VENICE, ITALY (The Daily Whatever Wire)—Clutch your pearls, people, for I have unbelievably big news: Phoebe Bridgers is a mammal. I know, I know, this is a lot to process, so let’s go slow. Mammals are a class of animal characterized by, among other things, mammary glands, warm blood, and hair. Not “hair, sometimes, if she’s feeling brave and forgot to pack her razor, or to book an appointment with her aesthetician.” Hair, structurally, as a defining trait of the taxonomic class. Class Mammalia. You were taught this in fourth grade, right before the substitute teacher gave up and put on a filmstrip.
So when Phoebe Bridgers stood on a boat in Venice on September 5 wearing a Gucci skirt suit, and her legs—which are, again, mammalian legs, attached to a mammalian body—had hair on them, the correct scientific classification of that event is “Completely Normal.”
What actually happened is that 18 photographers and at least one entertainment outlet encountered a baseline biological fact and treated it like a cryptid sighting. Somewhere a field researcher is standing very still with binoculars, whispering “we’ve got a visual, she’s fully coated, repeat, fully coated,” and getting a byline for it.
Here’s the part that should actually make you furious, and it’s not the leg, it’s the timing. Bridgers was in Venice for the premiere of Primetime, an A24 film where Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen—the guy who built a television franchise out of catching people exposed and broadcasting it as journalism. That’s the movie. That’s the joke it’s already in on. And less than 24 hours after the photo call, the coverage ran the exact same play on the woman standing next to him, minus the hidden camera and plus a macro lens. You can’t release a film about the ethics of gotcha exposure and then let your own red carpet become a live nature documentary about your lead actress’s shins.
David Attenborough would not stand for this. David Attenborough has seen a lion eat a wildebeest with more editorial restraint.
A new study I just conducted, methodology, alone and staring very, very hard at my laptop, finds that four out of five entertainment photographers can identify an unshaven mammalian calf from 30 yards in low light but can not, at gunpoint, tell you a single line of dialogue from the movie their subject flew to Italy to promote. Somewhere a man who’s never once audited his own follicular output is typing “just gross” under a photo of a fellow mammal existing as mammals do, and he will finish his coffee having no idea he just became the funniest part of somebody else’s article.
Not to split hairs (haha, I’ll be here all night, folks), but not every woman has hair on her legs, and that’s also just also biology. Alopecia, for example, means no body hair, no matter what gender the body. Bodies do what they do, and none of it is anyone’s business either way. The point is that hair, presence or absence, was the least interesting thing about the exquisitely talented Phoebe Bridgers, and likely the very least interesting thing about the Venice Film Festival, in progress on that dock. But here we are.
And we’ve been here before. Julia Roberts waved an unshaven armpit at a London premiere in 1999 and spent the next two-and-a-half decades explaining it was a wardrobe issue, not a political statement—and that’s a helluva thing to still be clarifying in her 50s. That’s 27 years of nature documentaries about women’s arms, and the species covering it hasn’t evolved a single new instinct.
I raised two daughters watching this machine run in real time, and I can tell you exactly what it teaches a 16-year-old when she sees her favorite musician denigrated for having leg hair: your body is a headline before it’s yours, and people are going to judge you mercilessly if you don’t conform to beauty standards, no matter how great your accomplishments.
Nah, I’m just fucking with you. My daughter gives exactly zero fucks about this story, or shaving. And we’ve got amazing seats to go see Phoebe Bridgers on her (very sold out) tour and we can’t wait. So suck it, patriarchal beauty standards!
Thanks for listening!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
We’re live every weekday at 10am ET with thoughtful analysis, sharp interviews, cultural commentary, humor, and the kind of conversations that don’t pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t.
If you’re enjoying what we’re building, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Your support helps us keep the show independent, book fascinating guests, and continue creating smart conversations with your morning coffee.
We love you — mean it!
Enjoy the show! I saw boygenius live a few years back and it was easily one of my favorite concert experiences ever. Phoebe (and Lucy and Julian) did not disappoint.
I’m glad she has hairy legs. And I like that she has hairy legs.