Madwomen & Muses Now Has a Paid Subscription Tier
In running this newsletter I’ve kept it free for years but now that I’m writing more regularly I’m offering a paid option that will include more personal essays and spicier takes.
Hello Lovely Readers,
While I have had a newsletter for the last few years, it is only since April of this year that I have been posting in a regular fashion. Since I posted so infrequently I felt it wasn’t fair to y’all to create a paid subscription tier. Even though many of you have pledged paid subscriptions and encouraged me to add a paid subscription tier. After a lot of consideration, I have decided to start a paid subscription tier in which subscribers get much more regular work for me, whilst keeping a free option for those that can’t pay for subscriptions or want to take a gander at the kind of output this newsletter has before committing to one. Here’s the breakdown…
Madwomen & Muses will continue to have a free option. I will post at least one free essay, short review, or recommendation list a month. For $5/ a month or $50/a year paid subscribers will receive at least one extra essay and one extra recommendation list or fun, shorter essay/pop culture-related review. If you want to be a founding member and subscribe at a higher amount than what I am offering I’m thinking of offering a personalized video message discussing what I have been reading or watching lately. I will likely be smoking weed in whatever video I make.
The paid subscribers will get much spicier takes, more personal-themed/memoir-inflected essays, and a window into my writing process for major Vulture work and my book projects. The paid tier will be a more intimate venue where I will really cut loose. But it remains important for me to truly reach people so for those who want to stay on the free tier, don’t worry! Absolute fire essays and reviews will still come your way at least once a month. For those on the fence, here are some essays that will published on the paid tier in June and the coming months:
-The Anime I Love column will continue with an essay on Samurai Champloo (2004)., which I really fucking loved. I think it’s even better than Cowboy Bebop.
-I was asked on Instagram when I had an AMA question up as I was getting my hair braided for seven hours, “How do you think we can hold a love of pop culture and a drive to end global oppression?!” The question really stayed with me so I will be writing an essay response, The Role of Art in the Revolution.
-I’ve had a lot of thoughts on recent works like Allison P. Davis’s long, reported essay from September 2023 that seeks to answer the question, “Can Parents and Childless People Be Friends?”. These splashy essays in a variety of major publications render this dynamic a war with hurt feelings on all sides whilst ignoring the material, financial, and emotional reality of being a parent in America today and treating children with scorn. It’s…troubling. A lot of people talk about “wanting to be in community” but seem to think community is in continuing the dynamics of your twenties with a little more income toward late nights and brunch hangouts. Children are our most vulnerable population. I don’t have kids myself. I never dreamed of marriage and kids as a young girl. That’s a lifestyle I have only started to consider recently. So I am writing an essay that considers the strictures of parenthood, shifting tides of friendships, and the needs of children titled If You’re Anti-Kids You’re Anti-Community.
-If you’ve been following my career, you will know that female madness is a very important theme and consideration in my life and writing. So, I am starting a column called The Feminine Grotesque, which I plan to be the title of a book one day. This column will consist of essays that blend memoir, history, and criticism. The essays will be very focused often on a single work, the first in the column will be on Elizabeth Taylor in Identikit or the anime films Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress directed by Satoshi Kon. Here’s a Letterboxd list I continue to add to with film and a few television examples of the genre I’ve formulated. Here’s how I define the Feminine Grotesque:
“The emotional, social and psychological problems that are specifically connected to the character’s sense of womanhood provide the meat and gristle of this genre. The questions of women’s pictures turn on their pretty heads in The Feminine Grotesque. The tools of beauty — physicality, dress, makeup — become weapons that wound as much as they empower.
Like women’s pictures, The Feminine Grotesque offers visual liberation from the confining strictures of the patriarchy. No matter how temporary, women are able to see themselves as bold, defiant, vulnerable, sexually realized, ambitious and hopeful. The films of The Feminine Grotesque obsess over female desire and subjectivity, but even with this strong feminist impulse, the genre is often muddled by endings that show these women integrating themselves but lacking any hope for a future. In cinema, like in life, it often feels like there is rarely hope for the madwoman.”
Madwomen & Muses will continue to be a space for me to flex, have fun, and experiment with ideas I’ll deploy in an even more elegant fashion in my work published at Vulture, in my forthcoming books I desire to write, and other publications. I am very excited for what I have coming up. Once I post this newsletter update, paid subscriptions will be available! I hope y’all will enjoy what’s forthcoming and how this Substack is evolving. If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please let me know.
I hope life is treating you gently,
Angelica Jade Bastién
Completely forgot to mention in the post that the first entry for paid subscribers will be posted this upcoming week.