Dear Gossips,

I really, really, really love Taylor Swift right now. It’s been a sh-tty f-cking few weeks. But this is why Gossip Is Good. And why Taylor Swift is Good For Gossip. Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston was enough to get trending #1 worldwide on Twitter yesterday. Even Roxane Gay was tweeting about it! So next time someone tries to shame you for knowing about celebrities, gossiping about celebrities, throw this down on the table and flip your hair:

 


Roxane Gay is all the justification you need. While you’re at it though, follow up that tweet by reading to them Roxane’s essay this week in Lenny about White Crime. “This is how whiteness works”, she writes, and repeats. This is why Brock Allen Turner will probably get out of county jail after just three months even though he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster – because he enjoyed the privilege of being humanised over and above his victim.

So, yeah, Swoki couldn’t have come at a better time. But just in case, because God knows we need more joy to fight all the f-ckery that the world keeps serving us, please check out the latest issue of Bloop, if you haven’t already.

Bloop: “a joint venture between Aminatou Sow and Jenna Wortham. Bloop is a combination of "black" and "Goop" —  basically, what it would be like if Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop were written exclusively by and for black women.”

Jenna Wortham, by the way, is the writer who received a personal note and flowers from Beyoncé a few months ago after her analysis of the Formation video in a roundtable for the New York Times. Can you imagine? To be known by Beyoncé is achievement enough. But to be acknowledged by Beyoncé for knowing Beyoncé’s heart? I will never not be jealous of that. Never.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey