The Bombshell Manual of Style
Bring 👏🏾 back 👏🏾 glamour 👏🏾
When I was a kid, growing up in Malaysia, my mum and I had a standing Friday date. She’d pick me up after work, in some fabulous jewel-hued 90’s power suit, and we’d hit the mall for lunch and a shop. The highlight was getting a scoop from Baskin Robbins (mint chip + sugar cone) and a book from MPH (Malaysian Publishing House). Don’t get me wrong - I live for a new outfit - but books were adventures waiting to happen, a portal to another world. I always had my nose in a book back then and it was a vice my mum was happy to indulge me in. Along the way I slipped in The Bombshell Manual of Style.
If you’re thinking, strange choice for a ten (give-or-take) year old, you didn’t know me as a kid (“precocious,” “a joy to have in class but very chatty,” “we have a strict dress code she needs to abide by”). I grew up around vibrant and dramatic women - my aunts, my mum’s friends - who were not ones to mince their words. They never shied away from color, confrontation or chandelier earrings. These were bombshells of their own making, simmering with tension and energy and verve, always on the verge of exploding. I found them fascinating and if growing up meant being a dynamo, maybe this book would hurry along the process.
The book itself is beautiful, a pink-and-white hardcover punctuated with illustrations by Ruben Toledo (the insert page is adorned with shoes that make that one scene in Marie Antoinette feel restrained). There are sections called “Things Bombshells Get Away with Ordinary Women Can’t” and “The Art of Sparkle, Shimmer & Shine.” There’s an entire chapter dedicated to tantrums (which I must’ve loved because it’s highlighted in the table of contents.) I hadn’t thought about the book in ages but after recently unearthing it, I see how much my pre-pubescent brain sponged up:
In my early 20s, my fridge was a receptacle for little more than SKII face masks, chocolate and champagne (“The Bombshell refrigerator is a sort of vanity on ice….a magnum of Dom Perignon are the only other nutritional substances in the Bombshell refrigerator.")
Once, on a Palm Springs jaunt, I found myself in a truly divine bathroom and remarked that it would be “the perfect backdrop for a lovers spat.” (see above: tantrums).
I was dead set on painting at least one of our bathrooms pink (“The Bombshelter”) and am currently knee deep in animal print textiles for a custom headboard (“In any case we’re likely to find several leopard print pillows, or a leopard print ottoman. Zebra will also do.”)
I have terrible back pain (“Bombshells don’t sit exactly. They perch, curl, curve and occasionally fling their legs up over the arm of the chair of the back of the sofa.”)
It’s a tongue-in-cheek book and is meant to be taken as such. Laren Stover, who wrote it, admits it was her way of imbuing what had become “a smart and sensible life” with more attitude. Life forces you to be practical but re-reading this felt like that first sip of champagne: sparkly, electric, dizzying. It brought to mind this Catherine Zeta Jones interview (Chicago-era) that’s stuck with me:
Call me crazy but that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than today’s endless scroll of vacant eyes, bored gazes and frozen-pouty-baby faces. Let’s celebrate the OTT, the sparkly, the l-u-s-h! I personally will be embracing more frivolity and fun.
If you need help detonating your inner Bombshell, I leave you with this parting gift for inspiration.
CATTY CORNER
Unless you’re chronically offline (what’s your secret?) you’ve heard the discourse on banning TikTok by now. Personally, I’m not an avid TT user (sorry to my friend Michelle who routinely sends me dozens of what I’m sure are very funny videos - love you girl, but I ain’t reading all that). As an aging millennial, I’ve begrudgingly picked my social media of choice and am sticking with it. Still, it does feel like a pretty benign and quotidien item to draw such a hard line over….
But what about China stealing your info? The way I (and probably, you) online shop, my data has long been farmed.
Freedom of speech? I think there’s another amendment we could do away with first tbh.
No more cat-tok! Ok! Now you have my attention-
Anyway! If I had veto power, here’s a few things I’d prioritize over that video app:
Leaving half drunk-mugs of tea around the house, tea bags intact
Honking (at me) in left turn lanes
Honking (at me) in right turn lanes
When your parking garage ticket slips between the seats
Not having hand lotion next to hand soap dispensers (this is a hate crime)
Restaurants not taking your request to make something spicy seriously
Pre-check TSA lines being as long as regular lines.
Allowing more than two parking signs on a single pole
Those mountain hats worn anywhere outside of mountain towns (note: LA isn’t a mountain town)
Parking tickets for tires facing the wrong way
French pedicures
Unripe persimmons
When you buy a big bunch of avocados and then they all go bad the same day
Husbands who pour bacon fat into empty cans and then leave those cans around for their wives to think oooh fresh Perrier (immediate jail)
CHILI METER RISING: DELIGHTFUL THINGS
The Milwaukee Public Library Instagram - This is by far the most delightful account I follow. Yes, as a bookworm (see above), I am biased but this account is wholesome, funny and topical. 12/10 follow.
This body oil from Wild Yonder Studio.
Wild Yonder is a female-founded, Wisconsin-based brand that prides itself on being “radically-botanical based.” This oil is sultry and spicy and putting it on tricks me into thinking it’s already summer. Plus, cute tiger!
The rush I’m getting from just planning my summer travel. I once had a doctor tell me that the chemical reaction your brain has thinking about travel is as potent as actually taking the trip. I thought she might’ve been trying to distract me because my feet were in stir-ups but as it turns out, it’s true! Duolingo hours - and my serotonin - are up.
The Lohanaissance - You already know my stance on bad girls (love ‘em). Still it was hard seeing Lilo hit the skids because I think she’s a genuine talent. But, if there’s one thing Hollywood loves, it’s a come back, and her time is now. The less I say about Irish Wish the better but I patiently await her gritty A24 mother-daughter drama with Julianne Moore.
Balanced Tiger Bars - I love visiting my friend Daniel because he always sends me home with a fun little treat. I’ve left with a cat collar, a jar of charcoal, chili oil and the last time I was there, he gave me a handful of these bars. I’m all about functional mushrooms (I add lion’s mane to my matcha everyday), so getting an extra dose from these tasty little bars is an added bonus. I’m not someone who gets hangry necessarily, but I’m big on snack culture and there are perfect on-the-go (plus cute tiger pt 2).
FASHION FLICK: WAITING TO EXHALE
Any movie about girlfriends going through it and being there for each is other is catnip to me. Add in the tag-line Friends are the people who let you be yourself — and never let you forget it? Please, I’m done for. I’m a wreck before the opening credits have even run.
The movie follows four thirty-something women (Angela Bassett, Whitney Houston, Lorette Devine and and Lela Rochon) navigating their relationships with men, each other and themselves. Whitney and Angela, together on screen, is a feast for the eyes. So much beauty! This is the kind of movie we simply don’t get anymore. Yes, I mainlined Book Club 1 & 2 on my last flight, but what other movie’s gonna give you Angela Bassett torching her cheating ex-husbands car in the first 20 minutes.
The men are predictably awful, the women criminally-beautiful and the wardrobe is 90s heaven. Worn in denim, silk slip dresses, the perfect arson-starting black negligée - and the accessories are on point.
Get the girls on deck, chill the white wine and cue it up for your next movie night.
WHO IS SHE
Cosmo Lombino aka The Queen of Melrose is the exact person you hope to cross paths with on a big night out. A chance encounter would shape you for years to come.
I’m sorry but this is a STAR. The energy! The honesty (“an oxygen tank and a cigarette”)! The side-swooped bangs! The queen of pop may have been onstage but an icon was born in the parking lot. Long live Cosmo! I would watch 32409248 seasons of this show btw:
FRIDAY BOP ALERT 🚨
New Justice? That’s actually good? Oh, we are sooooo back baby! This is the vibe shift I’ve been waiting for. Justice always makes me nostalgic for a naughtier, headier time and after the last few years, I think we deserve a naughty, heady time. I’ll be getting my nips out to this all summer.
That’s it for now! This + next weekend, I’ll be donning my marabou robe, sipping spicy margs and making Cowboy Carter my entire personality (or at least 75% of it). Till next time <3
CHILL THE WHITE WINE!!!!!!!
So glad the bathroom got its moment!!