Netflix Duckworth’s Special
We’re starting the year exactly how you asked us to: with more stand-up.
At our last live show, we asked the girlies what they wanted more of in 2026, and one of the top requests was more stand-up. To prove that your feedback is special to us, we plan to deliver a night of stand-up comedy for the girlies, by the girlies.
Join us at The Comedy Club at Duckworth’s for a very special stand-up show for the girlies, featuring Carol, Skylar, and some very special guests. New Year’s resolutions of more girls nights? CHECK.
In case the number of times we used the word special wasn’t a big enough hint, we’ll be filming the stand-up portion special-style so it would mean a lot to us (and our egos) if you came out and laughed with us. And loudly, please.
1/25/26 at The Comedy Club at Duckworth’s
Giving Away the Goods
We are so excited to announce the winner of our first HUGE GIVEAWAY! The winner of Obagi Elastiderm Face Serum ($215) and Obagi Elastiderm Eye Serum ($125) is @torriesavage! Congrats, Torrie! We will be in touch!
Thank you to everyone who entered! Stay tuned for more giveaways in 2026!
❌ Don’t Ask.
If you’re reading this, congrats. You survived the majority of the holidays and I have no doubt you were asked that question you desperately hoped to avoid and yet probably knew was coming.
For me, it was the Christmas Eve blindside, when the family friends of my boyfriend asked me, not him, when they should get their “pinafores ready?!” I had to look up pinafore, and honestly the southern accent was so thick they may have been saying something else, but it was abundantly clear to me from their saccharine but nosy tone, they wanted a wedding.
Last week we asked you What question are you tired of being asked during the holidays?
It turns out. All of them.
Are you dating anyone? 33%. When are you having kids/ another kid? 25%. Any big updates? 16%. Are you happy at work? 8%. Any plans to move back here? 12%.
With the last few days of 2025, we want to know, what’s your vibe for NYE as you ring in 2026?
NYE Vibe Check.
🍿 Pop Culture Bites
📺 If you’re a Stranger Things fan, you may have noticed some dialogue and scenes this season felt a little strange. And yes. Online speculation about AI has officially entered the chat.
🎥 It’s the most magical time of year for film fans. All the movies that aim to enter the Oscar Nomination chat are being released, and director Christopher Nolan hosted a special screening of Sinners, to urge Academy Voters to consider it for Best Picture.
🎵Jennifer Lawrence proved she is, once again, all of us when during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable—Cynthia Erivo revealed she has synesthesia (sees music as color) and JLaw immediately asked what we were all thinking.
🔎 Every year, new IP enters the Public Domain, and the newest class just dropped. Early Betty Boop, Pluto, Nancy Drew, and other 1930s icons are now free for anyone to adapt, remix, and reimagine (no permission, no royalties, just vibes).
🎃Tyler Perry is facing sexual assault allegations from an actor who appeared in Boo! A Madea Halloween, suing him for $77 million and sparking another round of conversation about power dynamics in Hollywood. Perry’s team denies the claims.
🫦 Cinema’s original 1960s sex symbol turned legendary animal‑rights advocate, Brigitte Bardot, has died at 91.
📖 Merriam-Webster crowned “slop” as the Word of the Year, used to describe low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. If you’ve ever said “why does everything online feel worse now,” congratulations: linguistics agrees with you.
🏓 Marty Supreme proved that selling a movie can now be the movie. The film debuted Christmas Day, but the marketing campaign might receive more nominations than the movie itself. Traditional press took a backseat to a series of live-action spectacles.
🔥 A new video of a high schooler keeping calm under fire is going viral, with a lot of mashups revealing the energy we want to have in 2026.
💬 What We’re Chatting About:
Carol: I finally finished Taylor Swift: The End of an Era. It took me much longer than I expected, mostly because I cried more than I anticipated. I already suffer deeply from post holiday blues and a girl can only cry so much. I knew there would be sad parts. I expected to cry. I didn’t expect to cry multiple times per episode. A mistake.
There really was something special about The Eras Tour. I’ve already written my plea for women to never forget the girlhood we cultivated together, but this documentary felt like another reminder of just how powerful we are when we gather around something with sincerity and joy.
Below are the sparknotes of my favorite moments / answers I needed / things I wondered about. Spoilers ahead.
Learning her manager is the one who has her phone during the show.
Team bonuses so large they had to bleep out the amount.
Wax sealing envelopes by hand in all of her abundant free time.
The sheer amount of screen time given to dancers and band members during the doc.
Andrea Swift being the one who suggested “the end of an era” lyric change from “the end of a decade” for the last show.
Finding out she was actually sick a lot. A trooper.
Florence Welch’s hilarious realization of “oh shit, that’s Taylor Swift,” after seeing her “cozy” friend onstage as a fully activated persona.
The rep bodysuit only changing late in the tour was just due to there literally not being enough fabric for another one (or so they say…).
Confirmation that none of the “she’s done with music” rumors are true.
The documentary wasn’t just about her. It was about us. And about how rare it is, as grown women, to be allowed to feel something fully, together, without being told it’s silly, unserious, or too much. My hope for all of us is simply more of that in 2026.
Skylar: I love those moments that remind you not only that women exist as multitudes—but that you, specifically, do. This holiday week, my reading and binging habits were… varied, to say the least. From prison reform to poetic, Shakespearean features, I was a CoNsUmEr of content and, as usual, I needed to talk about it.
Here’s how I spent my holidays. And if you, too, are eager to discuss any or all of this, simply email me back. Okay, thank you.
😢 The things that made me cry sad tears.
Wally Lamb’s The River Is Waiting
Like most of Wally Lamb’s books, this one is emotionally brutal—but very much on brand. He’s long tackled complicated human stories, so a novel about a man incarcerated in 2020 after accidentally killing his son fits squarely into his oeuvre. If you’re a girlie who loved Demon Copperhead (or books in that emotional tax bracket), I highly recommend.
The documentary The Alabama Solution
Premiering at Sundance earlier this year and now streaming on HBO, this documentary is devastating in the quietest, most unavoidable way. In an era of social media headlines and opinionated talking heads, spending hours inside the Alabama prison system isn’t just eye-opening—it makes it impossible to look away. Documentary filmmaking truly feels like the best form of long-form journalism, and this one will fundamentally shift how you think about the rights of incarcerated people.
Hamnet
I read Maggie O’Farrell’s novel earlier this year and was deeply curious how they’d translate such a narration-heavy book into a two-hour film about the origins of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Somehow, it worked. Jessie Buckley’s raw, emotional performance is Oscar-worthy, and my favorite (hopefully non-spoiler) fact: the actors playing Hamlet and Hamnet are real-life Jupe brothers.
🥺 Things that made me cry happy tears.
The End of an Era
Carol may be slowly cracking my “I’m not a full Swiftie” exterior because I felt something deeply emotional during every single episode of this (just like Carol). One quote she shares with her tour performers before their final show especially stuck with me:
“Everyone is jealous of what you have. No one is jealous of what it took you to get there.”
A perfect reminder for anyone building something and pausing to feel proud of it. The haters are gonna hate, hate, hate…
🤔 Things that made me sit back.
Heated Rivalry
I finally started the HBO phenomenon sweeping social media. And while I am currently very seated and watching a whirlwind of hockey bodies and beards. I am curious if to the broader gay community, this feels like a fetishization or a welcome representation?
Marty Supreme
Timothée, GP, and a (surprisingly) genuine performance from Kevin O’Leary. If you need your anxiety upped and your cold brew isn’t cutting it, Josh Safdie’s latest epic offers plenty to process, panic during, and immediately text your group chat about.
👯♀️ Girlies Know Girlies
We’re working toward an internal subscriber goal we set for ourselves to hit before the end of 2025 and we are so close. A few of you asked for an easier way to share the newsletter, and we’re excited to finally roll out our referral system. Each of you now has your own unique GCG sharing code, which you can find below.
As one fellow girlie recently reminded us: “girlies know girlies.” It’s really important to us that the newsletter continues to grow the same way it always has, by sharing with girlies who’d actually love the content.
✨ Refer 10 friends and you’ll receive GCG stickers, a small love note from us for helping grow the group chat the right way. We trust you.
Thank you for being here and building this community with us 💖
💌 Ghost of Your Christmas Future
If you’re still here, we have a little holiday invitation for you. Reply back to this email with a note to your future Christmas self, the one opening this next holiday season. Tell her what you want her to remember. Maybe you discovered how many days at home is too many days at home, decided remote control cars are officially banned from Santa’s list, or learned something you don’t want to forget once the season passes.
Send us whatever’s fresh on your mind. We’ll keep it safe and send it back to you next holiday season 💌
And lastly, if you have not yet, check out the Substack for all the things we can’t fit in the newsletter.
