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It’s the late 2010s and I’m a teenager carefully watching my mom out of my peripheral. She’s paying attention to the TV and the animated man on the screen in a hilarious combination of suit, tie, and yellow beanie. He’s eating ice cream in a diner with a friend: a girl who’s made it very clear she likes him this whole season, only to be met with his awkward body language, stumbled excuses, and quick subject changes.

I’ve seen this one before, but my heart is in my throat when the companion asks Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul) if he’s gay.

Todd responds, “I’m not gay. I mean, I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.”

I click the next episode of BoJack without hesitation.

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix original animated tragicomedy set in a fictionalized version of Hollywood. Our cast includes a mix of humans, anthropomorphized animals, and celebrity cameos. As it aired from 2014 to 2020, BoJack went on to receive consistent critical acclaim and a dedicated audience who loved the balance between the wacky scenarios typical to adult animation and the honest portrayal of serious topics like substance abuse and depression.

When season four graces our screen, I finally hear the word that I’ve held close to my chest for years now spoken aloud: “asexual.” Todd Chavez, our wacky slacker sidekick, initially reacts with an aversion to the label.

But after some uncertainty and self-reflection, Todd embraces his identity in “Hooray! Todd Episode!” During a vulnerable moment, Todd comes out to BoJack: “I’m asexual. Not sexual.”

I share a look with my mother, the woman who’s known me all my life, who still knows me best, and hope that she understands.

*

Todd Chavez was one of only two asexual characters included in GLAAD’s 2017-2018 “Where We Are on TV” report, marking the first year the annual publication included asexuals in its data. While the publication notes that there was some asexual representation on television in previous years, “those characters were often relegated to one-off episodes, which did not allow for nuanced exploration.”

Seeking out asexual representation on TV was an often-disheartening exercise for a young asexual (commonly shortened to “ace”) like me. As a greater number of queer characters stepped into the spotlight, I searched desperately for the aces. When it came down to it, most of our “ace representatives” pre-2017 were only “ace-coded” characters, portraying some common signs of asexuality without ever encountering, exploring, or articulating the term. Asexuals would often recognize these signs or find the experiences of the characters relatable to their own asexual experiences, but we rarely heard our label spoken aloud.

Sometimes, it was enough to be the character left uncoupled by the end of the narrative—like Frozen’s Elsa—to be hailed as an “asexual icon” on internet forums. The ambiguity of the unlabelled asexual meant little repercussion for portraying common ace stereotypes like the logical and emotionless “robot” over and over again. Think The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper who says he “find[s] the concept of coitus to be ridiculous and off-putting.” Sheldon is touch-averse and sex-repulsed, but never uses the term “asexual” to describe himself. The lack of articulated labels leaves it up to fans to draw their own conclusions and, in more cases than not, leaves the writers space to retcon any common ace markers to suit their narrative needs. When the word “asexual” was actually uttered, it was met with a “fix it” attitude like House M.D.’s episode “Better Half.” (House spends his 44-minute run-time trying to disprove the claims of a self-identifying asexual couple, unfortunately succeeding when it’s discovered the man has a pituitary tumor that lowered his libido and caused erectile dysfunction, and the woman admits she was faking for her husband.)

Todd Chavez’s ground-breaking journey on BoJack was an important milestone for those of us looking to see our sexuality portrayed with positivity and a complex, comprehensive multi-season storyline on screen. When I showed my mom BoJack, already knowing where Todd’s journey would lead, I was secretly building a foundation for my own coming out moment.

As Todd comes into his own understanding of his identity—an asexual who is interested in romance, but sex-averse—the show demonstrates the variance in ace experiences. A couple from his Asexual Alliance group explain the difference between aromantic asexuals—those not interested in sex or relationships—and aces who enjoy dating. Todd’s childhood friend Emily (Abbi Jacobson) informs us that some asexuals do have and enjoy sex. As Todd’s dating life progresses, we see the struggles that arise from dating while asexual, such as Todd dating Yolanda (Natalie Morales) because they’re both asexual, even though they have nothing else in common.

The thing I dreaded most about my own coming out moment was having to explain to my family what asexuality means. I didn’t want to field questions, discuss the nuances, and be delegitimized because I was just an inexperienced teenager. One of the benefits of representing marginalized identities on screen is that representation bridges gaps in understanding. Pink Triangle Press’s 2024 PTP Pink Paper, a research report on Canadian 2SLGBTQIA+ media representation, explains, “9 in 10 media professionals agree that on-screen representation increases understanding and drives acceptance of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in society at large.”

In its delicate handling of my identity, BoJack provided the crash course on asexuality that I dreamed of. My mom was an apt student who was enticed by the series’ rapid-fire shifts between tense dramatic moments and silly schemes. By the end of the series, she left with something meaningful: some basic knowledge about a type of sexuality she wasn’t previously familiar with. All that was left for me to do was to point at Todd and say, “Mom, that’s me.”

Yes, I came out to my mom using BoJack Horseman. Turns out TV is a useful tool.

*

Since BoJack, I’ve encountered more asexual characters in the media I love, though many of them aren’t as widely visible as the ones found on television. Most of my favourites come from books or indie content on the internet with a limited audience. On TV and popular streaming services, especially in Canada, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In GLAAD’s most recent “Where We Are on TV” (2023-2024), they reported four asexual characters across streaming and cable: Sex Education’s O, Heartstopper’s Isaac, Heartbreak High’s Cash, and Big Mouth’s Elijah. At four characters, we see double the total from Todd’s ace-debut year—all of them found on Netflix, two carried over from the previous year—and still pitifully in the single-digits. The 2024 PTP Pink Paper report omitted data on asexuals as there was not sufficient ace representation in mainstream Canadian media.

A greater number of characters only have their asexuality confirmed by their creators rather than shown on screen. According to SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg, in a 2005 People Magazine interview, he “never intended [SpongeBob] to be gay. I consider [him] to be almost asexual.” SpongeBob is asexual! Who knew? Many other creator-confirmed aces can be easily-missed by audiences, buried in interviews and old social media posts. The aces are out there—more of us than you’d think—but where are our storylines?

It’s tough work seeking out asexuals on screen. Alongside intersex and Two-Spirit, we’re still one of the most underrepresented queer identities on mainstream TV. Nearly a decade after he said “asexual,” Todd Chavez is still important to me, still my favourite character in western animation. He gave me the courage and the resources to express my pride and come out to my family by bravely embarking on his asexual journey. As the next generation tunes in to their favourite shows, I hope they find their Todd.

Photo by Jordan Murray, @lovelyliterary

Jordan Murray’s perfectly manicured hand displays an annotated title page of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. “From the library of Jordan Murray” is stamped in the centre; just below she’s written, “the cost of pride, love & marriage, social status.” And all around are illustrations of tiny flowers, hearts and envelopes along with a drawing of the famous 18th century English novelist. A multitude of coloured tabs peek out from the novel’s pages.

Murray’s @lovelyliterary Instagram page is an ode to the modern aesthetics of online book lovers. Murray, a 23-year-old University of Windsor student, is an avid book annotator and part of the boom of young adults passionate about reading.

According to a survey by BookNet Canada, a non-profit that collects and analyzes data about the Canadian book industry, half of those surveyed in the 18 to 29 age group preferred books in print. The medium is optimal for recording thoughts, reactions, and feelings in annotated form, and the phenomenon has spread. Practitioners share the art and joy of book annotation on book blogs, Pinterest, Instagram and BookTok, a TikTok subcommunity. Novices seek advice and tips on Reddit and Goodreads. Online retailers like Etsy and Amazon advertize purpose-made book annotation supplies.

OK, Boomer: this isn’t your version of annotating with pencil in hand, making surreptitious notes in margins. Millennials and Gen Zers go all out. They underline, circle and highlight pages. They generously apply different coloured tabs and stickers. “I’m swooning” moments, memorable quotes, relatable themes and spicy scenes are marked. Some annotators have colour coding systems—pink tabs to represent cute scenes, green for standout paragraphs. They also create legends or tables of content for easy reference. The more aesthetically inclined will match the colours of their tabs to their book covers. When it comes to supplies, tools of the trade include pens, scissors, tweezers, rulers, stickers, coloured tabs and highlighters.

“On a more surface level, it’s treated like an art form,” says Murray. “Sometimes it’s idealized for the aesthetics.”

But while these book enthusiasts use their online platforms to spread the word about their art and share with others, creating a hybrid medium of sorts, they also say the hobby offers a much-needed reprieve from the digitization of their lives. “It’s a form of self care, to really connect with my books and disconnect from the world,” says 36-year-old Alexandra Kelebay, a Montrealer and book columnist for CBC/Radio Canada who posts on Instagram @thebookishglow. “It is also a very creative process for some, which is another fascinating way to approach it; people quite literally transform their books into art objects this way, which is a wonderful antidote to our highly digital, online existence.”

This is something Danielle Fuller has observed in her research. The University of Alberta professor of English and film studies is interested in how Gen Z are drawn to analogue media even while they might choose to display their material practices, such as annotation, via digital technology. “Since [Gen Z] grew up with technology, they don’t want to be on screens all the time. Some of their motivations for choosing a print book is to get off screens and that networked environment.”

Equally important is the hands-on approach book annotation affords them. “It makes the experience come alive—it’s physical, tactile, and a kind of tangible way of experiencing a book,” says Kelebay. “When people especially connect with characters or themes in a book, it can be transformative, so annotating concretizes an experience that would otherwise remain abstract.”

Annotation also provides an opportunity to internalize away from a wired world focused on constant social interaction and stimulation.

“For me, annotating has always been something very personal, so to share this with someone would feel very open and vulnerable, almost like peeking into my journal,” says Kelebay. “It’s where I highlight meaningful lines, passages, and quotes, as well as scribble thoughts in the margins as I read. For me it’s a solitary, meditative experience.”

There’s another motivating factor. A few generations ago, books, reading, and annotation were the domain of geeks and scholars. Academics meticulously pored over classic literature and recorded their thoughts. This came with the implicit understanding that only centuries-old tomes by long-dead authors were worthy of annotation—a concept the new generation of book lovers rejects.

Murray started annotating for her Grade 9 English class unit on Shakespeare. But she says she now annotates whatever she’s enjoying – from a Sally Rooney novel to a horror-thriller. “Annotating has made the practice of reading more accessible and enjoyable. It isn’t just for Tolstoy or Austen anymore; it could also be for romance books with cute moments or thrillers with shocking reveals.”

These days, the practice is for everyone. “It leans into the idea that geekiness is now kind of cool,” says Fuller. And that geekiness is viral and massively influential among young adults. A 2024 Statista survey revealed 37 percent of TikTok users in Canada are Gen Z, with BookTok amassing 45.7 million posts. Then there’s BookTube, an online literary community where 90 percent of users are aged 18-24. At the same time, viral book clubs are helmed by the young, rich and famous: there’s Belletrist from Emma Roberts, and model Kaia Gerber’s Library Science. With this kind of star power, it’s no wonder book lovers are happy to share their love for the written word. And annotation is just one way to both publicly and privately display that feeling.

It’s a feeling shared by Ryan Jones, though she takes a digital approach. “I’m 26-years-old, but I’m definitely an old soul at heart,” says the writer and marketing specialist in Waterloo, Ontario. “I like to keep the integrity of the physical book as it is.”

Jones annotates her e-book versions of novels and makes notes on her phone about the writing, characters, and plot. “I do like to highlight things that make me feel so deeply.” And deep feelings about books show no signs of waning, thanks to this passionate generation of young readers.

Illustration by Sabahat Ahmad

As a half-Pakistani person, I often cozied up on the couch for Bollywood movie nights with my family growing up. These nights were more than a tradition—they were a rite of passage. I’m a fair-skinned South Asian, and this was a way for me to connect to my culture when I didn’t necessarily present as such on the outside. I idolized the actresses in these movies, awkwardly shaking my preteen hips and listening to soundtracks of films like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Aśoka on my CD player days later.

I first visited Toronto in 2015, when I was 24. I came to heal from a bad breakup in my hometown of New York City. A year later, I met my now-husband and fell for him immediately, permanently moving to Canada. He also has a South Asian background, and it made me feel less homesick to experience the comfort of Bollywood nights with my in-laws. We’d throw in our own sassy commentary, poking fun at the soapy love scenes and dramatic dance routines while being enamoured by them at the same time.

My move to Canada was not only out of love for my husband, but love for the city. Toronto has a massive South Asian population (nearly 385,000 as of 2021). It’s also the place with the highest number of South Asians in Canada. In Scarborough, where I live, our cultures are celebrated like nowhere else I’ve been in North America. Despite growing up in a place as diverse as New York, I’d never experienced such a normalized and integrated Indian and Pakistani culture, with aunties walking around in saris and Desi aromas like masala wafting through the streets. As a result, Bollywood carries some heft as a mainstream art form here, and a more diverse range of Bollywood and South Asian films are more present on Canadian Netflix than they are in the States. It’s heartwarming to see the classics of my childhood not just in their own dedicated section but in Netflix’s most-watched films, validating and serving the viewing preferences of the population.

But in the decades between the beloved films of my childhood and Bollywood movies today, not much has changed. The very same thing that brought me comfort is also holding us back as a culture. Only years later, as we watched these movies with my husband’s nieces, did I fully understand the unrealistic beauty standards they presented. European aesthetics are put on a pedestal, and actresses are cast accordingly, sending the message to young South Asian girls that fair means beautiful. As I watched my nieces regularly straighten their gorgeous curls, I reflected on the fact that the wide range of beautiful South Asian women is and was often underrepresented onscreen.

In Canada, these same issues of colourism and racism persist despite the country being globally recognized as a place where all cultures can thrive and coexist harmoniously. This shows us just how pervasive British colonialism remains in India and beyond. In searches for Canadian Bollywood actresses online, starlets like Sunny Leone, Nora Fatehi and Lisa Ray are the first three to pop up. This is in part because they’re the most popular, but it’s no coincidence that they also have fair skin and European features. It makes me feel as though darker-skinned South Asian women are set up for failure. I worry that young Canadian girls like my nieces will inherit these Eurocentric beauty standards, negatively impacting their self-esteem and making them want to fit into an unrealistic mould rather than appreciating what makes them so unique.

In January 2024, I read that Ed Westwick (everyone’s favorite toxic drama king from Gossip Girl) was marrying a Bollywood actress named Amy Jackson. She looked suspiciously Western to me, and with the name Amy Jackson, I knew I had to dive deeper. Was this the case of a name change or something more? She could have been racially ambiguous; as someone who is overtly conscious about being perceived as fully white when I’m not, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I saw the dark hair, olive skin, and light eyes not unlike my own and assumed she must also be of mixed-race heritage. But after a not-so-deep dive online, I discovered that she was, in fact, an English-speaking, British white woman who was somehow ludicrously popular in Bollywood films. I had the same moment of disconnect when watching one of my favorite shows a few years back, Made in Heaven, and discovering that one of the actresses, Kalki Koechlin, was also a Caucasian woman, despite being raised in India and speaking Hindi, which has helped her fit in when she takes on these roles.

In the past, South Asian actresses who passed as white were showcased and picked first. Today, it’s enough to be white and speak the language. I don’t even think I would mind if these actresses openly acknowledged their skin tone. But the fact that it remains hidden and requires some digging begs the question: is this Brownface Lite? Is it cultural appropriation? Or is it okay if these women were raised in Indian culture and consider India their home? It’s tricky to know where to draw the line.

I’m not trying to downplay the acting skills of talented, lighter-skinned South Asian women. It’s their right to take up space in their industry of choice. But I do find it troubling that these light-skinned and white women skyrocket to fame with such ease and are sought out by directors and producers in Bollywood while thousands of talented actresses with South Asian heritage are cast aside.

Bollywood has a history of giving priority to lighter-skinned actresses, and it perpetuates the harmful side effects of the caste system in South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Skin-lightening creams are frequently advertised in India by major stars like Shah Rukh Khan, and it’s always seemed gross to me.

These messages are already too strong in South Asian culture. I attribute much of that to the brainwashing of the British Raj, which dates back to the 1850s, nailing in the mentality that if you have Eurocentric features and traits, you’re bound to succeed. These sentiments are still fully normalized and accepted.

Anyone who watched Indian Matchmaker has probably heard the bevy of problematic things the show’s star, Sima Aunty, has said, often lauding lighter-skinned people as a great catch just because they’re “fair.” She would prioritize women that fit that colourist Bollywood aesthetic for many of the show’s eligible bachelors. My own fair-skinned grandmother would use the slur “kala,” a derogatory term referring to dark-skinned people. In contrast, as someone who is often perceived as fully white, I’ve been called “gori” which refers to a light-skinned or white girl. I’ve always hated this dichotomy. I’ve heard people within my community freely comment on the skin tone of children. This widely accepted language creates a hierarchy and promotes problematic beauty standards—whether it’s meant as a compliment or a passive-aggressive criticism—and it affects children, subconsciously or not.

It feels grotesque for billion-dollar industries like Bollywood to profit off the commodification of white faces in distinctly brown roles. It screams, “brown women, this is what we want of you. This is how you can be seen as a woman.” As if darker-skinned women with distinctly South Asian features are not equally worthy of earning a “vixen” role or being picked out in a crowded audition room.

If Bollywood showed women who represent the full spectrum of South Asian beauty, it would have a global impact, expanding beauty standards in South Asia and beyond. It would improve the self-confidence of women and girls while challenging the outdated norms of colourism and even make the worlds of beauty and fashion more inclusive, making way for a more empowered female population, which we need more than ever on a global scale.

While it might seem like not much has changed, we’re moving in a more positive direction. In Canada, I see hope in talented Canadian stars like Rekha Sharma, Kamal Sidhu, Uppekha Jain, and Parveen Kaur. It’s no surprise that Canada is leading the charge in showing the many forms that brown beauty can take beyond a skinny nose and pale skin, which will hopefully create a ripple effect in other countries.

Brown women will always remain at the heart of Bollywood, and if, as audiences, we can start to acknowledge how women internalize what they see onscreen, we can start to consciously change both the everyday lexicon we use to discuss beauty and the narratives we craft.

Illustration by Jessica Bromer

My friend Lou is visiting from Australia. We do silly things together, like watch Love Island and listen to music. Lou shows me the video for Chappell Roan’s “Casual,” which follows a girl and a mermaid in a situationship. I’m fascinated. The song is good, too: the slow pumping synth and zesty lyrics contrast with the video’s overall sense of campiness.

I laugh it off, thinking this is another artist my friends and I will talk about but who will remain coded in proximity to community, a secret, a love language for what we love together like girl in red or Rina Sawayama. Someone I can ask new friends about, a question inside a question about who they might be as well as what they love.

And then I hear another Roan song (“Good Luck, Babe!”), and another (“Pink Pony Club”). They get poppier and poppier, reminiscent of ’80s pop ballads I love because of my mother but also somehow the feeling I had when I first began loving Taylor Swift in 2008. Something maybe about the storytelling and the texture of feeling for women who are “different.” I have the feeling that I’m sure everyone has when they start to like an artist, a sense of discovering something both about yourself and in them.

It seems that sense of discovery is viral. I am one of many who fell in love with Roan’s music. By the middle of summer, she’d garnered hundreds of millions of streams. She’s performed at Coachella and Lollapalooza. What’s catching traction online, though, isn’t just her fame but her reaction to it. Roan has stated bluntly, “I told myself, if this ever gets dangerous, I might quit. It’s dangerous now, and I’m still going. But that part is not what I signed up for.”

Roan is being praised for setting a precedent for a new generation of artists and celebrities. She talks about having worked at a drive-thru and scoffs at the media for their surprised or sympathetic reactions. “Most people work horrible jobs.” Commenters cherish the rise of a queer working-class artist—but I wonder about the continual obfuscation of her whiteness, which prevents a certain honesty about her impact and how she’s able to make it.

Roan’s fame picks up pace, and so does her reaction. In August, she releases a series of TikToks. She speaks directly into camera, her iconic curly red hair up in a messy bun. “Would you go up to a random lady and say, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’ And she’s like, ‘no, what the fuck?’ and then you get mad at this random lady?” Should we expect a smile from celebrities and a customer service voice, or should we stay away—knowing that certain actions are expected in the workplace and certain boundaries are in place outside of it?

The celebrity as worker and fame as abuse are interesting arguments to make. When I ask Toronto-based producer Anupa Mistry, who also worked as a culture writer and editor, what she thinks, she says: “…[Roan’s] rancor is valid, but it’s ultimately focused on individual behaviour change on the part of fans and photographers, rather than a condemnation of the institutions of power that fund and amplify and set the terms of fame. She’s young and trying to work out if it’s possible to have an encounter with the music industry on her own terms. But even her ‘controversies’ generate value for her label.”

The idea that Roan’s candor is commodifying feels oddly manipulative. Mistry names what has been on my mind too: race and gender. Privilege, even when it seems absent or well-accounted for. “Do we read Roan’s demands and boundaries as more valid because she is white and cisgender? Her queerness suggests transgression only in its continued association with the American heartland, [the Midwest]. I’ll always think of Thelonious Monk or Lauryn Hill when I think about the costs of pushing back. What about Doja Cat’s shenanigans? When it got to be too much she pushed back and people didn’t like the way she did it.” But Roan’s pushback is applauded.

This brings me back to an original instinct I had ignored. As my enamourment with Roan begins to fray, I scroll her YouTube Shorts. In one, she says: “I wanted to be a cheerleader in high school. But I just never felt like I was that kind of girl. I don’t know. I am, now.” It reminds me of Swift’s rise to fame and her beloved video for “You Belong With Me.” Roan makes people feel seen in a similar way: you’re different, but all the things you want can happen to you too. The really distinct marker here, the key to their mass marketability, is that they’re both white American women.

My friend reposts Roan’s recent photo in Interview magazine on her close friend story, wild-clown themed of course. She writes: If I got straight famous, I’d unravel too. There is a point in math where a limit approaches infinity and cannot be quantified further. There is a point in fame where you simply cannot get more famous than you already are. Did Chappell Roan set out to become Mitski famous and ended up Taylor Swift famous instead? Did she strive toward success, the way any artist does, only to accidentally strive too far, primed by her personal privilege and positionality?

I can’t imagine how disconcerting it must be to be in Roan’s position. When talking about her with writer and poet Victoria Mbabazi, they say: “As a Black femme I understand what it is like for people to look at you as a shiny object and think that your existence giving them life means that’s where your life ends. Usually this ends in a disillusionment for both me and the person who dehumanized me into a fictional version of myself.” The parasocial toxicity artists endure is inexcusable and should be checked.

Yet the question I’m interested in when it comes to Roan is not whether fame is good or bad, whether she’s right or wrong, but of what she makes visible in the culture of celebrity, the purpose behind her commodification. And to me, that’s the power that white women have had and will always have. White women’s palatability imbues their art with the power of “relatability” even as it appropriates from communities, cultures and precedents that are usually created by Black and brown people who are then excluded from the material success of their own legacies. Roan’s drag persona and her lineage with activist, drag queen and queer icon Sasha Colby, a trans woman of Native Hawaiian and Irish descent, is a key example. Roan’s slogan, “your favourite artist’s favourite artist,” comes from Colby’s own tagline: “your favourite drag queen’s favourite drag queen.” This is indicative of the ecosystems of cultural transmission and inspiration, which can be appropriative and can not; which can be racist and can not, but which are undergirded by the uncontrollable, uncontrivable machinery of white supremacy. Intentionally or otherwise, Roan’s inspiration and interpretations in this lineage suffers from a sore reality: when white cis people do it, it suddenly just makes sense to a mass audience.

Don’t get me wrong though: Roan and her team are using Roan’s privilege to do good work. They’re against ticket resellers. She pushes back against rude photographers and makes clear contributions to queering pop. In the fall, she made a political stand by refusing to endorse either U.S. presidential candidate and by invoking Palestine.

But I believe it works against her when she refuses to own her success in all of its complexities. Part of me remains suspicious, reluctant as a fan, unable to fully trust or believe her when she has not once acknowledged her own positionality. It’s a place I’ve been before—with friends, coworkers, lovers—why does privilege do what it does and how do we make sense of the discomfort we are left with? How does this affect our ability to make sense of each other, to feel seen and heard?

I guess it just reminds me of the limits. Both for Roan and for myself and for celebrities like Kehlani, Janelle Monáe, and Victoria Monét, who have done similar work as Roan but were not afforded the same understanding: on the toxicity of the industry, on queerness, on politics, in terms of Palestine. What can celebrities offer us and what we can offer them? What are we owed and what do we owe each other?

My original instinct plateaus. I’m left with an old feeling, despite and maybe because of its flattening effect, a feeling like the popping of a balloon at the end of a party, sad and stalwart in its reminders. Clichés that are cliché as pop music itself, maybe because they stick around in the same way.

Sometimes you get where you’re going only by going too far. Sometimes what we think of someone has nothing to do with who they actually are.

Illustration by Tobias Diuk

When my girlfriend of six years broke up with me by text, followed by a short call, I couldn’t comprehend it. It wasn’t grief, shock, or denial. My brain, damaged from 16 months of Long COVID, couldn’t read or write, splice voices from background noise, or parse words said fast enough to react. When our friends asked what happened, I couldn’t explain the literally, not just emotionally, incomprehensible.

Early media coverage of the virus’s neurocognitive impacts focused on smell and taste, driven by viral videos of patients unable to tell pickle juice from lemonade. But SARS-CoV-2 can affect every sense and most aspects of cognition. My experience was severe but not rare: impaired word recall and object recognition; executive functioning, such as following steps to do laundry; and spatial memory, even in my own apartment. Conversations were dream-like, disorienting, and difficult; technology use triggered sudden naps. The pandemic’s collective TV-watching, live-streaming era passed me by. My life became as quiet as I could make it, and all the more isolating.

Louise Cummings, a professor in the Department of English and Communication at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, says that “language is breaking down” in adults with Long COVID. “Even a short, slow-paced conversation can induce a severe flare-up of symptoms,” she says, “necessitating many days of rest in some cases.” In her 2023 study, participants reported difficulty finding words (93 percent), losing concentration when talking (89.6 percent), recalling what was said (65.4 percent), or understanding speech (38 percent). Conservative estimates of Long COVID incidence are at least 10 percent of infections, and neurocognitive symptoms are among the most common and longest lasting. But while other types of brain injury (e.g., from a stroke) may show on a static scan, Cummings says “the disruption to brain physiology in Long COVID is likely…more subtle.”

Studies that do show this disruption use specialized testing not available to most patients. A University of Waterloo study found reduced oxygen saturation in the prefrontal cortex during cognitive tasks. Oxygen is fundamental to brain functioning, implicated in fuel metabolism and neuron communication. Numerous studies, including two from the University of California, San Francisco and CAMH in Toronto, found inflammatory markers in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid, known to impact memory and mood.

When my hospital network opened a Long COVID clinic and I was seen virtually, 20 months post-infection, the cognitive rehab specialist recommended a maximum of 20 minutes per day of cognitive or screen activity. She said I’d likely never work again: my brain was irreparably damaged. Like most clinics, there were no neurologists, cardiologists, or infectious disease specialists, no diagnostics or prescriptions; only virtual patient education on adjusting to illness, social workers and dieticians, and a PDF handout on attention and memory I couldn’t read. To get treatment, I had to find my own specialists, including in private practice.

Desperate for distraction while bedridden, I could only handle instrumental music: nigunim (Jewish songs in lilting rounds of nonsense syllables) or small classical ensembles. Slowly, I added podcasts, listening for short stints without multitasking. My favourite hosts were always two intimates whose conversations felt like lounging after a dinner party. I’d let the social ambiance wash over me, an experience that violated public health policy. Even when I couldn’t handle watching closed-captioned TV, I listened to backlogs of “Witch, Please” (“a fortnightly podcast about the Harry Potter world”); official cast and crew pods for The Good Place and Hacks; recap shows like “Out on the Lanai;” and “Race Chaser” (“dedicated to the discussion, dissection and dissemination of every single episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race”). It helped to hear familiar voices describing familiar things without pressure to contribute, to practice comprehension and memory in a low-stakes environment.

Some formats felt more accessible, even rehabilitating. Hannah McGregor, program director of Simon Fraser University’s publishing program and co-host of “Witch, Please” with Marcelle Kosman, suggests this could be due to pedagogical principles built into good podcasting. “Core to teaching is repetition,” McGregor says. “You need to articulate things multiple times for them to resonate with people, and ideally, you will articulate them in multiple different ways.” Podcasts, like all serialized media, are “a balance of repetition and change,” she says, a structurally predictable format with cues like segment intros or musical transitions. “Witch, Please” revisits every book and movie through different theoretical frameworks, glancing deftly sideways from critical theory back into fiction like the best undergrad class you never took. It uses the explainer format, in which one host presents research to the other, which McGregor says models “the actual process of listening” through active listening noises and follow-up questions, making it easier to stay engaged, especially for my overloaded brain.

Big Dipper, executive producer at the Moguls of Media (MOM) Network, says that “Race Chaser’s” comforting balance of structure and improv is intentional, supported by guiding outlines and a timed four-segment format. “All the character, uniqueness, and what stands out…comes organically from [hosts, drag queens Willam and Alaska Thunderfuck] in conversation, but I give them a strong structure to hold onto so that they can really have freedom…to improv and talk shit.” The hosts riff on a vast pastiche repertoire of Drag Race, queer canon, and cult classics, both reverential and sardonic, vividly describing the action on screen and outfits from hair to heel.

Big Dipper says the format made queens “far more accessible to their fanbase….long-form, true personalities, no facade.” The podcast is a love letter to other media and mediums, not just in content but in style. The leisurely intros and outros come from Big Dipper’s theatrical background. “I structure the majority of our shows [like this]: the cold open, theme song, intro, and an outro to let the audience down gently.” Cummings says frameworks like these can be helpful. “If an interview has a set structure, you are able to use a mental template of how it will proceed, to facilitate comprehension,” she says, compensating for the lack of visual cues. The format is comforting, says Big Dipper, because “nothing is expected of the listener” and you can “let it wash over you.” Listening helped me rebuild memory retrieval pathways for sound and images.

For me, podcasts were patient companions who didn’t mind repeating themselves, and a descriptive medium when I couldn’t comprehend multimedia. They kept me company when I was too sick to leave the house, when in-person events were banned, and my community fell apart post-breakup.

Even now, three years into this, large Zoom meetings and dinner parties are still challenging and nightclubs are inconceivably inaccessible. But I can listen in on other people’s friendships while they “improv and talk shit,” and doing so has helped immensely as I relearn how to comprehend, remember, and connect with the world.

But the reason why the show is so loveable? Because it’s relatable. I’ve watched it countless times. I watch it when I’m happy, I watch it when I’m sad. I may or may not have looked to it for signs during my last breakup, but I’m not alone. To many Millennial women, and the Gen Xers that preceded us, Sex and the City gave us four leading ladies who were meant to embody “every woman”—or at least every woman of 1998 who lived in New York City and either wore a size zero or made a six-figure salary. Perhaps some of this relatability is dead today, as society, the economy, technology, gender roles and every other aspect of modern life has changed since the show’s initial air 25 years ago. But in other ways, the show’s themes endure because some things haven’t changed: the messy realities of trying to find love, the absurdity of dating, the fast pace in which lovers and potential partners can enter and leave our lives, and the idea that friendship is the one non-negotiable in life. This resulted in decades of the show’s cult following, out of which spawned the question that seems to live forever: Are you a Miranda, a Charlotte, a Carrie, or a Samantha?

As I wait for the second season of And Just Like That… to air in spite of myself, I’ve been re-watching again, and re-working this question. Because people have evolved from boxed-in personalities, I want the question to keep up with what we know today, and to hopefully make it way less offensive: What’s your Sex and the City birth chart?

Over the years, Sex and the City and astrology have become constants in my life. They both bring comfort, a sense of order, and the ability to recognize parts of ourselves and those around us we may not otherwise see. Whether it’s for real or just for play, in my friend circles there’s an immediate kinship one feels around identifying as a Leo or a Carrie. Both can belie one’s true sense of being.

So, how does one determine their SATC chart? Unlike your astrological birth chart, where you’d visit cafeastrology.com and harass your parents about the exact time you were born, all you have to do is tap into your inner truth.

Now, many would base each character on their most basic and well-known qualities: Carrie is quirky and witty, Samantha is sexually liberated, Miranda is cynical and Charlotte is romantic and conservative. But, in order for this theory to hit a little closer to home, we need to dig deeper and understand that people aren’t necessarily made up of one solo SATC character, but perhaps there is a birth chart of four that comprises our makeup according to our moon, sun, and ascendant signs.

The sun sign is your most dominant sign. This is the house under which you are born. So, whichever character you feel you relate the most to, that will be your sun sign. Your moon is how you see yourself, and how you show up for yourself. Your rising, or ascendent, is the “mask” that you wear—the way people perceive you.

In case you’re wondering what makes your Sex and the City placements, here’s how I like to break down the main four, with traits that surpass what is obvious at first glance:

The Samantha: Fiercely independent. Cutthroat. Blunt. Supportive. Curious. Sexual (akin to Scorpio) and determined. A real powerhouse who gets what she goes for. Stubborn. Works for pleasure. Would most likely have placements in Scorpio and Taurus.

The Carrie: A dreamer. Flighty. Compassionate. Anxious. Temperamental. Stubborn. A little lazy. Static, fears change and tends to revert toward what is comfortable. Vain. Addictive personality. Expects pleasure. Would most likely have placements in Libra and Taurus.

The Charlotte: Passionate. Momentarily judgmental but the most open-minded. Anxious. Most likely to try or consider trying new things. (I.e.: Considering anal sex and a threesome with past partners, adoption, IVF, converting to Judaism.) Fiercely loyal. A dreamer. Goal-driven and determined. Detail- oriented and a perfectionist. Naive. Highly focused. Expects pleasure but works for it. Charlotte is 100 percent a Gemini.

The Miranda: Goal-driven. Fiercely independent. Cynical. Judgmental. Nurturing. Focused. Awkward. Ambitious. Stubborn. Skeptical. Loving, but coldly so. Hyper realistic. Does not believe in pleasure and finds herself overindulging anxiously (falling in love with Steve, the phone-sex buddy, and the chocolate cake episode). Virgo, Virgo, and more Virgo.

Chopping up the qualities of the girls using the birth-chart method means that you can pick and choose your placements according to what you feel fits your personality (or that of someone you know very well) best. No birth timing necessary, just a quick analysis of how you face life.

Personally, I am a Miranda sun: I’m cynical, unlucky, and clumsy in love, and I live alone with my cat. However, the way I scare men off due to my intensity and my constant need for validation is akin to a Carrie moon. Forget the fact that I’m a writer and have curly hair. With the moon sign representing how you present yourself to the world and those around you, it makes sense that I would be seen as a Carrie.

But then, my rising, which is the cherry on top of my entire personality, is Charlotte: not conservative, per se, but passionate about my beliefs and perhaps even stubborn, yet naive, at times. I’m also spiritual and faithful about little myths and tales, like the idea that everything happens for a reason.

When I first applied this theory to the group chat, I didn’t realize how true it was. But the more I diagnosed my friends, the more I realized how well it works. My friend Kristan, for example, is clearly a Samantha-Miranda-Carrie, and Mark is an obvious Samantha-Carrie cusp with double Carrie placements and a Samantha sun.

While this dissertation is mostly in jest, it feels as though our stories as women need to be comparable to something viewable or categorizable in order for us to actually realize that things are going to be okay. Perhaps this is my cynical Miranda speaking, believing that the media has to show women examples of ourselves before we can feel more liberated and “normal,” making our role in the patriarchy easier to swallow. Maybe this is why femme-presenting people also find themselves drawn to astrology, and to Sex and the City placements as well.

Or perhaps it’s just that human beings find our own personalities completely fascinating and we just want more ways to classify ourselves. But, if any of this resonates with you, keep changing the narrative and be sure to correct people when they assign themselves and others to a single character. And if you find yourself thinking about your own chart and that thought starts off with “I couldn’t help but wonder…, ” then you’ll know what at least one of your placements is.

A diehard romantic, I routinely scroll through Netflix’s “New & Popular” tab looking for the next rom-com to swoon over—and often keep scrolling. This year alone, I’ve scrolled past The Royal Treatment; Love in the Villa; A Perfect Pairing; Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between; and Persuasion. The only films I found worth streaming were Wedding Season and Hulu’s Fire Island. Yet neither moved me as much as a single scene from the Korean drama, Extraordinary Attorney Woo—more law-procedural than romcom—where the two leads press their fingers together against a window pane.

Hollywood’s rom-com genre is letting out wilted sighs as it aches for filmmakers to rejuvenate its body of work. Some critics have declared the genre “dead.” However, Scott Meslow, culture critic and author of From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy disagrees. He says of this past decade in Hollywood: “It was more like the decline of the mid-budget-studio-film era, and rom-coms were sort of scapegoated.”

If the appetite for romantic movies had truly fizzled, then 2022’s big releases in the genre, Marry Me, The Lost City, and Ticket to Paradise—starring rom-com veterans such as Jennifer Lopez, Sandra Bullock, and Julia Roberts—wouldn’t have performed so well at the box office. The Lost City grossed approximately $190 million worldwide against a budget of $68 million, and Marry Me amassed $50 million worldwide against a budget of $23 million.

But despite these successes, Hollywood is not investing in much beyond blockbuster superhero movies—or any intellectual property that has franchise potential. As culture writer Elamin Abdelmahmoud wrote earlier this year, Hollywood has “arrived at the nadir of original stories,” capitalizing on audience familiarity to ensure maximum profitability. In the meantime, rom-com fans have been turning to something that fulfills their desire to see two individuals overcome obstacles, against all odds, to find true love: Korean dramas.

For the uninitiated, Korean dramas (a.k.a. K-dramas) are limited-series romantic TV shows produced in South Korea. They are typically limited series—though some newer dramas have begun offering multiple seasons—and they range from around 10 to 30 episodes, sometimes as short as 25 minutes each, but typically lasting upwards of 40 minutes.

K-dramas, alongside other aspects of Korean pop culture like K-pop, have been making inroads in East Asia since the 1990s. They first gained prominence in North America, however, in the early 2010s— during what is now called the second Hallyu or Korean Wave—with rom-com series like Boys Over Flowers (2009), You’re Beautiful (2009), Playful Kiss (2010), and Secret Garden (2010). Their popularity was aided by websites such as Viki and the now-defunct Dramafever, which allowed North American viewers to watch episodes the day after they aired in Korea, with English subtitles, for free.

“[I first watched K-dramas] in university, four, five years ago,” says Mira Hajjar, a queer Lebanese-Canadian K-drama fan. Hajjar says what they enjoy most about the genre are “the little cute moments that make you kick your feet under the blanket,” like when the leads banter, do menial chores together, and make each other laugh.

Ziora Ajeroh, a university student, who has been a K-drama fan since 2015, loves the genre’s slow-burn. “You cannot pay me to watch a Hollywood romcom that came out this year,” they say. “They’re all garbage.” Ajeroh elaborates that newer Hollywood rom-coms can’t quite replicate the chemistry nor the well-written plots of rom-coms released in the 1990s and early 2000s—at least, to them. “I feel like I’ve seen every decent rom-com, at least in Hollywood.”

So what changed? For decades, the rom-com was a viable option for Hollywood studios. It was Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally (1989)—the quintessential work in this genre—that sparked the heyday of lighthearted, love-centric, and high-quality films from the 1990s to the early 2000s, such as You’ve Got Mail (1998), Notting Hill (1999), and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), which was nominated for two Oscars and won 24 big industry awards. However, this boom had faded to a whimper by the 2010s. When films like When in Rome (2010), and Killers (2010) failed to kill it either at the box office or in audience’s hearts (both have an audience score below 45 percent), they helped kill off Hollywood’s desire to invest in rom-coms.

From 2012 onwards, one can count on the top 10 highest-grossing films each year to either be explosion-filled blockbusters, superhero movies, Disney animations, a sequel to any of the above—or even a combination of all of them, à la any Marvel film. Since these films have such a strong track record, film studios have been less inclined to take their chances on rom-coms, whose pull on audiences is much harder to predict.

Before streaming services existed, films made revenue through both the initial release of a movie as well as DVD sales. Having two streams of revenue, as Matt Damon explained during his recent appearance on Hot Ones, made it possible for studios to invest in riskier films—like rom-coms—because even if they underperformed at the box office, they could make up for it in DVD sales. Streaming services killed DVD sales and offered only low licensing fees in return, leading studios to stick with films guaranteed to make a profit when widely released in theatres.

Streaming services, especially Netflix, have tried producing and releasing their own rom-coms to combat the subsequent dearth of rom-coms. However, only a few of these movies ever cut through the overwhelming amount of content on these services to generate conversation—Can you quote a line from 2018 rom-com Set It Up? Me neither!—unless, that is, we’re referring to conversations that make fun of them (I’m looking at you, Persuasion and He’s All That!).

Ironically, the biggest force to push audiences toward K-dramas is the very force that led to the rom-com drought in Hollywood: Netflix. As K-pop’s visibility increased in American pop culture, so did Netflix’s K-drama offerings. The company began to exclusively distribute several K-dramas at the same time as they aired in Korea, beginning with One More Time (2016). It converted large swathes of unfulfilled romance fans all over the world—especially in the U.S., Canada, and India—into K-drama fans through Crash Landing on You (2019–2020), which ranked in Netflix’s Top 10 in several countries.

When the pandemic forced people into lockdown in 2020, many longed for escapism and the comfort that rom-coms brought, but quickly burned through any new ones worth watching. After hearing about Crash Landing through word of mouth, enough people watched it out of curiosity for the drama to become the sixth most-watched series on Netflix in the U.S. and to be recommended by media outlets from Variety to The Daily Beast to TIME magazine.

Hajjar recalls being introduced to K-dramas by a friend, while it was Ajeroh who pushed her friends toward K-dramas and now shares a Viki account with them. Journalist Sabra Ismath admits to casually playing Crash Landing on You—where a South Korean heiress crash lands in North Korea after a paragliding accident and must find her way back with the help of a handsome North Korean soldier— in the background when people visit, so she can casually get them hooked.

While initially some North American audience members may have looked to the K-drama as a Plan B, they quickly discovered it had certain advantages over the classic romantic flick and romantic sitcoms made in the U.S. and Canada. “Hollywood rom-coms are always on the time budget,” bemoans Ismath. “The storyline is rushed. One minute they’re talking and [the next] they’re already a couple.”

Fellow K-drama fan Hajjar loves how K-dramas deliver a fully fleshedout love story over a single season. “It also means I can watch more of them.” North American romantic TV shows tend to favour will-they-won’t-they arcs drawn out tortuously over several seasons (think: How I Met Your Mother, The Mindy Project, Jane the Virgin, Never Have I Ever) while their film counterparts can feel too short. K-dramas find the sweet spot of offering deep character development while keeping viewers engaged.

In Crash Landing on You, for example, in addition to working together to prevent the heroine Yoon Se-ri from being captured and imprisoned by the North Korean police, Yoon Se-ri also has to confront her strained relationship with her mother and brothers, while the lead male protagonist Ri Jeong-hyeok has to come to terms with the death of his older brother. Even after they overcome their individual struggles, the two still have to figure out how they can be together despite ongoing political tensions between their countries.

The leads’ family and friends tend to be more three-dimensional in K-dramas than in rom-coms, making K-dramas more relatable, especially to viewers who also come from collectivist cultures, like Avani Thakkar, a freelance writer who began watching K-dramas during the pandemic. “With Hollywood, you never get to see the family,” she says, unless the character is going home for the holidays. “But with K-dramas the family aspect is really intertwined and as a desi person, I relate to that more.”

And another reason why rom-com fans love K-dramas so much is the satisfyingly slow-burn of the romance. In the 16-episode drama Descendants of the Sun, for example, the leads don’t kiss until the fifth episode, don’t start dating until the ninth, and only get their happy-ever-after on the very last episode. There are countless memes poking fun at the speed with which Hollywood rom-com couples become intimate versus K-drama couples—and countless more memes illustrating the glee viewers experience when they do. K-drama couples build an emotional bond first by facing obstacles together. It makes their ultimate physical bond that much more rewarding for viewers, some of whom don’t rank physical affection as the only love language that matters. Aysha Akhtar, a grad student, for example, really appreciated the thoughtful things the Crash Landing on You romantic leads do for each other. “Acts of service is my love-language,” she explains. “It was just easier for me to relate to that.”

K-drama rom-coms also offer a variety of subgenres within the genre—medical, thriller, law procedural—as well as diverse settings and complex plots. Both Lawless Lawyer (2018) and I Hear Your Voice (2013) feature lawyers falling in love while working to solve a mystery connected to their pasts. I Hear Your Voice incorporates age-difference and co-habitation storylines, as well as a slight supernatural element, while Lawless Lawyer’s male lead is rougher around the edges and has a push-pull relationship with the female lead (he’s the one pulling), making the two dramas quite distinct. And even K-dramas that aren’t billed as romantic typically devote a sizable chunk of their plot to romances. But they can also be a conduit to discussing or processing topics stigmatized in many cultures across Asia, such as mental health, strained family relations, and divorce.

Though admittedly rom-com K-dramas predominantly feature heterosexual couples, there has been a slow increase in the number of queer love stories, like in the 2022 web drama Semantic Error starring former KNK K-pop band member Park Seo-ham and DKZ band member Park Jae-chan. The unexpected popularity of the drama (it was the most-watched series on streaming platforms in Korea when its finale aired earlier this year) boosted DKZ’s popularity and had their old songs charting anew.

K-dramas’ high production value—which viewers can glean from international shooting locations like Switzerland (Crash Landing on You) or Spain (Memories of the Alhambra) or Canada (Goblin), the long list of sponsors at the end which often includes names like Samsung, Swarovski, and good ‘ol Subway, and the expensive wardrobe, especially for historical dramas—also helps, if you’re seeking unapologetic escapism.

While fans have lots of material to marathon, many don’t limit themselves to K-dramas. It becomes a gateway of sorts, leading them to romantic TV series from other Asian countries like Taiwan and mainland China (C-dramas), Thailand (Lakorn), and to a lesser extent, Japan (J-dramas). A Google Trends inquiry shows interest in Chinese, Thai, and Japanese dramas gradually increasing—and in that order— in both the U.S. and Canada from 2016-onwards, mirroring the trajectory of K-dramas on a smaller scale.

Perhaps the best example of these cross-country adaptations is Boys Over Flowers (2009), a K-drama starring Lee Min-ho and Ku Hye-sun and based on Yoko Kamia’s manga series Hana Yori Dango. The manga had already been adapted into two Japanese dramas and films, a two-season Taiwanese drama, and an unofficial Indonesian drama before its Korean adaptation—which was a hit both domestically and abroad—and it went on to spawn two Chinese dramas (one a remake of the other) and another Indonesian drama. Its latest adaptation, a Thai drama called F4 Thailand, released earlier this year.

The popularity of K-dramas—and Asian dramas overall—is a welcome antidote, to many viewers, to the overwhelming whiteness of Hollywood rom-coms. K-dramas have helped combat internalized racism in diasporic Asians—developed from rarely seeing themselves represented positively in Hollywood. In one memoir piece that ran in Salon, second-generation Korean-Australian-American actress Alicia Hannah shares that getting into K-dramas prompted her to finally learn her parents’ language. In another, Chinese-American writer Christine Mah-Kellams confesses: “K-dramas cured my prejudice against Asian men.”

K-dramas are challenging the emasculation of Asian men in North American media, and, by extension, North America by presenting Asian men as viable romantic and sexual options. Although, in some instances, this borders on fetishization. Indiana University Bloomington researcher Min Joo Lee coined the phrase “the Netflix effect” to account for a surge in young Western women travelling to Seoul and staying in their hostels watching K-dramas all day, then hitting the town at night. According to a CTV report:

“The women Lee interviewed were fascinated with Korean men who were portrayed on TV as being in touch with their emotions and willing to embrace their ‘effeminate sides,’ Lee said. They considered Korean men cultured and romantic while complaining that men in their home countries often neglected their appearances and had one-track minds.”

Though many K-drama actors already enjoyed significant popularity both in Korea and across Asia, gaining a North American audience has meant more partnerships with international luxury brands, Hollywood movie offers, and a new demographic of people invested in the personal lives of K-drama stars—similar to how Hollywood rom-coms made stars out of Meg Ryan, Matthew McConaughey, and Hugh Grant, to name a few. When Crash Landing on You stars Son Ye-jin and Hyun Bin announced their relationship, marriage, then pregnancy, for example, fans of the show were ecstatic—like Ismath, who enthusiastically shared pictures of the couple’s wedding in her friend group chat. The enthusiasm over the BinJin couple illustrates that K-drama stars have begun to occupy a place once reserved for rom-com icons in North American audience’s hearts.

The heart-shaped cavity in my own head that craves romance since the romcom went into decline is filling up again thanks to K-dramas. Yet I still long for a particular brand of optimism that only old-fashioned rom-coms can inspire in me. I am hoping that the calibre of recent films like The Lost City and Ticket to Paradise is a sign of a resurgence in the genre, so I can have it all. Until my hopes come to fruition, however, I’m just a girl, sitting in front of a “New and Popular” tab packed with awesome K-drama options, asking Hollywood to step up its game.

At nine years old I was an under-the-covers reader. Even on nights when my parents were distracted by their cassette tapes and homemade wine, I wouldn’t risk turning on my bedside lamp after 8:30 p.m. Maybe my parents knew I was deep into the world of Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown under those blankets, a flashlight illuminating the clues and cliffhangers on the pages.

Now, almost four decades later, I’m once again reading Nancy Drew books at 8:30 p.m. every night, only in my 10- and eight-year-old sons’ room. We join Nancy as she investigates mysterious bungalows or stolen clocks, and my youngest son makes wild guesses about what the criminals are up to. Both boys are often still debating plot possibilities after I turn out the light. I don’t think they read under the covers after I leave, but I wouldn’t mind if they did.

The popular culture of my kids’ generation is phenomenally different from the pop culture I grew up with. There is more of it, for one thing: an abundance of TV channels and streaming services, music apps that let them listen to what they want when they want, and many more book series tailored to their age group. Yet the appeal of a child detective is untouchable.

So much media for children in the tween and teen years features kids doing adult things with little adult interference. Teen-detective stories are appealing at this developmental stage because they provide examples of how a person can remain a child, while accessing the bravery associated with adulthood. Because growing up is scary.

In the most recent Nancy Drew novel I read aloud, Nancy gets knocked out then spends several chapters trapped in the gross basement of a bungalow in the middle of nowhere. For me, this is terrifying. For my kids? Well, they take it in stride. Their faith in Nancy is unshakeable. Nancy is brave, and smart—she can handle anything.

The day after we read this section of the novel, my eldest son is starting at a new summer camp. He is excited, but clearly nervous, bouncing around the kitchen, checking his outfit in the mirror, speculating on every detail of how the day might go. He is in no physical danger, but freaking out about this adventure into something brand new. Watching him go through these emotions gives me some insight into why children around his age are so attracted to stories where they see kids confronting the unknown and emerging triumphant.

And in those older mystery novels, that’s where it ends. The mystery is solved, the teen detective wins. Then everyone goes back to their sock hops—until the next mystery crosses their path. But there’s something missing from those older detective books: how do the characters feel as they go through these intense experiences? Did Encyclopedia Brown ever contemplate whether he could live up to the expectations placed on him by his father? Did Nancy Drew ever ponder her own mortality after being hit on the head repeatedly by the bad guys? Did the Hardy Boys ever wonder if their close sibling relationship would survive into adulthood? We don’t know.

These stories were written in an era where children were not expected to examine their inner lives, even as they navigated the complex emotional path to adulthood. It is something that the books published before the 1960s rarely touched upon, but I’m starting to see it in more contemporary stories. Weirdly, the place I’ve seen this navigation of a child’s inner life chronicled with the most depth and heart recently was in The Bob’s Burgers Movie.

It’s a bit of a left turn, I know, going from the classic Nancy Drew novel to an animated musical comedy about a family running a burger restaurant in a fictional town on the east coast of the U.S. And I certainly wasn’t expecting a tween detective story to shape the narrative of the full-length Bob’s Burgers movie, when I took my own family to the movie theatre for opening night.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Bob’s Burgers chronicles the ups and downs of the Belchers: parents Bob and Linda and their three children, 13-year-old Tina, 11-year-old Gene, and nine-year-old Louise. They scrape by on the profits from their underrated burger restaurant, and each episode draws viewers into their flawed but heartwarming family life.

In the full-length film, Louise is positioned as a central character as she unravels clues related to a murder mystery that many of the characters are attempting to solve. It is Louise who finds the skeleton that prompts the discovery of the murder in the first place, and in the space of a few minutes her character goes from confident and sarcastic to reeling in terror. This, combined with being teased in the school yard for her attachment to a bunny-eared hat she has worn since early childhood, sends Louise into a spiral of self-doubt. Contemplating life without her beloved hat leads her to conclude the only way she can prove that she is brave and not—horror of horrors—“a baby,” will be to solve the murder mystery. The adventures that ensue and the eventual conversations Louise has with her family allow her to gain a stronger sense of self.

This is not a coming-of-age story. Louise doesn’t get through these trials by making a clear transition into adulthood. Rather, it is a story showing the tiny steps children approaching adolescence must take to understand themselves a little better. Louise is working to solve a real, messy, grown-up mystery, while also grappling with the fear of removing her signature childhood hat, after so many years of clinging to it for security and a sense of self. The murder is ultimately solved, but the important story is really Louise’s emotional growth. In a scene near the end of the film, we watch as Louise backflips off of a horizontal bar in the school playground, and her bunny ears fall to the ground. The viewer never sees the character without her hat, but the movie shows her calmly retrieving it and placing it back on her head. The hat has become a choice rather than a desperate emotional crutch.

As the mother of a 10-year-old, I see struggles like these play out every day with my own child. I’m conscious of the trend of encouraging children to acknowledge and name their feelings, a trend that was very much not present when I was growing up in the 1980s. Recently, my son woke up on a school day and immediately declared he was sick. This had been happening a lot since the pandemic, and I was suspecting it was more emotional than physical. When I was a child, there was no such thing as a permissible “mental health day.” If I didn’t want to go to school, too bad. Faking sick was the only way to get out of it, and I could see my own kids using that age-old technique. But all it took was a quick discussion about how it’s okay to be overwhelmed and a little freaked out about whatever lies in store beyond the safety of our family home, to shift the narrative. I’m glad this shift to naming and discussing feelings as a tool for handling life’s challenges is making it into the beloved child-detective genre too, in its modern incarnations.

When my family went to see The Bob’s Burgers movie, it was Louise’s story that stood out for us, providing an unexpectedly emotional and nuanced look at the character. Viewers of the TV show have almost never seen Louise without her hat, and over multiple seasons, the hat has rarely been acknowledged or mentioned. It’s just a part of Louise, a character many viewers have grown to love.

Watching her grapple with a personal change that seems small but is actually huge for a child, all while trying to solve a murder, connects the audience to Louise more than I ever felt connected to the unemotional teen detectives of the past. And last summer, whenever we were driving somewhere for a family trip, my kids would play the movie soundtrack. Listening to them sing Louise’s words in the song “Sunny Side Up Summer” always got me: “Each and every day/ I just think I’m pretty great/ yep that’s right/ no big deal/ I’m not hiding what I feel.”

Louise may not have the clean-cut poise of Nancy Drew or the methodical detachment of Encyclopedia Brown, but in The Bob’s Burgers Movie she’s the messy, modern kid detective we all deserve.

I have always found myself in close proximity to teachers, first as a student then later in my personal and professional circles. As a figure skating coach, I felt a kinship with teachers, even if I didn’t always understand the weight of what was being asked of them. This past year, I began watching Abbott Elementary, a workplace mockumentary set in a fictional school of the same name. It is, in a word, delightful. And to me it’s the first show to successfully capture what makes teachers tick—and how they cope in a world that consistently under-rewards their contributions.

Created by and starring Quinta Brunson, the ABC series has earned the kind of critical acclaim elusive to network sitcoms today, including garnering seven Emmy nominations this year. Abbott’s most effusive praise has come from teachers, for its compassionate yet unflinching representation of what they do. Teaching has long been positioned as noble work, an idea Abbott both celebrates and complicates, exposing the structural and institutional challenges typically obscured by this one-dimensional perception of educators—especially in underfunded and understaffed schools.

The demands placed on teachers are unlike those of nearly any other profession. Teachers stand in as social workers, therapists, and even parents. And due to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, those demands have been ramping up. In Alberta, the place I call home, the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) significant funding cuts to K-12 education and inadequate COVID-19 policy have only increased said demands. Between the UCP’s abrupt pivots to online learning, elimination of contact tracing and testing, and inconsistent messaging on masking and isolation requirements, Alberta’s teachers have gone on record as feeling abandoned—and that abandonment is taking its toll.

In November 2021, the Alberta Teachers’ Association published a survey of more than 1,300 active Alberta teachers and school leaders. A staggering 94 percent of respondents reported feeling fatigue and 95 percent reported feeling stress. That’s an untenable reality even the leader of Alberta’s New Democratic Party, Rachel Notley, seemed to brush aside in a tone-deaf tweet issued from her Twitter account this past May. In it, Notley commended a teacher for working a second job at a restaurant, noting she didn’t know where she found the energy.

As an outsider to teaching, what I love most about Abbott is its affirmation of an oft-repeated adage: it is community care— not self-care and not state-sponsored care—that repairs harm and facilitates change. In “Light Bulb,” veteran teacher Barbara Howard (Sheryl Lee Ralph) advises substitute Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) on how to communicate effectively and compassionately with a parent. In “Art Teacher,” newbie Janine Teagues (Brunson) finds an inventive way to replace the damaged books of the hardened Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter). In “Ava vs. Superintendent,” lazy but loveable principal, Ava Coleman (Janelle James), stands up for her students and staff during a school board meeting.

The teachers in my life have much in common with Abbott’s cast of characters, pouring their time, energy, and resources into one another whenever they can. It brings comfort to know they are looking out for each other, but we should not let that comfort lull us into complacency. Those in power routinely expect teachers to make a way out of no way, and without complaint. It is up to us, as allies, to challenge this assumption and to mirror the solidarity modelled for us by the teachers on our screens. The fictional world of Abbott Elementary offers critical lessons for our real world, so read up. Take notes. This is one test we must not fail.

Photo by INSTAR Images / Alamy Stock Photo

When it first aired over two decades ago, Sex and the City’s fantasy lay in an idyllic New York City lifestyle of affordable rent, flowing cosmopolitans, closets full of expensive designer fashion, a revolving door of attractive men for one and all, and an endless string of meet-cutes. The four best friend protagonists, Carrie Bradshaw, Samantha Jones, Miranda Hobbes, and Charlotte York, had it all at their fingertips.

Seventeen years after the finale (and 11 years after the second movie, but let’s not discuss it), the anticipated reboot, And Just Like That… premiered at the end of 2021. While some of that original fantasy remains intact (like when Carrie walks around the grimy streets of NYC in a trailing, white tulle skirt without it becoming dirty), I was struck by the ways in which it has shifted. In this new iteration, it’s the fantasy of successful friendship into middle age that takes centre stage.

Maybe this is two years of social isolation talking, but some of my friendships are struggling. While I do think the pandemic has a part in it, and I’ll never know otherwise, I still have a sneaking suspicion that I’d find myself here even without a disease keeping us from our loved ones. Now, in my 30s, the majority of my friends have settled down with a longtime partner, and many of them have chosen to become parents.

I don’t begrudge them for it, but we live in a heteronormative society, one that values a more traditional family unit above all else. As a single, childless person, I’m not always sure where that leaves me. Unfortunately, it’s usually pretty low on the priority list, far behind children and spouses and work. At least until an empty nest and retirement. Old women together at the movies, I see and love you.

However, And Just Like That… presents an alternative reality where your friends are your family and you don’t have to spend several months going back and forth in a text chain just to organize a brunch. In the first scene of the show, Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are eating at a restaurant, their bond unchanged other than a devastating break-up with Samantha. Their friendship is still the focal point of their lives, despite both marriage for all and kids for Miranda and Charlotte.

At the end of the first episode, Carrie’s husband, John James Preston (also known as “Mr. Big”), dies of a heart attack. In episode five, she has hip surgery. After both of these major life events, Miranda and Charlotte drop everything to care for their friend, staying the night, nursing her back to health. But it’s not only the big stuff. They share frequent meals and walks together, their connectedness is a throughline. Making time for each other is a given, not an option.

Deeply moved, I felt comfort in being with old friends, albeit fictional ones. Then came profound grief for how my own friendships have changed. Ten episodes with Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte left me wondering who will be there not only for the hard stuff but the mundane, which is often just as meaningful: coffee, errands, inconsequential stories about my day. Of course, there’s a certain level of unattainability in And Just Like That…. It is television, after all. But maybe, just maybe, if we start working toward community instead of insularity, friendship can take its deserved place at the forefront of our lives, even if we aren’t on a television show