Celeb Meltdowns or PR Masterpieces? The State of the California Girl

From Meghan to Gwyneth: Is There Something in the Water for California Girls?

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Happy women’s history month! I could celebrate by focusing on women worthy of attention, reverence, and study, but I’ve taken a different path. For reverence, you can explore some digital collage prints I’ve uploaded to my Etsy. For something else, read on.

In “Califonia Gurls,” Katy Perry told us,

I know a place

Where the grass is really greener

Warm, wet, and wild

There must be somethin' in the water

In Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion said of her home state, “California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.” Is that the “somethin’ in the water?” Or is it something else?

All I know is that it’s a very weird time to be a California girl.

Here, in no particular order, is a rundown of the strangeness I’m seeing among white celeb women appearing in recent public profiles, shows, or spon. Is any of this an authentic portrayal of any of these women and their California-chill? Or just the dream of publicists with more imagination than I can conceive of? Truly can’t say. Here’s my rundown with a completely nonsensical grading system to measure my level of tolerance for each of these celeb performances.

Meghan Markle (Windsor?)

Is Meghan having a breakthrough or a breakdown? I have seen the show, and I have never been so amazed. First, she floated her company, "American Riviera Orchard” with its 50 jars of jams (to influencers only). Then, nothing. Then, we get a rebrand announced in an Instagram story that reads like Inception. Now, her brand is called “As Ever” and we’re meant to read this as her continuing work she’s always done. Yes, I’m familiar with the Tig. However, that’s like saying I once wrote movie reviews in high school, therefore I should be lead film critic at the New Yorker. Love the flex, but you need the range. To be clear, the racism she has experienced at the hands of the royal family, the press, and idiots online is repugnant. However, and I cannot stress this enough, watching her show was almost as painful as the years I spent pretending to be straight; I have no idea why I was doing it, I learned nothing, and it brought no one joy.

What’s the problem? Is it that she shows us how to repackage pretzels for guests from the original packaging to another plastic bag? No. I love what I’ll call a reboot that makes me seem thoughtful. I’m not above that. Was it that she presumed we all have a whole corn cobb at home we can use to pop popcorn? No. Insane, but no. My problem is two-fold. One, she has not been in the entertaining game long enough to come at me like a teacher. Martha is a lot of things, but she is a teacher. She knows her stuff and she knows how to teach. I have seen many experts lack any ability to communicate what they know, so having both skills is key to great teaching. Second, lacking a deep skillset, she is basically positioned a “personality hire” with no personality. How do I know this? When Mindy Kaling shows up in an episode of her show, it was like someone threw me an oxygen mask underwater. Mindy! Quips! Jokes about who received a jar of jam marked with a lower number than her. Does Meghan know how to pick up the ball of repartee and run with it? No. She instead gets prickly at being called Meghan Markle and gives a mini-lecture to Mindy about the specialness of sharing her husband’s name with their children to a woman famously thriving as a single parent.

Some reviewers said haters misread the show. The problem isn't that the show is not compelling (it's not), but that we don’t get that she's a California girl! She is into wellness, slowing down, and speaking in low tones about homegrown honey. As she once said on her blog, “I was born and raised in Los Angeles, a California girl who lives by the ethos that most things can be cured with either yoga, the beach or a few avocados.” I am from New England, so maybe I’m moving too fast, expecting too much, and judging as harshly as my forebearers did during the witch trials.

Grade: The Beach Boys performing “California Girls” . . . in Nashville. . . in 2022 as elders. (Bleak but non-threatening)

Gwyneth Paltrow

No one will ever make me hate Gwyneth Paltrow. She is not like you, she will never be like you, and she can communicate that without hitting us with the equivalent of “I don’t want to be identified as being in this time and place with you.” Still, she thinks she’s relatable. How does she communicate this? Amazing profiles in magazines like Vanity Fair.

Here’s just a few highlights from her latest Vanity Fair profile that will live in my head rent-free.

• In a piece about her return to acting, she somehow coerced the author of this profile to write this sentence: “She counts 2010’s Country Strong as the last movie in which she was “laying it all on the line and accessing a kind of vulnerability.” Country Strong? You mean, the poor man’s Nashville? What?!?!? Please watch this trailer to realize how unhinged this is and the ways she’s retconning the quality of this film.

• She describes her upcoming film playing the love interest of Timothy Chalomet’s Ping Pong kingpin saying, “They meet and she’s had a pretty tough life, and I think he breathes life back into her, but it’s kind of transactional for them both.” Is this Shakespeare in Love but with ping pong? How does her brain work?

• On the impact of gossip and rumors on her business: “You’re crossing a line because you could be impacting my P&L”—corporate-speak for profit and loss. “If it’s not true and you’re creating a negative perception about any one of our businesses, what’s your responsibility there? It’s different than just saying, ‘Look at this gross picture of Gwyneth on a beach on vacation.’ ” Someone explain how 2+2=4 here. How does a “gross picture” of her impact her P&L? No one knows but she says it with such confidence, I can’t question it!

• She gets creative in describing her almost -certain approval for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again campaign (or, at least support for unpasteurized milk): “Look, we’re all incredibly flawed. I think the leaders’ piece is what makes people think, I’m going to take this research into my own hands and I’m going to try to make the best choices that I can for me and my family,” she says.”

• She gives us this less-than-an-enthusiastic description of wanting to know her neighbors, Harry & Meghan: “Maybe I’ll try to get through their security detail and bring them a pie.”

• Her husband offers the casual framing she wants to get into the profile as a seemingly improvised reflection: “She’s the best when she’s home and relaxed and totally unguarded. Cooking in her pajamas (or topless when the burners get too hot), goofy and sexy and sophisticated all at once.” Topless cooking? How is that relaxed? That sounds stressful and like a fire hazard, but then again, I’m no Gwyneth.

Grade: Watching her 2020 “What I Eat in a Day” in which she’s probably trolling us. . . and herself.

Gwen Stefani

There’s been a lot of talk about public women and their “eras” of late. Specifically, during Lady Gaga’s rollout of her most recent album, she was asked which era of her career most represented her true self. As she notes, they were all her. I have the same question for Gwen Stefani and her eras. Which one is the real Gwen? Bindi-wearing No Doubt-Gwen of the “Don’t Speak” era? Hirajuko Girl Gwen? Hollaback Girl Gwen? Or, perhaps most tragically, her current pivot to religious app spon Gwen. She recently partnered with Mark Wahlburg’s Catholic app to lead subscribers through lent.

hallowapp

A post shared by @hallowapp

Not to knock sincere belief, but what is happening here? She’s releasing country music, cashing in on prayer, and turning into a relic of the 90s I’d rather not nostalgize. There’s a tendency to pin her eras on the men she was dating at any particular time. I hate that. What if what we’re seeing is the Orange County girl who's been there all along? Casual viewers of Real Housewives of Orange County know they trend conservative. Gwen, please go through another Return of Saturn! I thought “Simple Kind of Life” was about wanting something you thought you’d never want (convention). Now I’m wondering if that’s what she was aiming at all along?

Grade: Gwen Stefani claiming she’s Japanese in a 2023 interview in Allure Magazine.

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