The Polyester Podcast
Is Blake Lively a bitch or being misconstrued? Will Elon ever stop cringing us out? And why is everyone using slurs again? Every week Polyester's head girlies Ione Gamble and Gina Tonic take you down a weekly rabbit hole of online discourse and pop culture - from trad wives and surrogacy to porn stars and unhinged press tours. Exploring the intersection of IRL and URL through a feminist lens, the Polyester Podcast is your weekly digest on absolutely everything everyone on the internet is talking about. With guests like Tavi Gevinson and Sofia Coppola collaborator Stacey Battat, and special episodes beamed into your ears from cultural centres like London’s Tate Modern and Barbican Centre, every Monday we offer a down-to-earth take from the front lines of the internet, feminism, and the weird world of celebrity it has spawned. Hosted by Editor in Chief Ione Gamble with Senior Editor Gina Tonic. Edited by Olivia Graham. Have faith in your own bad taste! Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3 Polyester is a self published, intersectional feminist arts and culture publication aiming to bridge the gap of URL cyberfeminism with the IRL world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
You've seen his work. I've seen his work. We've all seen his work. A celebrity sits in a box on a magazine cover - probably Vogue - with some kind of cardboard prop near them. They're wearing a structural garment and the colours are washed with a muted green or blue. That's right, it's another Szilveszter Makó photo shoot!
This week, hosts Ione and Gina talk about publishing's photographer du jour. Has the Hungarian artist sold ...
Who would have possibly thought the tradwife way of life wouldn't be sustainable forever? In a series of New York Times articles and Instagram influencer pivots, we're seeing a mass exodus of women leaving the tradwife moniker behind.
This week, hosts Ione and Gina discuss the ways this alt right trend left women open to abuse, the culpability of the ex-tradwives, and the absolutely obscene press tour Nara Smith is currently tak...
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...
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 q...
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 back...
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. I...
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 marketin...
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 ...
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 o...
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...
The OOTD has taken on a new look: A still snapped from the video your Amazon owned Ring doorbell. Or, if you're Kylie Jenner, a selfie taken on your Meta glasses after bossing around your assistants for an #ad on Instagram. Nadia Lee Cohen and Alex Consani are amongst the swathes of fashion industry heavyweights embracing surveillance tech - but why are they allowing their images to be used for something so seemingly evil?
This ...
It's a long, hot American Summerween and we're so excited for Jane Schoenbrun's third feature film to finally hit our screens. 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' is Schoenbrun's third feature film and this time, they're taking on the slasher genre.
This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the queer metaverse of Camp Miasma, the poignancy of casting Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, and how trans narratives trans...
Pop's favourite provocateur Charli xcx is back - not that she ever went away - with a host of ‘anti-marketing marketing’ launch her seventh studio album 'Music, Fashion, Film'. From ‘in conversation with’ events and cover profiles to teasing lyrics via Substack posts and arthouse cinema screenings; the rollout for the project looks suspiciously like… the same old marketing tactics. But is the album a...
From Caroline Calloway penning viral essays to the constant discourse surrounding Ariana Grande - it’s no news to listeners of this podcast that thin is in. Yet on a weekly if not daily basis, a new Internet fixation surrounding weight loss rears its ugly head. The content is impossible to avoid, but in a culture that is normalising extreme thinness more and more, is it any wonder how we got to this point?
This week, hosts...
As Gen Z have aged up, they have become known for a generational distaste (at best) and fear (at worst) of ageing. But how is this expressed and how does it manifest? And why has it developed at all?
This week, hosts Ione and Gina are joined by Ellen Atlanta, author of Pixel Flesh, for an extra special live episode of the podcast at the Wellcome Collection. The three discuss sunscreens pros and cons, the fallacy of preventative...
It's been three years, how are we still 'just girls'? Is it because of food trend focussing on nostalgia? A need to heal our inner child? Or a lack of definition of what adulthood without conservative family goals can be?
This week, hosts Ione and Gina reckon with what some media outlets are calling 'toddlercore'. From eating tater tots and fro-yo to wearing baggy jeans, is arrested development a serious problem in gen z and mil...
The UK - and a lot of other countries, actually - are rolling out social media bans for under sixteens as well as social media curfews for those under eighteen. The news has caused uproar with teens promising they'll find workarounds, parents stressing about the impact on their kids and everyone raising concerns about giving mega corporations access to our government ID info.
This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the ...
It appears tech bros are shaking in their boots because... they're being called cringe - even when they buy a Rimowa suitcase and a full wardrobe from The Row. In a now viral essay, writer Emily Segal assigns the term 'tasteslop' to the lack of taste signified by items that used to be upheld highly in the taste algorithm when enjoyed by those who don't get it - aka, AI bots and the AI company owners.
This week, hosts Ione and Gi...
You're in bed on your own scrolling through your phone. On your screen, a woman your age is entering her new build apartment, making herself a bowl of pasta and a glass of Diet Coke on a lap tray, then sitting on a huge sofa to rewatch Friends with a candle burning. Her caption reads 'Life when you have no kids. No friends. No boyfriend.' and her comments are full of other women seeing her lonely lifestyle as aspirational.
This ...
It's no surprise to many that the third season of Sam Levinson's former hit TV show has had a less than best reaction from audiences. Aside from the show's actual plot and characterisations - don't worry, we'll get into those later - Levinson's real life reputation and his own world view has seeped into even the most die hard Euphoria stan's perception of the show.
This week, hosts Ione and Gina dive into a show that few seem to...
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