Indignity and Indignation

There’s been a cursed sentence floating around the Internet this week, courtesy of an orthorexic influencer who used to write quite interesting things about fashion before the disorder (and the sponsorships) took over. She says “My group chats are planning out cos-medical tourism itineraries in Korea and swapping Tixel providers and talking NAD+. I’m willing to bet yours are, too.”

I’m not trying to be a pick-me girl here, but also, no. My group chats are weird. My group chats lately, for example, are concerned with 1.) the $55.33 check I got from a class-action settlement related to the three days I subscribed to the Criterion Collection (WIN!) and 2.) warning my friends that a product I recommended may kill them at any moment.

I should rewind. I’m not in a good place. There’s a crisis happening in my life right now and it’s taken the wind out of my sails and the sun out of my sky. I’m absolutely not okay, and you’ll probably notice it in my tone and content, but I’m not going to talk about it here yet, if ever.

I’m also going to be converting this newsletter to a paid platform over the next month or so. However, if you are reading this right now, that is not your problem - this newsletter will be forever free to those of you who have been reading so far (also, thank you). Tell your friends though!

And believe me, I get it that everything these days costs money to read and everyone has a Substack and it costs more to read cheeky little missives than a Vogue subscription, but Vogue isn’t Vogue anymore either, is it? This is not what I want (nothing happening right now is what I want). I want to be Jilly Cooper writing a weekly column for the Times about all the hilarious mishaps that happen when you try to throw the perfect dinner party and get too drunk and forget to put salt in the osso bucco. No one’s happy.

Back to product recalls. When one is living the dark night of the soul, the strangest things become funny. You wake up from a night of not sleeping and check your email, and there’s something from Amazon about how your travel steamer will actually kill you. Oh good, you might say to yourself, as you click the link.

And then comes the mortification: I have recommended this travel steamer (the PurSteam Elite Travel Steamer PS-150) to multiple people as a lovely, cheap, and highly portable option for on-the-go garment care. You guys know how nuts I am about packing, and I love a travel steamer because steaming gets rid of bacteria on clothes after a travel day and delivers the illusion of freshness, as well as making things look nice. Well, this one will apparently kill you or at least, according to the good folks at Pursteam, “cause severe burns.”

According to the CPSC (did you know they were still around?) “Between December 2020 and 2024, there were 80 reports of hot water being expelled from the PurSteam Elite Travel Steamer model PS-510, including 14 reports of burn injuries.”

And the hits keep coming! I sent a pair of Chanel slingbacks to The Real Real, another Permission To Be Fancy fave, and they have disappeared into the ether. Customer services insists that all is well, expensive shoes DO have a tendency to go AWOL, you know, but that’s very normal behavior and there is nothing to worry about. (If they ever actually find them, do not buy them unless you enjoy feeling like your toes are being squeezed in a garlic press).

The cherry on the sundae? Instagram seems to have figured out what’s going on my personal life through the kind of nefarious surveillance usually associated with Carmen San Diego and now I’m getting lots of videos of dowdy women cooing at me that everything always works out for the best. While I appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Zuckerberg, maybe give a girl a minute.