The Tea on Being the Town Crier
& a poem about spring and fun fact about learning how to drive
Hear ye, hear ye!
I’ll tell you this right now - I am not great with a secret. Sure, if it’s a secret with high stakes or you really don’t want me to tell anyone, I can keep a lid on it, but that’s not my natural state. After years of fighting the allegations, I’m owning up to it. I’m a gossip. A yenta. A town crier.
For one of the national commercials that I did, I had to sign a NDA. Pretty common practice for those kind of gigs. Not only did I immediately tell approximately 65 of my friends, but I - unprompted - told the flight attendant on the plane. I quite literally flagged her down and was like, “hey guess where I’m going??” When my friend told me she got divorced, and that I could tell our mutual friends if it “came up naturally,” I texted “guess what” to a group text with my friends within 5 minutes. I, understandably, felt pretty guilty about that and ended up confessing to my friend. She responded that she in fact, wanted the news to get around our friend group but didn’t really want to tell people, so she intentionally told me first, knowing that I would spread the news for her. Which I did!
Gossip is widely seen as salacious, sinful, and insubstantial. Is it a coincidence that the vast majority of the people labeled as gossips are women? Historically, gossip has been used by disenfranchised communities as a check on power, and as a way of keeping each other safe. I can’t tell you how many times a woman, sometimes one I barely know, has pulled me aside and shared information about a powerful, predatory man in my orbit. If gossip keeps us safe on an individual level, it does the same on a collective level, allowing women to discover inequities, organize, and engage in collective action. It’s no wonder, then, that gossip, or more broadly, “women’s speech (has) been unfairly maligned by powerful men who would prefer that their doings not be discussed.” (Schwartz, 2025).
The thing is, gossip hasn’t always had a negative connotation. The word “gossip” derives from the Old English word “god-sibb”, or “godparent”, and was originally used to refer to a woman’s female friends who were invited to be present at a birth. In her book Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, Silvia Federici explores how, during the 16th century, the meaning of gossip changed from a strong female friendship to “women engaging in idle talk.” In 1547, there was even a proclamation forbidding women to meet to “babble and talk.” Any women who defied this by gathering and conversing in public risked being accused of witchcraft. (Unbabel, 2019.) It should be said that women don’t have the market cornered on gossip. The word “tea”, a common colloquial term for gossip, originated among queer folks of color, in the Black drag-ball scene. Similarly, this was another marginalized group who used, and continues to use, gossip as a tool for survival and community building.
This is a complicated, nuanced issue, and I don’t mean to argue that gossip is always an unambiguous social good. Gossip can absolutely be wielded as a tool for public shaming, misinformation, and deception. But this substack is already 2 days late and I don’t have time to get into all that. Personally, for this town crier, I love gossip because it’s a way of learning about the world and the people around me, a way of looking after my community, and part of the fabric of my most important, most beloved female friendships. And besides, c’mon, who doesn’t want to hear about my friend’s sister’s roommate, who’s having an affair with the department chair at her university AND his wife??
The cold weather is still clinging on by its fingernails here in New York, so here’s a poem I wrote about waiting for spring.
Spring
it's March 13th
I'm ready for spring
for joy and abundance
that summer will bring
I'm feeling so lonely
cause he doesn't call
and friends never text
or barely at all
maybe it's me?
or something I've done?
it's been a long year
and it's only begun
I'm ready for spring
when things will get better
how can you be sad
in such beautiful weather
Our supplemental reading this week is the recent New Yorker article by Alexandra Schwartz that reviews the new book by Kelsey McKinney (the host of the awesome podcast Normal Gossip.) Check it out here (no paywall!)
This week’s secret/fun fact is . . . I just got my driver’s permit, and when I was home in March, I went on a few driving lessons with my dad. I felt like I was 16, doing wheelies in the IKEA parking lot lol. Anyway, at one point she told me to press on the gas, and I accidentally floored it so hard I could smell rubber from the tires, and the car made that roaring/squealing noise cars make in movies when they go really fast. I literally burned rubber. So, get off the roads!
I thoroughly enjoyed every word of this
Omg yes tea