a lesson in useful pettiness

from sophie turner and her friend taylor swift

Thank you for reading Hmm … That’s Interesting, a reader-supported publication! If you enjoy the newsletter, please consider becoming a subscribing member. I will call this a *bonus* issue, because my (free) weekend post will still go live on Sunday, but I had too many thoughts on this to wait until next week.

---

There are very few things that I love more than a well-executed moment of pettiness. Very few things. It can be so delicious, so thrilling, so let me text all my friends about this. Pettiness is a community builder, actually.

Which is why, when I saw the picture of Sophie Turner and Taylor Swift, arm-in-arm, exiting a restaurant in New York with two of the smuggest little smiles I've ever seen, I just about threw my phone across the room from sheer delight. This was before we learned about the lawsuit (more on that below), and it just seemed so perfectly petty. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been writing about subjects that aren't ... hmmm, conducive, I'd say, to the sturdiness (?) of my mental health. So this? This little occurrence? A no-stakes pop culture gift, just for me? A treasure. 

They are also both very tall, which is not irrelevant. I do also want to say I suddenly need to see these boots in my closet. (Photo: Backgrid)

I couldn’t help but wonder (lol) how this outing came to fruition. Was it a publicists' (genius) meeting of the minds? Was it Turner's idea, after making a list titled Things That Would Most Annoy My Soon-To-Be-Ex-Husband? Or — and this originally seemed to me the likeliest scenario — was this idea borne out of known marketing and branding expert (most of the time) Taylor Allison Swift's brain?

Swift, famously both (1) a girl's girl and (2) broken up with by Joe Jonas in a 27-second phone call in 2008, probably rushed to the phone the second she heard about the break-up before being like be cool, be cool, give him a few days to self-destruct first.