A Definitive Ranking of Good & Gather Snacks at Target According to Me, a Bitch for Target

My name is Rachel, and I’m a bitch for Target. I really am. I applied to work there like, three times when I was in high school. They did not want me, but I still want them. I pay close attention to rebrands (yes, it’s the Karen within me) so I was very curious when Market Pantry (RIP) became Good and Gather, the more trendy, brightly-colored younger sister of MP. This quarantine, I have been trying my damndest to stop my online shopping habit, but I’m also trying to avoid going to the store and staring at the snack aisle, and so, meet my new love: digitally browsing the online snack aisle at Target.

Here’s what I do. I go to Target on my app (because, again, Karen), and I search Good and Gather and then I filter for snacks (aka Chips, Snacks, & Cookies) and then I gawk at all of the beautiful packaging and the little baby snacks within that promise to fill my soul. It also reminds me of grocery shopping with my mom. I miss her. Sue me.

Here is a definitive ranking of Good and Gather, because I am an expert. And I have started to eat a lot of snacks. Because nothing says “pandemic” more than reverting back to my middle school eating habits because, again, I miss my mother!

Also: I am obviously hugely privileged to be able to work from home (I’m an editor who works remotely, always) and to have the money to spend on snacks. I try to pay it forward by donating to different fundraisers I see popping up on Twitter and buying masks for my friends. It’s a weird ass time and I hope that this will at least make you smile or make you feel good about snacking considering all of the bullshit discourse happening among the Very Online regarding snacking during quarantine. Take it from someone who has been working from home for like, five years. No, you don’t have to wear real clothes. No, it’s not bad to wear sweats all day. No, you don’t need to make a salad and drink water. Yes, you can wear the same sweats every single day and eat snacks all day long and not give a fuck because we’re in hell and if all you do is survive right now, you’re doing amazing, and I will fight those people who say you’re not for you.

Anyway. On to the snacks.

(Note: I tried to only choose snacks that are available for shipping so you don’t have to go anywhere. Hopefully, they won’t sell out. Also, this isn’t spon con, I’m just a fucking weirdo who doesn’t like to expand her snack supply.)

1. These little baby nut clusters, $2.99

Did you hear the phrase little baby nut clusters? Are you not convinced? Anyway, I never thought anything would get me to eat pumpkin seeds and currants, but these are very good. They are also gluten free, for the GF among us. I like these because they come in a reclosable pouch in case you don’t eat them all, and they are just the right amount of sweet. They are also small enough that you won’t end up spilling them all down your sweats so you can re-wear them tomorrow.

2. This large bag of dark chocolate almonds, $5.99

I live for dark chocolate anything, but especially almonds. This is a decent sized bag for the price (especially since almonds are so pricey) and I like to just keep these at my desk for snacking whenever I want. It’s like eating candy all day, but I can pretend I’m getting my protein, too.

3. Also milk chocolate cashews, $5.99

A lesser food. Milk chocolate gives me zits and cashews are gross. But they do in a pinch and aren’t actually bad. I’m just a snob.

4. These dried out and then sugared strawberries, $3.99

I can’t eat fruit fast enough for it to not go bad. These are sweet as hell in a kind of chemical-y way that I enjoy, and they are nice and crunchy, but they also do that thing where you can hold them in your mouth and then they kind of melt. Imagine Pop Rocks, but fruit. A damn delight.

5. This bag of sea salt popcorn, $2.49

I never thought I’d be one of those women in her twenties who eats plain popcorn, but these are at least sea salt so I feel a little bit less like I’m in a romantic comedy.

6. These kettle chips, $2.19

I will never eat a plain potato chip, but you can drown me in some kettle chips. They are so crunchy! They are so filling! They are so fun to eat! Just remember to turn down the volume on your Zoom call while you snack so no one hates you.

7. This variety pack of fruit strips, $9.99

You know how we all had that one kid who actually enjoyed eating fruit leather in the cafeteria? That was me. I’d finish up my plain bagel (the only thing I’d eat as a lunch for years, I was a weird kid, whatever), and then on those rare days where fruit leather was somehow populated before me, I’d pretend not to like it and then truly wolf it down. I’m a vegetarian, and I’ve always hated meat, but there’s something about these leathery rectangles that deeply appeals to my palate. Also, this comes with three different kinds so you can try them all or you can be like me and grab one of each and stack them on your desk for an all-day-long snackstravaganza.

8. These apple cinnamon fruit bars, $2.69

Remember when I talked about my pandemic anxiety sucking me into childhood? Yeah, that’s where these babies come in. They are so mushy and grainy and clearly meant to provide nutrients for children, and I have at least one every single day. I have tried every single one, and this feels the most mom-put-this-in-my-lunch-box even though I for sure stopped having a lunchbox like… two decades ago, and also did my mom even make my lunch? Is that something I’ve dreamed up from watching too many Freeform family shows (shout out to my imaginary additional parents, Stef and Lena Adams Foster).

9. These chocolate chip nutrition bars, $4.19

I can’t tell if these are good. They have dates, so they probably aren’t. But my mouth really likes them and their smooshiness.

Let’s F*ck Up Some Bagel Bites

If I had to pick a one true love when it comes to food, I would hands down, 100%, choose Bagel Bites. On the morning of my birthday every year, my girlfriend brings in my breakfast: a fresh tray of Bagel Bites (because what monster transfers them to a plate). She gifts them to me while I sit in bed and I eat them all while she watches, probably amazed by how stunning I look as I shove each and every one into my mouth before I’ve even gotten up to pee or put my eyebrows on.

The case for Bagel Bites: they are affordable and lovely and delicious no matter what. Undercooked? Still good. Overcooked? Still good. Forgot about them in a depression haze and now you’re digging them out of the microwave an hour later? Still good. Bagel Bites are not a stride into the ~world of wellness~ or a food I would call healthy, but they are a good food. They have tomato sauce and cheese and protein. Sometimes they have pepperoni, but I’m a vegetarian, so that’s gross. I like my Bagel Bites without flesh, thank you!

And, they’re a good food in many different forms. Most major grocery stores offer their own versions of Bagel Bites, with Target, Walmart, Harris Teeter, and Trader Joe’s offering pizza bagels, though of course Trader Joe’s calls theirs “Spizzico di Pizza” because they’re Trader Joe’s, so they had to be extra and try to make a pizza bagel a fancy food. Ultimately, though, Bagel Bites are amazing because not only are they affordable, but you can get them in fucking huge packs: Bagel Bites come in 9, 18, 24, 40, and 72 count varieties. You can be like me and get a larger pack and then make a little charcuterie of Bagel Bites with a side of Bagel Bites. A damn delight.

You can also make them work for you. Here’s the scoop on that.

How to DIY Bagel Bites

Keep it simple. Get your favorite mini bagels (I’m not fancy about my bread so I typically just do whatever store brand is available), and get a marinara sauce, and then get some shredded cheese. If you wanna step up your game, get some fresh bagels and make your own marinara sauce and shred your own cheese. Alas, while I like cooking, when I am in anxious or stressed out times, all I want is to not cook and for my food to take one minute and thirty seconds in the microwave, so I rarely make them myself.

Alternative ways to step up your Bagel Bites prior to fucking them up: make them on an english muffin to make them crunchy, or make them on a regular-sized bagel so you can really hold it in both hands and shove it into your face. In terms of details, this recipe from The Comfort of Cooking recommends cooking them at 400 degrees for about twelve minutes. They also suggest adding pineapple, which is a yes from me.

How to DIY Vegan Bagel Bites

Swap cheese for Daiya Mozzarella Style Shreds, which don’t taste exactly like cheese but are somehow better than your standard shredded mozzarella, in my humble opinion as a vegetarian and not a vegan. Grab some mini bagels, like Thomas Mini Bagels, which are vegan. This recipe from Strength and Sunshine is also gluten-free, which is nice, and this recipe from Lila Ruth is vegan and also teaches you how to DIY grain-free bagels from scratch. Fancy as hell.

How to Set the Scene

Bagel Bites are best observed in bed. They do especially well with a thick, gooey face mask (my votes: Cocokind’s Chlorophyll Mask, the Bliss Marshmallow Mask, or the Laneige Water Sleeping Mask, which is extra nice because you don’t have to wash it off) that starts to dribble down your chin because you can just pop a single bite right into your mouth without having to figure out how to take a bite without getting face mask all over it. For a solo date night, eat them in the bathtub while you have a book at your side that you’re for sure totally not going to end up ditching for your phone just to aimlessly scroll through gay TikTok. Find someone cute and share them, but only if you really want to or if you have enough that you actually have to share. It’s your right to never share a Bagel Bite ever, no matter how nicely they ask. You put in that minute and thirty seconds and they’re all yours yours yours.

Let’s fuck these up together, shall we?

IRL Dating Is Canceled, but Animal Crossing Is Perfect for Cute Queer Dates

Did you know that Animal Crossing is beloved by shit tons of queer people? Yep! It has gotten really chill about gender, your neighbors will refer to you and other villagers using neutral pronouns, and, of course, you will find the scruffy sneaker-beanie outfit of your dreams along with the most femme looks you’ve ever dreamed up (that is, if you have enough Nook Miles to land the extra hairstyles).

I’ve been playing Animal Crossing since I discovered it in a Blockbuster when I was a pre-teen. I’ve gone through the original Gamecube game, transitioned on over to the Nintendo DS, hopped onto the Wii for Animal Crossing: City Folk, and made my way over to the Nintendo Switch (yes, I bought it just to play AC) for New Horizons in March. Like lots of other quarantined folks, I’m beginning to feel a little antsy for the outdoors. I typically don’t go many places, but feeling like I can’t, or shouldn’t, has me craving sand and grass and sunshine. One little, seemingly insignificant thing I’m missing? Dates.

Sweetly enough, it’s possible to have a shocking number of cute ass dates on Animal Crossing. I’m lucky to be quarantined with my girlfriend, but we’re running low on date opportunities. How many times can we sit in this room, or that one, and look at this wall, or this one, before it feels stagnant? A pillow fort or dinner in bed is only cute and fun a few times before you’re like, wow, remember when we could go to art museums and flirt at the plant store? So, date idea: I’ve been playing ACNH for almost twenty years, my girlfriend is new at it, and we’ve started playing together. It’s become something that makes me feel both deeply seen and heard and adored to have someone take me seriously when I’m like, “Hey, I mailed you a gift!” on a video game and she’s actually excited to open her mail and see what I bought her with my bells that I should, for sure, be giving to Tom Nook to pay off this home loan. Beyond precious letters, New Horizons has so many opportunities to explore (indoors, and outdoors! Remember that?) and I’m here for the queers making it the ~hottest date spot~ around.

Where to go on dates on your ACNH island

We’ve got a museum. And have you been in that museum? We’re talking levels, people. Nothing says first love like sitting next to each other, sweet and nervous, on a bench by a tank full of cute little fish. And if you’re feeling bold, you can turn your characters little bodies together and put their little toes together. And they move! In tandem! Tandem toes! Much smoother than anything many of us can finagle in real life.

We’ve got a beach. Do you not miss the beach? Change that clock to sunset (or don’t if you think time jumping is “cheating,” but like… come on. If you were ever going to cheat, it would be now, right?) and meet someone cute at the sand. Throw down a lighthouse with those Nook miles. Plop on some matching beach towels.

All of the opportunities for fires! We all look cuter in the light of a fire. Turn up your volume and listen to that little crackle. Ooh. Steamy. Maybe set up a campfire. Look in each other’s eyes. It’s on.

How to ask someone on a ACNH date

Established partners can definitely find new ways to find love on ACNH. It offers a new space to connect, and to build new ways to communicate. “We call it “frolicking,’” explains Miranda Manier, 22, a queer student studying television in Chicago who goes on ACNH dates with her transmasc partner; they’re separated by quarantine. “One of us will ask if the other wants to ‘frolic’ and then I’ll usually go to his island, because he time skips so his is much prettier haha.”

She continues, saying, “When we first see each other, and whenever we get excited, we run in circles around each other, and if it’s raining we’ll stop every so often to twirl our umbrellas at each other as a little flourish, like our own private ‘I love you” reaction.”

In case you doubted the magic of the New Horizons museum, Manier agrees that it’s highkey the best date spot the game offers. “We go to the museum a lot,” Manier says, “because there’s always new stuff and fun places to sit. We like to sit on benches and face each other so we can watch little us play footsie. We also recently started playing ‘tag,’ where we’ll hit each other with our nets and then go run off and try to outrun each other.”

Raven, 29, a queer person based in Virginia, also plays games with their girlfriend on ACNH. “Since my girlfriend and I share an island, we don’t do very much in-game flirting,” she said. “If we do, we usually fish together and hit each other with our nets lol.” So how do you initiate such a thing? “There’s no need to be anxious about it! If ACNH is your thing,” Raven says. “Even your noob partner will be able to appreciate the cuteness even if they don’t understand the game.”

How to flirt with a stranger on ACNH, because yes, it’s a thing

If you’re single or looking for a new person to flirt with, you might also find ACNH to be a really good dating opp??? I know in my heart that Isabelle, resident (lowkey, unofficial, but definite) cottagecore lesbian, would be proud. Aubrey Casazza, 26, a lesbian illustrator based in Ohio, has been playing since the Gamecube era in 2002. Casazza has found New Horizons surprisingly helpful for something typically reserved for gay coffee shops and our IG DMs: flirting. “Okay, so this girl slid in my DMs” she told me. “I wasn’t expecting it to turn flirty, so I told her for now that I wanted to be friends, but in general, I can still be a little bit of a flirt, especially in quarantine.”

They visited each other’s islands, and it was time. “Her island was in golden hour. She had so many flowers… the definition of lesbian cottage core. We were just chatting in the field and she used the ‘shy’ emote, which is essentially blushing. I used the ‘bashful’ emote. Honestly? It felt nice. When I complimented the flowers, she offered to give me her extra roses.”

Dating on ACNH might seem silly, especially with everything going on, but people are finding it to be a really great way to avoid that feeling of isolation and loneliness. “It really really helps this distance,” Manier told me. “Even if it’s not the same as actually being in the same room as each other, it’s so nice to dress up for each other and give each other presents and feel some kind of real time connection. The other night I actually started crying, because it made me really emotional to see ‘us’ together, being close and spending quality time, even if we can’t actually do that face to face.”

And trust me, there’s interest in random virtual dates. When I tweeted out the call for sources for this piece, Katie Speller, a friend and editor, responded, “can i reply to this so a cute girl will ask me on an animal crossing date?? bc i’d love to show off my house full of bugs.” So, make moves, people. There’s interest.

Where are you going on ACNH dates? Did you make a little farmer’s market on your island so you can invite over your crushes and impress them with your DIY abilities? Help us flirt from home.

How Social Media Fucked Up Lesbian Breakup Culture

It’s I Think We’re Alone Now Week at Autostraddle — a micro issue dedicated to being on your own, whether on purpose or by chance, and all the ways we’re out here making it work.

In 2016, YouTubers Cammie Scott and Shannon Beveridge broke the (small, lesbian, YouTube-obsessed) internet with their breakup video, titled, simply, “why we broke up.” The 11-minute video has, in the last 3 and a half years, amassed over 3.1 million views, and its own wide range of spinoff videos, with other YouTubers creating compilation videos made up of clips from their Instagram Stories and Snapchats and rumor-filled vids with salacious titles like, “WHY SHACAM REALLY BROKE UP.” Despite the two being on apparently fine terms in the years to follow, and the fact that they’ve both been in new relationships since the breakup, this one breakup shapes almost the entirety of their social media presence. Even if the YouTubers want to move on, and don’t talk about the breakup much on their own accounts, their personal presence is almost less important, or impactful, than the presence surrounding and about them: Their tagged photos on Instagram are flooded with Shacam-stanning accounts with Instagram names like “cammiebeveridge” and “shannonscott” and other mashings of their names. In their lives, their identities may have little to do with each other, but to their online fans and followers, they’re seemingly forever linked via shitty photoshopped collages and screencaps and a plethora of gifs, doomed to kiss forever on the internet.

In 2020, breakups, especially queer and lesbian breakups, are so fucking messy — and social media is to blame. In a world where we’re all, kind of, influencers, and where queer influencers are almost more powerful than queer celebs, social media is a way to make things permanent whether we want them to be or not. As my own relationships have shifted and changed, both with friends and with partners, I’ve found myself with jarring questions to answer. On Instagram, should I hide photos with this person in them? Delete them, or simply archive? What about my Instagram Story highlights? Do I mass delete or just save for later? Bouncing from photo to photo trying to decide which ones you want to get rid of entirely versus which ones warrant archiving versus which ones to let live on in digital memory is such a baffling experience, and one (I assume) none of us want to have while we’re like, mid-vomit and sobbing against a toilet seat.

These questions didn’t even exist ten, fifteen years ago. Twenty years ago it would have been almost impossible to imagine a world where you have to decide which posts to archive, or which accounts to unfollow. But we’re in a world of the Facebook graveyard, a digital world where we fly toward more dead Facebook accounts than living ones, and our Facebook and Instagram Story memories love little more than to pop up in the literal worst moment possible to remind us of people we once loved, or thought loved us, or maybe a little bit of both.

When Instagram and social media first became a Normal part of our lives — something we pretty much all had, something we used to keep in touch with friends, something that we checked in on daily — it was something we felt like we had control over. I would post photos I was proud of and write comments that felt thoughtful and like pages because, well, I liked them. Now, it feels like that control has flipped. I take photos for Instagram, I write comments because the algorithm wants me to (and because if I don’t comment on my friends’ photos, I’ll never see them again in my hourly scroll) and I follow The Right accounts, not necessarily the accounts I actually want to follow. A lot more of us live according to social media, rather than social media acting as a simple tool for us to use to build our digital lives.

Breakups can feel just as impacted by this social media control. Because of social media, people have thoughts on our relationships, all the time. In my own breakups I’ve been confronted after posting an Instagram Story via DMs by eyeball emojis as people wait for an update, or make assumptions about who I am or am not sleeping with. People I’ve never met in real life DM me on Twitter and tell me my relationship is their everything. It’s not even about friends and their commentary; it’s about followers and fans and strangers. It feels gross and invasive, but it also feel strangely caring, and builds a sense that there’s this weird community that’ll come out of the woodworks when they notice your highlight with all of your favorite girlfriend moments has been deleted, or that your anniversary Twitter thread has disappeared. The content is meant to feed the platform, rather than the platform serving the content, so when you’re not doing couple photo shoots or tagging each other in memes or appearing in enough Stories, people have questions. And a whole fucking lot of them ask them.

Now, on TikTok, lesbian influencers and baby gays face a similar world, albeit perhaps and even more invasive one. While YouTubers might post one video a week if we’re lucky, on TikTok, gay influencers post almost constantly, filming upwards of five videos a day to stay relevant. When they start commenting on other gay TikTok accounts, we see it; when they start dating a new gay TikTok user, we see it; when they break up, we see it. The subsequent crying videos flood our feeds, and I find myself watching as 19-year-old lesbians sob in different ways to different songs on a loop that lasts, seemingly, forever, if only we let it keep playing.

Breakups are so often garbage and hard, and managing the social media that surrounds it is just another gross layer that makes them even more garbage and even harder. In April 2019, Shannon Beveridge posted a video titled, “Do I regret my public relationship?” In it, she says that she doesn’t regret the relationship, but that there’s a reason she doesn’t post as openly or publicly on social media about her relationships as she did about her relationship with Cammie. I don’t know that abandoning social media is the answer, but I also know that I don’t blame Shannon, or any of us, who choose to take a step back. Maybe balancing out the weird power dynamic so many of us have with social media means actively deciding not to post when we don’t want to post, even if the app (and the voices that live within it) are expecting it.

In Honor of Rude Women

feature image via YouTube/Disney

This winter, I was watching The Grinch when I realized the reason that Martha May (played by Christine Baranski) made me Feel Things as a child: she’s glamorous, sure, and she really does make an adorable Who, but, most importantly, she’s just a little bit rude. Even as she clearly flirts with the Grinch with her eyes, she sides with her asshole husband and has, for her entire life, aligned herself with bad people, preferring unnecessary wealth to goodness. She uses her beauty to get what she wants. And yet, I found her so deeply appealing, not knowing as a child if I wanted to be like her, or if I wanted something else.

There’s a lot of overlap between queer culture and rude women because so many villains onscreen are queer-coded. On all of the various lists on the internet about “if you liked these characters, you’re gay now,” are the villains who grabbed our attention in our youth, or in our current lives: Take Shego of Kim Possible, who wasn’t at all a nice woman, and instead was a snarky character and a literal villain; yet I always found myself drawn to her and her neon green outfit. Halle Berry as Catwoman, and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin piqued my interest in similar ways, as I liked the ways they flitted around onscreen, moving slowly and increasingly sensually, making men feel bad and yet keeping them interested. Their niceness was always a farce, a trick meant to make the guys, good or bad, do their bidding. Raven of Teen Titans, though not a villain, is definitely not a typical nice girl, as she’s decked out in all black and wears her hair short and purple, a look of disinterest on her face for the most part, unless she’s looking on at her friends with disdain or frustration (throwing out the only occasional smile). Many of these characters gain their queer-coding as villains, or as women who challenge the norms of what a feminine woman not only should look like, but be like.

Another example that comes to mind is in the hypersexual, why-do-I-find-this-queer Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Angelina Jolie’s character Jane is clearly an outcast in her friend group of sweater-wearing, book-club-loving women. She sits on a floral couch wearing a pink cardigan and pink dress, attempting to play the role expected of her as a wife and a woman, but clearly fails, her dress sliding away to reveal thigh-high black boots and fishnets. She is doing womanhood in the stereotypical, man-approved way, quite wrong. While you can argue that the scene is more male gaze-y than anything else, done to light up the eyeballs of male viewers hoping for a peep of Jolie’s famous legs, it feels more like it serves the character herself and illustrates her inability to, ultimately, fit in. She’s not supposed to be there.

There’s power to be found in women behaving badly—and in women behaving rudely. In 2014, HuffPost reported that a study found that men are most interested in “nice” women, with niceness associated not just with sexual attractiveness, but with femininity. There’s an entire discourse about niceness, and about the ways that women do or don’t, or should or shouldn’t communicate. Every three months a new article comes out about if we should use exclamation points, telling us at first that it makes us look desperate and over-eager, making it easier for our coworkers not to take us seriously and for our emotions to boil over, and then telling us that we’re being rude by not catering to the needs of the people we communicate with, arguing that women’s words come across too cruelly when not punctuate with a rollout of emojis and exclamation points. Memes float through Twitter and Instagram about how many exclamation points we should use; at this point, we have no choice but to laugh about it. Then, of course, there’s, “You should smile,” the IRL version of the exclamation point, the request that demands that women physically illustrate their happiness at all times lest we cause stress to our viewers, strangers or otherwise. In 2012, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh created an art series titled “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” and yet, nearly a decade later, the issue persists, ultimately for a frustratingly simple reason: our cultural expectation that women be nice, and that they be nice in the way that most pleases our individual expectations.

The swirling bullshit surrounding perceived niceness and perceived womanhood feeds my admiration for women who don’t bow to it. Now, at 27, I still struggle with it, maybe even more than I did as a teenager arguing with fifty-year-old men in Target who told me I was pretty and should smile more. It feels easier, sometimes, especially being a queer Black person who is afraid of everything, to just smile and throw in exclamation points and answer the strangers in my DMs who demand my time and energy and expect it.

On my cat’s forth birthday, I described her as terrible lovely, and a friend commented, “I aspire to be described as terrible and lovely.” I also aspire to be terrible and lovely, or maybe to just be terrible, or maybe just to surround myself in love and friendship with terribly rude women who don’t smile unless they feel like it and accept the title of villain if it means they get to experience life and emotion on their own terms.

So, please, in honor of rude women: who are the rude women you know (or don’t know) and love? Can we flirt with/admire/aspire to be ruder, together?

Dark Under Eye Circles Are Gay, or: Hi, I’m Depressed

I was flipping through Instagram Stories when I came across a poll to the effect of: ladies, do you use concealer most for acne, or under-eye circles? I was honestly surprised to see under eye circles listed. After all, who wants to hide their under eye circles? Is it not a badge of honor to be tired and sad and drained and to still exist?

Yes, I am this extra with my feelings. When I am at my most broken, heartbroken or otherwise, the just sort of general brokenness we carry with us (but especially that specific aching gay brokenness), I want everyone to be able to see it on my face. A big part of this is that my sadness, otherwise, isn’t visible. I am at my most productive when I am at my most depressed. At my most depressed, I accomplish new goals and check off from my to-do list things I couldn’t manage when I was happy because I was too busy being happy. At my most depressed, I laugh a lot and go out a lot and buy rounds of drinks and shake my ass on my friends and flip my hair and take really really good selfies that make people from my past DM me and tell me I’m pretty. I come up with very funny tweets that do not sound at all like me, and strangers like them and I feel recognized as something that is not me but is someone, someone who is existing and doing these productive things and thriving while I sit inside of myself in a very small and very tight ball of skin and organs and blood and try to breathe through it.

Maybe I live in my under eye circles when I’m depressed. The darker they get the less sleep I’m getting, or: the less sleep I’m getting, the darker they get. They form their mini-moons beneath my eyes, which get red when I cry but not as red as the white people I know, so white people can’t always tell when I’m hurting.

Apparently concealer became a marketed, sold thing in 1930s with white women as the face. The goal was to hide blemishes ranging from veins to birthmarks, as its creator, Lydia O Leary (also a white woman) had a birthmark on her face. Concealer is racialized, and so are under eye circles, with some races and ethnicities more likely to have prominent dark circles under their eyes than others (for example, a Teen Vogue article from 2014 says the main concern of South Asian and Indian girls is under eye circles). A writer for SELF explored their genetic roots. It’s hard for me to think about any beauty trend without thinking of the impact of race: when we talk about contouring, we have to also talk about contouring for dark skin, when we talk about bringing back thin eyebrows, we also have to talk about the fact that some people are hairier than others. Some people sleep on special pillows or smear Preparation H on the skin under their eyes to fight eye bags. Apparently a lot of people, especially women, Google how to get rid of their under eye bags. I’ve never done it until now.

I tend to overthink a lot of these things. Maybe it’s simple, and the under eye circles versus concealer debate is my version of the gay eyebrows versus straight eyebrows debate: the messier and more unkempt, the gayer I feel.

I try to imagine myself doing the whole triangle-of-concealer thing. I hear the beauty gurus and influencers and editors saying I should draw a triangle of concealer one shade lighter than the rest of my face and my body and then I should fill it in, kind of like a cat eye, but different. In my head, I look like a clown. I’m not always good at knowing what I look like, so I’m not always good at knowing what will and won’t look right. I imagine the triangle just sitting there, waiting, because blending has never been my strong suit.

My gay icons all have dark under eye circles. It feels like a signal, like, look how tired I am from sleeping with hot girls all the time, or, look at how all of my gay trauma has me staying up at night watching Adventure Time and trying to learn the lessons I could have learned as a kid but didn’t because I was too busy thinking about being gay, or not, or good enough, or not. But Kristen Stewart always has dark under eye circles, even when she’s maybe-happy with her model girlfriend on a boat. Hayley Kiyoko often looks like she, too, could use a nap. Janelle Monaé hides hers with a thick line of teal or purple eyeliner, rather than the safe flesh-toned concealer. Tessa Thompson lets hers hang out.

In therapy, I wear expensive shirts from Madewell and tuck them into jeans and swap my filthy Vans for cheap Target mules that make me feel like an adult. When my therapist asks how I’m doing, I say, great. She says, do you think you’re good at dealing with your emotions, and I say, for sure, and she says, do you? She says I don’t look like I’m taking care of myself; I look tired. Maybe if I covered up my under eye circles she wouldn’t be able to tell as readily, but maybe I need her to. Need someone to.

Why Is It So Damn Hard to Build a Good Lesbian Breakup Playlist?

Once in a creative writing class, my professor said that every feeling ever has been written down; it’s why it’s so hard to write something unique when you’re going through a very normal human feeling, like grief or heartbreak. It’s extremely difficult to not come across as cliché at best, cheesy at worst. Writing about heartbreak makes me feel obnoxious and annoying, but I also don’t necessarily think that professor was right. While every feeling in its most general sense has of course been documented, not every experience that led to those feelings has been documented in the same way. Marginalized people have less opportunity to document their experiences in this archival way that gives other similarly marginalized people access to their words. If it had been documented, if music was dominated by queer people of color and bisexuals and lesbians it wouldn’t be so hard for me to find a song — or even songs, imagine that! — about how I’m feeling. Reading books about and listening to songs about straight people’s relationship sadness just doesn’t connect for me, because I’m not straight, and the whole “love is love” thing doesn’t jam with me. Queer love is so different; I need media from people that deeply know and understand that.

It was something that I always knew, but wasn’t as aware of until I went through a pretty shitty breakup and suddenly realized there were so, so, so few songs that actually captured my experience. I tried to google my feelings in hopes that a song or an artist or something relevant that would help me feel less overwhelmed and pained and drained would turn up. My results? Porn. Because god knows that you can’t google the word “lesbian,” even when it’s real and it’s the context of what you need. When you’re crying on your couch at 4 am and you haven’t eaten in a week and you’re trying to find a song that makes you feel less alone and all that comes up as porn, it sucks. It just does.

There’s extra complexity around lesbian breakup songs for two reasons: first, that there just aren’t many songs specifically about lesbian relationships, and second, that lesbian breakups just are not the same as straight breakups. The lack of music created by queer women for queer women means that, often, it feels like artists are doing a lot with a single song—the song is rarely just about one thing, and instead covers a lot of ground—and, too, at least in my experience and those of my friends, lesbian breakups don’t always have a super clear timeline. In a similar way that my first gay dates went completely over my head (the stereotypical “Wait, that was a DATE?” experience was very much mine in my first lesbian relationship), my breakups with women have had this specifically queer messiness to them. When it’s not clear when your relationship began, how are you supposed to have any more clarity around its ending?

When I thought I was straight and exclusively dated men, it took nothing for me to find music that fit my experiences. I didn’t even have to try. The songs were perfect, too, not just vaguely related. Straight people have songs on songs on songs about love, and about breakups, and about how you survive when someone cheats on you or how you survive when you’re going through a divorce or how you survive when your ex-girlfriend walks into the bar in her cutoff jean shorts and your new girlfriend is hanging on your arm and laughing and totally, blissfully unaware. You’re a straight dude and your wife left you for a friend of yours and they had a baby and now you’re sitting there staring at pictures of them while you down a beer and wonder what went wrong? Congrats, there’s a song for that. Straight listeners are afforded this level of specificity that, now, as a queer person with a broken heart, I haven’t been able to find.

We know that queer relationships have their own unique experiences that aren’t just variations on straight relationships—they’re literally different things. And they’re not just two different things. Queer relationships exist in endless forms that differ from each other and are bound from the simple fact that they aren’t straight; beyond that, though, the nuance and difference is endless. My straight relationships followed rules, but my favorite thing about being queer has always been that there really are no rules beyond decency, respect, and consent. We don’t have these specific building blocks we’re supposed to do to legitimize our relationship. And in some ways, my relationship, especially since I’m not a white queer person, was never going to follow rules or be legitimized to begin with; I can’t get gay married and be a part of two white bodies standing at the altar and holding hands while their rich white families watch and cheer, so why bother trying to assimilate in a way that just doesn’t feel natural to me or serve my personal goals or interests or the way I love?

It’s also difficult because so many lesbian songs are doing double work. I didn’t realize until the breakup that so many songs I listened to when I was happy and head-over-heels in love also function as breakup songs. When it came out in 2018, Hayley Kiyoko’s “Sleepover” was a song filled with longing that reminded me of how I felt early on in most of my relationships—that overwhelming, dreamy feeling. After a breakup, “Sleepover” and its longing just makes me miss things. She sings about touch and not wanting to think about it and feeling alone, and even though I’m not sitting here crying about a straight girl who doesn’t love me (not now, anyway), the song still hits.

The Internet’s “Girl” is a song I used to think was just beautiful and slow and sensual and hot. I’ve fucked to this song. Now, it makes me almost throw up because of that same slow sensuality. Now, the thought of passion and wanting to give everything to someone makes me want to die! (Kind of—I am, ultimately, fine).

Somme’s “Broken Hearted Lovers” does similar work. Even though it’s always been a song about broken hearts (obviously) and the strange and needy relationships we build with random, other equally-sad women to try to heal ourselves, it was a song I have definitely danced to with girls I loved; now, it’s actually a song about broken hearts, and it hurts to listen to.

I used to clean my house or make out or pluck my eyebrows to “Everything” by MUNA and think about how deeply in love I was and how lucky I was to only be able to feel the song to an extent; it wasn’t a song for me, it was just beautiful, and wasn’t it so lovely that I didn’t have to wonder where she was or if she was thinking about me or what was happening in her world—I knew it, I had the answers to those questions. But now that I do feel this deep and nagging ache in my chest and my feet and my gums and my wrists, I can’t listen to it without falling in and out of love on a loop, and crying. Literally everything from girl in red now makes me want to burst into flames.

The duality of so much queer music, and the overall lack of it, has also called into question all of my playlist-building abilities for one very simple reason: I don’t want to put any songs on my breakup playlist that any of my exes have used, or are using, to woo their new girlfriends. Like, wow, what a thing to have to worry about when you’re out here just trying to eat enough and go to therapy enough and breathe deeply enough.

When I was with guys, I was legitimately never concerned about this. Maybe it was because I didn’t like them that much (a conversation for another time) but mostly it was because there is such an expansive catalog of straight people music by straight people for straight people about the experiences built into straight relationships that the likelihood of you building an entire playlist that matches the entirety of your ex’s playlist is like, extremely unlikely. And this was in the time before Spotify, and the extreme ease by which people with internet access and the ability to pay for streaming services can build playlists. It was easier for me to find a love song at random on the radio in 2011 that I could 100%, undoubtedly relate to than it is for me to find such a song in 2019! In the time of Spotify! It horrifies me. It hurts.

But I feel similarly about other media. If anything, music has come further than books or film or television in terms of showcasing a variety of romantic queer experiences. Pretty much everyone broke up this summer for some reason—I truly blame climate change, we’re all too hot, we are all too stressed—and we have been blessed by new music from King Princess and Sizzy Rocket and Fletcher and Megan Thee Stallion, whose Hot Girl Summer check-ins across social media have really propelled me forward in search of sluttiness and sexuality on my own, newly-loosened terms. I tried to watch Blue Is the Warmest Color and Below Her Mouth and The L Word and the Callie/Arizona episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and it just… is not working. The closest onscreen experiences I’ve come to relate to in this trying time are the three queer episodes of Easy, with Chase (Kiersey Clemons) and Jo (Jacqueline Toboni) very messily broken up in the most recent installment. It works for me because they’re not both white and they’re not just assholes—they’re fully humanized, complicated people, and they’re going through it. They also don’t just have sex the entire time with a weird male gaze situation, which is not what I need when I’m crying, thank you.

What I want are more songs. What I want is an endless catalog of sad gay songs, not a heartbreaking dearth of relatable, comforting music in a time where I am heartbroken enough to begin with. What I want is to not have a list of, at best, a few dozen songs by queer women for queer women that I can find without spending a million years on the internet. I want this music to be easy to find when we need it so we can focus on crying instead.

My Absurd Skincare Routine Is the Softest I Am to Myself

When my dad comes to visit me in North Carolina, we do the usual things: I show him around the nearby campus, I re-introduce him to my kitten, Dr. Yang, and I take him to a queer-owned vegan restaurant downtown — and then, that night, we do face masks.

He and my partner sit on opposite sides of the couch in our new apartment, and I stand in the space between them, explaining the rules of the fairly expensive face masks I got for free because of my job: Okay, so you peel the back of the mask off, but you have to peel the front, too. Otherwise, you miss out on the serums. It can’t soak in the same way.

They hold the masks out in front of them, peeling the back, and then the front, as if holding alien oranges; I watch, their proud teacher. They hold the skins and I reach out, careful to cup my hands and catch the entirety of the mask lest the serum drip on the sofa, stain it, poison the kitten.

Then, I sit between them, following the same formula. Back. Front. Lightly press into face. I turn to the left, adjusting my partner’s mask over her chin; I turn to the right, adjusting my dad’s mask so it’s not bunched on his forehead. We laugh, and take selfies, and then the novelty wears off and we’re watching a sitcom about Black people and letting it all sink in.

A week ago, my mom texted me: I used to always tease you for your skincare routine. Now you’re getting paid for it! I don’t explain to her that I don’t actually get paid to review skincare products, instead I am just sent a slew of them on a regular basis. I guess this is a kind of pay. I send her a laughing emoji and thank her and say I love her. We haven’t really talked since the holidays when I told her it broke my heart that she could date a Trump supporter knowing everything I am. I know this text is an offering of a sort of peace.

Today, I send her a picture of a new cream I’m trying. It’s for aging and dry skin, I say. Then I send her a picture of a balm I’m using. It comes in a heavy red tub and looks cheap but isn’t. I say, For your ears. For the last three or so years she’s had a sort of eczema-like condition that has caused her ears to itch, producing thick chunks of skin. She picks at her ears constantly. When I go home and see her picking, I threaten to get a spray bottle and spray her, training her like we’ve trained the kitten. She both laughs and looks like she resents me for being there, catching her bad behavior, calling her on it.

I don’t have the condition, but sometimes I find myself picking at my ears, causing scars and thickened skin and placing myself in a loop where I’m creating a problem that wasn’t there before.

My partner doesn’t always let me press oils into her face. For me, it’s how I slip back into my body. Sometimes my mental health is just so shitty that I need it, that moment to just press things into my skin and press my loosened soul back back back, connecting self to muscle or bone. Her anxiety exists in a different form than mine, the kind where I say How are you? and she pulls her lips back, grits her teeth, and says, Fine. It’s a form of breaking-point-comedy and it’s how she tells me she’s hurt. She knows I’m feeling less sane than usual when I wear soft socks and soft shorts and a soft t-shirt to bed and surround myself with oils, and lotions, and serums, and begin to press. It’s the softest I am to myself.

Some days, though, she watches me hydrate my body and then scoots close to me and tilts her head up, waiting. I ask if she’s been moisturizing and she says sometimes. I slide my ring finger across a miniature tub of blue and lightly push beneath her eyes. I ask her if she wants me to spray her and she nods. She closes her eyes. She won’t stop flinching. I say, like I do every time we do this, I’m not going to trick you. We’ve both had the shitty kind of partner who would take pleasure in tricking you. Hers was worse. I hold the amber-colored spray bottle six inches from her face, say, Ready? and, when she nods and tightens her eyelids, I spritz the rose water on her skin. Wait, I say, knowing her instinct: flight, escape. She stays as still as she can, anxious ankles bouncing beneath the comforter but her face unmoving as the rose water finds its way from bottle to air to face.

I’m still getting to know myself. Someone sent me a magnifying mirror and I’ve been trying to look at myself differently. Sometimes being queer and black, bisexual and biracial, feels like contradiction, like too many things, and sometimes sometimes feels like always, and sometimes I’m not sure that I’d recognize myself if I walked by. I don’t know if I’m just more fucked up than I know or if everyone feels like this. I don’t know if I need to just breathe deeper or get a therapist. I don’t know who I am, but I’m trying to be kinder to whoever that is, to touch myself with intention and kindness, to find that point of connection, even if it’s only skin to skin.