“DO YOU LIKE SPACE? DO YOU WANT TO DO A FEMINISM? CALL NOW.”

That Elle cover story, plus the '80s delights of the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook, and Kevin falls into the world of ironic belt buckles.

Recently I fell down a Etsy wormhole, as I am wont to do, and I finally pulled the plug on a variety of items I’d been eyeballing — several of which will make their appearances here eventually,¹ and one of which is making its appearance here today:

As a child, I was obsessed with Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the syndicated TV show on which this book was based. My mother hated me watching it — probably for good reason; I think she (likely correctly) thought everyone on this show was an asshole — so I had to sneak it at my grandmother’s house, where I was generally allowed to do whatever I wanted. I don’t know that I admired any of the people featured on LotRaF; then, as now, I was primarily nosy about the inside of these people’s houses, and fancy swimming pools and what people served at their dinner parties, and this was the only show that dove into that.

Although this cookbook was published in 1992, it is easily one of the most ‘80s artifacts I have ever seen. (A little known fact, if you didn’t live through it, is that 1992 is basically the last year of ‘80s, culturally speaking.) With a few notable exceptions, despite the promises of the cover, this book does not feature “recipes from the most extraordinary people in the world” — although that level of hyperbole is absolutely on brand for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous — but it does highlight a murderer’s row of 1980s Famous People and Rich People Who Were Once Famous For No Reason. You know, the sort of famous people whose interpersonal dramas/divorces often ended up on the cover of People magazine, back when People was bitchier than it is now. How did I, a child, know about, say, Princess Caroline or Priscilla Presley or Loni Anderson? The powerful one-two punch of People and The National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout line. Just look at this table of contents:

F. Warrington Gillet was a World War I flying ace!

You also need to know that almost all of these people were photographed holding a pet, a trend of which I approve.

Chief among these Famous for Being Famous 80s Personalities is Infamous ‘80s Famous Person Ivana Trump — whose segment, noteworthily, never once mentions Donald, from whom she was divorced two years prior. Ivana was at this point largely famous for having had a very dramatic financial tussle over their break-up because our current president was low-key broke at the time. (Mar-a-Lago does come up, in a hostessing capacity.)

There is also, obviously, a large spread featuring “Bolivian Tin Heiress Isabel Goldsmith,” whose Mexican recipes are, as you might hope from someone was then and is still now a longtime resident of Mexico, relaxingly correct. (Fun fact: She also recently auctioned off a beautiful collection of Pre-Raphaelite art at Christie’s and owns a very nice-looking hotel near Puerto Vallarta.) And it’s not an ‘80s publication without Sally Jesse Raphael, but I’d argue that this segment is diminished without her iconic red glasses:

Apparently, this recipe won an award from Food & Wine.

In keeping with the time period, we’ve also got two daytime soap stars. First, Jean LeClerc, who masterfully played one of my favorite characters on All My Children, the sometimes-monk Jeremy Hunter, who eventually died at the hands of serial killer who shoved him into quick-drying cement (although I believe this actually happened on Loving, on which he would occasionally appear afterwards as a ghost). He’s apparently also a very adept chef, but I mostly want to know more about this cat:

We’re also got General Hospital’s beloved Jacklyn Zeman (RIP), who is credited here as Jackie, and who all GH watchers remember as Bobbie Spencer — a nurse who, to put it lightly, went through it. For example, I just scrolled haphazardly through that Wiki to refresh my own memory and landed on this sentence: “Bobbie consummated her romance with Damian after Tony threw her out, but when she learned he had only seduced her as part of a bet with Lucy, she left him to die in the catacombs.” This was just a throwaway plot point. (He obviously did not die here, although he did eventually die in an orphanage fire that he himself set.) Jackie’s recipes are very reasonable, but you should know that at one point, she did have a dramatic glass bird sculpture on her coffee table:

LotRaFC also features people who were famous for very GOOD reason circa 1992, like Joan Collins, whose spaghetti recipe for 20 (!!) is incredibly normal other than being vast; my beloved Florence Griffith Joyner, who suggests she only married Al Joyner because he was a good cook (relatable); and Martha Stewart, whose segment in the book is probably the only piece that you could clip out and run now without anyone batting an eye, although of course at one point there is a photo of her working on her topiary:

And, of course, we’ve got a huge spread featuring General Hospital mega-fan Elizabeth Taylor and her then very recent husband, Larry Fortensky. I did want to read about their wedding menu!

It does seem glamorous to plonk down a roast chicken one Tuesday evening and announce to your family that you got the recipe from Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding, so I guess what I’m ultimately saying here is… thanks, Robin Leach. Dinner is sorted.

— Jessica

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Women Are Going to Space, But I’m Crabby About It

Elle produced a digital cover story about the women whom Jeff Bezos will shoot up into space later this month, and I’ve been stewing and chewing on it for a week. The whole thing feels like people answered a personal ad reading, “DO YOU LIKE SPACE? DO YOU WANT TO DO A FEMINISM? CALL NOW.” And it’s a fucking tragedy that NASA has been pushed so far beside the point now that we aren’t celebrating sending women to space on an actual mission.

Photographed by Celeste Sloman for Elle

In case you have been fortunate to live in a cave lately, Blue Origin is sending up a ship on April 14² with these six ladies aboard: Bezos’s fiancé Lauren Sánchez, Katy Perry, Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, activist Amanda Nguyen, and STEM star and former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe. And I am not denying the facts. It is the only all-female crew since a cosmonaut went up alone in the ‘60s, and only 11 percent of space travelers have been women. Fewer still have been non-white. But I can’t help bristling at the hyperbole in the Elle story laboring to lend this mission historical import. Because this is not a mission. This is a joyride for the ultra-rich — a nightmare carbon footprint cloaking itself as feminism, in hopes of deflecting criticism and covering the colossal waste of resources that could make a difference someplace other than in whatever memoir Lauren Sánchez thinks she’s going to write one day. Even Perry admits it’s a flight “shorter than a phone call” — 11 minutes, to be precise, on a ship that steers itself. I don’t even know if they have to push a single button other than maybe on their seatbelts.

Credit where it is due: Bowe actually worked at NASA and is bringing the Apollo 12 flag up with her, on loan from Seattle’s excellent Museum of Flight. And I thought Nguyen gave a fantastic answer here:

It’s a dream come true, and for me it was a dream deferred. I worked at NASA, I studied the stars—astrophysics at Harvard and MIT—but life got in the way. Gender-based violence is a big reason why so many women in STEM don’t continue on with their training, and I was one of those women. After I was sexually assaulted, I traded my telescope to fight for my rights as a sexual assault survivor. I drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, passed it in Congress and at the United Nations. And then, after 10 years, I was like, I want to honor the person that I was before I was hurt.

I mean, I am not arguing with that, and I will cheer them getting their moments in space, which I’m sure will be very personally meaningful to them all even if I cynically find this problematic — but also, once again, what a goddamn shame it is that NASA doesn’t exist anymore in a form that sends women like Bowe and Nguyen to space on research missions that make use of their credentials. Instead they will get to be weightless for about five minutes, probably listen to Katy Perry warble so that she can say she’s the first musician to sing in space, and return to Earth with some nice photos and a week’s worth of CBS This Morning stories. Everyone will update their Wikipedia pages, and it will all have been for naught, because the purpose of Blue Origin and its ilk isn’t to democratize space travel for the masses or even forge ahead in the spirit of scientific discovery, and we all know it. Rather, it’s so anyone with a million dollars can buy themselves a dinner party anecdote for the rest of their lives. Feels about right for a nation that’s trending anti-science at a rate almost as fast as their entire trip will be.

I’m far from the only one to roll my eyes at this. Olivia Munn, who spent last week co-hosting Today, said, “What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous… Space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind. What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?” Our pal Abby at

We Have Notes

wrote about it too, including screenshots of comments (“We just want healthcare”) and a Blakely Thornton reel in which he says, brilliantly, “You cannot rebrand your vanity as altruism.” Olivia and Jenna made fun of them for wanting to wear lipstick and eyelash extensions, and I diverge from them there; women who wear lipstick and eyelash extensions are more than capable of also being kick-ass intellectual giants and barrier-smashing scientists and overall serious people. One does not exclude the others. Having said that, I could do without Katy Perry saying things like, “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” When you consider the hollow “feminism” of her last album, though, that’s pretty much on-brand.

I also took umbrage at the portion of the story in which the women discuss how they’re showing the world’s children that moms can go to space. Flynn says it was her own son’s reaction years ago — I believe in 2011, when she signed up for a Virgin Galactic flight that has yet to depart; that is a long time in the waiting room — but no one in this story, and certainly not Elle, points out that MOMS HAVE BEEN TO SPACE. Like, say, Anna Lee Fisher, who in 1984 became the first. Or Shannon Lucid, a mother who also became the first woman on Mir and the first to fly more than twice (she went five times). Millie Hughes-Fulford, the first female payload specialist in space? A mom. Tragically, Christa McAuliffe would also be on the list, had Challenger not exploded. Sure, kids today likely feel far enough removed from space travel not to know this history, but how sad and disrespectful that anyone, much less journalists, should allow this novelty flight to carry the banner for MOMS IN SPACE when ACTUAL ACTIVE SCIENTISTS have worn that mantle for a while³. Let’s be real, ladies, you’re really just using that line as an excuse to go on a trip that nobody needs.

— Heather

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ICYMI…

In Which We Explore Matters of Manners

A Hard Day's Night, Indeed

Sweet Valley High Super Editions, and a Celebrity Wedding Mini-Edition

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Yee-Haw!

My kids’ school is having a Western-themed fundraiser, and while I am not so much leaning into the theme as gently wobbling in its general direction, my husband Kevin decided to order a cowboy-ish shirt and novelty belt buckle — mostly because once he started shopping for them, he didn’t want to leave the rabbit hole.

Unfortunately for us all, he did not order that one with two real, dead scorpions facing each other, and really, would it have made SENSE without the chaps? Wait… why didn’t he want to order the chaps?

The poker hand with the hidden lighter couldn’t get here in time, which is a shame, although the cards don’t look like the ones they use in Wild West movies that end with flipped tables and shootouts, and I choose to believe Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is profoundly historically accurate. This is a tough tightrope to walk, because we don’t know most of the other parents there yet, and you don’t want anyone to think your novelty belt buckle is SINCERE. Ergo, we passed on the skull with crossed rifles, and anything with an American flag, most of which had THEY’RE TAKIN’ OUR GUNS vibes that definitely say wrong things about us. With the coiled snake surrounded by the words “DON’T TREAD ON ME, AMERICA,” we weren’t entirely sure WHAT statement he’d accidentally be making, and also it’s $50, which is insane for a joke, even if it IS pure Montana tarnish-free metal. Pass.

The boys go to a Catholic school, so Kevin settled on the cowboy kneeling sadly before a grave with a large cross, because “it tells a story” is only perhaps LIGHTLY sacrilegious, and ideally should be hard to take seriously. Sadly, I found Cowboys of Faith after he’d already ordered it (though he wouldn’t have picked it, because, he scoffed, “THAT doesn’t tell a story; where’s the mysterious widower?”). But I think we can all agree that the real choice for a fundraiser at a religious-based institution should have been this one:

CAN YOU IMAGINE. We might have gotten expelled. It might have been worth it.

— Heather

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Last Call

— Programming note: Jess will have the White Lotus finale recap out later today — a whole day early! — because she sensed people would be itching to discuss. Look for that around 3:45 p.m. PT.

— The Kate Spade x Target collab drops on Thursday — online, it’s at 3 a.m. ET — and I have to admit, there’s some pretty cute stuff in there. Like, say, all the purses. It’s a good thing that the disco heart does NOT look like it would fit my phone. Anyway, I know shopping at Target is complicated right now for a lot of people, but the intel is there if you need it. —H

— I clicked on this story in The Telegraph SO FAST: “I spent six months aboard a never-ending cruise.” It was not all it’s cracked up to be! (I mean, I don’t really even want to take a normal cruise, but you know what I’m getting at.) The author, in fact, calls the experience “a clusterfuck.” Mike White, you know what I’m thinking…White Lotus, season four. — J

— I have never wanted a so-called “Smart House” and now I really don’t want one after reading this article. No kidding people don’t want to live somewhere where you need a password to use your dining room table. I can barely keep track of the passwords I actually do need. — J

— Rest easy: A feud I somehow didn’t even know about between Madonna and Elton John is OVER. — H

1. As a teaser, six words: The 1981 Sears Christmas Wish Book.

2. I had to provide this intel specifically because the Elle article NEVER MENTIONS THE DATE OF THE LAUNCH.

3. You know what moms can also do? Lots of awesome things that do not involve a costly junket outside the atmosphere that lasts fewer minutes than the first act of a Survivor episode.