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I Was Brave Enough To Watch The Bachelor

Is The Franchise Really Back?

Okay let’s just start off by saying that I do unironically enjoy Love Island.I love the chaos, the characters, and shameless self-promotion. Every season, two people on average fall in love while the rest compete for screen time to land brand deals. Isn’t all drama better served in a British accent?

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Photos and Interview by Jordan Edwards

It's been four years since we last spoke to Stela Cole. While her commitment to infectious pop has remained, everything else has evolved. Her sound is more sophisticated, her styling is upgraded, and yes, she's blonder.

As Cole has grown, her career has picked up momentum. The Georgia native signed to Ultra Records in 2021, and this past spring, she represented her home state on NBC's American Song Contest. After appearing on the show, she released the single "Rhapsody in Pink," which crosses the Gershwin classic with a booming dance club beat. "Star," released on Sept. 23, is a proclamation of her ascension. It's also fun to dance to.

We met up with Cole in downtown Los Angeles to talk about her latest music and how she got to this point.
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FILM & TV

WEEKLY RUCAP | All Stars is back, henny!

Halleloo, ladies! Rupaul is back, and ready add a third queen to the Drag Race Hall of Fame.

RuPaul’s Drag Race | All Stars 4 Official Trailer

WARNING: THIS RUCAP CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!

Hey kitty girls!

Rupaul is back with her new, legendary All Stars in a bombastic season premier that brought more than a few twists and turns. And despite my many fears, it seems that this season aims to not only match the legendary All Stars 2, but chisel it's own place as one of the best seasons of Drag Race we've ever seen. The queens have come to play and honestly, it's relief. This season has definitely been one of the most talked about seasons of the show's herstory - and I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to the hype.

But this premier did that.

We start the episode with the usual work-room walk-in starting with Trixie Mattel rollerblading through the work room door.

She delivers her, now iconic, "Oh hoooney," before almost falling on her face - but she recovers and even gives us an appropriately corny "And that's how I roll." She's perfectly pink, and sporting some 80s neon bodysuit realness. It was so perfectly Trixie and I lived for it. And she wouldn't be Trixie without throwing a little shade, "There's nobody in here. It's like a Morgan McMichaels meet and greet."

Then we had Season 6 club kid favorite, Milk! Serving some "denim pennochio."

It wasn't my favorite look out of the rest of the queens, but it definitely showed of Milk's ability to own any look she puts on. Plus, her opening line, "I just farted," gave me a good chuckle. And honestly, I picked up some definite diva vibes. It makes sense, Milk has seen a lot of success in her post-Drag Race career - but this is Drag Race, and it wouldn't be Drag Race without a little shade.

Then we have bayou queen, Chi Chi DeVayne!

She wears a beautifully made twist on her original entrance look - it's still trash bags, but they're yellow and they don't actually look like trash bags. She looks stunning, even if she can't keep that hat on her head. Not to mention, she brings a certain level of Southern charm that makes you just like her.

Then we have the permanently peppy Brooklyn queen, Thorgy Thor!

She is serving circus clown realness in probably one of the worst entrance looks I've ever seen. But, she makes up for it with her energy, even though she almost broke her foot on the way in.

Then of course, we have the dead bitch, Morgan McMichaels.

And she is slaying in this look! I've seen Morgan on WOWpresents, and I've seen clips of her stellar drag performances, and I am not surprised that the other queens are intimidated by her. She didn't come to play games, and she wants to make sure that every single contestant knows that.

Next is Aja, scooter-ing through in a delightfully skimpy outfit.

And I have to say it, I love her hair, and her make up shows a lot of improvement over the trainwreck that was season nine. She says she has some unfinished business, and I have to say, I was surprised to see her on the cast list. After all, she just finished Season 9 - but hey, I ain't complaining, 'cause this bitch clearly came to play.

Then there's BenDeLaCreme, wearing an atrocious repurposed dress.

Listen, I love BenDeLa, but come on - that dress looks terrible. And why did she have to do the same exact thing she did for her Season 6 entrance. I think Morgan said it well, she feels a little recycled. But, I can't really hate her, because she's too damned sweet!

Next we have one of my favorite entrances, Kennedy Davenport!

She's back, and she's here to show you that she didn't die, SHE CRYSTALLIZED! Sure, it was in a horrible dress, but I don't even care. She's perfect, she beautiful, and even if she looks like she just threw on a bunch of random stuff on a gross yellow dress.

Then we have Miss Shangela Halleloo herself, back in the world for the third time!

She enters in her iconic box, and then reveals into a very Alyssa Edwards-ian dress. I guess the drag daughter doesn't fall far from the tree. I mean, come on, you cannot tell me that you looked at that bow and didn't hear Alyssa's faint tongue-pop in the distance.

And just as the queens speculate about who the tenth queen is going to be, the sirens go off, signifying Rupaul is about to make his entrance. Everyone is confused, and then Ru enters, looking kind of funky in an all red suit, only to reveal that something seems to be wrong - there's someone missing. And after an agonizingly long wait - the mysterious tenth queen is revealed to be...

NONE OTHER THAN SEASON ONE WINNER, BEBE ZAHARA BENET!

Speculations about the mysterious tenth queen have been going on around the internet for ages. But in the end, it seems all signs pointed to Miss Benet's return. And man, what a return it was. I don't know what it is about her, but she exudes this ethereal energy that makes you feel both at ease and incredibly excited. Even though I already kind of knew it was her - I still felt my breath catch when she entered. I mean, look at her.

And the other queens were absolutely gagging - after all, she did win, how are they supposed to compete with someone who already won? We'll just have to see.

Anyway, after the dust settled, we were treated to a rather lackluster reading challenge. I don't know if everyone was just off or what, but they just didn't read very well. Especially poor Thorgy, who just couldn't seem to get a read out without spending twenty or thirty minutes taking me on some weird journey. BenDeLa ended up winning after delivering a surprisingly nasty set. But honestly, I think Kennedy's, "I hate you," towards someone (I think it was Aja) definitely deserved some sort of recognition.

After the reading challenge, Ru revealed that their first Maxi-Challenge would be another Talent Show ala All Stars 2 - and I'm not even mad. I don't know why I love the talent show idea so much - I think it's because we get to see what these queens think they can bring to the table. Ru also informed them that they would be doing the same form of elimination as last season: The winning queen gets to send one of the bottom two home.

Unfortunately, my excitement was short lived. Half of the queens decided they were all going to be doing the same thing, which was a major let down after the surprisingly diverse set the previous season's queens brought. I expected the show to wind up being just boring.

Boy was I wrong. There was a lot of dancing, sure. We had Shangela provide a perfect Alyssa Edwardian dance routine, but with her own twist. Bebe did an amazing Lion King-esque dance/lip-synch that literally transported me out of my body. Kennedy slayed it, as always, but is it really all that impressive if you expect it? Yes. It is. That was a dumb question. And Aja, Jesus Christ, AJA - she did a FLAWLESS performance that ended with a death drop from the top of a huge box to the ground!

BenDeLa slayed with a parody burlesque performance that involved her ripping off bra, after bra, after bra, revealing increasingly ridiculous pasties. It was hilarious, and honestly, I expected nothing less from her. She and Aja were definitely the highlights of the evening.

Thorgy and Trixie both stood out from the crowd, with Trixie doing a beautiful song with an instrument that I cannot identify. And Thorgy blending drag and violin in a fun little performance. They were different, but unfortunately, they both fell a little flat in terms of energy - especially after Aja.

Then we have the lower end of the spectrum. Morgan tried to perform one of her own mixes, but fell flat - it wasn't that it was bad - it was just boring. Chi Chi decided she wanted to look completely busted, and decided to go out with no heels, no pads, and a wig she got from Party City. And then there was Milk, who delivered a weird and dull performance to one his own mixes that basically included him strapping cardboard dresses to himself.

I wasn't surprised to see Aja and Ben take the top, and Morgan and Chi Chi end up on the bottom. The deliberations were definitely different from the last season, with most of the cast (excluding BenDeLa) agreeing that a "group consensus" wasn't going to work.

They each come out and deliver a fun lip synch to Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda," with Aja doing a more poppy-sexy kind of move, and BenDeLa doing a perfectly shtick-y, fun routine. BenDeLa ends up taking the win and (falsely) stating that the group has come to a consensus and that means that she's going to send... Morgan home!

But, much like last season, I doubt this is the last we'll see of Morgan. After all, Rupaul has her back.

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TV Features

Maybe Love Is Blind—But It Doesn't Happen Within 30 Days

Can you truly know you love someone within the span of a few weeks?

Netflix

After my last serious relationship, I decided to "put myself out there" again and downloaded Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid.

Being an active user on all these platforms solidified to me how different the dating scene is nowadays. Most of it is due to technology and our social media culture, which has definitely made us a bit more narcissistic, fake, and even cold-hearted. Romance in this day and age is pretty much dead—and, without a doubt, so is chivalry. Only two of my most recent 20 dates opened a door for me, so now I go on dates with zero expectations. Most of these guys just want to hook up, thinking a first date and a couple drinks warrants the perfect opportunity to proposition me.

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CULTURE

Help, I Can't Stop Ending Texts With "Lol"

"Lmao" and "haha / ha / ha! hahaha" will be discussed at a later date, but today we're focusing on the granddaddy of text-speak, the ever-useful "lol."

Photo by Miquel Parera on Unsplash

Sometime around 2015, I started ending most of my text messages with "lol."

Since it's almost 2020, it's time to ask myself why I haven't been able to stop.

In reflecting on my reliance on "lol," I've traced its roots to my lifelong sense of insecurity and social anxiety. This wasn't created by the Internet—I spent a lot of time in my pre-social media youth (and too much of my adult life) worrying about what others think, or trying not to care.

Texting hasn't helped. In fact, texting is my least favorite form of digital messaging, and it often makes me even more uncomfortable than personal interactions. Texting crystallizes my social anxiety, making it present and unavoidable, unless I actively decide to disengage from my phone. Perpetually, there's someone waiting to be responded to or who I'm waiting for a response from, or some conversation I'm supposed to know how to continue or reignite in a perfectly cavalier, laid-back yet considerate fashion. Though I write for a living, I've never really been fluent in the art of casual human small talk, and that has translated into my digital communications.

When "lol" appeared in my life (a crush of mine had a tendency to use it), it quickly became a code word that was and is everything I want to imply but don't know how to say in a text. When I end a message with "lol," it means, I don't take myself too seriously, and neither should you, and, I have a healthy, cheerful, cool and chill attitude towards this conversation and to life, and if you want to end this conversation and never speak to me again, I would understand!

Usually, none of those things is entirely true, but the person I'm talking to doesn't need to know that. "Lol" adds a flicker of sarcasm, a kind of wink. It's less cheery than ":)" and less peppy than "!," less effortful than an emoji (though I do love those), more open and friendly than "…" and far less vitriolic than the period-free cold stop.

On the other hand, emails and status updates are much more formal and easy to intuit. You can end emails with "Best, ____," and call it a day. The artifice is explicit, and no one is pretending that the conversation could go on all night. When we email, there's an inherent understanding that we all want to get back to whatever it is we do outside of performing formal interactions with people we don't really want to be around or don't feel comfortable with.

But you can't end a text message with a cordial "Sincerely" or a "Thanks." For me, texting is so stressful, in part, because it's basically distilled small talk, and it's oddly difficult to end a conversation without ghosting or lying; and, having been on the receiving end of both of those things, I know that neither is a kind thing to do to someone. Also, texts are so easily misinterpreted; it's so easy for them to come off as cold or callous when they're supposed to be the opposite.

All this can be fixed by "lol." In terms of linguistic devices, it's actually quite elegant, a catch-all that does large amounts of emotional labor for a little palindrome. This isn't an accident—it's just indicative of language's ability to become an arbiter of nuance and implication instead of a fixed code. According to linguist John McWhorter, "If you look at the LOLs from the perspective of a geeky linguist looking for structure, what the LOLs are, are particles which indicate that the speaker – so to speak – and the addressee are sharing a certain context of interpretation, i.e., you know what this nasty day is like; You know what it's like being in the library. That is a piece of grammar."

How 'LOL' Changed the Way We Talk www.youtube.com

The definition of "lol" has changed over the years due to its prominence in texting, writes McWhorter, coming to act as a stand-in for casual laughter and a symbol of nuance and empathy. "It used to be that if you were going to write in any real way beyond the personal letter, there were all these rules you were afraid you were breaking—and you probably were," he continues. "It wasn't a comfortable form. You can write comfortably now."

That's a fairly positive interpretation, and I would imagine that Mr. McWhorter is pretty fun at parties, but I'm not quite so optimistic about why we all love "lol" so much. In addition to being a grammatical unicorn, "lol" is, perhaps, a kind of shield against reality.

Like iPhones, a face tattoo, a trenchcoat, or a clown nose, maybe "lol" is a buffer against the truth.

In some ways, "lol" may be an early acronym for the post-ironic discourse that millennials and digital natives have become reliant on. Like a meme about politics or mental illness, perhaps "lol" is a way of communicating information while remaining self-deprecating and un-self-serious, which successfully circumvents the need to acknowledge that a change must be made.

And maybe we do need these kinds of buffers in order to exist in today's world of apocalyptic headlines and cutthroat capitalism. We need our casual laughs and our inside jokes, just like we need our coffee and our alerts and notifications that blink like signifiers of solidarity, albeit fractured through a screen. Perhaps "lol" functions similarly to Tweets, memes, and Tik Toks—all of which are becoming more and more sophisticated at helping us distance ourselves from reality, thereby allowing us to engage with the people and the world around us at lightning speed.

So, should I stop using "lol" or lean in further? Should we continue using the Internet while knowing it brainwashes us and tracks our information (but also opens our minds to new voices we may never have otherwise heard), or should I abscond entirely and move to a permaculture cabin in the woods? Friends, this is all pretty spooky imo lol. I'm not actually laughing, but you knew that.

CULTURE

Vulture Dehumanizes Drag Queens with Random Ranking

Unfortunately, New York Magazine overlooked the depth of those underneath the makeup, even dwindling some down to a footnote.

When New York Magazine began releasing photos of international drag sensations, many fans were excited to read profiles on the artistic geniuses.

Unfortunately, Vulture's coverage reminded many that a RuPaul's Drag Race bubble exists and not everyone respects the Queens for the artists they are. Instead of treating the magazine's cover stars like those prior, the publication ranked the performers, classifying them as either Top Tier or Bottom Tier. The reductive representation offered no further insight on the fascinating queens—who they are beyond surface level accomplishments or individual placements on the show. While Drag Race is a launchpad for hundreds of queens, Vulture failed to appreciate the profundity of the new generation of Instagram and reality TV celebrities.

The lives of drag performers tend to be disregarded, with fans favoring the spectacle and on-stage characters. This is a reminder that queens embody a type of expression that both embraces and rejects gender to cultivate a new narrative and understanding of personhood. Drag culture is a celebration of self and the ability we have to truly be ourselves. Unfortunately, Vulture overlooked the depth of those underneath the makeup, even dwindling some down to a dehumanizing footnote.

Queens photographed for the publication reacted swiftly, taking to Twitter to criticize the written content and the photos' lighting.

Although Martin Schoeller is known for his up close, unedited style, the article did not match the quality of the photos. Willam Belli (of Drag Race and television fame) called out the journalistic integrity of Vulture's editors, claiming none of the subjects were informed they would be ranked.

If journalists bothered to look beyond the accessible information on a drag queen's career, each artist's influence on our cultural consciousness would be more recognized. In turn, they could become championed members of our society, surpassing Pride coverage and queer-oriented events (ahem Met Gala). Uplifting their stories year round (outside of the reality show format) would increase the number of pivotal voices allowed to transform our culture. If it wasn't obvious enough, these entertainers have contributed to a shift in Western society and impacted younger generations for good: Gen Y and Z are more inclusive and expressive than past generations, which will inform the future, with or without journalistic appreciation. Vulture should know better.