Sidenotes #13 Kristen Stewart’s cover, the Hackney lesbian bar and Kate Nash
Featuring the Marquess of Cholmondeley x
I am so glad that 60% of you have opened my email and that so many of you have stuck around. And so many have joined Sidenotes! Welcome, I’m going to go on some tangents. It’s been a quick week, partly because of several mornings just spent lounging about in bed and yesterday going to the massive balloon museum near London Bridge that’s basically M&Ms world level kids-and-tourist central (my niece and nephew had an inset day, I had a very very warm time in a ball pit that genuinely sucked me into hell, having a great laugh at these supposed ‘dopamine-inducing’ experience galleries that, essentially, are just Instagram sets.
Anyway, that’s all just to say, I’ve definitely done some more things than opine on these three things, but these were the things I’d like to share my thoughts with you about.
Kristen Stewart for Rolling Stone
When I first saw this, I thought how wonderful it was to see Kristen really just be so “gay” as she calls herself (if I loved women as much as she did, lesbian would suffice! I mean, it already does…). She’s been out for a long while now, but it’s yet another piece of proof, a little slice of vindication I’ve been waiting to be served for over to a decade now.
I don’t know what it was about Kristen’s energy in the Twilight years - because ultimately, that’s what sexuality boils down to, desire, energy, behaviours relating to carefully projecting those depending on who is watching these and the subject of these and how open they are to the notions - but she was “so gay, dude” as she later put it on SNL. And yet everyone, everyone told me she was straight. It’s a type of homophobia, suggesting that the number of queers is actually quite small, and we’re overhyping it to get attention. It’s also a type of homophobia to suggest that lesbians are out to find lesbianism everywhere we look. We were looking at a grumpy girl in a dress flinging her Chanel shoes off on the red carpet so she could get into Converse! I know that’s a stereotype of a lesbian, but what a lesbian!
So even though I don’t quite know how to read [insert older Hollywood actor’s name here, no, not that one, that one]’s energy, if every gay guy I know is quietly convinced he’s gay, then he’s gay. I trust them! But people didn’t trust me. And it’s nice that I was right all along. And I hope any other lesbians reading this shared that feeling.
Anyway, I was actually going to read the damn article, then the far-right conservatives kicked off and Kristen gave a statement along the lines of “The existence of a female body thrusting any type of sexuality at you that’s not designed for exclusively straight males is something people are not super comfy with and so I’m really happy with it,”
You can watch her say it here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/GeJePlIFE_Y?si=95pd9Jr8C_ZphiuQ&t=597
I’m trying to work out what exactly about this cover ejects men as much as Kristen insists it does. Or even the shoot; from the various stills I can even see one of two men edging close to her - this is an out-take from the cover scene, too!
Is this meant to depict lesbianism? Sure, queerness is apparent - she is Kristen Stewart of course, remember that energy! - but I do think when it comes to depicting women who aren’t attracted to men, an absence of male participation helps get the message across a bit better? Every bi girl who’s ever tried to pull another woman knows this sort of comms is helpful.
So yeah, Kristen can suggest she’s throwing two fingers up to the male gaze, but all I see is a thin, white woman with a fresh bikini wax and a lot of her body exposed. Sure, it references lesbian subculture and gay male homoerotica, but I don’t think Kristen is right in saying this isn’t for the male gaze. It completely is. Pretending otherwise is to ignore her pretty privilege, to ignore how, no matter how much you try to outpace the patriarchy, a woman has got to really do something extremely odd - like, um, appear more masculine than her beholder - for it to not be turned by some creep into something sexual. It’s not quite as declawing as the Sports Illustrated near-nude shoot of Megan Rapinoe, but it’s just not that revolutionary.
It reminds me of that TikTok that I can’t find now, where a girl explains that Jackass would never exist with women in because all the hair-brained pranks - guys stapling their genitals and bums, a man dressed as a homeless guy eating chocolate pudding out of nappies, as onlookers, not knowing about the chocolate pudding, assume the worst, their haunted reactions filmed for a lol, guys falling off of skateboards - would be so quickly fetishised. Women can’t be weird and expressive without someone saying it’s there to please men, probably because some man somewhere will continue to treat any women as their objects until we stop being complicit in the disproportionate objectification of women.
Sidenote, someone showed me a photo of David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of the same, actually called David Rocksavage, taken in 1992, and I’m sorry, have you ever seen a more handsome toff? He looks like an American called Brench Dartmouth is playing an English gent!
Anyway, back to Kristen, and the cover. The cover! Her hand…her hand is right down her pants. You can see it balled up in a fist, she’s not doing anything penetrative, or holding onto a dildo or something. It’s almost like a solidarity fist that’s been quickly concealed. This, in my opinion, is the thing that is delightful for straight guys - if you’re an adult man who’s not a virgin, you simply have seen a woman touch herself - and terrifying for conservatives, very worried about kids seeing this on the news stand - how dare a woman touch herself! It’s the only thing there that clearly states; men aren’t the be all and end all here, women can get themselves off, too. So it’s not actually the queerness that is upsetting, it’s the independence of femininity.
Parking Kristen’s obvious queerness (the energy!) and simply grappling with her statement that the shoot is “not designed for exclusively straight males”- are we reaching a point where stepping outside of gender norms is enough to classify a woman as queer? Does a straight woman become not straight the moment she seeks her own pleasure? It’s just not the case. So while Kristen has my utmost support when she’s up against far-right conservatives, I have to say; not quite on the terms she’s setting. Of course, it’s hard to express yourself sexually away from prying eyes of men when they’re so happy to pry - especially when they think they’ve been told not to, especially when it’s women setting those boundaries. But I feel like Kristen’s sexuality - her energy! - is enough to bring in the female gaze as much with clothes on as with clothes off. In fact, the sexiest image of all from the shoot is this - allowing the imagination to do the hard work. Would the far-right conservatives not like to see her lift some weights?!
El Camionera
Yes, I’m going to review a club night opening! 500 or so lesbians of all sorts - Soho lesbians who’d travelled, east London stalwarts, sober crews, south east London art gorlys, north London swaggering daggerers, Walthamstow couples with dogs, Hackney Wick elders with headpieces, graphic designers, barkeeps, gals who work in think tanks, girls wearing tank tops etc. I never expected that the much-hyped bar with ES Magazine coverage and a multitude of influential lesbian followers on Instagram wouldn’t be packed. In fact, I never even planned to go in, but as I stood on the threshold, it was warm, it was chattery, it was, I hope, a place that will stick around for a while and give lesbians a safe, regular place in Broadway Market to hang out and bump into exes. That said, without me even stepping indoors to its dungeon gloom, I get the sense it faces two big problems already, and these aren’t just the normal problems befalling lesbian bars e.g. women meeting up, falling in love then never going out again, high rents, women just not having that much money to go out…
First, it’s a pedestrianised road, so there should have been not too many issues with it being effectively blocked by everyone. It was the largest free outdoor space that I’ve been in since Romy DJed outside the Royal Festival Hall in, I think, 2019. Passersby - some confused, thinking it was “a protest of some sort” could get by - but more than a few shirty men on fancy bikes were getting irritated. A couple of police officers made their way down, but there was no actual crime taking place, and the biggest harm was the smashed glass on the street (which doesn’t mean it didn’t make me furious, you gays are trying to murder me!). That said, you can bet Hackney Council is aware of the night and its popularity and that’ll mean what it turns out to mean…not without a fight, though. Second, the only other thing El Camionera could fall victim to is its own popularity. It’s really not for me, a comfortable lesbian in my thirties, to gatekeep opportunities for young women to find safe spaces to meet their people.
But there’s something about the TikTokification of the market as a whole that gives me the jitters - I mean, more than that, it makes me want to set up anti-tourism measures to rival Amsterdam’s. Of course, of course, I know I’ve been part of the problem, especially last Thursday night. But hopefully, east London’s lesbians are a self-selecting group, commercial rents are doing what they’re doing in the cost of living crisis (meaning, wow, another lesbian bar could open in another area, meaning the lesbians could be spread out bit more???) and, ultimately, I heard that if Stav B hasn’t anointed your presence, you’re not coming in. Long live Camionera, I just hope not every single lesbian who’s seen the posts about it online dares to come along…because tbh, one of the most mesmerising things about it was the space we had, to spread out, to bump into people, to get away from others!
As for me
No new articles from me this week, because everything I’m writing is a little longer-lead at the moment. But I did get reminded of this one about how employees are vetted on social media the other day. We’re heading for an Autumn election, all the forecasters are suggesting, which means decent time to actually filter candidates, so let’s see if it can be managed!
I also did a TikTok about the internalised homophobia of dating pretty girls.
And finally…
I didn’t mean to get into this rant but this is such a beautiful song…because it’s got these sort of will-they-won’t-they break up lyrics matching so carefully with this gentle, plinky-plonky itty bitty nearly overproduced track. Musically, it sits somewhere between the percolating LCD Soundsystem’s Oh Baby and anything Dev Hynes did, with these sort of Jack Antonoff western-y guitars riffing over and twiddly violins adding melancholy. And you get the feeling she’s alone and lonely and just thinking of all the different ways she feels her relationship is unsustainable. It’s got the classic Kate Nash-y day-in-the-life lyrics: “hot coffee on the stove left a little bit too long and I’ve burnt the beans/But I don’t have to make a new one so I take it with me”. While her confirmation bias sees misery everywhere from rainy days to that burnt coffee to a random couple on the train.
Whereas some of her earlier break-up songs - hello, Foundations - were about undeniably chaotic situations, with loser guys who you just know needed to get lost, this is about something far larger, with something so deeper gone awry. It’s the subtle problems in the big relationships that are harder to undo than the big problems in the small relationships. Someone getting sick on your new trainers is a clear-cut dealbreaker in a way that losing passion or lacking certainty, just isn’t.
And then, just when she’s feeling really bummed out, you get the feeling she claps eyes on this guy again, this person she felt nothing but sadness for just a moment ago. Or he pulls through in a way she just wasn’t expecting and now, or she recognises their collective accountability for their rut, before declaring: “something feels like home to me in you/ and that’s worth the fight”
And it all surges to this huge euphoric This Is Me-style chorus, with the cold electronica gone, a choir behind her, the strings spiralling up into the heavens, drums slapping and crashing like it’s the mid-90’s. I almost expected church bells at this point… Yes, it’s a by-numbers power ballad and perhaps seems tackily traditional but I love how it keeps us guessing until it feels a bit too late. And with so many other songs by older (I’m sorry but this industry is ridiculous) artists having a TikTok-able hook written in…this is such a refreshing moment. The only thing I think could improve it - apart from church bells, I definitely want church bells - is if the choir has an opportunity to do one more coda of those brilliant choral ad libs without the music completely in the way. Like that bit at the end of Soar by Christina Aguilera. Maybe Kate can save that for the live shows…she’s got a date in May but please don’t all book it because I’ve not booked it yet.
For full disclosure, I love Kate Nash so much that I’ve long said that Underestimate The Girl, a song she was widely derided for, would have been a critically acclaimed masterpiece if Alex Turner had drawled it instead of her. And I have long thought this!