In September, when Donald Trump admitted, at last, that Barack Obama is in fact a born American, Twitter imploded. Many times, Twitter has also exploded. Twitter has gone both nuts, thanks to Al Roker, and wild, thanks to Trumpâs mom. Twitter had a meltdown when the Cubs won the World Series in November. And whenâŚ
To my shock and mild horror, I became a Sephora VIB Rouge member this yearâthe highest level in Sephoraâs rewards program. I qualified after spending $1,000 in a calendar year.
By the time you read this, I will be on maternity leave. A little quick math will reveal that I have therefore laid off the liquor for nearly a year. A year with several occasions whereâto put it mildlyâI could have used a drink.
Coming out of my cage
As I did last year, instead of having the staff write blurbs about themselves like this is some sort of painful, HR-mandated self-evaluation, for a look at the best Jezebel posts of the year, I had our staff nominate their own but said I would write about them. So here you go: half what they think, half what I think.
Many of the films and TV shows that held our attention this year were centered around the black experience. Barry Jenkinsâs elegant depiction of a black manâs love in Moonlight earned due praise, and several other prominent titles told black American stories: Fences, Hidden Figures, Loving. On television, the subtleâŚ
In 2001, when I was about 14 years old, my male friends invented a game that went like this: one of themâand it was always the same oneâwould sneak behind me, slap meâand it was always meâon the ass and run away as I sputtered, angry and humiliated.
Hereâs the thing about the apocalypse: You donât know when itâs coming. Itâs an obvious truth, yet itâs what grants the apocalypse narrative endurance. The Apostle Paul warned the Thessalonians that destruction will come like a âthief in the night.â Even as prophecies go, Paulâs is particularly devastating, hisâŚ
In 2016, I spent too much time distracting myself from the pain of being by focusing instead on Bravoâs Real Housewives franchise. If I were a wiser person, I instead would have spent my year considering the consequences and sociological impact of reality TV, but Iâm not and I didnât, so why let all that time go toâŚ
2016 was the year prestige television finally heard the clarion call for gender egalitarianism in on-screen nudityâwhich is not to say they exactly heeded our demands of tit-for-chut, but they did show an unprecedented amount of male genitalia.
The world isnât necessarily going to end because Donald Trump was elected president. Itâs going to end because weâve squeezed the natural gasses out of it like a dirty sponge; itâs going to end because the singularity has already arrived; itâs going to end because we are massively overdue for an extinction-levelâŚ
A lot of men got away with it this year, and plenty of women didnât do much to help. Weâd like to take a moment to recognize the people who made 2016 slightly more bearable. Please join us in saluting Jezebelâs 2016 sheroes.
Women had absolutely no excuse to vote for noted pussygrabber Donald Trump, and yet 53 percent of white women did just that. Worse still by far, though, were his female surrogates: the women who showed up to support Trump publicly, often for many interminable hours on my television. They placidly defended everythingâŚ
You read these. You read these real good.
âA MASTERPIECEâ reads the poster of Kenneth Lonerganâs Manchester by the Sea in a font larger than the title. Itâs a font so large that the blur of motion doesnât render it illegibleâitâs in, I think, every subway station along New Yorkâs L line, which means Iâm confronted at least a few times on most days with âAâŚ
It would be putting it lightly to say that I enjoy reality television. I watch multiple hours of Bravo per week. I take great pleasure in blogging about shows like Vanderpump Rules and Bachelor in Paradise. Iâve locked eyes with Lisa Vanderpump between three and four times, Iâm on two distinct email listservsâŚ
In this so-called golden age of television, saying âthereâs nothing to watchâ is one of the biggest lies you can tell yourself. On the contrary, thereâs too much to watchâand a lot of it is good! Remember when âMust See TVâ was just one night? Now itâs every night. Itâs 10 times a night. Must-See TV is just any TVâŚ
When we look back at 2016, weâll remember many things: all the mornings we woke up in the grips of a full-blown panic attack, stomach acid burning our throats, or the shattering revelation that oneâs pubic hair can turn gray from stress. Besides that, though, weâre left with one, extremely important take-away: manyâŚ
When the Jezebel staff was individually queried on their worst song of the year, an informal debate emerged: was Shawn Mendes 2016's most offensive musician, or was it Lukas Graham? As you can see here the consensus was split but equally flogged with their music, though there was plenty of other trash to go around.âŚ
The year 2016 has been an ice cream sundae of realized horrors, topped off by a human that actually looks like a cherry if that cherry was radioactive and run over by a convertible. A lot of fears that used to feel outlandish suddenly seem pretty plausible: apocalyptic climate change, nuclear war, fascism, close-upâŚ
