The Vogue Editorial Archive Will Mess You Up
Besties, We Need to Talk About Tiny Fruit and Women in Boxes.
Besties, we need to talk. And because you know me, you know this is about to get weird. By now, we know each other well enough that I feel comfortable sharing my weirdest, freakiest obsessions with you. The stuff I whisper in trusted corners of the internet. The thoughts that have taken up permanent residence in my brain.
So here’s one: what’s up with tiny fruit on cakes?
You know what I’m talking about. The microscopic, perfectly placed, too small to actually eat strawberries or raspberries, delicately arranged on a towering birthday cake.
Not the luscious, ripe ones. Not the kind you actually want. No. These are always too tiny, too polite, a fruit with the energy of a Victorian child who just coughed into a handkerchief.
Which leads me to my next question. Who gets to eat the tiny fruit?
Because I never do. No one slices the cake and says, “Lisa, here’s your sliver. Don’t forget your 2mm raspberry.”
The fruit is decorative. It’s for the aesthetic. A performance of nourishment. And now that I’ve pointed it out, you’ll never unsee it. You’re welcome.
But tiny fruit isn’t the real problem here.
Boxes are.
“OMG Lisa, Am I In A Box Right Now?”
Now, before you get smug and say, actually, I’m at an open-air café drinking an oat milk latte, let me remind you: the box is not always literal.
But the Vogue editorial archive? That’s another story.
If you’ve never noticed the bizarre editorial obsession with putting women in boxes, congratulations and apologies. Because now? My obsession is also your obsession.
Gwendoline Christie, statuesque goddess, mythical creature, headmistress of your nightmares (and your dreams). Known for wielding a sword like she was born for it (Game of Thrones), commanding an entire school of outcasts (Wednesday), and now, apparently, posing like a haunted doll in a vacant Eastern Bloc apartment… while wearing another house, on her head.
Yes. A house. On her actual head.
This, apparently, is art.
And if you think that’s the first time you’ve seen it, think again.
Even Barbie, the doll who was literally sold to us as a plastic embodiment of limitless female potential, spent decades inside a, you guessed it, box.
Congrats you chose the red pill, time to reveal your box.
Here’s your first clue. At first, you’ll think you chose the box. You’ll think it was your idea. It’s cozy, padded with approval, lined with the promise that if you can just be content, you can stay here, forever safe.
But boxes are funny like that. You don’t realize you’re in one until you try to stretch.
Sometimes, the woman in the box looks wistful. Sometimes, she props herself up with pillows, curls into a doll-like pose, makes it look intentional.
A woman in a box with an elaborate backstory? Art.
And sometimes, sometimes, she knows she’s in the box. She toys with the edges. "Oh, I’m playfully poking my toes out of the box. Oh, look—now I’m clutching a dramatic scepter inside the box. Is this art? Am I trapped? Am I royalty?" She’s got a scepter, a throne made of artfully disheveled pillows, a faraway look like she’s contemplating the meaning of it all.
But she’s still in the box. The set dressing changed, but the dimensions didn’t.
Time for Your Second Clue. Not All Boxes Look Like Boxes. It’s also the moment you’re mid-sentence, telling a story, making a point, just existing and something shifts. Maybe someone talks over you. Maybe their eyes glaze. Maybe you hear yourself switch to ‘agreeable’ mode before you’ve even finished your sentence.
Your body remembers before your brain does.
Your voice drops half a register.
Your expression shifts into something… softer.
You tuck a stray piece of hair, nod at the right time, laugh just enough.
You make yourself easier to listen to, easier to digest.
You disappear in real-time.
That. That’s the box.
Not the literal walls, not the editorial spreads, this.
And here’s the real mindfuckery. The best trick they ever pulled?
They stopped asking us to get in the box.
We just do it now.
Kate Bush Is Running Up That Hill For A Reason People. Meanwhile, Men Get Hotter.
If there’s one thing I love more than unraveling strange aesthetic conspiracies, it’s women who refuse to be boxed.
Kate Bush? Weird before weird was cool. Ran up that hill so fast, we’re still trying to catch up. Parker Posey? Indie-film chaos queen. Improvisational legend. Freak of my dreams. Her genius is in her layers. She plays characters that are unpredictable, nuanced, never just one thing. And yet until now, hello White Lotus, she’s lived on the indie-fringes for decades.
Because women who refuse to be easily defined don’t fit neatly inside the box.
Meanwhile, men? Oh, they get hotter as they get weirder.
Conan O’Brien? A human exclamation point of gangly-limbed absurdity. The kind of man who could order an unreasonable amount of pancakes at a roadside diner at 3 AM, and you’d still find yourself leaning in, mesmerized. (Hot.)
Jeff Goldblum? A walking jazz riff. The man doesn’t talk, he improvises. He could be reciting your grocery list and somehow, you’d still be blushing. (Hot, hot, hot.)
Nicolas Cage? His entire career is built on not making sense. (Hmm. Not hot in my book, but hey, you do you.)
Men get to be chaotic, magnetic, uncontained. Their weirdness is endearing, sexy, part of the package. Women? We get called “difficult.” Which, let’s be honest, is just rebranded inconvenient, but I digress.)
The Final Aesthetic Conspiracy
I've written about this before, here, here, and oh, here. And now, we’ve come full circle.
Because this? This is the final form of every aesthetic trap, every “empowering” trend that turned into just another rulebook. To make you less specific, less sharp, less you. It’s the over-editing, the softening, the “let’s make this more marketable” of it all.
This is why “main character energy” became a thing, because we were desperate to take the reins back. This is why “girlboss” burned out—because we tried playing the game and taking up space at the same time, and it exhausted us.
Every trend, every movement, every moment we try to reclaim our space? The culture finds a way to package it up, shrink it down, and sell it back to us.
Soft Life. (Be ambitious, but don’t hustle.)
That Girl. (Take up space, but make it effortless.)
Quiet Luxury. (Be rich, but don’t flaunt it.)
We’re allowed power, ambition, visibility as long as it still looks nice.
And that? That’s just another version of the box.
Which brings me to Boxing Helena.
(Yes, that Boxing Helena. The one that lives in the same cursed cultural basement as Gigli and that one time Jared Leto mailed used condoms to his co-stars.)
And Now You’re Ready for, Boxing Helena.
If you’ve never seen it, congrats, your psyche is intact. If you have seen it, you already know.
Boxing Helena is a 1993 fever dream of a film where a man, obsessed with a woman, traps her in his house and amputates her limbs so she literally cannot leave.
Yes, really.
And listen, I’m not saying culture is out here cutting off women’s legs for real, but I am saying the second a woman dares to leave the box, the world starts looking for ways to pin her down. They get Meghan Markled.
Ha! Triggered you, didn’t it?
Exactly.
The internet still hasn’t forgiven her for stepping into or out of the fairytale. Pick your grievance. Was it the audacity to marry a prince? Or the even greater audacity to say, never mind, I’d actually like to go now?
But let’s be honest. It’s not men clutching their pearls.
Women are doing the Markeling.
(And before you come for me, love you, mean it, but you know I’m right.)
Look, the patriarchy is whatever. A given. It’s the air we breathe. But the real sting? Women side-eyeing other women for making a break for it. For trying something different. For leaving the box before we’ve all agreed it’s safe to do so.
And that’s the thing about a woman in progress: she makes everyone else recalculate. She disrupts the order. She refuses to serve as a reference point for what’s acceptable, what’s aspirational, what’s allowed. And for some, that’s unforgivable.
Meghan Markle did it on the global stage. But I’ve yet to see a man get Markled. Sussexed? Excommunicated from the Just Charming Enough Club? Shamed out of public life because he changed his mind?
Exactly. And listen, I’m not here to litigate her latest brand pivot (other Substackers have done it better, shoutout to the real ones, you know who you are) but the fact remains that women in progress make people nervous.
Forget the Tiny Fruit. Take the Whole Damn Cake.
Because after reading about Gwendoline Christie dressed like a haunted porcelain doll in an abandoned Soviet flat, seeing Cate Blanchett trapped in a Vogue-sanctioned diorama, and Meghan Markle getting…Markled, you’re gonna need a big slice.
So here’s the move.
Forget the tiny fruit. Take the whole damn cake.
Not the polite slice. Not the crumbs. Not the carefully plated, socially acceptable serving. The whole thing.
Because the box? Was never built for you.
And the tiny fruit? Was never meant to be eaten.
You know what to do.