Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
I know, I know: You’re sick of hearing the name Julia Fox. May I be so bold, though, as to push back against your weariness? It is, after all, not the 32-year-old Uncut Gems star’s fault that we live in a relentless P.R. hellscape that shoves the celebrity du jour down our throats on every content platform until we basically want to tear our eyes out, Oedipus style. All the girl did was date Kanye West!
Whether you believe that what Fox and West had was real or largely a public-relations machination (personally, I’m on the side of true—if brief—love, because once you eat at Carbone, it’s real), it can’t be denied that Fox has been everywhere lately, stepping out in a Princess Diana–style revenge dress post-breakup and feuding with erstwhile feuder Azealia Banks. Still, I couldn’t help but be endeared to the actor for the way that she’s handled herself of late.
“Y’all would love if I was sooo upset!” Fox wrote in a now deleted Instagram Story, adding, “The media would love to paint a picture of me a sad lonely woman crying on a plane by myself but it’s NOT TRUE!! Why not see me for what I am which is a #1 hustler. I came up yall and not only that but Kanye and I are on good terms! I have love for him but I wasn’t in love w the man Jesus Christ what do u guys think I am 12 years old?!”
I’ve taken the time to transcribe Fox’s words about the end of her relationship with West because frankly…they rock. In a culture that’s obsessed with defining women primarily by who they sleep with, I find it endlessly refreshing to see Fox wresting control of her own narrative (even if it is in a spectacularly messy fashion, e.g. via IG Stories. Actually, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t expect anything less from her. She’s a thoroughly modern It girl). The woman is an actor, an artist, a downtown fashion icon in the making, a single mom, and so many other things; who are we to think we understand her inner psyche just because we’ve seen a few pictures of her eating pasta with Ye?
I don’t know what the future holds for Fox, but I can only hope we get to see more of her in whatever capacity she chooses, whether it’s walking the runway at more LaQuan Smith shows, hanging out with her squad in the pages of magazines, or—to hell with it—dating and dumping some other captain of industry. Why not? We know she has the resilience to make it just another chapter in an eventual memoir that I will be preordering and reading on a plane with a very strong whiskey ginger.
