This week, we braved the South End parking and scooted our way over to Seaboard South End for our latest live show. Devastated there’s no photo evidence of Carol on an actual scooter, group chat girlies goodies in tow looking like she was ready to sing along at the Cowboy Carter tour stop.  

As always, we covered a lot — and just a quick reminder from us group chat girlies: friends don’t let friends get peer pressured into a LaBubu life. And unfortunately? Not every caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Some just ghost you after three dates and blame Mercury retrograde.

ICYMI: Our recap & reco newsletters keep you looped in on what the girlies are talking about, whether you were at the live show or watching from your group chat.

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🦈 Shark Week: Turns out none of us are following the signs, we’ve been flushing tampons with generational confidence. The tiny trash cans felt like they were for the plastic applicators or pads. Are we wreaking havoc on the plumbing system? Yes. Will we stop? Mmm…felt like a no. Maybe this is our leverage. No free tampons? No mercy. Curious about cups? A girlie highly recommended giving @periodnirvana a follow.

💅🏼 Russian Manicures: A girlie allowed her recent manicure to be inspected and the girlies approved. Possibly illegal (but just in NC).

🪩 Vibration station. Worth the splurge. Lelu and Womanizer were two brand names that got dropped.

❤️‍🔥 Liam & Pam Summer. We’ve been looking for our summer theme and we’ve found it.

🍿 Binge:
Hunting Wives (Netflix), The Bear Season 4 (Hulu), Dept Q (Netflix), Amy Bradley is Missing (Netflix), A Deadly American Marriage (Netflix) 

🫢 Skip (or silently ignore):
Untamed (Netflix) – to be fair, no one had seen it, despite it allegedly being one of the most streamed shows of July. The math ain’t mathing. Love Island Beyond the Villa (Peacock).

🎲 Split the Room:
Too Much (Netflix) – some vocal advocates on both sides, The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 (Amazon), We Were Liars (Amazon), and Squid Game Season 3 (Netflix)

Haven’t found your perfect beach read yet this year? The girlies recommend Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez and One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune.

🌟 Special Shoutout:

Your faves are still faving so this live show we asked girlies what episode they recommend to start out with if you’re looking to dive into some of the chart toppers.

Good Hang W/ Amy Poehler - try the Seth Meyers interview

Call Her Daddy - Chelsea Handler and Jane Goodall were two interviews the girlies say are worth checking out.

If you’re looking for something new, one girlie recommended This F*cking Guy, a podcast by two female comedians featuring deep dives into the lives of individuals they describe as "the worst b*tches in the game," exposing their "horrible, corrupt, and dishonest pasts."

We asked the girlies for their thoughts on Eater magazine’s current best restaurants in CLT, and here is what they had to say:

📍 OpenTable Approved:
Marinas Tapas, Albertine, Orosoko Sound Bar, La Lima, Rada

🚫 Made the list and already closed
Mazi

If you’ve been served an ad from Staud, the girlies strongly are in support of giving it a go but feel free to pass on Oak + Fort.

Heatless curlers seemed to get a lukewarm reception at best. I personally know friends who have loved them, but this room wasn’t having it.

And the scrolling ring… we’re intrigued. Deeply. But no one’s brave enough to be the first to try it. Consider this your official call to action: one of you has to report back. For science.

Skylar: At the show, the topic of Love Island and its disaster casting came up. As a certified lover girl™ and long time reality dating show apologist, I have to say… it really has been a rough year. What used to be a beautiful little chaos lab for watching actual human emotions unfold has basically turned into a fame funnel with a spray tan.

And maybe this says more about dating in the algorithm era or the way we treat influencer fame as currency, but either way? The system (and therefore all the shows we binge to discuss it) is broken.

I feel very strongly about calling for a hard reset. Love (island) is dead. Or at least… soft-launching it for clout. 💔📱

🏙️🧳 We’ve all had that main character fantasy of running off to a new city and becoming the most evolved (and also most gorgeous) version of ourselves. And honestly? I fully support it.

During Thursday’s show, one of the girlies asked if it’s worth it to move somewhere new and fully rebrand, and before the room even had time to respond I was giving an empathic yes. I do think it’s important to check in with yourself about the why. Are you running away from something, or running towards something? But if you’ve got that little voice or intuition telling you to go… it’s not going to shut up until you listen.

As a girlie who’s made a few bold moves, I can tell you: the happiest I’ve ever been was when I was in a city I chose, doing the things I loved, and building a life that felt like mine. That kind of confidence? No one can take it from you.

Carol: Glad to know I’m not alone and that we as a collective are ruining plumbing systems everywhere. Turns out those signs are about us.

The girlies discussed Russian manicures at the show this week, and I need to be honest: there is little I loathe more than getting my nails done. It is not a treat. It is not relaxing. It’s torture.

It starts with the high-stakes gamble of choosing the right color, which inevitably ends in the quiet realization that you didn’t. Then you’re told they’ll “be right with you.” They are never right with you. Just when you’re about to leave, they move you… and put your hands in a little bowl or into hot little mittens. And now you’re really stuck. And sweating.

What follows is a full-on sensory nightmare. I lose access to my hands for full 90 minutes while people come at me with tiny drills and files in a cloud of chemical smells. There are three TVs, one with Property Brothers, one with a cooking show, and one with a romcom from 2005. AND MUSIC PLAYING. The woman on my right is deep into a long-distance bestie catch-up, giving out the worst advice, and I can’t intervene. The woman on my left is getting Snoopy painted on her thumb, and I can’t intervene. I don’t like the color of my own nails… and I can’t intervene. It’s. Too. Much.

Even when I pick Lincoln Park After Dark and actually like how they look, I know I’ve just locked myself into the cycle. I’ll have to return. To the torture department. In two to three weeks.

And here’s my conspiracy theory: women are too powerful, so the world invented beauty standards that are cyclical, time-consuming, and physically disabling, then marketed them as fun girl-time activities. This isn’t self-care. It’s mechanical maintenance. It’s strategy. A global effort to ensure there is never a moment when every woman has access to her full brain, both hands, and working eyeballs at the same time.

Just imagine what we could accomplish if every third woman on Earth wasn’t soaking off gel polish, tied to a chair with foil in her hair, pinning down her lashes to tint and lift, getting her face lasered off, or laminating her eyebrow hairs into compliance.

Anyway, let’s revolt.

Shoutout to @sydneyschertzphoto for her amazing brand photography (we used her photos on our show flyer). @wozhereco for the gorgy hand drawn stickers (a little treat from the show) and @merenator for the incredible advice and inspo!

Are you, or do you know, a “girlie with gossip” that we should share at a show - let us know with an email to [email protected]. 

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