In 2020, semi is the new ex, because not every relationship is official

Maddy, a 24-year-old woman in New York City, defines "ex" as a past exclusive relationship.

Well, most of the time.

I spoke with Maddy after she completed a survey I created for this article all about the term "ex." It was distributed over social media in February, and 283 people responded. During our conversation, Maddy discussed a woman she considers an ex — even though they were never exclusive.

"It does feel like she's my ex, even though that goes against my own definition," said Maddy, who requested to be referred by her first name for privacy reasons. "Just because of the level of closeness and the level of how much we expected from each other."

Maddy is not alone. It's 2020, and there are so many permutations of relationships beyond exclusive ones (not to mention those within polyamorous relationships, which I will not dive into here). We all have our own nebulous definition of "ex."

There are so many paths a relationship can take, and there are just as many degrees of emotion we attach to them — even when they're labeled outwardly as "casual." When these types of entanglements end it can feel heartbreaking, as much as when you experience the end of a "real" relationship. But if those people are not exes, then what are they?

I propose we call these not-really-exes "semis." It's another prefix and incredibly fitting: Those people who got part of the way towards a "real" or "serious" relationship, but not quite all the way.

Here's how it is used in a sentence: "Ugh, I got a 3AM text from my semi from last year."

I know, I know — yet another dating buzzword to describe our current dating landscape. There are, however, several reasons why I feel a word like "semi" is incredibly necessary.

Our current state of dating

In retrospect, it does make some sense that the English language has not kept up with the various types of relationships we see ourselves in today. For a long time (and is still the case in some areas of the world), dating was something facilitated by parents, or at least one's family. It usually culminated in marriage and the promise of children.

In the United States and many parts of the Western world, this shifted in the twentieth century in part due to social movements like the sexual revolution. Thanks to technology, however, dating in 2020 is far different from the courting of the nineteenth century and even dating in the twentieth century. It's shifted the kinds of relationships we have with each other. And as our romantic interactions have changed, a plethora of terms to describe the scourge that dating has become have emerged.

Dating apps are certainly part of this. With a few swipes right and messages, you can get a date seemingly in an instant — and thus begins a new, unique relationship. Whether it be a one-night stand, a short-term relationship, or a life partner, it is in fact a relationship. That is even more true for queer people: More queer couples meet each other online(Opens in a new tab) than heterosexual couples.

But it's not just dating apps that have contributed to an array of relationship permutations. Social media as a whole has had a hand in this. You may follow someone on Instagram that you dated years ago and haven't spoken to since, for example. But something as ubiquitous as texting has also shifted our relationships. You can talk to someone for days on end and create a deep connection even if you barely had any face-to-face time.

For better and worse, tech has made connecting much easier, and thus made forming deep connections with our fellow man much easier. On the upside, we can make friends online and keep in touch with faraway loved ones. The downside, though, is that we have tons of different relationships with people — and we don't always know how to categorize them.

Guy Winch(Opens in a new tab), psychologist and author of How to Fix a Broken Heart(Opens in a new tab), believes these loose definitions are generational to late millennials and Generation Z. The trend among young people is to not want to label relationships, to "see where things go." Considering we are the first generations where apps and online dating permeated our dating experience, it makes sense.

It's this uncertainty that led Kate Wiswell, author of Full-Frontal Nerdity: Lessons in Loving and Living with Your Brain(Opens in a new tab), to coin "eggplant"(Opens in a new tab) as a descriptor for someone who was not just a friend, but not a boyfriend, either.

Even six years after writing that blog, Wiswell believes the English language lacks language nuanced enough for the plethora of relationships we have. "I still feel incredibly frustrated by the lack of ability for us to have the right words to try and describe what we're going through," she said in an interview with Mashable.

Millennial and Gen Z dating histories, according to Winch, are like the gig economy — patchworks of experiences. "There's not the understanding of this linear process of you start dating someone, it intensifies in seriousness, and then either you get into a committed serious relationship or it drops off," he said in an interview with Mashable. "That's no longer the main model I think people are using."

Labels do have their downsides, such as giving people false expectations or they can be seen as restrictive. But not labeling the relationship can also cause a lot of confusion. "People 'go with the flow,'" said Winch, "but then they start to question, 'Well, where is this flow going?'"

How people define "ex" now

Samantha Rothenberg, a comic artist who goes by @violetclair(Opens in a new tab) on Instagram, told me that she only considers someone an "ex" if they had that conversation where they label their relationship.

"An ex must be someone who I had the relationship talk with where we firmly established that I'm his girlfriend, and he's my boyfriend," she said.

In my survey, 73.4 percent of the 283 respondents agreed with Rothenberg and said they use "ex" only to mean a past exclusive, monogamous relationship.

But that is not the whole story. While many felt the same way, others have a looser definition of the term. Over 37 percent said they refer to someone they've dated in the past for a certain amount of time as an ex, and 20 percent said an ex is someone they've dated for any amount of time.

Since we live in a time of friends-with-benefits and fuck buddies, I also asked about sexual relationships. Around 19 percent of respondents say they consider an "ex" a past, non-exclusive sexual relationship for a certain amount of time, while 6 percent consider an "ex" a past, non-exclusive relationship for any amount of time.

Additionally, Rothenberg polled her some 200,000 followers about the subject. The majority of the 4402 respondents, 54 percent, said they use "ex" more loosely than just past "serious" relationships.

Not only is our definition of "ex" all over the place, but so is the amount of time we feel necessary to deem someone an ex. When asked about how much time is "a certain amount of time," respondents answered anywhere from a month to six months to years.

While Rothenberg has a tight personal definition, she said that it makes defining past relationships that did not have "the talk" harder to talk about. "It does kind of leave this weird gray area when I'm referring to one of those relationships," she said, "I'm never sure what the correct term to use is."

The "ex" conversation becomes even more layered once you consider queer relationships, which can take varying degrees of platonic and romance at any given time. This is something heterosexual people cannot seem to wrap their heads around even decades after When Harry Met Sally.

Maddy said she does not know how to define the word when it comes to other queer people. "If ex is based on relationships," Maddy said, "the only real model for relationships that we've had for hundreds and hundreds of years is straight relationships."

Why "semis" deserve to be named

There is an argument that we don't need to name these relationships, that they are unnamed for a reason: They are not significant enough to have their own names. If you were not in an "actual" relationship, why legitimize them with language?

It's because these relationships, even undefined, are significant. We invested enough time and attention to have genuine feelings for this person — why else would we be talking about them? If they were insignificant, this gap in language would not exist because we would simply forget about them, they would not come up in conversation, we would have no need to truncate "that Tinder guy I hooked up with for six months but then it got weird…" or what have you.

If it takes a paragraph to explain someone's role in you life, it's a lot easier to just create a word for them rather than will those feelings and memories away.

"Even if someone is not officially your boyfriend or girlfriend, it can still hurt so much when it ends," said Rothenberg. She described how the emotional pain of a "situationship"(Opens in a new tab) ending could be brought on because you're left with the fantasy of what could have been — rather than the reality of how a relationship could have played out where you see that you were not a compatible couple.

Furthermore, your brain cannot tell the difference between those "not really" relationships and "real" ones. Breaking off a friends-with-benefits arrangement or with someone you dated but never DTRed(Opens in a new tab) — it's painful. "Those relationships hurt because the fact that they're nebulous doesn't mean that our mind doesn't fill in the blanks at some level," said Winch, "With all kinds of hopes and expectations and anticipations."

Even if we do not know the future or the other person's intentions, our mind fills that void. Winch commented, "Psychology hates a void. Something's going to go in there, even if you're not fully articulating it." That's what makes our hearts break over semis: it's not about what actually happened. It's about what we thought would happen, or what we thought about what was happening. If you pour your hopes and dreams into a friend with benefits you believe will for sure want to marry you, and then they don't, of course it's going to hurt.

That is why we should not brush these semis aside, and why we should label them.

"We need to find a way to embrace the uniqueness of various relationships," said Wiswell. "There aren't just a few little buckets that we can put everything into."

Where do we go from here?

It's difficult to say whether this relationship trend will continue. Wench believes trends to be a generational pendulum — perhaps those who come next will balk at the way millennials and Generation Z labeled or did not label their varying relationships, and the tides will shift.

Furthermore, we don't know the technological developments that will change dating. The landscape got a complete overhaul in the 2010s, and it may, and probably will, happen again.

Our language should change with the times. I want my and others' feelings validated by the words we use; I want there to be words to use, period. I do not want to have to rattle off a paragraph to describe someone who meant a lot to me — so instead, they'll be my semi.

Snoozers are losers: Everything you need to know about the button we love to hate

When your alarm went off this morning, did you leap cheerfully out of bed like some kind of psychopath... or did you do the predictable thing and hit that snooze button?

Love it or hate it — or even love to hate it — the snooze button is as much a part of our modern morning routine as breakfast radio shows and scoffing cereal.

But what's the story behind this quirk of modern life? And by tapping that fateful nine-more-minutes-of-sleep option, are we really cheating the system — or just ourselves?

A brief history of the alarm clock

Before we consider the concept of snoozing, we have to look at the bigger picture. That's right, it's time to do a deep dive into the history of the alarm clock.

Way back in the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato had a water-based alarm clock that would rouse him and his students for dawn lectures.

Skip forward a few hundred years to around 725, when Buddhist monk and polymath Yi Xing created another water-based contraption with gongs that went off at certain times.

Mechanical clocks as we'd recognize them today emerged around the 14th century. Monks get most of the credit for creating them, in order to stick to prayer schedules.

From then on, clock towers in town squares would chime in the mornings to wake people nearby. If you weren't close enough to hear, you might employ a knocker-upper to bang on your bedroom windows. With the advent of the industrial revolution, some factories would sound a morning whistle to wake workers.

Leap all the way to the 1780s, when American Levi Hutchins(opens in a new tab) is said to be the first man to make a personal alarm clock. It could only be set to 4 a.m. (the time Hutchins considered proper to wake). Despite being a clockmaker by trade, he never commercialized the concept.

The first U.S. patent for an alarm clock that could be set to the owner's required time was registered in 1876 by Seth E. Thomas(opens in a new tab), who went on to manufacture such devices through the Seth Thomas Clock Company.

When was the snooze button invented?

In the mid-1950s, arguably a time of huge technical advances and massive growth in the household appliance market, the first bedside alarm clock with a snooze button was released.

Marketed as "the world's most humane alarm clock," General Electric-Telechron introduced the "Snooz-Alarm" model as a "new kind of alarm" that "wakes you, lets you snooze, wakes you again!"

Rivals Westclox(opens in a new tab) swiftly followed with a "Drowse" button, offering a 5- or 10-minute respite from your alarm, a standard it continued for many years after.

However, it was the "snooze" description and nine-minute duration that won, eventually becoming the industry standard still recognized today.

Few manufacturers have since tried to mess with the format, although the popular Sony range of Dream Machine alarm clocks boasted a large snooze button labelled as a "Dream Bar(opens in a new tab)" for many years.

Why was snooze set to nine minutes?

The main theory behind why the snooze period was set to nine minutes is a technical one(opens in a new tab). The snooze function had to be worked in around the existing gearing of a small alarm clock, and keeping the time period in single digits is said to have(opens in a new tab) presented a more logical technical solution.

The secondary reason, which may be due more to user experience(opens in a new tab), is that nine minutes is a satisfactory time for a brief rest. If you get past the 10-minute mark, your body may start to fall into a deep sleep, making waking up again more unpleasant.

But why is it still nine minutes?

In a completely programmable digital era, the fact that snooze is set to a default (and in many cases, an unchangeable default) nine minutes is what is described as a "nostalgic artificial standard."

In other words, it's either an homage to how things have traditionally been done, or an if-it-ain't-broke-then-don't-try-to-fix-it type scenario.

Apple's iOS platform and Amazon's Alexa both default to the nine-minute norm. The more fragmented Android market offers five-minute, 10-minute, and user-defined periods.

Of course, now we don't hit a physical button on an actual clock. We tap a touchscreen, or simply tell our devices to "snooze."

Snooze button stats

A recent survey of nearly 20,000 people by Withings(opens in a new tab) found that around 50% admitted to hitting the snooze button at least once in the morning, with a sleepy 15% putting off their alarm three times or more.

Withings found the under-30 age group are the guiltiest for multiple snoozes. A similar British YouGov survey(opens in a new tab) supports this data, suggesting 58% of under-35s use snooze at least once when their alarm goes off.

Is hitting snooze good for you?

There are two major reasons, according to science, that snoozers are losers.

Professor Matthew Walker(opens in a new tab), a neuroscientist and director of the University of California's Centre for Human Sleep Science, states that "when we are artificially wrenched from sleep by an alarm clock, a burst of activity from the fight-or-flight branch of the nervous system causes a spike in blood pressure and a shock acceleration in heart rate."

Repeating this wrenching process by pressing snooze frequently puts your cardiovascular system through such a shock again and again, causing what Walker says is "multiplicative abuse to your heart and nervous system."

If that wasn't bad enough, then snoozing can also adversely affect you on a hormonal level by increasing your body's level of cortisol, a hormone that is released when you're stressed.

Sleep expert Neil Robinson explains that "by dozing off for those extra minutes, we're preparing our bodies for another sleep cycle, which is then quickly interrupted — causing us to feel fatigued for the rest of the day that lies ahead."

A bonus reason to not be tempted to press snooze is for the sake of your relationship. A Sleep Junkie survey(opens in a new tab) of more than 1,000 Americans found that the more people's partners hit the snooze button, the lower they rated their relationship satisfaction.

Sooo, what's the alternative?

So, we now know we should steer clear of the snooze option, but what are the alternatives?

One increasingly popular option is to ditch an audio-based alarm clock in favor of a light therapy solution. These "sunrise alarm clocks" or "wake-up lights" gradually illuminate in a way that simulates the sun rising, promising a more gradual and natural wake-up process.

Lumie(opens in a new tab), MOSCHE(opens in a new tab), and Phillips(opens in a new tab) are just three manufacturers that offer products along these lines. Depending on the model, some also give you a sunset option for a bedtime chill-out session, the ability to wake to different sounds, and options to change the amount of time the light gradually brightens.

More recently, wearables are a viable alternative to a traditional alarm solution. Smartwatches will not only gather useful data about your night's rest, they'll also wake you gently in the morning.

Apple Watch owners can take advantage of the device's haptics by setting the alarm to vibrate(opens in a new tab) for a more sedate way to wake, and manufacturers like Withings(opens in a new tab) and Fitbit(opens in a new tab) offer smartwatches with vibrating alarms to wake you silently.

Finally, if you can't afford to splash out on a new alarm clock or a smartwatch, you could opt for audio that wakes you in a more civilized manner than the traditional blaring alarm. Birdsong(opens in a new tab), gentle music(opens in a new tab), or even a song from your own music collection(opens in a new tab) could be considered a better alternative, especially if the sound increases gradually.

TL;DR: Step away from that snooze button, people...

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie have been through a lot(opens in a new tab) over the years. Thank goodness everything seems to be hunky-dory these days.

The stars of The Simple Life were just seen together in public for the first time in years — and their reunion quickly sparked rumors about a reboot of the iconic reality television show that debuted 15 years ago.

Hilton and Richie were spotted catching up on Sunday at The Daily Front Row's Fashion Los Angeles Awards, where they each presented awards — to Philipp Plein and Juicy Couture, respectively.

If you look hard enough, you can spy Richie's husband (and Good Charolette frontman) Joel Madden, as well as former Disney Channel star Rowan Blanchard sneaking in a photograph in the lower right-hand corner.

While one photo is a far cry from the duo's iconic days ruling tabloids and television together in the early 2000s, their reunion inspired plenty of imaginative folks who've spent the better part of the last 10 years dreaming of a reboot to the reality show. And then there was a tweet from the reality show's official account.

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The two might reunite again sooner than you'd expect, though not on screen. Hilton is engaged to partner Chris Zylka, and she's confirmed(opens in a new tab) to Entertainment Tonight that Richie is on the guest list for the wedding.

But until the day The Simple Life ultimately returns to air, we'll just be watching videos of the two screaming "sanasa" forever.

Bimbos are good, actually

The bimbo is back and Gen Z is reclaiming it with a leftist flair.

The modern bimbo is hyperfeminine, embraces their hotness, and rejects the capitalist mentality that they must showcase marketable skills.

Bimbofication isn't exclusively for cis women — everyone who aligns themselves with femininity and finds joy in being ditzy can identify as a bimbo. Above all, the modern bimbo isn't necessarily uneducated or unintelligent, but their personality doesn't revolve around their degrees and resúmé. The modern bimbo takes the male gaze that's been unavoidable since birth and creates a caricature of it by performing vanity and cluelessness.

Despite the derogatory origins of the word "bimbo," used to dismiss beautiful women as unintelligent, Gen Z is leading the effort to reclaim the word. Syrena, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed "intelligent bimbo" who goes by the handle fauxrich, offered a diagnosis in a recent viral TikTok.

"Do you not care about society's elitist view on academic intelligence? Do you support all women regardless of their job title and if they have plastic surgery or body modifications?" Syrena asks her followers in a singsong lilt, before asking if they also dream of owning dozens of shoes and idolize the late model Anna Nicole Smith. "I'm no doctor, but I think you may be a New Age bimbo!"

The prognosis: pink glitter and Juicy Couture velour sweatsuits.

The bimbo's resurgence is especially popular on TikTok, where, as (Opens in a new tab)Rolling Stone(Opens in a new tab) put it, bimbos are something of an "aspirational figure." The tag #bimbo has just over 81 million views. The tags #bimbotiktok and #bimbofication have 8.9 million views and 5.8 million views, respectively.

The phrase "bimbofication" gained notoriety in 2017, when an illustration of a buxom woman in a minidress picking up a book and transforming into someone more conservatively dressed went viral. Though the artist insisted that it was fetish art, not an anti-feminist condemnation of sexually confident women, the internet was outraged over the implication that women could be either hot or intelligent. In a (Opens in a new tab)Deviantart blog post(Opens in a new tab), the artist apologized for offending people, and wrote that the image was meant to satisfy a client's kink, not make a statement.

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The image took on a life of its own, and inspired memes, spin-offs, and even fanfiction(Opens in a new tab) that imagined the various versions of the woman as a queer book club. The meme format made a comeback in late November following Harry Styles' Vogue cover, which features the musician in a Gucci ball gown.

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Personally, I began jokingly calling myself a bimbo earlier this year when the term "himbo" started trending. Himbos are known for being traditionally masculine men — the himbo is hot and dumb, but above all, he respects women. When viral discourse over the term brought the word back to TikTok, young women asked why the word "bimbo" wasn't met with the same affection. Spoiler alert: It's the same reason femininity has been belittled and dismissed for centuries.

The short answer: Sexism!

Syrena, the 21-year-old diagnosing her followers as New Age bimbos, is a college student studying health science. As a woman in a rigorous educational program, Syrena rejects the expectation that to be taken seriously in professional or academic settings she has to distance herself from hyperfemininity.

"I think we don't have to 'be' anything to be taken seriously, as women should be taken seriously in all spaces regardless of how they look," Syrena said over Instagram DM. "I think all-inclusive feminism includes boss babes, sluts, bimbos, PhD holders, single moms, and just ALL women in general ... The people who believe it's anti-feminist are those who believe bimbos are who they are for the male gaze, which is completely untrue."

Syrena added that she herself had to unlearn her own "inner male gaze" in the process of identifying as a bimbo. Diving headfirst into the hyperfeminine should not be equated to giving in to the male gaze. The TikTok creators who identify as bimbos have made it clear they're putting on the costume not to appeal to men, but to make fun of them. Kate Muir, who posts on TikTok as bimbokate, told Rolling Stone that she uses her online persona to make men uncomfortable by pairing stereotypically feminine visuals with jarring messaging.

"Being a self-aware bimbo is amazing," she captioned(Opens in a new tab) one TikTok of herself dancing in front of a mirror. "You become everything men want visually whilst also being everything they hate (self-aware, sexually empowered, politically conscious.) Reverse the fetishisation of femininity."

The real appeal of the term, aside from consciously choosing to lean into your inherent hotness, is rejecting the societal expectation that women must have it all. (Anyone, Syrena explained in another video, can be hot with confidence.)

To have some sort of value in American society, the modern woman is expected to be compassionate and maternal, but also ambitious and goal-oriented. On top of that, women are pressured to meet a constantly changing beauty standard. Juggling all of these expectations is so exhausting and instilled in women from such an early age, it's taking a psychological toll on teenage girls. In his book The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls From Today's Pressures, University of California, Berkeley, psychology professor Stephen Hinshaw described the juggling act as excelling at "girl skills," achieving "boy goals," and being "models of female perfection." Between conflicting messaging about being both family- and career-oriented, plus immense pressure to be sexually appealing from a young age, the teenagers Hinshaw profiled in his case studies were "set up for crisis" and at higher risk for anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

Which is why the bimbo resurgence is transgressive — by leaning into the caricature of femininity, Gen Z's New Age bimbos are turning the male gaze back on itself.

Jaime Hough teaches introductory gender studies courses at Washington State University and wrote her PhD dissertation on women's expression of sexuality. Dealing with that triple bind, as Hinshaw describes it, is an exhausting, lifelong juggle. Hough is especially enamored by the resurgence of the bimbo because it's such a middle finger to that triple bind.

"I think part of bimbofication is saying I'm not going to do it all," Hough said in a phone interview. "Today I'm just going to focus on being pretty, because I want to. I'm going to let go of being assertive, going to let go of caring for everyone else. I'm just going to care for myself, feel good, and look pretty. Fuck the rest of you."

The modern bimbo is inherently anti-capitalist too, because no matter how intelligent, accomplished, and ambitious they may be, contributing to the market is not a priority. Everyone has likely performed some form of (Opens in a new tab)unpaid emotional labor(Opens in a new tab) at some point in their lives, but women take on more of it than cis men. From waking up earlier than cis male coworkers to get ready in the mornings, to doing the bulk of household duties because men simply "aren't as good at it," to (Opens in a new tab)regulating their emotions(Opens in a new tab) to appear more approachable.

"In our culture, we rely on women to do almost all the emotional labor we don't teach men how to do," Hough said. "And so, women are always carrying this huge mental emotional burden of thinking not just about what I want to do, but whose feelings are going to get hurt and how can I do it in a way that their feelings don't get hurt? How can I achieve my goals without making anyone feel threatened?"

In addition to the triple bind young women face, all young people are expected to meet some level of productivity. If something isn't directly related to self-improvement, it's not seen as valuable in American culture. The labor and expense women put into maintaining their appearance, Hough added, isn't directly profitable, but that doesn't mean it isn't work. Being a bimbo also involves rejecting the pressure to be constantly productive.

"I believe that productivity is constantly fed to society as being a slave to capitalism by working or thinking about work," Syrena said. "I think productivity can be learning something random that you like."

Identifying as a bimbo is so enjoyable because, whether it's feminist or not, you're allowing yourself to be selfish for once. If you have to spend hours futzing with your appearance to have any value in this capitalist hellscape, why not make it your entire personality?

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Don't confuse the New Age bimbo with girlboss second-wave feminism. The New Age bimbo is intersectional, and transcends gender or heterosexuality. Though the classic bimbo is a skinny, blonde, heterosexual white woman, TikTok's modern bimbos are queer, trans, people of all races and of any and all body types. Chrissy Chlapecka, a 20-year-old TikTok creator who wrote the "Bimbo Bibble," styles her videos as (Opens in a new tab)open letters(Opens in a new tab) to "the girls, the gays, the theys," and (Opens in a new tab)"anyone who, unfortunately, likes men."(Opens in a new tab)

Anyone who embraces femininity can be a bimbo; TikTok has also come up with the gender neutral term "thembo" to describe someone who's hot, dumb, and respects women. TikTok creator little_sun_boy coined the phrase "bimboy" as a spin-off of himbos. Instead of someone who's large, masculine, and ditzy, the 24-year-old creator explains that the bimboy is small, feminine, and ditzy. In an Instagram DM, little_sun_boy clarified that while the bimboy is feminine and ditzy, he isn't ditzy because he's feminine.

Ultimately, the bimbo's newfound popularity points to a shift away from the belittling of femininity. Hough noted that stereotypical hyperfeminine women in children's media, like Sharpay in High School Musical and Yzma in Emperor's New Groove were written as the movies' villains and, though it's subtle, that messaging only adds to the triple bind young women grapple with in their childhoods.

Nothing is black and white, though, and categorizing traits, goals, and interests into "for boys" and "for girls" is harmful for all impressionable kids. I myself was reluctant to admit my own queerness because I was so insistent that being hyperfeminine could only mean that I was heterosexual, and when I did come to terms with it, I overcompensated by getting rid of my frilly wardrobe and extensive makeup collection. But surprise! You can be two things at once! I, for one, have now leaned even further into hyperfemininity with an even more extensive makeup collection and a newfound zest for wearing over-the-top looks that I put on for my own artistic enjoyment, not for a man's.

Distancing from the color pink is a common experience in feminist circles. Hough and many of her peers in academia were reluctant to embrace the color that had been forced upon them since birth. A (Opens in a new tab)2011 study(Opens in a new tab) led by Stefan Puntoni, an associate professor of marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management, (Opens in a new tab)concluded(Opens in a new tab) that the relentlessly pink, gendered marketing used in breast cancer awareness ads actually may repel the women the ads are targeting. Female participants were less likely to think they were at risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer when they were shown pink advertisements than when they were shown colorless or neutral-toned ones. Participants were also less likely to donate to the causes when shown pink marketing materials. Puntoni hypothesized that the color pink triggered a "defense mechanism" that made some female participants unconsciously ignore or downplay the advertisement's message.

American culture has a habit of forcing femininity and masculinity on children from birth, so rejecting the color pink is a natural reaction to foisting bubblegum bows and flamingo-toned tutus on infant girls. But distancing yourself from femininity for the sake of distancing yourself from women is just internalized misogyny. The sexist and backhanded compliment (Opens in a new tab)"not like other girls"(Opens in a new tab) has been reborn and recirculated in different forms over the last two decades, from bimbofication fetish art to the (Opens in a new tab)"Bruh girl" versus "Hi girlie" trope(Opens in a new tab)s popularized on TikTok this year. Regardless of whether they identify as women, New Age bimbos subvert such patriarchal categorizations by reclaiming femininity without pitting women against each other, whatever their gender may be.

"One of the things I love about this new wave of bimbofication is that it's very anti-hierarchical, and no one's degree makes them better or smarter, that's not a thing we value," Hough said. "This new wave of bimbofication is this idea that this is about self-love and self-pleasure. Anything that gets in the way of that, like traditional educational values or capitalist values, isn't worth it."

But then again, expecting that anything women do must be in the name of subversion goes against the modern bimbo's hedonist principles. All you need to do to be a new bimbo is be feminine, feel pretty, and not particularly care about what men want from you.

Cyndi Lauper put it best in her 1983 bimbo anthem: Girls (and gays and theys) just wanna have fun.

Quordle today: Here are the answers and hints for October 18

Sorry about the difficulty level of today's Quordle. I wouldn't say it's a hard one, so much as it's simply one that takes longer than usual. But your mileage may vary from mine!

If it's a little too challenging today, you've come to the right place for hints. There aren't just hints here, but the whole Quordle solution. Scroll to the bottom of this page, and there it is. But are you sure you need all four answers? Maybe you just need a strategy guide. Either way, scroll down, and you'll get what you need.

What is Quordle?

Quordle is a five-letter word guessing game similar to Wordle, except each guess applies letters to four words at the same time. You get nine guesses instead of six to correctly guess all four words. It looks like playing four Wordle games at the same time, and that is essentially what it is. But it's not nearly as intimidating as it sounds.

Is Quordle harder than Wordle?

Yes, though not diabolically so.

Where did Quordle come from?

Amid the Wordle boom of late 2021 and early 2022, when everyone was learning to love free, in-browser, once-a-day word guessing games, creator Freddie Meyer says he took inspiration from one of the first big Wordle variations, Dordle — the one where you essentially play two Wordles at once. He took things up a notch, and released Quordle on January 30(Opens in a new tab). Meyer's creation was covered in The Guardian(Opens in a new tab) six days later, and now, according to Meyer, it attracts millions of daily users. Today, Meyer earns modest revenue(Opens in a new tab) from Patreon, where dedicated Quordle fans can donate to keep their favorite puzzle game running. 

How is Quordle pronounced?

“Kwordle.” It should rhyme with “Wordle,” and definitely should not be pronounced exactly like "curdle.”

Is Quordle strategy different from Wordle?

Yes and no.

Your starting strategy should be the same as with Wordle. In fact, if you have a favorite Wordle opening word, there’s no reason to change that here. We suggest something rich in vowels, featuring common letters like C, R, and N. But you do you.

After your first guess, however, you’ll notice things getting out of control if you play Quordle exactly like Wordle.

What should I do in Quordle that I don’t do in Wordle?

Solving a Wordle puzzle can famously come down to a series of single letter-change variations. If you’ve narrowed it down to “-IGHT,” you could guess “MIGHT” “NIGHT” “LIGHT” and “SIGHT” and one of those will probably be the solution — though this is also a famous way to end up losing in Wordle, particularly if you play on “hard mode.” In Quordle, however, this sort of single-letter winnowing is a deadly trap, and it hints at the important strategic difference between Wordle and Quordle: In Quordle, you can't afford to waste guesses unless you're eliminating as many letters as possible at all times. 

Guessing a completely random word that you already know isn't the solution, just to eliminate three or four possible letters you haven’t tried yet, is thought of as a desperate, latch-ditch move in Wordle. In Quordle, however, it's a normal part of the player's strategic toolset.

Is there a way to get the answer faster?

In my experience Quordle can be a slow game, sometimes dragging out longer than it would take to play Wordle four times. But a sort of blunt-force guessing approach can speed things up. The following strategy also works with Wordle if you only want the solution, and don’t care about having the fewest possible guesses:

Try starting with a series of words that puts all the vowels (including Y) on the board, along with some other common letters. We've had good luck with the three words: “NOTES,” “ACRID,” and “LUMPY.” YouTuber DougMansLand(Opens in a new tab) suggests four words: “CANOE,” “SKIRT,” “PLUMB,” and “FUDGY.”

Most of the alphabet is now eliminated, and you’ll only have the ability to make one or two wrong guesses if you use this strategy. But in most cases you’ll have all the information you need to guess the remaining words without any wrong guesses.

If strategy isn't helping, and you're still stumped, here are some hints:

Are there any double or triple letters in today’s Quordle words?

Three of four words contain a letter that occurs twice.

Are any rare letters being used in today’s Quordle like Q or Z?

No.

What do today’s Quordle words start with?

S, W, B, and R.

What are the answers for today’s Quordle?

Are you sure you want to know?

There’s still time to turn back.

OK, you asked for it. The answers are:

1. STINT

2. WEDGE

3. BUGLE

4. RIGOR

My Chemical Romance is back, and after the year weve had, their timing is perfect

My Chemical Romance is back, just as we're all getting emo again.

The night before My Chemical Romance's reunion show in Los Angeles on Friday, band members handed out blankets(Opens in a new tab) to fans camping outside. Some especially devoted fans had been waiting outside the Shrine, a venue known for its chaotic lines, since Tuesday(Opens in a new tab). The band's last performance together was in 2012, about a year before they split. Fans stayed emo throughout the six year hiatus — and My Chemical Romance's return couldn't have had better timing. When the band opened(Opens in a new tab) the show with its 2005 song "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," the audience sang along with their whole chests and meant it.

My Chemical Romance's lead singer, Gerard Way, who usurped Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz to become emo king of the 2000s, said the break up was right. He told(Opens in a new tab) the i that when the album The Black Parade was released, "it was a good time to be counter culture." In 2006, president George W. Bush was in his second term in office and the U.S. was embroiled in "war for oil."

The Black Parade was My Chemical Romance's third and most commercially successful album. As a whole, it follows a character called The Patient as he comes to terms with his inevitable death from terminal illness and descends into hell. The song Welcome to the Black Parade, which is about literally welcoming death, became emblematic of emo culture itself. In the last 13 years, it's become recognizable based on the single opening note(Opens in a new tab) alone.

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"But when Danger Days was out, we had Obama, things were going really well, we were making so much progress," Way continued in the i, referring to My Chemical Romance's fourth and last studio album. "I'm able to read the writing on the wall pretty clearly, and I was like, 'Nobody really needs us now ... I think it's time to finish."

That era had plenty of issues(Opens in a new tab), including weathering a crippling recession and further American intervention(Opens in a new tab) in the Middle East, but Barack Obama's presidency inspired(Opens in a new tab) a sense of hope most of the world hasn't felt since the 2016 election.

Internet culture, which has always been dark, ramped up after Trump took office — memes have only gotten bleaker and more surreal. When economists predicted another incoming recession earlier this year, millennials and zoomers joked(Opens in a new tab) that they were ready because they had nothing to lose in the first place. A 2019 Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index report(Opens in a new tab) on millennials found that major depression was the most prevalent health condition affecting the generation. That may be because younger people are more open to discussing mental health issues — the American Psychological Association reports(Opens in a new tab) that Gen Z is the generation most likely to report mental health issues — but you have to admit that when climate change, a failing healthcare system, crippling student loan debt, and an increasingly divided nation loom over you, the future can seem pretty miserable.

In a post(Opens in a new tab) recapping last year, Way called 2018 "a year of black magic." When a Guardian reporter asked(Opens in a new tab) if the band would ever get back together earlier this year, Way seemed to allude to the dumpster fire we're all continuing to exist in.

"That's the stuff I thought about when the world started to get super fucked up again," he told the Guardian in March this year. "It definitely came into my head, but I'd changed so much as a person. I didn't know how I'd fit into it any more, I didn't know how the band would fit into it any more. But you're right, the world is definitely in need of something more positive."

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My Chemical Romance may be known for its macabre aesthetic — the Daily Mail once referred(Opens in a new tab) to them as a "suicide cult band," sparking outrage among fans — but its music does have more uplifting notes. Welcome to the Black Parade discusses being unashamed of a broken life. Its chorus, in which the Patient declares he'll "carry on," was a Tumblr rallying cry.

Like most music beloved by teen emos, My Chemical Romance's music embraced sadness and owned up to anger. During the Los Angeles show, Way described the song "Our Lady of Sorrows" as "a little stabby" before launching into a guitar riff that turned the entire auditorium into a gloriously chaotic dance floor. Between songs, he asked the audience how many people were seeing My Chemical Romance for the first time, and seemed surprised that nearly everyone raised their hands.

As much as the band embodies the millennial spirit, nobody in the band is a millennial. Age ranges are arbitrary, though: Gen Z is very(Opens in a new tab) much(Opens in a new tab) into(Opens in a new tab) emo music too, now, thanks to TikTok and generational depression. Emo Night(Opens in a new tab), a wildly successful themed party that plays alt rock and pop punk from the aughts, draws in thousands of self-proclaimed emos every month. Modern artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Princess Nokia, and the late Juice WRLD credited(Opens in a new tab) the emo music they listened to as young teenagers as influences that shaped their musical styles.

In the pit on Friday night, I danced among two teenagers who brought their parents, a 26-year-old who was able to fly in from Chicago because he could afford it with his "new grown-up job," and a couple in their 30s who saw My Chemical Romance during Warped Tour in 2005. The thousands of Killjoys — the fandom named itself after the band's last album — who managed to snag tickets all shared the same anger, sorrow, and reverence for Mikey Fuckin' Way as they did a decade ago. (The nickname for Mikey Way, the band's bassist and Gerard's younger brother, is even printed on official merch(Opens in a new tab).)

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It's fitting that My Chemical Romance closed its show with "The Kids From Yesterday," a ballad about taking "one last ride" since growing up. I started listening to My Chemical Romance in middle school, just before the band released Danger Days. In the decade since, I scaled back on the eyeliner and drugstore hair dye, but haven't gotten any less emo. Despite both the fans and the band maturing, dancing to Welcome to the Black Parade when My Chemical Romance performed a second encore was just as much of a near-religious experience as the first time I heard it.

In its review(Opens in a new tab) of the show, the Los Angeles Times asks why My Chemical Romance returned now, of all times. Conspiracy theories(Opens in a new tab) aside, I can probably answer that question: we're all feeling a little stabby.

Teens are apparently stealing soap dispensers and urinals from school for the devious lick trend

Students are stealing paper towel dispensers, lab equipment, and school bus parts to flex as "devious licks" in the latest back-to-school trend on TikTok. Well, at least they claim they are.

In a video posted last week(Opens in a new tab), TikTok user @oskarsoskar, unzips their backpack and pulls out two COVID antigen testing kits. They toss the kits into a larger pile of boxed kits on their bed, and then pans over to a duffle bag filled with even more kits. As the music builds, @oskarsoskar pulls out a drawer from under their bed, revealing even more antigen testing kits.

"Mfs doing great licks,"@oskarsoskar captioned the video, which has more than 2.3 million views as of Monday. "I'm out here doing a whole Heist."

They posted the video again the same day, racking up 4.6 million views, and captioned it, "I won this trend."

The opening bars to Lil B's "Ski Ski BasedGod"(Opens in a new tab) — sped up to a frantic, tension-building trill — provide the backing track to these alleged school supply heists, which has become a trend on the app as schools return to in-person classes. In a typical video, the TikTok user unzips their backpack to reveal their apparently stolen goods. The more difficult to obtain, the more devious the lick. Toilet paper rolls, class pets, and a classmate's shoes are small-grade licks. Mid-tier licks include parking signs, school laptops, and desk chairs. Especially complex swipes like an entire filing cabinet or security cameras are referred to as nefarious, diabolical, and godforsaken licks.

As of Monday, there are over 76,000 videos using the sped-up version of "Ski Ski BasedGod," and 24,500 videos using an identical sound posted by a different TikTok user. The tag #deviouslick has 175.2 million views.

The trend started when TikTok user jugg4elias posted a video on Sept. 1 showing off a box of disposable face masks they claimed to have stolen from school, according to Know Your Meme(Opens in a new tab).

"A month into school...absolutely devious lick," they captioned the video, adding "Should've brought a mask from home. Now look at you walkin round campus maskless you dirty dog."

The video racked up more than 345,800 views before it was removed on Monday.

TikTok user whiteboywes upped the ante last week(Opens in a new tab), posting a video unzipping their backpack to reveal a wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispenser. The video now has more than 13 million views, and the user appears to have changed their name to dtx.2cent.

Amid videos of actual stolen property, TikTok users are also bragging about implausible heists. The tongue-in-cheek videos feature students admonishing others for their small licks before revealing "stolen" cop cars and school busses.

"In just a few minutes...I'm going to win this trend," TikTok user ucharlie captioned video of himself pretending to dismantle a boiler(Opens in a new tab).

Another user posted a video of a massive bronze horse statue(Opens in a new tab) at the entrance of their school building, writing, "I'm finna hit the most diabolical lick of the school year."

One posted space footage of planet Earth(Opens in a new tab), joking they "hit the biggest lick in the universe."

Other students are fed up with the antics. TikTok users complained that school bathrooms are closed because of missing toilets(Opens in a new tab) and stolen bathroom stall dividers(Opens in a new tab). One user joked about being scared to use public restrooms(Opens in a new tab), lest their shoes be stolen from under the stall door in the name of a devious lick.

And school administrators are threatening consequences for the trending theft. TikTok user drexerss posted a recording of a school announcement(Opens in a new tab) imploring kids to stop stealing soap dispensers and warning students that if caught, they'll be disciplined.

"For those that are participating, please know that when we do catch you we will discipline you to the fullest extent and you will be arrested and you will be responsible for any of the monetary damages that have been done," the school administrator said in the video. "Because of the antics of a few, we don't have soap in any of the boys' restrooms...nor do we have any more soap dispensers so you will not be able to thoroughly wash your hands."

The administrator added that the school had to close one of the bathrooms because of the damages from this trend.

In a Facebook post(Opens in a new tab) on Sunday night, Sunlake High School in Land O'Lakes, Florida told parents that stealing school property may seem like a "harmless prank," the trend does involve "criminal activity."

"Soap dispensers, exit signs, safety signage for fire rescue, and classroom telephones are just a few of the items that were removed and stolen this week," the school posted. "We love our Seahawks and we do not want to see any of them arrested so PLEASE talk to your kids. If they are participating in this activity you will be hearing from an administrator and our School Resource Officer. Let's work together to put a stop to this now."

One student on TikTok said participants "took this devious lick thing too far" and now their school is only allowing transparent backpacks(Opens in a new tab). Another school is taking "anti-menace" measures by locking soap dispensers in metal casing(Opens in a new tab).

It's unclear if these measures were already in place, or if students are posting these consequence videos to get in on the trend.

And while the trend may appear harmless, already underfunded schools are taking a hit. YouTuber and streamer Arthur EXE responded to another student(Opens in a new tab) who claimed they stole a SMART Board, which can cost a classroom between $2,000 to $7,000 for the hardware alone.

"A lot of you don't realize how expensive a SMART Board is," Arthur EXE said, adding that his mother is a teacher. "Buying a SMART Board is basically taking out a small loan...This might be the greatest lick in history."

The base price of the interactive board itself doesn't include the cost of installation or software licensing, which varies by brand but can still cost tens of thousands of dollars. And while the cost of most classroom furniture like desks, boards, and basic technology is covered by the school district, teachers are still burdened with paying for other supplies out-of-pocket(Opens in a new tab).

Bottom line: devious licks can be fun, but they do hurt actual teachers trying to do their jobs, and punish students who didn't even participate in trend. And while there aren't any lick-related arrests made public yet, it's a very real consequence of attempting a heist just for some clout.

Guy & Alison & David & Samin & Chrissy: How the internet redefined the celebrity chef

Internet of Yum digs into all the things that make us drool while we're checking our feeds.

In the '90s and early aughts, a celebrity chef was someone who turned their kitchen chops (be that knife skills or simply being charming behind the counter) into Food Network shows, packed restaurants, bestselling cookbooks, merchandise, or a deal with a sought-after brand. Now, they're someone who turns their bestselling cookbook into a Netflix show, or their YouTube show into a Hulu show, or their popular YouTube show into spinoff YouTube shows, or their blog into cookbooks, or their Instagram popularity into a TV Show, or their Twitter goldmine into a Martha Stewart-esque empire.

That's because social media, memes, better smartphone cameras, and streaming have changed the formula for success — and Food Network faltered when all that began to take shape.

"The thing where people used to say chefs are rock stars, it really continues to be true," says Allen Salkin, author of spicy tell-all From Scratch: Inside the Food Network(Opens in a new tab).

But just like you never had to be the best musician to top the music charts, you never had to be the best chef to be a celebrity chef. It’s always been more about personality than how well one can cook. Or, how well one can interview other chefs or travel the world eating exotic foods with other famous people.

That was true in the ‘60s when Julia Child demystified French cooking. That was true when Emeril first yelled “Bam” in the ‘90s. That was true when Guy Fieri started bringing camera crews to greasy spoons in the aughts. And it’s still true now when Alison Roman answers questions about The Stew, her face masked by Instagram’s puppy-ears filter. Or when David Chang travels to Morocco with Chrissy Teigen for a Netflix show(Opens in a new tab) and wonders, “How the hell did she go from SI swimsuit model to the modern-day Martha Stewart almost? It’s like crazy.” (Teigen was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2019, honored as a pioneer in the food space by celebrity chef Eric Ripert(Opens in a new tab).)

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"Even the word chef is complicated — some people define it as anyone who has a culinary degree, others say you have to run a restaurant kitchen, others say you need both," says Emma Laperruque, food editor at Food52, an influential food site. Still, there have been home cooks who've made the transition to "celebrity chef."

"These days, it can go in the opposite direction: a celebrity who turns into a culinary influencer," she adds.

Star power

Julia Child wasn't the only chef on public television, but she certainly is the most well-known. In 1967, four years after The French Chef taught Americans how to make crepes and cook a goose, Joyce Chen used the same set to teach upscale Chinese cooking. But Joyce Chen Cooks fizzled out after one season because it couldn't get a sponsor(Opens in a new tab). Chen, the first woman of color on a national cooking program, had to work with a vocal coach to soften her strong accent. Looking back on her show's short life, media scholars and food historians note she didn't have the same "charisma"(Opens in a new tab) as Child, and xenophobia may have played a role. (Child and Chen were friendly, and Child often ate at Chen's Cambridge restaurant.)

For decades, PBS would be a main source of televised cooking for Americans. But the business of PBS was very different than later iterations of televised chefs. PBS offered cooking programs as a public service. The Food Network, which launched in 1993, was made to make money, and celebrity sells.

The Food Network debuted just months before Martha Stewart turned her magazine, Martha Stewart Living, into a syndicated TV show. More Americans were spending money on home decorating and improvement. The American economy was booming and people had extra cash. Stewart may be more of a lifestyle guru, but she's also been called a celebrity chef over the years. She's had a renaissance recently due in part to her collaboration with Snoop Dogg on a VH1 cooking show,(Opens in a new tab) a friendship made for the internet.

In the beginning, there wasn’t even a working oven on the Food Network's set(Opens in a new tab). One time, someone behind the scenes mistakenly broadcast porn(Opens in a new tab); rather than hurting the network, the flurry of complaints proved to advertisers that people were watching. Entire seasons were shot in a week. Emeril Lagasse, whose photo could have been next to the dictionary definition of “celebrity chef” in 2000, came up with his “Bam(Opens in a new tab)” catchphrase to wake up a tired crew(Opens in a new tab).

As the Food Network grew, there was controversy in the kitchen. Food Network hosts were (Opens in a new tab)TV chefs(Opens in a new tab). Not real chefs. The same lines in the sand would be drawn decades later as cooks began to show off their chops online. Those are YouTube chefs. Those are Instagram chefs. Not real chefs. And yet, an Instagram chef or a YouTube chef has the power to be more famous than someone who owns a successful restaurant.

“There’s disagreements with people about who is a celebrity chef and who's a food influencer. It's so blah blah blah blah blah,” says Guy Fieri, a Food Network prodigy. “Whatever. I don’t even think about shit like that.”

“If you're doing something good in the industry, something good for people, you know — who's educating people, entertaining people, helping people, all inside of food... those are my criteria,” Fieri says of who should be considered a celebrity chef.

Salkin considers Fieri the Food Network's last home-grown star. The next big twist to come from the network, he says, was Ree Drummond, a home cook who built her own fandom through her blog, The Pioneer Woman(Opens in a new tab). In 2011, she went from influencer to Food Network star with even more influence.

"Having created a nation of people who knew what kale and shallots are, [the Food Network] made a business calculation that they can run dumb crap over time and they’d get a couple more thousand viewers," Salkin says. At the same time, Bravo and other cable networks were also running food shows, particularly competitions. Then in 2015 came higher-brow content like Chef's Table from Netflix along with "the broad, the Instagram and YouTube chefs," he says.

In 2006, a year before Emeril Live was cut due to declining ratings, Fieri won The Next Food Network Star. The show, which later dropped “the next” from its title, ran until 2018. By then, YouTube was already being called “the new Food Network.”(Opens in a new tab) Fieri was still the show's most famous winner. He’d become popular not for his own cooking but for spotlighting diners, drive-ins, and dives in his show of the same name. And for leaning in hard when the internet turned him into a meme. (He has a team that comes up with the memes, which he then runs by his sons.)

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Internet power

Other celebrity chefs have tried to transition to the internet with varying degrees of success. Ina Garten is popular on Instagram, her "store bought is fine" catchphrase fitting in well with home cooks looking for recipe ideas. (Same goes for her willingness to make a humongous quarantine cocktail.) Tom Colicchio of Top Chef has also upped his Instagram game during the coronavirus pandemic. With his New York restaurants closed(Opens in a new tab), he's been showing off(Opens in a new tab) his sourdough(Opens in a new tab) bakes. Garten has 2.6 million Instagram followers to Colicchio's 246,000.

In between them sits Alison Roman at 560,000 Instagram followers. Roman's recipes have become proper nouns (The Cookies, The Stew, The Pasta) and she's been dubbed "the face of home cooking(Opens in a new tab)" and "the prom queen of quarantine(Opens in a new tab)." She's even referenced "store bought is fine" in an Instagram caption(Opens in a new tab) before.

The Nothing Fancy(Opens in a new tab) author is casual and unfiltered. She fits the millennial ideal of cramming a bunch of people into a small apartment, everyone drinking out of a hodgepodge of glasses and eating anchovies, but anchovies in effortlessly cool and delicious dishes. She dons filters to answer cooking questions in her Instagram Stories. It's endearing, although she says it's more out of embarrassment than trying to be cute.

"I'm not wearing makeup or like I just went for a run or like didn't get dressed or take a shower, and I'm like 'I look like shit' but if I put a filter on, I look OK," she says. "It's like an obvious way of saying I do care what I look like. Not enough to style myself for a video on Instagram, but like enough to put dog ears on me that smooths out my rosacea."

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But her say-whatever, keeping it real vibe got her in trouble. She sent shockwaves through the Twittersphere when she basically called(Opens in a new tab) Teigen a sellout. Teigen responded with a sad tweet(Opens in a new tab) noting she'd been making Roman's recipes for years.

Celebrity chefs criticizing one another(Opens in a new tab), either for being "sellouts" or bad cooks, is a time-honored tradition. But the masses didn't demand an apology when Lagasse dunked on Rachael Ray. Or when Stewart did the same. Or when Anthony Bourdain roasted Fieri. None of those barbs had a negative impact, overall, on anyone's fame. What makes Roman's gaffe different? We have apology culture and cancel culture, sure, but we also have a heightened awareness of privilege, how successful women should treat other women, and internet power. Roman, a white woman, criticized a woman of color over how she leveraged her fame. She was disparaging another woman to differentiate herself. In this dynamic, though, Teigen has the real power. She sits at the cool table in our social media cafeteria. Roman sold a TV show recently (production has been on hold because of coronavirus) and Teigen planned to executive produce. Like Martha Stewart, Teigen is a lifestyle guru who in some circles is considered a celebrity chef. She uses her cooking to propel her fame, after all.

Unlike those other food celebrity dust-ups, this time there was an apology(Opens in a new tab). And a public olive branch in return.(Opens in a new tab)

"It was stupid, careless and insensitive. I need to learn, and respect, the difference between being unfiltered and honest vs. being uneducated and flippant," Roman posted on both Twitter and Instagram, tying it back to her own insecurity. A few days later, she was making The Pasta with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.(Opens in a new tab)

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Before the brouhaha, when asked what made someone a celebrity chef in 2020, the New York Times columnist and restaurant-trained chef said it depends.

“If you’re asking the cool kids on Twitter about who they think is important and cool, it’s different than like my mom,” said Roman. For what it’s worth, she said she makes recipes for both the cool kids and moms.

"I'd rather be known like overall for good work than like for one recipe that's very successful," Roman said. "That's more important to me than like, 'Oh did you make The Cookies by that girl.'"

"It's not like my main goal to make hit after hit after hit. That feels exhausting. And I will fail if that was my objective."

When she's writing a new recipe for her column, she's thinking about how she can make something delicious that anyone can make.

"It's funny because plenty of people, especially at the New York Times, people love to comment like, 'Oh well I do it this way,' and like 'I do it that way.' And I'm like, yeah, I know you can do it a lot of ways, but I'm trying to write one recipe that is as inclusive as possible," Roman said.

Accessibility has been part of celebrity chefdom since Rachael Ray taught a busy nation how to make 30-minute meals nearly 20 years ago. The difference now is we're not spending 30 minutes watching how to make something. We're scrolling through Instagram at lightning speed. Or we're double-screening it, scrolling on our phones while we watch Netflix or YouTube.

Some celebrity chefs of the aughts have tried to harness the power of YouTube. Both Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver have YouTube channels, although Ramsay with 14 million subscribers has more than Oliver's 5 million. Last year, Ramsay was nominated for a YouTube Streamy Award for Food(Opens in a new tab), but didn't win. Instead, the honor went to Andrew Rea, the home cook behind Binging with Babish, a YouTube show with nearly 7 million subscribers that recreates food from TV and movies. Binging got its big break in November 2016 when Rea made the "moistmaker" sandwich from Friends. Since then, he's made the Krabby Patty Supreme from SpongeBob SquarePants and Direwolf bread from Game of Thrones with star Maisie Williams. He's spun his success into another cooking channel called Basics with Babish, where he teaches viewers how to make hummus and sourdough, and a lifestyle show called Being with Babish, where he plays Oprah and gives gifts to deserving fans.

"Anyone with a camera and an internet connection can make content now. I'm not saying that all of that is good," Rea notes. "But there's so much of it out there, and there is so much of it that is genuinely good and really [well] produced, really well thought out, really affable, and really enjoyable shows on YouTube that nobody's watching because they either didn't market themselves correctly or they didn't get as lucky as I did," Rea says.

"I try not to ever fall into the trap of thinking that I'm special for having made this," adds Rea, who wouldn't call himself a celebrity chef. Those are "your Gordon Ramsays, your Alton Browns," he says. Although, not calling yourself a celebrity is a requirement for internet celebrities. Like Roman, he has to be approachable, aspirational.

"There's so many levels of what could be considered a celebrity chef," Rea adds. "When does the line start? When you have 100,000 subscribers, when you have 250,000 subscribers? Like when do you become a celebrity chef?"

Claire Saffitz, the Bon Appétit chef whose memeability comes close to rivaling Fieri, also never wants to be called a celebrity chef. Saffitz hosts the magazine's YouTube show Gourmet Makes where she recreates junk food from scratch. People relate to her frustration, which is on full display when she tries to make gourmet Doritos or Peeps.

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Her videos consistently net between 5 million and 10 million views.

"Absolutely not. I cringe. I think if I ever get to the point where I expect recognition, I'm a sociopath," she told Mashable last year at Vidcon when asked if she considered herself a celebrity.

Rea, who didn't go to culinary school, was recently featured in a Bon Appétit challenge. A professional chef walks him through making a Jean-Georges egg — fluffy scrambled eggs stuffed in an egg shell and topped with whipped cream and caviar, but they use ostrich eggs and salmon roe — while they stand back to back. Jean-Georges Vongerichten has a restaurant empire, but he never made it big on TV. He had a short-lived PBS food-travel series with his wife, but he's known more among foodies than the "cool kids on Twitter," as Roman would say.

"I was really flattered that they chose a pretty technically difficult recipe for me to do," Rea says. "I was like, OK you guys have confidence that I can hold my own."

Rea considers Saffitz and other Bon Appétit stars celebrity chefs. "They're people who walk down the street and will be recognized," he says. "They're superstars."

Perhaps Rea isn't as recognizable because he doesn't show his face on his cooking shows. You see his torso covered in a black apron, his hands, and his arm tattoos. His soothing voice comforts you. The colors pop.

"I shoot it. I edit it. I do the voiceover. I write the instructions, the little jokes. So good and bad, stupid and smart, ugly and pretty. The show is me. It is an extension of me," he says (adding that he does outsource some of the multi-camera footage assembly for his spin-off cooking show Basics with Babish).

His look — the minimalism, the high contrast — can also be seen with food content on Instagram. And on Netflix.

Netflix slides in

Netflix turned Samin Nosrat's bestselling cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat(Opens in a new tab), which aimed to give home cooks the confidence to use their own instincts, into a show. With its brightly colored food close-ups, the show would fit right in on Instagram. It's part documentary show, part cooking show, part travel show, a formula that's been used before but is especially inviting with Nosrat's boisterous laugh acting as the secret sauce. It's also only four episodes. Netflix doesn't have a problem bucking TV traditions on series length, and the show is better for it. Nosrat leaves you wanting more.

Sometimes Nosrat, who was named on the Time 100 list(Opens in a new tab) as a food pioneer alongside Teigen last year, screws up(Opens in a new tab) and it still makes the cut. She thinks of it as a teaching tool. Julia Child did the same thing. So does Rea.(Opens in a new tab) In the "Salt" episode, where she visits Japan, she talks about how imperfections in a dish make it human.

David Chang shows a similar attitude in his own Netflix shows. The restaurateur behind Momofuku can lure a mob of hungry hipsters to a hole in the wall with a single tweet. On both shows, Chang talks about his changing perspective on food and internet fame. He's reached a point where he's "OK making really ugly food." And he's still wrestling with having his "life out there in social media." Chang's been leveraging his platform recently to spotlight the struggling restaurant industry amid the coronavirus pandemic.(Opens in a new tab) He's closed some of his own businesses too. Likewise, Fieri has been raising money for unemployed restaurant workers.

In the first episode of Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner(Opens in a new tab), Chang smokes weed with Seth Rogen as the two eat their way through Vancouver. In another, he rides camels in Morocco with Teigen, who turned her first cookbook, Cravings, into an online platform. Like many celebrity chefs, she's a merch machine.(Opens in a new tab) Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner is also only four episodes. The first season of Ugly Delicious(Opens in a new tab), which shows Chang traveling around and unpacking the evolution of various foods like pizza and fried chicken, is eight. The second, which debuted in March, is half as long and kicks off with Chang talking about becoming a dad. It's more about his personal journey than food.

Famous-chef-talking-to-celebrities-while-eating programming isn't new. Anthony Bourdain perfected it. Netflix is just doing it with a new, edgy celebrity chef. The same idea will probably be recycled in a decade from now on whatever the next Netflix is with whoever the next Chang is.

"Everybody wants to be Anthony Bourdain," Salkin says. "They want to travel around the world and tell gritty, reflective stories about the power of food. Every fucking person thinks they can be the new Anthony Bourdain."

Everybody also wants to be the next Guy Fieri. They want to travel around, eat greasy food, and talk to salt-of-the-earth chefs. The Burger Show(Opens in a new tab), a YouTube show turned Hulu series, features chef Alvin Cailan — who became well-known for his food truck turned restaurant Eggslut — eating burgers at various restaurants with celebrities like Padma Lakshmi, Lana Condor, and H. Jon Benjamin.

"In order to sell a television show you need something new unless you’re already somebody," Salkin says.

Making it last

Internet celebrity, even Netflix celebrity, can be fleeting. And being a famous cook doesn't open as many doors as it once did. Winning a food competition show doesn't guarantee you your own spin-off. Many food competition winners, for example, can't get their restaurants(Opens in a new tab) to stick. You're also competing for the internet's attention with a bunch of home cooks.

No matter what you call today's celebrity chefs — food celebrity, culinary influencer, YouTuber, Instagram personality — they all have to compete with our ever-shortening attention spans to keep their stars shining bright. Yet, the concept of a celebrity chef isn't going away, even if the definition has loosened over time.

"As all times do, we will create our own celebrities who are right for the times," Salkin says. "Just wait, the next food celebrity is going to use the moniker," he pauses for drama, "the Sourdough Stud."

Nicole Gallucci contributed to this report.

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