In A Bad Mood?

Hi friend,

It’s remarkable how every day seems to bring a fresh headline about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. On Wednesday, when The Hollywood Reporter announced that Lively has “filed an amended complaint alleging that two other actresses on the set of the film [It Ends With Us] are prepared to testify as to their own uncomfortable experiences with Baldoni or with his Wayfarer Studios partner Jamey Heath.” Lively and Baldoni are set to go to trial in a few weeks.

This legal tête-à-tête has been described in the media as a “feud” or an ongoing saga, but that framing purposefully confuses the matter. This series of events all reportedly unfolded from Lively’s discomfort with inappropriate behavior on set – concerns that she raised privately. Nonetheless, as Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate reported in a bombshell for the New York Times late last year, a “Hollywood smear campaign” was launched against the actress as some sort of bulwark against reputational damage. (Baldoni is now suing the Times over this; they stand by their reporting.)

Given this information, all coverage of Lively should be consumed with a healthy dose of skepticism – including the recent spate of faux outrage over her appearance at the SNL50 anniversary special.

It all reminds us of the revelations contained in the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, which illuminated how the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries weaponized the press’s desire to present “both sides” of an issue, framing fact as debate to deliberately obfuscate the truth. The playbook was as follows: “discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt.”

We’re in a new information age, and yet, the strategy remains the same.

Who cares? You might ask. Well, celebrity gossip is the sort of soft topic that’s already been used to pull women down the alt-right pipeline. There’s a reason why antisemitic right-wing influencer Candace Owens has been faithfully vlogging Blake and Justin updates. (Keep this in mind when you see weirdly vitriolic coverage about Meghan Markle’s lifestyle brand and upcoming television show, which will — at worst — be bland.) It’s also the playbook for almost all other news, unfortunately; sorting through the chaos is basically a full-time job at this point.

Speaking of chaos, this week one writer shares another kind of struggle: owning a business while in the thick of perimenopausal rage. Scroll on for that, plus a few recommendations for your weekend.

Bye,
Your friends at Gloria

I’ve worked in food service since I was old enough to have a job. As a born people-pleaser, I was destined for hospitality, and always dreamed of owning a little place where I could offer my own version of great care and good food. 

But it’s hard to open a restaurant, and even harder in New York City. My twenties passed, and then my thirties, and it still hadn’t happened. In the summer of 2023, I was working at a hip little cafe (in Dimes Square, ahem), but it was yet another dead-end job. Still, the place was cute and customers were always asking me, “Is this your place?” While flattering, the more I heard this, the more I thought, “This should be my place.”

Every night I did my sad little walk to the subway after the job that was doing nothing for my career path. The doubly depressing realities were that I was too old for it (my coworkers were all fresh out of college), and too poor to open my own place (financial literacy has never been my strong suit).

On that walk to the subway each night, I passed Essex Market, a lovely public market in the Lower East Side where I’d worked in an office-y role when I was in grad school. One night I looked in the window and noticed a vacant stall; the woman who’d sold soup there the previous ten years had closed up shop. Market rents are much lower than for a whole Manhattan storefront, so the spots are a prized commodity, but it helped that I’d already worked in the market; my application was accepted and I could afford it.

To carry on the legacy, I opened that October serving soup. The first few months were great, with lines at lunch every day. Many of the Google reviews of my business (which I named Chomps Élysées, a nod to the years I spent living in Paris) mention how nice the owner is — I couldn’t believe they were talking about me!

I don’t remember when things started to change, but it feels like it coincided with the slow summer season, shortly after I turned 42. As you can imagine, not many people eat soup in July in NYC. (People say things like, “No no no, I eat soup all year round!” Yes, and thank you so much, but you all eat soup once a month in the summer and twice a week in the winter.)

I was confronted daily with the fragility of owning a small business, but also something was different about me. I felt a low level of irritability every day, with little remaining in my usually bottomless well of patience for customers. At the beginning of each workday, I was filled with dread. My sole full-time employee is a 50-year-old woman, an angel on earth, with whom I have a very harmonious relationship. But I was beginning to find reasons to be annoyed with her too.

One particularly grumpy day, a regular customer, a younger woman, asked me how I was doing. I took that as an opening to tell her how I was actually doing. After I told her how hard it was to feel my hormones hijacked by perimenopause, she was like, “Byeeeee thanks for the soup.” Later that day, another one of my regulars came by, a woman closer to my age, and I told her what had happened. She laughed and helped normalize my bad day. She was like, “Oh yeah, and have you experienced brain fog yet?” 

I knew so little about menopause. My grandma told me about a hot flash so bad she had to take off her pantyhose when she was in the back seat of her friend’s car on the way to lunch with the ladies. And I watched my mom have a particularly sweaty hot flash in a restaurant in London. But no one had warned me about mood swings. Or more accurately, that a mood swing could be code for HULK RAGE.

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TO STREAM In Hollywood, you can’t have too much of a good thing. Actually, not a “good thing” in any critical sense, but rather, a thing that people will watch. Hence the premiere of Suits: LA. Out Sunday on NBC, it’s got a whole new cast of attractive young suit-wearing climbers. They’re also piloting a (maybe promising?) new series, Grosse Point Garden Society, the same day.

TO TRY We’ve been using Outschool to keep our kids engaged and learning during holidays and breaks, and it’s been a total game-changer. From reinforcing essential math and reading skills to fun and creative courses, there’s something for every child —including activities like a Squishmallow drawing class. Best part? It’s affordable, enriching, and keeps kids excited about learning — even when school’s out. Try it today and use this link for $20 off! #partner

TO LISTEN Was everyone aware of the fact that Gloria Gaynor (one of the inspirational women behind our newsletter’s name) released new music? You can listen here.

TO WATCH For those of us who love to go to the movie theater, the poignant new film Ex-Husbands looks like it’s worth a ticket. It’s about a Manhattan dentist’s spiral after a later-in-life divorce. Bonus: Rosanna Arquette plays his ex.

TO GET There’s a Neil Young tribute album coming out this spring, and it’s available for pre-order now. The lineup is amazing, and includes Fiona Apple covering “Heart of Gold,” Eddie Vedder covering “Needle and The Damage Done,” and Brandi Carlile covering “Philadelphia.”

“When ‘having it all’ becomes ‘wanting a divorce.’” • “Quiet facelifts” are a booming business. • A short, informative podcast on cannabis safety. • The fascinating tale of an art-world Ponzi scheme. • “I was a cadaver on Law & Order Toronto.” Finally, some good news.

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