Dauphina Fontaine

Pink cotton on top, black lace on the bottom.

[dauphinafontaine]

Portrait of the Artist as her Online Shopping Cart

I stopped eating added sugar in October and yet I have created a Fortnum & Mason account to fill a cart with seventy-six pounds worth of confectionery. An amount of money painstakingly whittled down from one hundred thirty-seven pounds. I feel like Hillary&Huma, for theirs is the refrain that pumps in my blood, for it echoes throughout womanhood: “Shall we be bad?” 

#butheremails

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What went through my head when my friend told me he watched “The Revenant” on his 30th birthday

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Do you guys think we could make “Jurassic Park” a verb?

As in, “You really Jurassic-Parked that up, Cynthia.” Obviously it would mean “to ham-fistedly manipulate or to cross every line known to man, god, biology, history, and common sense with disastrous results”; see also FUBAR,  male penis envy, YOLO.”

[dauphinafontaine]

“SALE!” email copy I will never get to use

TEMPUS FUGIT, BITCHES./ So shop this sale now!

LET’S BE REAL / This sale is the most interesting part of your day.

I’M DOING THIS FOR THE MONEY / So please just buy something, okay?

FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY / Kind of like our time on earth. Chop, chop!

[dauphinafontaine]

A REVELATION I JUST HAD WHILE WATCHING A BASEBALL GAME:

it is totally okay to take your life really, really seriously.

Love always,

Dauphina

[dauphinafontaine]

#MetaCosmo Quiz

WHAT FAIRYTALE BEST DESCRIBES YOUR INNER LIFE? PICK ONE.

A. SLEEPING BEAUTY

B. CINDERELLA

C. SNOW WHITE

D. THE UGLY DUCKLING

E. THE THREE LITTLE PIGS

F. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

G. THE SNOW QUEEN

H. THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

I. HANSEL AND GRETEL

J. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Key:

a. You’re a late-bloomer.

b. You’re a martyr.Grow up.

c. Everyone actually is jealous.

d. You work in Finance.Grow up.

e. You’re a Communist.

f. You are Manic Pixie Jail Bait

g. You wish you were a bitch but life is hard.

h. People are sick of your feelings.

i. You have abandonment issues and fear authority.

j. You're better than everyone else and you’re also maybe a sex addict.

[dauphinafontaine]

PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS HER AMAZON CART

[dauphinafontaine]

Pay Them Bitches No Mind: the Balls-Out Showdown between RuPaul and the Virtual World

Season 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race is in a league of its own, and many have said that’s a bad thing. Citing lackluster casting, stacked challenges, and heavy-handed producer interference, online fans—particularly those on Reddit and Facebook—have come down hard on this season from the very beginning.

Don’t be fooled, kitty girls – this season was Ru’s fiercest and tightest-tucked yet.

Just to get it out of the way: yes, the struggle was real. This season was tough to watch, and no true fan will deny that.

But breaking up with fantasy is always hard to do, and that’s what this season was about. This was the season where the show “woke up”, which makes Pearl its heart and its hero, in her own flaze-da way. But what comes after waking up? The pursuit of realness at all costs - which made Chachki’s win not only deserved but inevitable.

This season was a masterwork of meta-narrative, and nothing werked harder than the way Ru addressed her critics in the Season 7 Finale. The Katya gag, of course, stole the show, but there were plenty of subtler moments in which RuPaul told the world that throwing shade on the internet means nothing next to what real live artists do.

Despite the glitz factor, the pageantry and stiffness of past finales had sashayed away. We got more personality per queen than ever before – Pearl mouthed off, Fame brought a barnyard animal escort, and Katya did Katya. For a season that’s been heavily criticized for its flat performances, this was both surprising and delightful – and it was Ru’s way of saying that she does not make mistakes, in casting or anything else. Other season finales have included multiple shout-outs to fan voting and influence, but this finale recognized only one vote.

RuPaul, it seems, is done playing. She’s ready for the whole world to bow down.

In hindsight it’s obvious she was building up to this declaration of sovereignty. The bare-bones structure of the new Untucked, as well as the transparent ”injustice” of certain eliminations, were exercises in “coming out” to fans who still want to believe that RuPaul’s Drag Race is a crystal ball which magically identifies the “best” drag queen in America. But take away the Big Pink Fluffy Box and the pretense of objective merit hierarchies, and all that magical thinking evaporates like a cloud of baby powder in an empty dressing room.  Reality TV just got realer: it’s not fair, it’s not pretty. But it will always be fierce.

This show has changed the world, and it’s changed all of us. Every season we learn something, and this year taught that breaking the spell can be a beautiful thing. This finale, less “reunion” and more Big Reveal, rolled back glittery curtains to reveal the handwriting on the mirror in lipstick-lettering ten feet tall: this is Ru’s house. She built it, she pays for it, and she mops its floors with haters.

Dieu et mon droit, hunties. 

[dauphinafontaine]

THE MILLENNIAL SONGBOOK: GREATEST HITS

Entitled to Your Love

I'd Swipe Right for You

I Only Have Eyes for Your Dick Pics

My Tumblr Valentine

Out of My Comfort Zone

Having a Moment with You

If There Was an App for Love

My Love Is Gluten Free

Baby, It's Complicated

You Can't Always Get What Your Parents Had

It Is What It Is

Now’s Just Not a Good Time for Love

I’ve Got a Lot on My Plate Right Now

Come On Over (My Roommate’s Gone)

Love Is a Social Construct (But It Sure Feels Good)

Ain’t Got Nobody to Chat With

Performance Review Blues

I Will Survive Ikea

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do in Person

I Wasn’t That Into It Anyway

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What Your Favorite 60s Girl Group Says About Your Personality

THE SUPREMES - You worry that you’re a little bit basic. You are.

THE CHIFFONS - You’ll always be misunderstood. Sorry.

THE RONETTES - You’re damaged, but you have a good heart.

THE SHIRELLES - You are a badass.

REPARATA AND THE DELRONS - You did Wicca in high school, but life’s a lot simpler now.

THE MARVELETTES - You have hidden depths.

THE SHANGRI-LA’S - You should probably book a spa day.

[dauphinafontaine]

Prayer for the Libra Moon

O Moon,

Let my emotions be not a well within me

but a storm in the distance.

Not a volcano with its overchurned thirst

but a mob with its heart in its mouth

bearing a thousand flames and headed for the palace.

Let me see them coming, 

Let me meet them,

Let them leave,

[dauphinafontaine]

Fear: the Original Truth

In certain areas of advertising (as in life) there exists tremendous pressure to navigate around negativity like it’s the goddamn Cape of Good Hope and you are Magellan. Or like it’s the Cave of Wonders and you are Aladdin. Or like you are at a rave at a leper colony and you do not have leprosy yet. Don’t. Touch. Anything. 

God forbid that you should acknowledge a downside to anything, ever, in your product or in your consumers’ lives, or address a misconception, or admit that you are all just people trying to reach other people, and people are afraid.

Fear is more than pervasive, common, understandable. It is often logical and it is often what keeps us alive. It’s our first inheritance, woven into our biology and mythology. Glands. Reflexes. Scylla and Charybdis. The very first experience of the Awakened Man when he heard God rustling in the pomegranate trees was Fear. 

In advertising, I’m often in favor of addressing what my customers are afraid of, and I’m always overruled by those with a penchant for the perpetually perky. But I’ve also expressed fear in a personal way and met with the same tyranny. Afraid of flying? Going crazy? Losing love? Pray on it, drink on it, take a pill.

The notion of Fear as a symptom implies that it can be treated, that it’s some sort of sinful/Debbie Downer delusion to be flushed away with the appropriate dosage of spiritual/psychological Metamucil. Partly this stems from our bankrupt society (#awkward), and partly from some deep dark evolutionary memory of going into total paralysis just as the saber-tooth tiger bites down.

Sometimes, sure, you’re gonna get paralyzed. But i want my fear. And I want to speak to people from that fear sometimes, because fear is something we all know, and things that we all know are the very beginning of the truth.

[dauphinafontaine]

I smell vitamins. And a playground.

- Me on Rhone wine