BeReal is planning its comeback
I need them to be real!!!
Hi and welcome back to as seen on :)
Today’s newsletter is long and juicy because I’m the hardest working girl in Portland, Oregon. I start my days by 5 a.m. now, and being able to share that with you all is the only reward I need.
As seen on today’s issue: Kris Jenner’s facelift makes its cinematic debut, another state-of-Gap deep dive, I played around with the first chat-based AI fashion shopping agent, Hannah Neelman’s Substack, Bezos’ wedding gifts, Anthropic wins against creatives, L.A. hoteliers are in an uproar, Kim Kardashian is officially in bed with Amazon, Partiful is recruiting college students, Texas wants American movies to promote “Texas values,” the “carnivore-ification” of beauty and wellness, BeReal is planning a comeback, and a bunch of other stuff.
ENJOY!
Julie wants to be the next generation’s go-to destination for all things sexual wellness. And rewrite the pharma communications playbook while it’s at it. Last week, the brand launched a Substack,
, with plans to tap notable cultural voices like Jemima Kirke to write authentically (and hopefully interestingly) about the reproductive health space. I reached out to co-founder Julie Schott (also of Starface, BLIP) to learn more about their editorial (and Substack) strategy.
Julie has experimented with long form content through zine partnerships with Byline. Why did Substack feel like the right platform — and why launch now?
What really made us want to dive into long form writing on a regular basis was the many fascinating, private stories our friends and customers shared with us. We realized how much people miss reading about sex, love, dating, and relationships. Substack felt like the natural choice for Sex Happens — it’s an innovative platform and it fosters a sense of freedom that draws people in. Plus, summertime is inherently sexy and there’s a beach read feel to our pieces, so it felt like the perfect time for Julie to show up in a new way in culture.
Will Sex Happens be partnering with or featuring any existing Substack voices?
It was actually one of our top priorities. These writers are the ones who make Substack cool and compelling. It felt important for Sex Happens to respect that. We went into this with some seasoned Substackers on board — people like
, , and — and found new, fresh voices through our research. It’s an exciting mix.What’s missing from today’s conversations about sexual wellness that you’re hoping Sex Happens can address?
The conversations that we see in mainstream media are often anxiety-producing and all about the ways romantic and sexual interactions are doomed. The sweet spot is the balance of nuance and levity. Memes are a beautiful way to communicate, but sometimes it helps to read something longer than a sentence about what is most likely a universal experience. You’re never the only person in the world feeling something and it’s important to be reminded of that.
Too much Sabrina discourse, too little talk of HAIM! Sincerely, I wish more was being said about how good their music videos are.
agrees with me: “The Haim sisters and their creative team have an incredible talent for picking up-and-coming actors, ruffling up their hair a little bit, and putting them in a music video where they get to prance around for three minutes looking like the hottest men alive.”
You know things are hard when you’re trading in $85 gel sets for $20 press-ons from Target. Young Americans aged 18 to 24 are cutting back on spending, with online and in-store purchases down 13% year-over-year. Bank of America also found that spending among Gen Z and millennials fell 1% between May 2023 and May 2025 — a small but telling decline, especially at a life stage when spending is expected to rise. The usual suspects — job scarcity and student loan repayments — are to blame. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that WSJ readers don’t care much for the youth of today. There are 282 comments on that article, 99% of which are some version of “get your shit together” or “when I was your age…” Look, I kind of get it. I grew up middle class in a third-world country where youth unemployment hovers around 33%, with another 28% considered underemployed. I experience a fair amount of cognitive dissonance writing this newsletter. But really, America is not a real place and neither are half of its problems. Things get real cooky when you reach peak Maslow's hierarchy. Come to Portland, you’ll see what I mean.
In more bad news for Gen Z, FICO plans to start incorporating Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) data into its credit reports this fall. Some of you are cooked!