Boo! Welcome to Halloweek. Today we explore the scariest feeling of all, CRINGE. Also, a genuinely horrifying peek at breast-reconstruction surgery and the man they call Hairy Bradshaw. —Emily Gould
JUST ASKING
What Is Cringe? What Isn’t Cringe?
We have bad news for a lot of you.
All this week, The Cut is running a series exploring “cringe” from all angles. Today’s essays are about age-gap crushesand posting crying selfies. I called deputy editor Jen Ortiz to ask her about humiliation and its relationship to creativity and the sublime, and, also, just as crucially, whether skinny jeans will ever come back.
Where we land, in a lot of these pieces, is, if not pro-cringe, cringe-neutral.
Our “Fashion Friend” column this week is about wearing something that Gen-Z and those younger have determined to be cringe, and what to do about it. It takes the phenomenon of a high-schooler TikToker telling me I can’t show my ankles anymore somewhat seriously, and actually examines why maybe a look or a trend doesn’t work, and how to think about wearing a certain style, as opposed to just being told it’s embarrassing to wear that style. So it’s still kind of cringe-neutral, but with actionable advice to avoid being heckled by children.
The thing that immediately springs to my mind because of the exact age and also body shape that I am is skinny jeans. I pray for their inevitable return. I want them to come back again because my legs are my best feature and we are living in the age of wearing something fitted, or, at least, tailored on the upper part of your torso, and then having more voluminous pants. And I have acceded because I feel like if I stepped out of my house wearing skinny jeans, I would be shot. Actually, I would be. Some girls that go to Pratt would handcuff me and put me in a paddy wagon. And then I would be sent to a reeducation camp and I would emerge with several additional stick-and-poke tattoos and I’d be wearing straight-up JNCO jeans.
Skinny jeans actually are not addressed, but showing off your ankles in general, which I still sort of refuse to accept as cringe. Allison Bornstein makes the case that it’s not cringe. It’s just that you’re cutting off your proportions, which I had not thought of before. If you are wearing cropped jeans, you’re breaking up the line. So fine, I’ll at least take that advice or consider it versus just being told I can’t show my ankles, which are the only delicate part of me, so why can’t I show them off?
Okay, so I’m just going to say some things really fast and you’re going to say cringe or not cringe, just in your opinion. You’re not speaking for The Cut here. Retweeting, replying to, or interacting in any way with, or just admitting that you are aware of the existence of, say, the Club Chalamet Twitter account.
I want to say cringe-neutral. It’s not cringe knowing that Club Chalamet exists. It’s just like being a citizen of the internet. Interacting with her or with any of the tweets is another story. If it’s arguing or making fun or trying to clout-chase, that’s definitely cringe. But if it’s just a funny reply or observation or if you’re just dropping her tweet because something she said is funny, then sure, fine, not cringe.
Stanning any — and I mean any — politician.
Cringe. Exercise your freedom and right to vote but stanning a politician can often lean naïve. We lived through “I’m with her” and we can’t ever go back.
What’s a topical Halloween costume that could be considered a little bit cringe?
A Curtis Sliwa costume is cringe and we might get a bunch of those.
The phrase “crashing out.”
Using it at work: cringe. You cannot say you’re crashing out to your boss and you can’t use it as an excuse for not doing something, whether it’s showing up to your best friend’s wedding or just missing some important deadline. It’s also not a real excuse for you to not show up to my dog’s birthday party, which would be important to me. But generally as a phrase, I don’t really care.
Who is someone that you would never associate the word “cringe” with anything that they ever have done or said or thought in their entire lives?
Jennifer Lopez is above and beyond cringe. Cringe cannot touch her because she has surpassed a level of putting herself out there, of feeling too much, of making a movie and documentary about her love. And we know how that story ended. But I only want her to keep making movies and music and headlines about her love life. It will never be enough for me. So it can’t be cringe. For something to be cringe, you also kind of want it to stop. And I never want that for our girl J.Lo.
What was the most recent thing that happened in your own lived experience that was cringe?
Isn’t there always just a feeling of once you leave the house, there’s a little orb of cringe just floating around inside you? That’s what it feels like.
YIKES!
Breast Reconstruction Is Much Gnarlier Than You Think
Don’t read this while eating. Bodies are terrifying.
Unless you’re in the know, you could be mistaken for assuming that breast reconstruction after cancer is no big deal. You go in, they remove your old breasts, they put in implants, no fuss, no muss. Well! Think again. Four weeks after Rhonda Williams’s mastectomy and the placement of expanders in her chest, this happened, Melissa Dahl writes:
One morning, she was headed to the bathroom when she felt a stream of liquid running down her torso. “I mean, fluid was just pouring out of my body,” she said. She didn’t know what to do — it just kept coming. It smelled awful, and it looked like the stuff that oozes out when you pop a zit. She ended up leaning over her bathtub so it could drain out. She had emergency surgery the next day, during which her doctor identified the culprit: MRSA. Her chest was full of it. The surgeon removed the expanders, leaving Williams’s chest flat. He told her she would have to stay that way for about a year, through chemo and radiation and three more surgeries.
Far from the “free boob job” that some suppose is the one upside of a breast-cancer diagnosis, many women face dozens of surgeries over the course of years in order to get back to feeling like their breasts are what they’d like them to be. Melissa quotes a psychiatrist who points out, “Where it gets hard is when people have assigned meanings to their breasts that connect to their identity.” But since the rest of the world does, how could anyone not?
HALLOWEEK
How Do You Not Already Know What You’re Being for Halloween??
Okay well, don’t worry, the Strategist has you covered.
Halloween is this Friday (or, if you are a gay, very online man, it’s already been going on since last Friday). Ambar Pardilla and Liza Corsillo have strategized some minimum-effort, maximum-impact costumes. My favorites include: KPop Demon Hunters, but just the scene where they’re relaxing and snacking on the couch; New Pope; Lazy Wicked; and, of course, Gilded Age “Clock Twink” Jack Trotter.
Click Your Way Out
Lucy Dacus would go on Survivor or Traitors.Survivor or Traitors.
There will be a lot of art at JFK’s new Terminal One.
A new week, a new pizza to stand in line for.
If you have a spare $7.995 million, invest in Lily Allen and David Harbour’s cursed Carroll Gardens townhouse.
A man had the audacity to write a blog post, an act which led him to be called “Hairy Bradshaw,” among other things. CRINGE.
Samantha Irby doesn’t get money from affiliate links so you know her recommendations are real.
Ilya’s favorite “Treehouse of Horror” episodes are from seasons nine and 12 of The Simpsons, FYI.
It’s no longer a feeling; it’s a language (I’m fluent).
What a perfect reminder that “cringe” is just the word we use when sincerity makes us uncomfortable. Every era invents new ways to be embarrassed by feeling things.