What happens when Gen X snark meets Gen Z sincerity? Magic — and a few light existential crises. On today’s episode of The Daily Whatever Show, Dana and I welcomed the brilliant and wickedly funny Femcel, whose Substack essays have been quietly (and rightfully) lighting up the internet with their sharp takes on culture, sex, and literature. This was her first live appearance anywhere — and she handled it like a seasoned pro, proving why the kids are alright and possibly better than we were at that age.
We started with a bang — or more accurately, a Taylor Swift diss track. Femcel brought the receipts and the nuance as she broke down the weird little “beef light” between Taylor and Charli XCX. While I was ready to defend Taylor’s new album (The Life of a Showgirl) as a joyful victory lap for a woman who has earned every sparkly inch of it, Femcel wasn’t having it. She called the album’s “actually romantic” track flat and inauthentic — an attempt at sexual bravado that rang hollow compared to Charli’s raw self-awareness in “Sympathy Is a Knife.” And she wasn’t wrong. When she pointed out that Taylor — a woman who spent two decades being America’s perfect blonde Barbie — suddenly wants to sound raunchy and “wet,” it hit different. Femcel articulated something many of us felt but couldn’t say: the difference between a woman performing sexual freedom and one actually inhabiting it.
But this conversation wasn’t about tearing anyone down. It was about how women — from Gen X to Gen Z — navigate ambition, envy, and authenticity in a world that still tells us there’s only room for one of us at the top. Femcel talked about how Charli and Lorde managed their own so-called rivalry by making music together instead of competing, and how that kind of collaboration is its own form of resistance. It was one of those moments that remind you why we do this show — to hold space for smart, complicated people who see the world through a clear, unflinching lens.
From there, we shifted to Femcel’s real life: a newly minted PhD student in English who just landed a fully funded spot in a program on the West Coast. Her reflections on academic life and the grim job market hit hard — especially her observation that our generation and hers alike are “spinning every wheel on every hamster wheel all the time.” That’s the kind of brutal, beautiful truth that makes Femcel a voice to watch: she makes you laugh, then think, then question your own illusions of stability.
This episode was a reminder that generational lines don’t divide us so much as refract the light — we’re all showgirls in our own way, trying to keep the sequins on while the world falls apart. And if you haven’t yet, go read Femcel’s work. She’s not just writing about culture; she’s writing the future of it.
Thank you
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