4-17-22

in which I contemplate the murder of Princess Peony, Instagram ads for Project Makeover, and my compassionate admiration for Yoko Ono.

Apr 18, 2022

Come clean, Martha: What, exactly, happened to Princess Peony?😔💐

It’s now been two weeks since influencer Martha Stewart announced via Instagram the unimaginably violent death of her calico Persian cat, “the beautiful and unusual Princess Peony.” I have so many questions.

According to Stewart, her four dogs Emperor Han, Empress Qin (the Chow Chows), Bête Noire, and Crème Brûlée (the French Bulldogs) “mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenseless little self.” The post in question showed three members of her staff in Bedford digging Peony’s grave. The deceased has left behind her sister Empress Tang, another calico Persian* pictured here amid Ms. Stewart’s dendrobium orchid. In the past week, calls for Tang to be rehomed have accumulated on her guardian’s Instagram page. If famed cat rescuer Beth O. Stern, a.k.a. St. Francesca of Southampton, could lead the charge, that would be helpful.

I was shocked to see Slate describe Stewart’s disturbing death notice, specifically its “total lack of ceremony” as “kind of refreshing.” Even more appalling was the writer’s assumption that this cat’s burial was “a totally natural part of a beloved pet’s life cycle.” In what world is a fatal case of mistaken identity by a gang of high-profile canines natural? Was Princess Peony, unlike Blackie the outdoor barn cat, strictly indoor? It seems that way, given Stewart’s July 2020 post claiming the princess “spent the first three years of her life hiding in the basement (not dark and not dank)” while her sister Empress Tang “lolled around upstairs.” During the first few months of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Peony began to spend “more and more time upstairs,” making all staff and residents at the Winter House “so excited and so happy.”

Her origin story begs the question: how did she get outside? A door or window left ajar? Did hot gardener Ryan McCallister, who spends much time in the greenhouse with Blackie and has a ginger tabby of his own named Ewan, offer Peony a trip to see the irises and pink jasmine in bloom? It appears Martha was home that day, taking her two Friesian stallions Hylke and Geert, who arrived at JFK from Holland in January, out for their first go at pulling her newly refurbished training carriage.

Did Peony die while Martha was with the horses, the violent sounds drowned out by her horny peacocks’ mating calls? Did Martha, or one of her staff, happen upon the killing, but intervene too late? Or did someone discover a ghastly crime scene? If the latter, were Emperor Han, Empress Qin, Bête Noire, and Crème Brûlée still there?

Martha Stewart poses with Princess Peony’s future alleged killers.

After sharing a portrait of Princess Peony in her prime, Stewart (or some hired extension of her) was back to regularly scheduled programming, delighting us on her blog with jadeite cake stands, artificial bird’s nests, and Baroque dinnerware plates from her spring collection. Within days of Peony’s death, Stewart had flown to and from Tulsa, where she bought eight cercis canadensis (Oklahoma’s state tree), angering several followers with her Sooner State spon-con amid Oklahoma’s efforts to criminalize most abortions. She seemed to pay these comments no mind, nor has she answered any questions on Peony’s death (or Empress Tang’s safety) like the ones below:

Chow Chows, a breed originating in northern China, are considered “high-risk dogs” that can drive up the cost of their humans’ homeowners insurance. While the American Kennel Club euphemistically describes the Chow Chow as “unusually dignified” and “cat-like in his aloofness and independence,” Wikipedia says they “tend to display discernment of strangers and can become fiercely protective of their owners and property.” As a Pitbull apologist myself (highly influenced by the Dodo’s “Pittie Nation” videos), I don’t want to be a breed essentialist about all this. But something tells me that Bête Noire and Crème Brûlée— brachycephalic dogs prone to breathing issues—wouldn’t have the stamina to kill Peony. So, were they accomplices? Bystanders? Then again, in late 2020, Stewart told us her Frenchies “have boundless energy and rarely, if ever, sit still!! They want to be everywhere, especially if there is a taunting squirrel nearby !”

Unfortunately, I don’t think the Westchester County Coroner conducts autopsies on animals. And even if they did, such records are typically exempt from FOIL requests.

It seems Princess Peony and Empress Tang had always been paranoid in their own home. Last August, Stewart shared a photo of the sisters apparently feeling “liberated because the four dogs are away on vacation. Leaving the cats alone in the house to roam, relax, recover !!!”

I agree with @tuesdaysashes’ comment: “The cats should have been able to roam and relax whether the dogs were there or not. Completely irresponsible and an innocent animal paid the price.” Couched in that wisdom is the hard truth that animals (and humans) are products of their environments and in need of proper socialization. I beg Ms. Stewart to send all four dogs to a vetted trainer, preferably not the one Kim Richards used for Kingsley. If she doesn’t, the grieving Empress Tang and Blackie, not to mention all the indoor/outdoor cats of Bedford Hills, may meet the same fate.

Are if you are unmoved by any of what you’ve just read, please remember that hatred of cats is misogyny.

May the good Lord bless and keep Empress Tang.

*NB: Calico cats are almost always female, as the trait is sex-linked and carried on the X chromosome.

😡ENEMY OF THE WEEK: MAGIC TAVERN, MAKER OF “PROJECT MAKEOVER” AND ITS UBIQUITOUS INSTAGRAM ADS😡

Are you recently enthralled/plagued/infuriated by computer animated clips of mud-covered women being cheated on, forced to live in abandoned Victorian homes during a snowstorm, then electrocuted via flat iron? You can thank the online gaming company Magic Tavern and its subsidiary Bubblegum Games for these invariably fascinating but frustrating ads. If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a compilation on YouTube.

Apparently, the game itself looks nothing like the ads (We call that a lie in the industry, to quote Bethenny Frankel’s recent TikTok). Quotes from Google Play reviews include:

“This is the most infuriating and stressful game you can imagine”
“This is not at all as advertised!”
“I actually do like this game but won't be playing anymore due to the fact that it's almost impossible to pass certain levels without having to spend money.”
“The makeovers are fun but the levels are borderline IMPOSSIBLE without going into debt.”

As I’ve been tempted to download the game, this is all important for me to know, given my history with FarmVille.

Of course, Project Makeover also reminds us of Gill and Scarf’s understanding of postfeminist femininity as a bodily property (see New Femininities, 2011 & 2013). Apparently, not even digital women are free from the constraints of “compulsory beauty” and “heterosexiness.” (See “Sexual Subjectivity and the makeover paradigm.”) Remember that neoliberalism is always gendered, and that women—constantly required to improve, regulate, and transform themselves (see Jia Tolentino’s “Always Be Optimizing”)—are its ideal subjects.

Another factor of my Magic Tavern hatred is the amount of time I spend watching their ads, only to be disappointed, time and time again, by the story that unfolds. They might wash the mud off her body or build her a fire, but they’ll never just brush her hair or insulate her windows. At least when I’m watching those “State of Survival” ads I’m reminded that my life needs a higher purpose, like building an insular self-sustaining society for my cats and me amid a Zombie apocalypse.

Further reading:

“Project Makeover: Advertising Strategy Behind Its Rapid Success” by Andrea Knezovic for Udonis (Jan. 16, 2022): here.

“Inside Episode and Project Makeover’s toxic advertising push to boost engagement,”by Malavika Pradeep (Dec. 15, 2021): here.

❤️‍🔥CRUSH OF THE WEEK: ELODIE FREYMANN❤️‍🔥

My crush of the week is my friend from high school Elodie Freymann, a first-year DPhil student at Oxford’s School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. She studies the ways in which chimpanzee mothers teach their infants how to self-medicate. After several months of field work in Uganda’s Budongo Forest (see here , here and here), she has gone to Neubrandenburg, Germany to test her botanical samples in the lab. A few weeks ago, she was written up by the German newspaper Nordkurier.

Elodie’s photo of a chimp family in the Budongo Forest.

You can follow Elodie’s research on Instagram at @primatesandplants.

In addition to her scientific work, Elodie is an artist whose primate illustrations can be found here and here. I am floored by her 2020 work “The Evolution of Life Across Geologic Time,” which showcases her extraordinary talent in hand-cut paper art.

Elodie’s hand-cut paper art illustrating the Permian Period.

She is also a former Division I javelin thrower who spent her childhood summers learning tight rope, trapeze, and water spitting tricks at circus camp.

🔎ARCHIVAL: BARRY GOLDWATER COLORING BOOK🔍

Through my work, I recently came across this 1964 coloring book “Goldwater Made Simple: From A to Z with BMG.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, what it augured for the Republican Party, and its resonance today, then you lack basic U.S. cultural, historical, and political literacy. But because you’re reading my newsletter, I’ll pass along links to the Johnson campaign’s Daisy ad and Goldwater’s speech accepting the Republican nom for president. Declaring “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” Goldwater officially aligned himself with the likes of the John Birch Society. I’m also going to recommend you read some Rick Perlstein. Here are my favorite pages from the coloring book:

🎶SONG OF THE WEEK: YOKO ONO, “DEATH OF SAMANTHA” (1973)🎶

As I continue to use this newsletter to both vindicate and celebrate Yoko Ono, I’d like to reexamine her heartbreaking 1973 song “Death of Samantha,” whose full lyrics can be found here. It starts with the seeming nonchalance of “People say I'm cool / Yeah, I'm a cool chick, baby / Every day I thank God / That I'm such a cool chick, baby.” (That reminds me of the Amy Dunne “Cool Girl” monologue in Gone Girl I mentioned the other week). Then Ono shifts, telling us, “But something inside me / Something inside me died that day.”

Iain Macmillan - Portrait of Yoko Ono, 1969.

According to Geoffrey Giuliano’s 2001 book Lennon in America, “that day” was election night in 1972. The American people re-elected Richard Nixon, under whose administration the FBI had placed John and Yoko under surveillance due to the couple’s opposition to the war in Vietnam. On March 6, 1972, the Immigration and Naturalization Service served them with deportation orders, prompting a four-year legal battle that the pair ultimately won.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon arrive at court in lower Manhattan for a hearing on their deportation case in spring 1972.

On the night of November 7, 1972, as their marriage suffered under the stress of surveillance (apparently combined with Ono’s “deep distress over her stagnant career” and Lennon’s “seemingly inexhaustible sexual appetite”), they attended a party at Jerry Rubin’s apartment on the Upper East Side. Heavily under the influence, Lennon allegedly “fondled another woman’s breasts in Yoko’s presence,” an event that affectively ended their marriage, according to Rubin. Their son Sean Lennon has said that the incident inspired “Death of Samantha.”

That’s all about dad having sex with some girl at a party where my mom was. When I think back on those events, I think of my dad as a huge asshole. He was a macho pig in a lot of ways and he knew it. The only thing that made it okay was that he could admit it. That was his saving grave. He tried to overcome it.

Ono and Lennon separated the following year. In January 1975, they reunited, with Lennon returning to their home at the Dakota.

When I'm with people, I thank God / I can talk hip when I'm crying inside. / When I'm with friends, I thank God / I can light a cigarette when I'm choking inside…

💌ASK CARRIE💌

Dear Carrie,

My boyfriend of two years is a modern Orthodox Jew. Should I convert to orthodox Judaism to marry him?

- Abby, 28, Brooklyn

Hi Abby,

I really don’t know. I could personally never do this, especially given that the conversion would be to orthodox. Do your values and aspirations align with that sect of Judaism and its prescribed way of living? Would you have to wear a wig? Is the conversion important to him, or is it important to his family? What does your own family think? Can you both agree to a reformed Jewish lifestyle if you convert? I’m sorry to say that my inclination is that you should not go through with this. Do you really love him? Did you know about these expectations at the start of the relationship? I’m sorry I can’t give you better advice. Perhaps I will crowd source from the readers.

Very best,

Carrie

📱TEXT OF THE WEEK📱

📬EMAIL OF THE WEEK📬

📖READING RECOMMENDATIONS📖

1. Gill, Rosalind and Christina Scharff. New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

2. Johnson, Walter. “The White Slave, the Slave Trader, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s South.” Journal of American History 87, no 1 (June 2000): 13-38.

3. Psarras, Evie. “‘It’s a mix of authenticity and complete fabrication’ Emotional camping: The cross-platform labor of the Real Housewives.” New Media & Society (2020) 1-17.

📺VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS📺

1. Psychologically damaging interview with Nicole Richie while promoting The Simple Life in 2003 or 2004.

2. This 1999 Qantas Airlines commercial (thank you, Witt).

3. Does This Child Preacher Understand the Words He’s Yelling? The Oprah Winfrey Show, late 1980s.

🖼️SOLICITING EKPHRASES🖼️

Please submit your best ekphrasis for this fabulous diptych (courtesy of my friend Bella DeVaan) of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434) and this photo of Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury with their late Pomeranian Mr. Chai (2020).

🌈AND LASTLY, SOME PARTING WORDS FROM THE GLASS MENAGERIE (1944)🌈

Across the alley from us was the Paradise Dance Hall. On evenings in spring the windows and doors were open and the music came outdoors. Sometimes the lights were turned out except for a large glass sphere that hung from the ceiling. It would turn slowly about and filter the dusk with delicate rainbow colors. Then the orchestra played a waltz or a tango, something that had a slow and sensuous rhythm. Couples would come outside, to the relative privacy of the alley. You could see them kissing behind ash-pits and telegraph poles.

This was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or adventure. Adventure and change were imminent in this year. They were waiting around the corner for all these kids. Suspended in the mist over Berchtesgaden, caught in the folds of Chamberlain's umbrella. In Spain there was Guernica! But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows ... All the world was waiting for bombardments!

I wake up drenched in rainbows thanks to the prism stickers I ordered on Etsy and stuck on every window in my apartment.

I hope you have a week full of sex that hangs in the gloom like a chandelier and floods the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.

FELINE ACNE

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