Every one of those pieces is so very.

Yeah, but where does this article rank in the Pantheon of all Bill Simmons articles on Deadspin today?

I seem to be forever in the greys so I’ve got nothing to lose. I just think if someone says that something is satire, they have to be able to explain what it’s a satire OF. Saying that the author is brilliant and it’s no big deal because it’s just about dresses doesn’t cut it. Even The Onion has to apologize now and…

Yeah but the whole telling her therapist and stuff doesn’t happen till the end of the article and to be fair, it’s a long-ass article. I was slightly offended until about half-way thru the article when it occurred to me that it was a joke.

For real, I was like, “is this article, shaming women’s fashion choices, really…

as for whether or not something is funny, it’s anyone’s taste. i personally don’t find it fun to make women feel horrible about themselves then try to make them feel worse by not being in on the “joke.” but thanks for outing yourselves, sarah and jia, as people to stop reading immediately. good to know.

It didn’t work as full satire because the voice is pretty much in line with Jezebel’s usual tone, like you could have replaced maxi dresses with something else a Jez writer hates, like Ansel Elgort, and it wouldn’t have seemed out of place. So it read as, the writer genuinely has these feelings about the maxi dress…

read it immediately/only as a PERFECT send-up and also making fun of itself at every turn but hey everyone do what they will

Nice defensive double-down on willfully misunderstanding what Jez commenters are trying to tell you. And now you’re saying, “Look, the mens don’t care if we make fun of shorts!”. Please.

I think this is spiralling out of control, which neither of us wants, I think.
I’m pretty sure I took what you said about people being on the verge of tears too seriously, and based my reply on that, and then you subsequently did the same with mine.
All you probably (?) meant to say was “the article is kind of mean, a…

If the vast majority of your intended audience doesn’t “get” it, then it’s not “genius” - it’s a failed attempt at satire. People think satirical writing is easy because they confuse snark and meanness with satire, but it’s actually an extremely difficult style to write. Snark and faux meanness are not and will never…

Accompanied by another writer leaping in and heaping on praise.

I think the big deal is that women get shit on all the time for how they look and this is supposed to be our safe place from that.

It also went on too long for about 3/4 of a mile...

You automatically become a judgmental asshole when you start telling people how they “should” feel about things. Say a guy goes around punching everyone he sees, no exceptions. Most people can take it just fine, and maybe get mildly annoyed. One person gets a punch on his broken arm and collapses to the ground in…

If shitty, un-funny, body-shaming is “genius”-level work, then I guess so. She certainly takes a long, long time to get to the “punchline.”

it was too dry. like idk i consider myself VERY dry and i really love vicious, cutting satire, but i was honestly unsure of the whole thing and i felt like i didn’t know what to do with my hands. the only reason i thought it was satire? because it seemed to mean for jez, and i assumed there was a joke i was missing.

If you thought it was perfect satire then that’s ok, but the amount of people not sure or taking offense seems to imply that this generally failed. It takes so long to get off the ground that it only finds itself near the end of the piece and doesn’t have the comedic/satirical turn early enough to get the reader on…

I think - and I may be totally wrong - it was the intense descriptions of body types and just how all body types look horrible (short and busty? bad! tall and slim? bad!) in them that might have rubbed people the wrong way in the beginning, before they entertained the idea that it could be satire...

Yeah, I’m reading thru the comments. But damn, that hit me really hard. I’m usually pretty good about rolling my eyes and moving along.