not an indictment of their character (unless they did something truly bigoted or evil that editing doesn’t manipulate). Plus, we all love our villains for keeping the show moving.
I think the Real Housewives fandom is a great case study for this. These women bicker at nothing and are extremely out of touch with how the world works. They frustrate us often. However, we love them for the joy their work has brought us. We don’t have to know them in real life, which actually makes us love them more. Even though we have more in common with the bartenders and servers the housewives poorly interact with, we don’t have to take the dismissive parts of them, so it’s easier to love them.
Some fandoms need to get better at this. Back to Drag Race, we have a problem with (particularly young) judgmental fans sending copious amounts of hate to the queens online. Queens get bullied over just about anything, winners being told their victory was a lie.
Especially shows whose stars are more accessible to us, reality star deaths possess something conventional celebrity deaths won’t: our individual treatment towards them. Angelina Jolie isn’t reading her fan DMs, but that random Love Is Blind contestant is. When we approach these fame-craving people with hatred, especially over things that don’t matter, we are actively dampening their lives. Although these “stars” do choose to go on their shows, no one deserves relentless bullying for petty show behavior.
(Hopefully many decades) Later, when these reality stars pass on, wouldn’t it be much better to remember the fun we had watching them instead of the crap we gave them online? Unless they are truly rotted, hateful people, we will remember all of them fondly, no matter their skill or connections on their corresponding shows. We’ll continue memorializing them online and hope our behavior before their death matches our reverence after. Let’s make sure our reality stars have respect at other times in their life than just their death.
This week’s photo is from a big walk I did yesterday. I’d been wanting to walk the two hours to Forest Hills Stadium just because I knew I could. I’d never been to the neighborhood and wanted to see its suburban glory. I realized I wasn’t done once I got there, so I ended up going all the way to Jamaica Center and taking the train home from there. You could say I walked to another country. There’s an ad below me here that, if you click on it, gives me $2 (assuming you didn’t click the one on the top).
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Current fixations I want to mention
Food & Drink
I had a really amazing brunch at beloved Greenpoint only-hiring-hot-people restaurant Rule of Thirds this weekend, but I can’t stop thinking about a dinner I had earlier last week a few blocks away. My friend’s friend visiting last year from North Carolina went to Japanese sandwich shop Taku Sando and said it was one of the best sandwiches she’d ever had. Although I thought every meal I had in New York was the best meal ever when I first visited and moved here, this place did look really good. I finally went, grabbing a chicken katsu sando to eat in the sun down the block on the dinkiest park along the water. Usually I’m unwrapping white and orange paper around a chicken sandwich at 3 a.m. from Popeye’s, but this more appropriately timed sandwich looked so amazing I had to snap a pic (which I don’t do much with food). Thankfully, it tasted as good as it looked. The bread is thin but in a way you like, just barely keeping steady the saucy fried chicken and slaw below. Yes, I was hungry and eating dinner after a long day, but I think I’d feel the same in pickier circumstances. Taku Sando gets bonus points for having one of the best bathrooms I’ve seen in the city, a single room with multicolored tile and a bidet.
Music
Lately I’ve been getting up early on the days I have to go in the office so I can take the L into Manhattan and, instead of transferring to get to my office, walking down the island for an hour until I reach it. It’s been really fun for like every reason imaginable. Last week, I walked along the West Side Highway and Hudson River, looking out at the picturesque piers and West Village runners. Something snapped in me, and I ended up listening to all the songs I have saved on Spotify from my girl Miley Cyrus. I just want to appreciate her for a second. My first concert was Hannah Montana with the Jonas Brothers opening, and “See You Again” was a song that made third-grade Sydney feel like a big girl. I’ve always adored Miley and her music even through the dark ages. If you haven’t listened all the way through Bangers, it really is an album of bangers and might be her best. I love her in every era, though. I’m walking to my first internship to “Mother’s Daughter,” driving to my first job wondering “WTF Do I Know,” dancing on my first nights out in the city to “Flowers.” I hope her next album gives me some memories, too. I don’t think it’s nostalgic to say that she has one of the most captivating voices of our generation. Always great to have a Miley Walk.
Internet & Pop Culture
Non-New Yorkers, there’s this popular, infamous megaclub called Brooklyn Mirage, which is owned by a company with a reputation recently for making festival Electric Zoo look like Fyre Festival. The Mirage has been under construction and was set to reopen this past weekend, but people were highly skeptical this would happen. The CEO slung out a robust social campaign aimed at quelling fears and getting people excited for what could be the future of clubbing. However, you could see all the visible construction going on in the back of the videos, showing that the venue clearly would not be ready by Friday. The day of the reopening, the Mirage posted on Instagram that they, in fact, were canceling the night’s show due to the venue not passing city inspections. Everyone laughed. They eventually canceled the rest of the weekend’s events, too. It’s just funny to see flops.
Television & Maybe Movies
Sorry, but I still haven’t been watching any TV other than The Real Housewives of New York. God, this season is so awesome. They do a cast trip seemingly every other episode, Dorinda is getting mad at nothing, and I just heard the Countess LuAnn utter the iconic phrase, Be cool. Don’t be all, like, uncool. This season, and especially the Turks and Caicos trip, is incredible because there are so many fights but they all get resolved quickly with a side of humor. I’m especially enjoying the absolute lesbianosity of Bethenny and Carole’s budding friendship, which really starts with Carole wearing a sweater reading Trouble telling Bethenny she had a sex dream about her. Bethenny really has all of these newer girls malfunctioning, and I loved watching her and Heather fight and make up with Heather all but admitting Bethenny made her jealous. These women have all been very touchy, but now I’m really understanding why there are so many stan Twitter people talking about how gay this franchise is. I didn’t have much time this week to watch TV, and I’m happy I spent all of it immersed in this universe.
Journalism & Literature
My RHONY obsession brought me Carole Radziwill, one of the few Housewives I think is genuinely super smart. The women on the show knew of her by her memoir What Remains. It goes through a lot of the first 30-some years of her life but particularly focuses on loss: her best friends died in a plane crash three weeks before her husband died of cancer. Carole spends the beginning discussing her small-town roots before moving to the big city to work for ABC where she meets and eventually dates Anthony Radziwill, JFK’s nephew. His best friend is his cousin, JFK Jr., and his eventual spouse Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy becomes Carole’s best friend. JFK Jr. and Carolyn were the ultimate tabloid couple with a vortex of rumors swirling about their union, which you don’t hear much about in this book. This book memorializes all three of them, but I really see it as a love letter to effortlessly stunning, kind Carolyn. Otherwise healthy Anthony learns he has cancer, is basically told he’ll die in 5 years, and slowly deteriorates until then. Carole is very honest about her guilt, resentment, and bravery even though she wouldn’t use that word. I cried a bit at the end. It’s definitely sad but also a quick read, and the journalist she is knows how to set a scene, which are often in beautiful places. I think I see a lot of myself in Carole both on the show and in this book maybe because of her journalistic tendencies and overall silliness. She also coined a term that made me laugh: tragedy whores (for people who milk someone’s death). I really enjoyed the book and am happy to have this new lens of someone on the show I’m watching, but I’m in the middle of a Celebrity Memoir Book Club episode about it that’s more critical than I am.
Something I Saw in the Wild
I saw the underbelly of some G train seats because I fell as I was sitting down when the train started moving again. I fully rolled onto the floor and made a scene. Gabby is always there whenever I fall for some reason, placed by God to laugh at me. I need to learn how to laugh things off because when I make a scene, I immediately go into project management: Thank you! I’m all good! I’m not hurt! Sorry to disturb! Even worse, a guy said he heard a thud of an object leaving my bag, so I looked under the seats assuming it was my phone…only to remember my phone in my pocket.