You know how half the time, magazines have photos on the inside that we think, “Well, THAT would have been a much cooler cover”? Teen Vogue went ahead and did it. I LOVE how non-traditional this is. It grabs you right away, and it perfectly complements the story, which is, yes, about rage, but also about passion and love and hope and frustration and a desire to make the world better if other people would please just stop being THE WORST. Anyway. It’s a tremendous cover.
Phoebe Bridgers seems like a cool person, truly. I enjoyed reading this article, and about the things that fire her up, and finding out that we have a lot of them in common. From her Depp-Heard trial comments to transphobia to her stance on abortion:
Over the years, Bridgers has made an effort to “show everybody what [she believes] in.” In 2020, during the uprising for Black lives, her sophomore album Punisher was set to be released on Juneteenth (an oversight, or “bimbo hours,” as she put it). Bridgers surprise-dropped the album a day early and encouraged listeners to donate to a list of advocacy groups. “That was one of my first moments realizing, ‘Oh, I actually have power,’” Bridgers says. “On the days where everybody’s paying attention to me because I’m putting something out there, you can point it to something really useful.”
Other examples proliferate: covering the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” with Maggie Rogers as a fundraiser for Stacey Abrams’s organization, Fair Fight, in 2020; inviting the Texas Transgender Education Network to share resources at her Texas shows, in a state where teachers and social workers have been deputized to police trans children and their parents; and giving onstage shout-outs to the Mariposa Fund, a New Mexico-based abortion fund that focuses on undocumented people.
“I just think middle-class, upper-class white people are always gonna have access to health care and abortion, whether it’s through flying [to another state] or even access to f**king organizations,” Bridgers says. “It’s just so much harder for the people that it was already hard for, so I like the organizations that are making life easier for those people.”
Amen, sister.
