#4: very, very, very homesick: I just want to shake a salad like kourtney kardashian
Or, fuck, I miss my family so much you guys.
welcome to no one asked for this, a newsletter of stories that are sometimes true. here, we will talk about pop culture and queerness and lavender lattes, which not enough people are currently drinking. welcome.
A sparkling CBD brand tells me I can be calm if I spend $30 for 6 cans of its totally adaptogenic healing product. A loungewear brand tells me THIS is the fabric that will not pill and will make me feel okay with my new quarantine body. Plus! It’s good for the planet! A YouTuber who used to tell me about books now tells me to buy this $60 conditioner because, you guys, this has totally saved my hair from all of the damage from these daily messy buns! This week, I ordered a $30 (originally $40, sale bb) ceramic bowl online because I suddenly want desperately to be someone who walks around and shakes her salads like Kourtney Kardashian.
This year was the first year I ever watched Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It’s not the sort of show that would normally appeal to me. I tend to be more of a Steven Universe/Twilight/Grey’s Anatomy/Bob’s Burgers person. I don’t watch reality television, but I did as a kid. I think watching Flava Flav at a very young age probably did something irreversible to me. I never watched The Real Housewives and I hate Selling Sunset and I have minimal interest in things like The Circle and Too Hot To Handle. I don’t like The Bachelor.
This is not a not like other girls diatribe; instead, it’s just my general disinterest in people when it comes to shows. In books, yes. Give me a deeply human story about a messy woman and I’ll love you forever. But on screen, give me Princess Bubblegum and the Cullens. I don’t understand why I should care if this white woman with a bizarrely sparkly dress on and a strange fake giggle falls in love with Man 1 or Man 2 or Man 3, though we all know it’s Man 1 because of Instagram and podcasts.
But—my girlfriend loves reality television. If you listened to us talk, you would think it would be me. I love Starbucks and buy $60 leggings and pair my Apple Watch with a cheetah-print scrunchie. But she’s the one who wakes up and turns on the white-women-yelling-show and then wakes me up to also watch the white-women-yelling-show.
And, so, when she decided KUWTK was what we were watching now, I tried it.
And I get it, you guys. I get why we care about these people. Despite spending years writing for [insert-now-dead-womens-media-company-here] and covering the Kardashians (“TK leggings that look just like Kim’s”) I knew literally nothing about these people (I told you I am a professional liar, did you not read the little blurb when you signed up to read this?) and NOW I know so much!!!! I know what makes them cry and what makes them punch each other (in the boob! always!) and what they’re scared of. I have watched them literally threaten each other and then re-enter Kris’s kitchen and discuss Snapchat filters. I have seen pregnancies and workouts and new wigs and the launch of a decidedly unimpressive denim collection and many many makeup lines that look… sure, they’re fine?
I have also wanted to shake salad like Kourtney Kardashian. I don’t especially give a fuck about the salad itself, though, when I googled “Kourtney Kardashian salad” (at first, admittedly, I googled Khloe because I am only a fake fan) I got list after list of recipes and how to copy Kourtney’s favorite salad recipe and how to copy her salad AND her workout routine. But I don’t want to like, miraculously look like the girl. I just want to go from room to room and shake my salad.
I don’t have the bowl yet but I do have salad. I have started making salads and filming myself shaking them and sending the videos to my sister. She is younger than me, two years, we say, but actually 23 months, and I turn on music from the ’90s like the music videos we used to watch in childhood at our neighbor’s house and I walk into the room, camera on, like Kourtney and shake the living shit out of that salad. It is not a ~healthy~ salad. It is feta and literally shit tons of avocado ranch and dried cranberries instead of real fruit and soooo many walnuts my god Rachel how many walnuts do you need. It is so many walnuts my anxiety spirals and I wonder, what if I’m allergic to walnuts, how many would it take for me to find out? I’ve never been a salad bitch like this and now I’m eating all of these walnuts, I wonder how my girlfriend would feel to come home to watch KUWTK and find me surrounded by walnuts and choking, not because I’m allergic but because I’m anxious enough to think I am, which is not cute or funny but is just concerning behavior!
I send the little videos to my sister and she says she laughs and laughs and I don’t know, maybe she thinks I’m a fucking weirdo for sending her these videos, she is 6 hours away and I can’t see her and haven’t seen her since last Christmas because of the pandemic and me being too scared of killing my family to go see them.
Instead, I just send her these videos, me and my salad, and, soon, me and my salad in its $30 salad bowl, and, soon, me and my salad and my $30 salad bowl walking from room to room in my mother’s house and seeing my family, in real life, not on a screen, but right there, listening to me shake the walnuts and feta and ranch with as much vigor as Kourtney Kardashian does when she enters yet another room. Maybe she’ll walk in and tell Kim she just doesn’t understand that she’s a MOTHER, Kim, she’s not always working all the time, or to tell Khloe that no, she doesn’t want to collab, she doesn’t like tasks! and then she’ll tear up and cry into her salad, but they’ll be there to hate her in person.
I would give anything for my family to be able to hate me in person.
Instead, I think about if I should go home for Christmas or not. I think about what will happen if I do. I think about what will happen if I don’t. I think about how many people in my life are traveling and hugging their sisters and smiling on Instagram. I think about how I spent $30 on a salad bowl (originally $40) in search of any sort of peace, or maybe any sort of way to shake off this level of angst that coats my skin more and more, leaving me slick with rage and turning more judgmental and more cruel by the day. What I need is touch. What I need is love. What I need is my sister’s specific IRL admiration and to sit in the driveway with my brother and to drink coffee on the porch with my mother at 10am when we both wake up. I don’t need a bowl or a sweatsuit or a can of maybe CBD, maybe nothing. I need my family.
But I can’t have that yet. And so, I shake.
++++++++++
similarly
In case you do want the Kardashian salad (be warned, it has no cheese)
etc.
I liked this: Joseph Longo wrote about Dakota Johnson’s gay ass house (kitchen rug kitchen rug kitchen rug)
I’m reading these: Work Won’t Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe (ha ha)
I’m watching: Twilight (sorry, I’m rotting!)
I bought this: the salad bowl, obv. Here it is! (and it has a lid and is cute, ok?)
i exist here, and across the internet, as @rachelcharlenel, always. (because there is no leaving the internet, so we might as well exchange memes and scream together.)