Rich Text

This week on the podcast, we were ready to let loose and have a little fun. After a few relatively heavy topics, it was time to get back to the important business of frivolous television.
In this episode, we chat about three TV shows we've binged in the past month: The Alix Earle reality series "Earle Meets World," a fascinatingly vacuous reality show about making brand content; the mediocre but serviceable YA romance "Crew Girl"; and the luminous, irresistible romantic drama "Sterling Point."
All three shows are, in some spiritual sense, the offspring of millennial pop culture that shaped our generation. "Earle Meets World" is a rather limp attempt at recapturing the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" magic, while "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" both reflect a renewed demand for WB-style romantic teen soaps. But are they worth watching?
First, we discuss "Earle Meets World," starting with Alix Earle as a cultural figure – a relatable hot-girl influencer who has now become a reality TV protagonist – and our general reaction to the show. (Overwhelmingly, boredom.) We discuss how the familial drama of the show, which stars not just Earle but her entire immediate family, is sublimated into professional grievances and assertions of workplace hierarchy, and we also look at how the entire show functions as brand management for Earle – at the expense of any real vulnerability or narrative excitement.
Then, we discuss the current state of the teen soap renaissance. With "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" added to the growing pile of WB-esque YA romance series coming out on streaming platforms (especially Prime), we wanted to dig into why these shows dwindled in number, why they're having a resurgence, and what need they fill for audiences today. We chat about the class, race, and sexuality politics of these shows, as well as how they portray coming-of-age experience through those all-important love triangles. We also have a little fun breaking down the more absurd details of "Crew Girl," before turning our attention to the best show we cover in this episode: "Sterling Point." We talk about what made this show so winning to us, and dig into its melodramatic but resonant exploration of daughterhood, sisterhood, and what it means to be a family.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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CW: Though we will be discussing the Lindsay Clancy case only in broad strokes in this episode, this events are extremely disturbing, and we will be referencing child murder and severe mental illness. If you choose to listen, please do so with care.
Last week, following a month of wall-to-wall media coverage and feverish social media discourse, the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial. Clancy was charged in the deaths of her three young children; her defense team did not contest that she had committed the acts, but argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. Her trial became a site of consciousness-raising around the terrifying condition of postpartum psychosis, from which Clancy and her team claim she suffered, but also wild conspiracy theorizing. The debate over one woman's culpability also metastasized into a debate about the validity of postpartum mental health diagnoses, the perceived crimes of feminism, and whether women should be stripped of the vote.
To be honest, neither of us wanted to pay close attention to the trial or the social media firestorm around it. The killings were horrific; the suffering of the children, and now their family and loved ones, is agonizing to contemplate. But as the discourse heated up and quickly grew politicized, we began to feel that we could not look away. Ignoring a massive news story that has not only exemplified most of the toxic tendencies of our current media and social media ecosystems, but has fueled a disturbing movement to strip women of our civil rights, seemed impossible. That's why we eventually decided to discuss the Lindsay Clancy case here: Not to dig into the details of the investigation or the trial, but to examine the public conversation that has raged around it.
In this episode, we discuss the salacious true-crime fascination that immediately surrounded the case, how social media algorithms fuel this fascination and incentivize creators to grow or monetize their brands by making content around it, and how conspiracy theories and fake news spread rapidly in our fractured media ecosystem. We also discuss how many women related to what they learned about Lindsay Clancy's postpartum mental health struggles and her repeated attempts to get the right help – and we discuss why this specific white, affluent, educated mother has garnered widespread empathy and support, while others charged with similar crimes have not. We also get into how politicized this discourse has become, as right-wing hacks have taken it as an opportunity to argue for the repeal of the 19th Amendment.
Below, for reference, is a selection of the reading we did prior to taping this episode.
If you choose to listen to this episode, we hope it helps you process the upsetting state of the public frenzy around the trial, just as it helped us to talk it through together.
Reference List:
"The Women Obsessed With Lindsay Clancy," by Stephanie McCrummen, The Atlantic
"Why People Want To Believe The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Theories," by Jessica Winter, The New Yorker
"The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood," by EJ Dickson, Wired
"What If Doctors Missed My Postpartum Psychosis, Too?" by Erica Schwiegershausen, The Cut
"The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Spiral," by Eren Orbey, The New Yorker
"Lindsay Clancy admits to killing their children. So why is there an online groundswell blaming her ex-husband?" by Rebekah Riess, CNN
"How ‘forensic fandom’ in Lindsay Clancy trial threaten postpartum psychosis awareness," by Christopher Mathias, The Guardian
"Not Skinny But Not Fat Podcaster Responds to Backlash for ‘Grossly Inappropriate’ Betting Ad About Lindsay Clancy Trial," by Toria Sheffield, People
"The Meaning of the Lindsay Clancy Mistrial," by Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic
"Lindsay Clancy's case is a Rorschach test," by Moira Donegan, The Guardian
"I Understand Why a Jury Could Not Convict Lindsay Clancy," by Jessica Grose, The New York Times
"The Real Stakes of the Lindsay Clancy Gender War," by Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day
"The Lindsay Clancy Fan Club," by Caitlin Flanagan, The Free Press
"The Lindsay Clancy Trial Is Sparking a Political Divide on the Right," by Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone
"Lindsay Clancy Truthers Are The Best Argument For Repealing The 19th Amendment," by Rebeka Zeljko, The Federalist
"Lindsay Clancy Democrats," by Ann Coulter
"Feminism should also be on trial in the Lindsay Clancy case," by J.P. De Gance, Washington Examiner
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In honor of the "Love Island" USA season 8 reunion, we are making our July episode featuring Anna Peele, author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island,'" free for all Rich Text subscribers.
By the beginning of July, I have entered my now-annual "Love Island" fugue state. I fall asleep watching new episodes, and I wake up and immediately reach for my phone to scroll social media reactions. I try to recap the major plot points to my husband, who is usually baffled by the onslaught of details and my feverish emotional state. It's all I know how to think about about at the moment. So I was thrilled to get a chance this week to chat with, Anna Peele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island.'"
As a relative newbie to the "Love Island" universe, I'm always looking for more insight about the show's history, influences, and impact, and Peele's deeply researched and reported book is the motherlode. She analyzes the show's forerunners and how executives put together the show that has evolved into an international mega-franchise, and breaks down that franchise's rocky introduction to the American market. She offers insight into how producers actually shape – or don't shape – storylines and character arcs, and into how contestants perceived their experiences.
In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of the "Love Island" format, what made it tricky to bring to America and how it contrasts with "The Bachelor," the significance of the show's hosts and inimitable narrator Iain Stirling, how contestants experience being in the bubble of the show's set, our takes on the most recent "Love Island" USA seasons, and much more.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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Recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she was freezing her eggs during the August recess. In fact, in a very AOC move, she documented the entire process on Instagram, and used her videos to speak directly to her followers about her decision, the experience of freezing eggs, and policies she believes could provide childbearing people with more options for planning their families. Predictably, MAGA mockery and backlash ensued. AOC was accused of using her fertility for a campaign stunt – and, still worse, tricking normie women into believing they could put career first and still have kids.
Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway hit the red carpet in a Prabal Gurung crop top that showed off her baby bump. The 43-year-old is currently expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman. And this, too, drew mockery and backlash. Hathaway was not only criticized for conceiving a child at such an advanced age, but scrutinized for evidence that her bump was an advanced prosthetic for a fake pregnancy.
In this episode, we discuss the contours of these two backlashes and what they say, individually and together, about the right's view of fertility, pregnancy, and women's rights. We talk about the puritanical disgust for women's bodies – and pregnant bodies – evinced by the freakout over Hathaway's bump photos, and the reactionary belief that pregnant people are inappropriate for public view. We also get into the frequent conspiracy theories about celebrity women's baby bumps, and the underlying attitudes about what kind of woman can be a mother. And, of course, we dig into the far-right pronatalist outrage at women having children after 35 – at least, women who aren't tradwives and don't already have 10 children. Plus, we look at how the increasingly punitive and rigid pronatalist ideology being advanced by male conservatives is deepening a rift between men and women on the right.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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CW: Pregnancy and childbirth are discussed in detail in this episode.
It's a big week on Rich Text, because Emma is back in the (metaphorical) building! On the two-month birthday of her daughter, we recorded her first postpartum podcast, and it was such a pleasure to be back to our old tricks. (She will be taking more time before returning to Love to See It, so don't be alarmed to see that Leigh is still manning the cohost mic in the coming weeks.)
Given the huge event that just took place in Emma's life, what topic could be more natural, more fitting, than her birth story? In this raw and personal episode, Claire asks all of her burning questions about the labor and delivery, how Emma got through the hormonal rollercoaster of the first few weeks postpartum, her feeding journey, and what her daughter's personality is like (so far? mostly ravenous) – and Emma shares the ins and outs of her wild couple of months getting acquainted with parenthood.
Plus, we get into the unbidden arrival of mom guilt, the still-more unbidden arrival of hospital bills, and all of the structural supports that would make this life-altering experience easier and healthier – like universal healthcare and childcare, home health visits, and subsidized pelvic floor therapy – which our country refuses to provide for birthing people and new parents. Hope you enjoy! xo
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