I’m a big fan of obscenity. Raised in a strict Southern Baptist household and taught from an early age that ladies who cursed were trashy, it was an inevitability that I would grow up to slur like a sailor. Beyond the gleeful rebellion one feels when throwing out a well-timed “motherfucker,” obscenity is inherently contrarian—and anyone who knows me even in passing knows that I am contrarian down to my bones. When you’re shocking and offending, you’re jolting people awake. You’re flipping a giant middle finger to polite society and saying, Nah that doesn’t work for me. I’m going to do things my way.
There are nuances to this of course, but this is not an essay for The Atlantic, so I’m not going to bother with them. Dirty jokes are fun. That is my hard-hitting journalism for the week.
🎥 Bottoms (in theaters)
Y’all I saw this twice in one week. And laughed my ass off both times. The obscenity flies from scene one and never lets up, interspersed with bloody fun fights and razor-sharp barbs. Your favorite actress from The Bear stars with Rachel Sennott in the story of two ‘ugly untalented’ lesbians who start a fight club for girls in their high school. You can wait till this is streaming, I suppose, but it’d be a lot cooler if you supported this female-written-and-directed movie by buying a ticket.
(Aside: Cindy Crawford’s absolute clone of a daughter is in it and when I mentioned that to my teenagers, they said, “Who’s Cindy Crawford?”
📖 How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
In a time when censorship is unfortunately trending up again, it’s good to revisit the wisdom of Lenny Bruce, the grandfather of obscenity. Long before George Carlin was making lists of curse words, Lenny was being blacklisted from television, arrested onstage in comedy clubs, and eventually convicted of obscenity in a Manhattan trial in which Bob Dylan and James Baldwin petitioned for his acquittal. This is a short read full of brilliant social criticism.
📺 Big Mouth (Netflix)
Probably the most offensive, lewd show you will ever watch. And my god it’s funny. It’s also, at its heart, earnestly truthful and caring about what it’s like to be an adolescent constantly at war with your body. I wish my kids would watch it, but I do not want to be within 10 miles when they do. Once you hear Maya Rudolph say “bubble bath,” you’ll be hooked.
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I couldn’t place why that actress looked so familiar! Had no idea it was Cindy Crawford daughter. What a crazy movie.