Moving Pieces

 Issue 3 Yearning For 2016 in 2026: The Better Days or a Case of Rosy Retrospection? By: Meg North 2016 is b eing remembered as the last ‘normal year’ before extreme digital saturation, algorithmic doom scrolling, vapid use of AI , C ovid-19 and the blending of politics and social media. The new trend ‘2026 is the new 2016’ involves users posting photos from 2016 as a form of yearning, with a collective agreement that those were the ‘better days’, it has taken over feeds since the new year. Here’s an analysis: Was 2016 really the end of normality, or is this a simple showcase of rosy retrospection? A circulating conversation is the inauthenticity of the modern digital experience. Posting online feels both strategic and formal rather than instinctive and raw. In the 2010s, it was not unusual to take a selfie and upload it in the same minute, likely with a thick layer of Tumblr filters and often multiple times a day. In 2026, users are increasingly aware of their online presence an...

 Issue 3 Never Met a British Girl, You Say? : Pink Pantheress' Fancy That , British Identity and y2k Fashion By: Olivia Lyes PinkPantheress has been stuck in our heads since her 2021 single  Just For Me  went viral on TikTok, with 810K likes and 1.1 million posts using the sound, but her most recent mixtape  Fancy That  accentuates Pink’s distinctly British, y2k image. This new era for PinkPantheress unifies fashion with music, marrying her personal style and sense of identity with her iconic UK garage sound in order to produce a cohesive and marketable product. Milena Agbaba first styled PinkPantheress for her  To Hell With It  mixtape promotional photoshoot. Since then, the two have continued to work together, styling Pink for Coachella 2023 in a denim maxi skirt by Stefan Cooke, as well as in archive Roberto Cavalli from Found and Vision for the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Awards. Although PinkPantheress – like any other musician or public figur...

 Issue 3 The 'Weird Girl': Coveting Authenticity in a Performer's World By: Rhian Kille ‘The clean girl is dead’ cries social media users, and the ‘weird girl’ is primed to take her place. Tiktok, if it is to be believed, shows the popularity of ‘weird girl’ fiction recommendations, ‘weird girl’ fashion ideas and calls for December 2025 to be a ‘weird girl winter’ (often soundtracked by songs off Audrey Hobert’s 2025 debut album ‘ Who’s The Clown? ’), Most of all women are reclaiming their (non-descript) ‘weirdness’ and celebrating the authenticity of their identity and personality. The authentic individuality, alternative nature and comradery of the ‘weird girl’ offers more freedom and fun than the trends that have dominated social media in recent years, such as the aforementioned ‘clean girl’. More than this, within the weird girl’s popularity is a push back against a vicious trend cycle that encourages social media users to buy a new identity to perform every...

 Issue 3 The Music Biopic Phenomenon: and Why Studios Need to Stop Making Them By: Annabel Lepore I sat down recently to watch the Bruce Springsteen biopic  Deliver Me From Nowhere , starring Jeremy Allen White as the titular rockstar. I didn’t (and still don’t really) know a lot about Springsteen, but I thought, seeing as they had made a whole film about him, his story must be a somewhat interesting one, right? Well, in short, not really. I thought that White’s performance was great, and it was interesting to look at Springsteen’s issues with mental health and specifically depression in both his personal and professional life (especially when he moved to L.A and ended up contemplating suicide, as well as how it affected his romantic relationships). However,I just couldn’t see what happened in this period of his life that constituted making an entire film about it.  Deliver Me From Nowhere  covers around just a year of his decade-spanning career, in which he made the...

 Issue 3 Parasocial Extravaganza: Deconstructing the Hype Around Lily Allen's West End Girl By: Jess Smith When Lily Allen’s iconic Las Vegas wedding photos were first posted online, I remember exactly where I was; sat on my sofa, snuggled under a blanket, re-watching Hugh Grant and Julia Robert’s  Notting Hill . Allen’s candid snapshots that capture her eating an In-N-Out burger, posing next to an Elvis Presley impersonator, and stunning in her white Dior mini-dress seemed to reaffirm to me the idea that true love is out there. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why I felt like this. Perhaps it was the concept of a Vegas wedding itself – ignoring tradition, getting married on a whim, a private affair of love and commitment. Yet, with the release of  West End Girl , Allen’s deeply confessional and personal breakup album, true love couldn’t have been further from my mind.   Listening to  West End Girl ...

 Issue 2 Boys Will Be Boys: How the Gender Dynamics of This Year's Love Island Reflect A Concerning Regression in Gender Equality By: Issy Young Love Island has become a staple in British culture, blending escapism, competition and sex appeal, and I don’t even have to tell you how well that sells. But beneath its chiselled exterior lies something more insidious. While the show has previously gestured towards progress, with iconic feminist moments from Maura Higgins and Amber Gill’s solo win, the latest series 12 has marked a troubling step backwards.   This year, Love Island didn’t just reflect the dire state of the current dating scene; it magnified its ugliest realities. In an era when gender inequality and violence against women are undeniably rising, the show’s platforming and protection of emotionally manipulative men, paired with the online vilification of its female contestants, exposes a deeper societal rot.   The Regression of Romance: When “Triangles” Becom...