Confessions & Obsessions #1

Gothic fiction, going viral, girlboss ghosts, and getting unstuck

Trying out what I hope will be a regular format - inspired by the confessional at the opening of Pixel Flesh, which remains my most quoted chapter. Here are the things that I’ve consumed and that have consumed me this past month.

First of all, patient readers, I must apologise for my delay and confess that I have been terrified of this newsletter - terrified of this entire platform - and as a result have put publishing off for months on end. I often find myself stuck in a mud of my own making, so consider this one squelchy step out of the pit of procrastination, and please, be gentle with me as I stumble out into this world.

To be completely honest, I still can’t decide if opening my book with a series of confessions was a good idea or not. Sometimes it feels right. Sometimes it feels horrific and self-indulgent and I would implore you to look away. Please look at literally anything else!! Sometimes I get a message from another woman who tells me it feels like I managed to crawl inside her brain, and the relief that trepanation brings. Sometimes they write on Goodreads that I’m insufferable. I say all this and yet here I am doing it again - offering to do it every month. Oh, to be a woman writing memoir!

I recently had a video go viral of me talking about Kylie Jenner’s face and how it doesn’t quite work in real life (because it doesn’t really need to). It’s a phenomenon I wrote about in Pixel Flesh, in which I discussed ‘the digital gaze’ - the separate dimension we now craft ourselves to exist in, one not entirely rooted in the corporeal world. Three million+ views later and I have been getting countless messages across all platforms telling me I am not a feminist because I critiqued a woman, that I am bitter and ugly and jealous and need to do better. I had a minor wobble and one sleepless night, but generally surprised myself with how unfazed I was by it all. For the first time in my ever-anxious life, I was confident in my work and my message. Yes, the clip had been chopped and edited for maximum impact - not something I had any control over, and naturally, the video of me talking about the impact of this culture on young girls got less than 10% of those views - but if anything, it solidified my reason for being. The Cult of Kylie Jenner persists but so do I.

ELLE UK featured me on their list of 40 Global Beauty Game-Changers and I went to five different newsagents for three days in a row just to find a copy. No matter how long you spend in this industry, these little hits of validation always feel necessary and nice.

As a self-confessed recovering Girlboss I still don’t think I have yet mastered the balance between rest and relentless productivity. I worry I have recently been slacking, that I will drown in ideas before I execute any of them and that my potential will only ever be a paralysing force. I already feel like I missed out on so much in the promotion of Pixel Flesh because writing the book felt like an act of self-dissection in and of itself, and the post-publication time was necessary for recovery. Often I feel like I am treading water whilst everyone else sparkles on the surface. Currently feeling out what works for me - this feels like a healthy start.

My boyfriend wrote a really gorgeous dedication to me in his recent foray into substacking and I had to really try my hardest not to focus on the photo he had selected to go alongside it. A makeup-free candid, a classic boyfriend post. He thinks it’s effortlessly beautiful. I think he must’ve gone blind. But how lucky am I to be seen through his eyes?

In recent years I have shied away from promoting products as part of my output and work - largely because I think we all need to consume less, the beauty industry is churning out endless unnecessary releases, and I don’t want to sell-out for the sake of a PR gift. I’ve managed an entire career in beauty without writing a ‘10 Red Lipsticks You Absolutely Need NOW’ type-listical, and I’d like to keep it that way. Having said that, I have been looking for a middle ground. The products listed in obsessions below are the result of long-term lusting, wear-testing, and a desire to spotlight emerging brands. I still don’t intend on seeking out endless PR or promoting things for the sake of it - but beauty can be fun and whimsical and a force for good, and I’d like to be a part of that.

I wish I could give you some cool niche music recommendations as part of this post but I’m writing it whilst listening to Alexandra Burke’s Start Without You. The dance routine came back like muscle memory.

I have been keeping many secrets from you. More soon.

The Unseen Beauty is Back!
I am so proud of Lauren Bowker, founder of The Unseen Beauty, for buying back her brand and relaunching against all the odds after being drastically let down in a funding round. The Unseen are one of the only true innovators and forces for good in the beauty industry right now, and their presence is so so necessary. Aside from their insane flash-reactive eyeshadow pigments and heat responsive oil-slick hair dyes, they also invented Algae Black™, the world’s first non-toxic, sustainable black pigment in beauty. Previously, the conventional black pigments used in beauty products (in your mascara, eyeliners, etc) were created from crude oil, coal or mined iron oxide (methods that carry heavy environmental, health and ethical burdens). The Unseen’s Algae Black™ is crafted by processing algae waste via a low-oxygen pyrolysis method - locking in the carbon the micro-plants had captured, while creating a pigment that is carbon-negative (reducing CO₂ emissions by about 200 % compared to standard carbon black).

While the most canny business decision would’ve been to lock down Algae Black™ as a protected USP, the Unseen have made the ingredient open-source. All other brands - from global conglomerates to independents - now have access to the pigment, making the beauty industry cleaner and safer for us all. If you can switch your usual mascara and eyeliner to their ABSORPTION set, I would implore you to do so. The formula is incredible (both lengthening and thickening), the packaging is a sustainable metal and glass, and directing profit towards more innovation in a female-founded indie brand is the cherry on top.

Curtsy Toes Shoes
I’m so glad that Weird Girl Shoes are a trending topic online at the moment because it has unlocked so many new independent brands for me. As a long-time Tabi girl (you can make as many memes as you like @Real_Housewives_of_Clapton I will not desist!) the Toe Post Wedge from Curtsy Toes is currently top of my wishlist. The pre-orders ship at the end of October so I’ve saved you all the excruciating countdown I’ve been on for the past few months. These with a silver chrome pedicure or half-toe stocking are all of my weird girl dreams come true.

Castle-Core
In this household we are currently obsessed with armour and chainmail. Not in that way. Maybe in that way? Behave. But look at this cunty little chainmail cape you can get for under £50!!! Call me delusional but I think it would go with everything?

This is the Skin of a Killer, Bella
In my desire to reconnect with my inner child and reclaim makeup as a form of play, this year has been all about glitter. My approach to beauty, generally, is to look as ethereal as possible, which is both aided and abetted by the fact that I am translucently pale. Viral glitter shadows like Urban Decay’s Space Cowboy have too much of a pigmented base and just read orange on my skin. My solutions have been e.l.f’s glitter shadow in Fine as Fleck (a £7 sheer white sparkly eyeshadow topper) and Fenty’s Diamond Bomb highlighter in How Many Carats!? (more expensive but the pan is huge and the glitter is so fine it looks like it’s emanating from your vampiric skin). Both have clear bases that give a magical, almost wet-look on the eye. I apply with my fingers over setting powder to avoid creasing, add some mascara and then rub the excess glitter across my arms and chest. The Lavender Luv’r holographic shade from FENTY is now on my list, the pink and blue reflects make me giddy.

Jacqueline Novak: Work In Progress
My dear friend Shope (who writes the newsletter Let Loose) took me to see Jacqueline Novak (of POOG fame)’s live stand up show in Islington last month. Jacqueline’s style is so chaotic, cerebral, and luxuriantly verbose - a blend of literary neurosis and absurd sensuality. She takes the kind of subject matter that might be crass in other hands and treats it with metaphysical curiosity, stretching it until it becomes about embodiment, power, gender and art. She ran through tangents and bits and lectures and I found her so inspiring. Who needs narrative arcs!! Linear structure is patriarchal anyway!! Afterwards, Shope and I took the long way home so we could chat for longer, walking arm in arm to the station. Our friendship is evolving into something so special and I love this season of us.

Byung Chul-Han
This month I have been a Byung Chul-FAN of Byung Chul-Han. As ever, I’ve been knee-deep in philosophy, digital criticism and feminist literature this month, during which I have been eternally grateful for Chul-Han’s efficiency. His short books are made up of fragments with minimal fluff, and I have sped through Saving Beauty, Psycho-Politics and The Burnout Society - all wonderful vignettes of theory that will no doubt be formative for my future work.

I’ve also read:

Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert
I was lucky enough to be sent an early proof of Girl on Girl but unlucky enough to be so swamped that I only got around to reading it this month. It’s a lucid, lacerating look at how women learn to see themselves through one another - online, onscreen, and in the mirror. Gilbert traces how feminism got tangled with voyeurism and self-performance. It’s the kind of cultural criticism that feels personal: sharp, shimmering, and a little haunted by the question of what we’ve traded for visibility.

We Were Feminists Once by Andi Zeisler
At times dense but endlessly informative and impeccably researched. I’ve been working away at this book since Christmas as part of some wider thinking on the 2000s and the evolution of the feminist movement since the dawn of the new millennia. We Were Feminists Once is an essential text. My highlighter ran out halfway through because I scribbled on everything. Notes to come soon.

The Safekeep by Yael Van de Wouden
I read this as part of the SE London bookclub I go to with fellow author Freya Bromley and some friends. We met at Skehan’s pub for a cosy autumnal evening and collectively gave The Safekeep a 7.3/10. It’s a gothic tale of the domestic and the inherited, where what’s passed down isn’t just memory, but what rots beneath it. I can see why it was received with such acclaim in the industry. Personally, I didn’t love the character development - I found the actions of the protagonist to be jarring and unconvincing at times, which meant the second half fell a bit flat for me. Still, I really enjoyed both the audiobook and the physical copy (I am guilty of having to use both for last minute bookclub catch-up), and the meet-up itself is something I look forward to every month.

Universality by Natasha Brown
I love Natasha Brown and Universality was no exception. Brown’s work is a scalpel to the soft rhetoric of progress; she writes with mathematical precision, stripping away sentiment to reveal the quiet violence of belonging and exclusion beneath polished institutions. I inhaled it in a day.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Oh, Margaret! The writer you are! I love Atwood’s prose. It was a staple inspiration for me during my Masters and revisiting her work years later is a reminder of what true mastery looks like. Alias Grace is a haunting, meticulously layered novel to take you into spooky season, one that blurs the lines between truth and fabrication, madness and performance. Through the textured story of Grace Marks - a convicted murderess in 19th-century Canada - Atwood dissects the gendered politics of power, memory, and storytelling itself.

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And lastly, I couldn’t talk about my obsessions without mentioning Aeron, who remains the most inspiring force in my life. In a world of discourse around dating demands and who deserves what from whom, I feel endlessly proud that our relationship is one of reciprocal communion, of sitting and reading and sharing in the home we have built together. It was the 3am publication of his first substack this week that has motivated the publishing of mine; he draws me out of my glossy bubble of paralysing perfectionism and towards a ‘you can just do things’ state of ease. This one is for the girlies, but also for him.

The MØRNING People Fund, which grants £4,000 to one creative project every 4 months, is open for submissions until the 1st November. Just email GIMME4000 to good@morning.fyi for all the info on how to apply.

I wrote an interview with my magical friend Dakota Warren for Dazed this month. We survived the rapture together, long enough to discuss growing up in rural Australia, the history of lesbian literature, and her first novel, Be Happy I Am Mad, coming Spring 2026.

And there we go. The band-aid is ripped off. I am new here and feel shy now, so do reply to me, let me know your thoughts and anything you’d like to confess. See you soon for longer essays, criticisms and the occasional overshare.

Love always,

Ellen xxx