holiday gossip
take a seat, babe, and let's get into it
I have a confession: I love gossip. Not because I think talking about others is a good—it’s not—but because I understand that it’s much easier to talk about ideas through the lens of individual people than it is to talk about ideas in the abstract. Gossiping about people is a shorthand for discussing ideas, if done correctly. (If done incorrectly, gossip is merely an excuse to give into our learned instincts of distrust, paranoia, and hatred.)
When we gossip about others, we must understand that we are also gossiping about ourselves. In that way, we are not safe from criticism when we gossip! We are, in fact, telling on ourselves when we discuss others—what we find cringe, or distasteful, or insufferable, or annoying about the object of gossip says just as much about ourselves as it does them. And that’s okay! I think this makes gossip an equivalent exchange—the gossiper can so easily becomes the gossipee. Round and round it goes, this circle of gossip.
So let’s do some good ol’ fashioned PE gossiping—you know, the kind that we’d do on boring Physical Education class days when there’s a lot of sitting around because students are being individually tested for the Presidential Fitness Award. We’re wearing our mandatory PE outfits—oversized gray shirt and black mesh shorts that are somehow ill-fitting on everyone—and dad sneakers that will become cool in the 2020s but certainly are not cool now. Maybe one of our friends—the one who slides so easily into the “mom” role of the group (which we later learn is due to her absentee parents and learning to take care of her younger sisters) is braiding another friend’s hair. And we’re sitting on the concrete next to the basketball courts, leaning against the wall of gym, while groups of the more athletic students actively try to show off in front of each other by attempting the most pull-ups, the highest jump, the fastest mile.
Come! Sit down next to me. I want to talk about three people—as ideas, not as individuals, mind you: (1) Cait Corrain, a fantasy debut author who had a two-book deal with Penguin Random House (key tense: had); (2) Cami Téllez, cofounder and former CEO of underwear startup Parade; and (3) Hilary Rushford, Instagram life coach who is now having a fire sale of her online courses about entrepreneurship, “elegant excellence,” and healing burnout, among other topics.