What if Carrie White was a victim? And what if Cathy Ames was a girlboss? Booktok and filmtok have united this month to rally against the proposed sanitisation of some of literature's most complicated female characters.

This week, hosts Ione and Gina dissect the depictions of the East Of Eden and Carrie reboot leads, consider whether one note characterisations can benefit or hinder feminism and why we all want evil women to root for on screen.

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Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

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Trigger warning: sexual assault and misogyny

The internet has been set ablaze by the proliferation of a college campus sexual assault at Cornell university in 2024. After a recent expose by the student newspaper against the fraternity members who were involved as well as the failings of the Cornell higher ups and the local police department to deliver justice, national and international news and social media accounts have been quick to deliver their own take on the case.

This week, hosts Ione and Gina take apart the social media reaction to the so called 'Cornell 7', the monetisation that influences inflammatory responses on X in particular and whether the I Am Jane Doe campaign is a successful way of protesting against the systematic failures that allow assaults like this to happen in the first place.

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Watch the episode on YouTube!

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You must have heard about it by now and if you haven't? Lucky you. It's not often that a local news story breaks containment through traditional reporting and not a viral TikTok, but for Last Ditch - the Covid conscious lesbian bar in Greenfield, MA - a report from The Boston Globe broke open a case that would change the world. Or at least, our social media feeds.

This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the ongoing backlash Last Ditch are experiencing from offering a mask optional night in their programming. Is the owner in the wrong for excluding patrons who can only attend fully masked events? Is their community acting too harshly in their response to her business decision? And should we question the ethics of laughing at situations that the right wing are capitalising on during the American mid terms?

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know the best way to learn something? A 60 second video that you watch on two times speed referencing one case study found in another video of the same ilk. Duh!

This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the newest kind of content creator - the Thinkfluencer. This short form video essayist condenses topics into bitesize chunks to give viewers insight on topics ranging on everything from neuroscience to the Met Gala. Is this content helping to make academia more accessible or is it hindering our natural hunt for knowledge? Or is this just another trend for engagement farming?

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's not about Sydney Sweeney doing an easily misinterpreted advert again. It's not about her being completely naked in it either. Listen to me, it's just sports. Or at least, that's what gambling app Novig want you to think.

This week, our hosts Ione and Gina dissect the discourse surrounding Sydney Sweeney's latest advertisement drama and get to grips with the more pressing problem that is arising across the world of marketing: The ethics of promoting gambling and who benefits from the popularisation of bettings apps.

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alert! There has been a slop detected in the mother toilet - who refused to flush? We are talking about, of course, the lukewarm reception that's being directed towards the new Adela and Rebecca Black album releases.

This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the newest term spawned out of Twitter and being dissected on Substack - C*ntslop. Are pop music visuals going too far? Or are they not authentic enough? How does it all tie into the white gay male gaze? And should we stop pandering to the pink pound?

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has the title influencer dropped from glamour to disregard because people hate women? Or is it possibly due to the growing resentment between the working class and the content creator economy?

This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the discourse connecting the ire directed at influencers with misogyny. Is a Nantucket sign in a vintage shop outright sexism or a signal of a growing exhaustion with social media's impact on society? Does every public figure need to be insightful as well as aesthetically enviable? And is anyone directing this kind of nihilism towards influencers towards male content creators?

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's kinda chic to eat a sandwich. It's kinda chic to lean on a bollard. It's kinda chic to intellectualise an Instagram trend as a signifier of the end days.

This week, hosts Ione and Gina talk about the growing need to be seen as cool across social media - spawning everything from tutorials on how to be cool to long read Substacks dissecting the tutorials. Has the the algorithm has fully drained the joy of recommendation and curation? Is the quest for coolness futile? And if everyone is kinda chic, then is no-one chic at all?

Order The Polyester Book Of Bad Taste here!

Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3

Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!

Order Gina's book, Greedy Guts, here!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.