Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

Content Warning: This guide references parental abandonment and details mental health conditions, specifically obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

“They did a whole article in Vogue about [Katharine Breakspeare’s] blowout, which is ridiculous considering Katharine’s famous for her trailblazing career in human rights law.”

Celine’s observation that Katharine receives more attention for her hair than her trailblazing career highlights the media’s attention on women as objects of beauty rather than competent career women. That Celine recognizes this as ridiculous, however, suggests that she can see through this characterization by the media and understands it to be limiting and unjust.

“[Minnie is] my best friend, so we know stuff about each other’s families. As in, I know her gran’s a lesbophobic cowboy and she knows my dad ditched us for his second family ten years ago and I haven’t seen him since. The usual girl stuff.”

Celine here uses the phrase “usual girl stuff” to reference her deep emotional connection with her best friend, a contrast to the expectation of the phrase as suggesting frivolousness. This reshaping suggests that serious matters are actually commonly discussed between female friends, rejecting a characterization of girls and girlhood as inherently unserious.

“She said something this morning about, like, toxic canon and how literary gatekeeping being intertwined with heartless cisheterosexist white supremacist capitalism has poisoned Western creative culture.”

Jordan here references Minnie’s comments in their shared literature class, where Minnie has pointed out the ideological limitations in the traditional literary canon. Her phrasing (echoed through Jordan) suggests that both Gen Z characters have a facility with the language of social justice. That Jordan, a football star, admires these qualities, subverts the traditional “jock” stereotype that imagines all athletes as conservatively invested in traditional gender roles.