Everything I've Bought For My Home This Year (So Far)
And my thoughts on Bonnie Blue.
Greetings Spendthrifts,
After a slow start to August on the fashion/pop culture news front, it’s all kicked off in the last week and I (once again) have way too much to cover in a single newsletter. Here’s a quick run-through of the news stories on my mind right now: the fashion industry’s collective jaws dropped at the news that Net A Porter founder Natalie Massenet is suing her ex-partner Erik Torstensson (co-founder of denim brand Frame), alleging fraud, intentional deceit and basically just being a wrong ‘un. The details are eye-popping - here’s the Daily Mail (sorry) article that first broke the news, and an update on the unfolding scandal from Puck’s Lauren Sherman. Elsewhere, the girlies are flogging Cutting Room Floor podcaster Recho Omondi for offering poverty wages - I first learned about this c/o this Substack from Ira Madison III, though it’s since become a more widely reported story. Topshop has re-launched and is deeply underwhelming (although I still combed through all 800+ pieces to find five things I’d happily buy and wear - that’s below the paywall). I tried to watch season 2 of With Love, Meghan and couldn’t, although this Raven Smith Vogue article pretty much sums up how I feel about it all.
That said, I did have a New York-based friend ferry over some of Meghan’s As Ever product range for me recently, mostly out of sheer curiosity. My verdict? A pancake mix is a pancake mix, and the packaging should’ve been a bit more luxurious. Cardi B is in court (again) and the footage emerging from the trial is a very effective reminder of why she was such a watchable reality TV star in the first place.
And look, I know everyone’s harping on about autumn fashion already but I’m simply NOT IN THE MOOD to talk about that yet, so this month’s newsletter is mainly focused on interiors – specifically, a rundown of every single thing I’ve bought for my flat so far this year and where I got it from, a list that includes the only ready-made curtains I’ve ever been truly convinced by, a few high street bargains, and several of my favourite vintage furniture suppliers (and not just the Instagram-popular ones you’re already following).
Most of my homemaking efforts this summer have been dedicated to – very successfully! – pimping out my balcony (pictured below) so I’ve also shared a bit about that process too, for those of you trying to make the most out of a balcony or small garden.
Plus: there are some excellent documentaries knocking about at the moment. I’m not really a true crime girlie but I do enjoy a true grifter story, and this trio of docs had me HOOKED from start to finish.
Before we get into all of that though – I watched the Bonnie Blue documentary so you don’t have to. Keep reading to hear my thoughts.
This month’s newsletter is sponsored by SURI.
Every time I go to the dentist, they ask me whether I use an electric toothbrush, I say “no”, they ask why not, I shrug my shoulders in a manner intended to convey they’re too noisy, they’re a hassle to keep charged, they’re sort of ugly etc etc, and we repeat the whole process roughly 6-12 months later. No longer! Because I recently started using a SURI toothbrush, and guys.. my manual toothbrush days are firmly behind me.
For starters the design is super minimal and clean, so it actually looks good in my bathroom (plus it comes with a magnetic mirror-mount to reduce the dreaded sink clutter - as you can see, I put mine on my wall but you do you). The 40+ day battery life is also a godsend and… I’ve noticed a real difference in how clean my teeth feel after brushing! SURI’s brush heads are also plant-based and recyclable (which SURI does for free), and there’s a rather fetching UV sterilising travel case you can get too that kills up to 99.9% of bacteria.
If you fancy upgrading your dental hygiene routine, you can enjoy 20% off your SURI order with the discount code ATW (you’re welcome).
THE BONNIE BLUE OF IT ALL
By now I imagine you are well aware of exactly who Bonnie Blue is, and what (and I suppose who) she does for a living. I phrase that as directive – “you are aware” – because… well, you are, aren’t you?
If you haven’t yet watched the recent Channel 4 documentary 1000 Men And Me – which follows the notorious OnlyFans creator in the months leading up to her much-publicised attempt to sleep with 1,000 men in a single day – allow me to save you the trouble. I have watched it, and I sort of wish I hadn’t.
It’s a deeply frustrating watch, one that reveals little that hasn’t already been covered by the many, many articles written about Blue. It left me with far more questions than answers, and I came away from it with the sense it had been made almost entirely with the intention of generating as many views and headlines as possible, rather than actually providing a meaningful (let alone journalistic) insight into the dynamics at play within the Bonnie Blue ecosystem. Louis Theroux, this is not.
1,000 Men And Me is both surface level – failing to rigorously challenge Blue as she repeatedly trots out a few poorly argued choice-feminism soundbites about being ‘empowered’ by her OnlyFans stunts; and salacious, in that it contains a frankly astounding amount of explicit pornography, which – call me naïve! – I really wasn’t expecting (and which ultimately adds little besides the requisite shock value). I’m no pearl-clutching prude but I found it genuinely surprising that the show was broadcast on what is a publicly owned, ‘public service’ channel.
Fairly early on, Blue’s rationale for the stunts that have made her infamous is laid out: she wants to make a lot of money, has hit on a way of doing that, and unlike 99.99% of other women, doesn’t mind doing it – in fact she actively enjoys it. Fine, I guess? As her male “creative director” Josh, a lacklustre man who apparently used to work with children in the care system (concerning) states early on with the same deludedly confident affect of an Apprentice contestant, Bonnie Blue is a businesswoman.
But even once I’d accepted that premise – that Bonnie Blue (real name Tia Billinger) just absolutely loves having sex with members of the public, and that there is no underlying trauma driving her actions – the questions remained. No, actually - they proliferated.
Why, I wondered, did the filmmakers not touch on her fertility struggles, an experience Blue/Billinger has previously described in an interview as “the most lonely experience” (thank you Sophie Wilkinson for making me aware of this)? Or about her future life plans – does she still want to have kids? Does she think she’ll get married again in the future? How does she imagine her notoriety might impact her dating prospects? Or the lives of her (hypothetical) future children? Why HAVE she and her husband separated, given that he was apparently ‘supportive’ of her OnlyFans career? How old was she when they met? And got married (she’s still only 26!)? Does she have any friends who aren’t in some way involved with her OnlyFans work? Could we hear from them? Why, when towards the end of the documentary Bonnie travels to Romania to link up with Andrew Tate did the documentary maker feebly announce “I wasn’t sticking around for that” - as though that were a mere addendum to Blue’s exploits and not something that viewers might actually be very interested in (I certainly was)? The answers to any, or all, of these questions might have provided a fuller picture of Blue’s psychology beyond simply I’m Bonnie Blue, and I just LOVE sex, a pronouncement that gets increasingly wearing as the documentary rolls on.
But worst of all - and what I consider the most egregious omission from this hour-long documentary - there is virtually zero interrogation of any of the men who turn up to partake in Blue’s stunts.
If Blue is to be believed (itself a good question - how many of her claims have been properly factchecked?), one thousand men turned up to that event alone. 1,057 actually. That, to me, is a far bigger story, one that given the title of the documentary I’d gone in expecting to be given plenty of airtime. There is after all, only ONE Bonnie Blue – but over ONE THOUSAND MEN attended that event alone, and many more have participated in Bonnie’s content elsewhere. What is driving them?
And though most of the men filmed for the documentary wear balaclavas to disguise their identities, the thing that lingered with me in the days and weeks after watching it, is that several of the men did not. Having been offered a means of hiding their identities, and knowing full well that the resulting footage would be shown not just on Bonnie’s thriving (but admittedly paywalled) OnlyFans account but also potentially broadcast to the entire nation on Channel 4, several of these men chose not to. A few of them even posed for selfies!
That they weren’t ashamed to have their actions potentially become public knowledge – queuing up alongside 999 other men to have sex with a total stranger – and perhaps didn’t even see anything wrong with or weird about what they’re doing… well, I found that incredibly disturbing, and it made me wonder what kind of people these men are, and what kind of jobs they do, what women they have in their lives, if any. Do they have wives? A girlfriend? Sisters? Daughters? Colleagues?
Perhaps naively, that was what I found most shocking about the whole documentary – more so than all the sex and how graphic it was; more so than the oddly detached way Blue regards her own body, treating it as a tool to be abused in service of clicks and cash (it’s sort of like Severance except Bonnie Blue’s Innie has somehow escaped and is running the show 24/7). It was the men.
Where were the interviews with these men? We’re shown interviews with Bonnie’s mum (who FYI, has quit her job and is now on Bonnie’s payroll as her PA - discuss), her bird-brained publicist, the aforementioned “creative director” (giving credence to the idea that a lot of people have gotten waaay too comfortable giving themselves the title of ‘creative director’). But not a single interview with any of the men who actually turned up to – pardon my language – fuck her.
Oh, we get a sense of these men, certainly, thanks to shots of them excitedly thumbs up-ing the camera, or grunting out their excitement as they shuffle in for their turn with Bonnie, naked save for a pair of boxers and socks (a visual that might have been comic were it not so tragically seedy).
It’s the sort of oversight one might call a missed opportunity if you were feeling generous, and lazy, sensationalist journalism if you weren’t (I’m not). I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the psychology of it, a fact I was discussing with a friend who (God BLESS her) alerted me to the fact there actually are a few interviews with these men kicking about online, and after watching them - finally - it all made sense.