chloë sevigny is the hater representation we need.
chloë sevigny is the hater representation we need.
The ultimate “it girl” provides a much needed antidote to toxic positivity culture.
Queering the Burbs is a regularly-published distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness written by Joe Erbentraut. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing (it’s free!), liking or sharing this piece.
Is there anything more refreshing than a celebrity who simply cannot (or will not) be media trained? We’ve seen it with Dakota Johnson on her Madame Web press tour. We’ve seen it (repeatedly) with Reneé Rapp. But you have to hand it to Scorpio Chloë Sevigny for not shying away from sharing the hottest of hot takes on her recent press tour for (the brilliant) Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. On the heels of Valentine’s Day, the holiday of love, I think it’s time we celebrate and unpack Sevigny’s lovely little (mostly victimless) hate parade.
It all started innocuously enough when Sevigny appeared on Vogue’s YouTube channel several weeks ago and noted off-handedly that she hadn’t been invited to a Met Gala for nearly a decade. Of course, the Met Gala invitation list is controlled by none other than Vogue’s very own infamous matriarch Anna Wintour, and the subtle shade was not lost on commenters on the video. Give up the invite already, Anna!
The chaos escalated further when Sevigny appeared with her Feud cast mates Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald, Naomi Watts, and Tom Hollander in a video for Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel where the cast answered a series of questions to test how well they know each other. The video is pretty uneventful until the show’s executive producer Ryan Murphy wanders onto the shoot and asks “What’s the crime I’m most likely to be convicted for?” Ringwald guesses tax evasion, before Sevigny offers her own answer for the notoriously difficult and plot-challenged director and writer: “Plagiarism?”
Of course, Sevigny wasn’t done there. In fact, she was just warming up. In an interview with Marlow Stern published in the Rolling Stone, Sevigny admitted that she has simply had it with the vibes of certain dog-owning NYC residents these days:
“The athleisure and the dogs are taking over, and that’s really unfortunate. Everybody’s in Lululemon and has a fucking dog and it’s driving me crazy. I’m sorry, dog lovers. There are too many of you.”
Criticizing dog owners is a dangerous game, but Sevigny doesn’t know fear. She was about to come for her most unstable and insecure target yet: Los Angelenos.
In a video interview for ELLE’s YouTube channel, Sevigny said that LA was the last place she would want to live if she didn’t call New York City home. Why? She’s glad you asked. Her devilish complaints about the City of Angels were as follows:
“I feel like there’s a lot of driving.”
“I feel like it’s very isolating.”
“I find it very bright.”
“I find the sunshine monotonous.”
“I don’t like how dry it is.”
“I don’t like how hard the water is.”
“I don’t like that it’s a town based around the industry where I work in. It makes me feel very self-conscious and uncomfortable in my own skin.”
“I don’t like it to rain.”
“I don’t like the vegetation.”
So, why should we care about a celebrity spouting off with petty jabs at every chance she gets? I suppose most people won’t, but honestly, that’s their loss.
Sevigny, of course, is a privileged, white, cis, conventionally attractive, famous individual. With that territory comes a lot of inherent privilege, but also a lot of inherent expectations because a lot of people’s incomes are dependent on her checking certain boxes. In this particular example, FX isn’t putting Sevigny up to this press tour in some effort just to make the Kids icon look cool. Of course, FX wants more people to watch Feud, the show she is promoting.
Watching Sevigny rebel against those expectations is like fantasy fulfillment for many of us. I won’t speak for everyone reading this but I, for one, wish I could be so aloof, so effortless, so borderline reckless as she is in these interviews. She’s the epitome of no-fucks-given, but the vast majority of us—with mortgages, student loans, credit card bills, and the like—simply cannot afford to let go of the fucks that weigh on our minds.
Instead, we bite our tongues and swallow our grievances, reserving them only for our closest friends for fear of offending a family member, a friend, a coworker or even a boss. We wish to evaporate into mist when a family member, totally unprompted, brings up the “immorality” of abortion during a holiday meal. We feel ready to puke when a friend in a straight-presenting relationship says how their upcoming wedding will “basically be gay” because a lot of the guests happen to be queer. We cringe when a tech startup HR director tells us to simply start meditating instead of addressing the root causes of a toxic workplace culture.
Wouldn’t life be just a little bit more fun in these trying times if we all stirred the proverbial pot and said how we were actually feeling from time to time? The pull of Midwest Nice is real, but I’m personally ready to stop being quite so polite. Maybe we all could stand to be a bit more like Chloë. Let’s all vow to be 5% more of a hater next week. If you don’t want to do it for me, or for yourself, please just do it for her.
If there’s one person out there who I know would buy my theory, it’s the criminally underrated comedian Drew Droege, who you might recognize from cameos in shows like Search Party and just revived his viral impersonation of Sevigny in light of her soon-to-be-legendary-to-some Feud press tour. Icons recognizing icons, indeed.
LINK DUMP
Them: The NYT’s Latest Op-Ed on Trans Kids Has Already Been Cited in an Anti-Trans Legal Brief
NBC News: Survey of Over 9,000 Trans People Shows Vast Improvement in Life Satisfaction After Transition
New York Times: 100 Small Acts of Love
The Cut: The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger
HuffPost: Andrew Keegan Spills All About His Supposed Cult: ‘It Was a Really Cool Community Center’
Thrillist: In Defense of Sitting Down at Concerts (I wrote this one!)
Vogue: The Matriarchal Legacy of Cecilia Gentili (please watch this TikTok of the late trans activist’s beautiful NYC memorial, which was just formally condemned by the Archdiocese of New York)