Molly

vibes are a catch-all error term. The way that we are talking about how people feel is like “yeah buddy sorry you’re feeling that way.” Like the vibes are off for reasons that make sense

“We started talking about vibes in September 2020,” says Dr Antonia Ward, chief futurist at trends intelligence company Stylus. “We were looking at how social media was reflecting a more chaotic mood. Before that, platforms such as Instagram had been quite buttoned down and filtered, but something shifted. We began sending a more impressionistic co... See more

In our present technological era, humans have also needed a new framework to avoid drowning in the daily firehose of entertainment, media, and information. Given this setting of increasing complexity, it becomes more appealing to use an associative concept like “vibes” as a simplifying framework for understanding or self-expression. If we can’t mak... See more

The vibes are off, but they’re off fundamentally because they focus only on feelings and emotional connections that have already existed. They don’t provide or imagine pathways to new futures; they allow only for an understanding of what feels good or bad based on experiences that have already happened, things that have already been seen.

In other w... See more

One of the women in the book, she was a young Black girl in the U.K. She described beauty to me as a negotiation of power, about using the tools that you have and the resources you have available to you to kind of negotiate opportunity and visibility and success and safety.

So many women and girls, whilst I was researching for Pixel Flesh , were telling me how empowered they were. When you dig deeper into that, you realize they can't quite tell you why or how. The actual feeling underlying that isn't one that really feels good, it kind of feels a bit uneasy. There's kind of an undercurrent of anxiety, but they've lear... See more

You do you, boo,” when it comes to your face, and “As long as you're happy, everyone's happy” when it comes to filler and cosmetic surgery and body modification, whilst in the background, they're kind of pulling away at bodily autonomy, trans rights, reproductive rights.

I was then looking at my friends, and there were belly rolls folded over a laptop keyboard. There was cellulite and body hair and razor burn and everyone was a bit sweaty and sticky and red. It’s just so beautiful to me. And I realized in that moment how desensitized I’ve become from what women look like, what women’s bodies have always looked like... See more

To have really obvious hair extensions or to have really obvious lip filler or obvious fake tan, to have beauty work that's really legible and visible is a sign of your labor.