dolly alderton/pandora sykes : Most liked Posts

Funnily enough I’ve just seen a screen grab of her book on insta and it is a passage about marriage and the smugness of married couples

Fine — I concede that not everyone likes weddings, apparently. But I’ll eat my hat if one day she doesn’t have a big ol’ wedding in some sort of flamboyant sixties wedding dress with kooky kohl eyeliner and a brigitte bardot hairdo.

That’s wonderful thread, thanks for compiling! I’ve been following James for a while now too, he’s pretty funny. Pandora is that posh person at uni who is only friends with posh people but disagrees with tories yet can’t quite being herself to vote labour so votes Lib Dem lol.

I streamed Pandora and Candice’s event last night. It was a bit awkward as P does not enjoy being interviewed and she was unable to speak eloquently about any of the topics in her book. Partly due to Candice asking a lot of irrelevant questions about fashion. Credit to Pandora she answered these patiently. P’s nerves got the better of her because every answer was very muddled and rushed.

The part I found most irksome was the conversation about social media. She said that using SM makes her feel anxious but she thinks most people enjoy it. The reality is she is not different to anyone else, when she posts a selfie of her in her new glasses in a shop window, or her kitchen, or her at a film premiere, or her posing on the tube, or her holiday to Bermuda, she gets the same dopamine rush as any other Instagram user. She’s not immune to that, she’s not above how the human brain works. She may feel anxious using it sometimes, don’t we all, but for Fs sake if it made her that anxious she would stop posting images of her personal life on it.

She said that 2 years ago she logged in every 2 weeks which is just a lie because I, along with her other 300k+ followers, were consuming a huge amount of holiday, fashion and interiors content from her. Prior to Zadie being born she would post daily updates of furniture and upholstery she was buying for her home. Everything she says about her relationship with social media sounds so false and superior, it’s actually an interesting topic so why not talk about it honestly?

She also said she does not attend fashion events anymore I’m not an influencer blah blah blah but last night she was at the Batsheva x Laura Ashley event with a load of influencers. Her hypocrisy is maddening!

Soz for the essay rant

The thing is that there will always be someone richer, more connected than you. There will be many people who’s lives you could only dream of living, and I suspect that Pandora has come into contact with a lot of them throughout her life, from her school days to her career.

The problem is that she seems to have taken all that as proof that she’s entirely average (in terms of finances and experiences) and firmly middle class.

The literary/media bubble she lives in has probably further convinced her of that - it’s so normal to most of them to live in £1.3mil houses in London, only wear cashmere or 100% wool knitwear, holiday at places like Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica (on her Instagram) which pre-Covid, at its cheapest, was about £600 a night.

To her, this stuff is normal, because it’s what everyone around her has, too. I think she’s proven herself to be insanely myopic, if not arrogant that she could speak for women on topics which not only has she potentially played a part in (the rise of fast fashion) but which don’t actually affect her in the way she’s discussing (I highly doubt she’s ever gone on a Primark shopping spree of her volition, for example).

Dolly aka Hannah is well known among her London peers for taking other people's love life mishaps or funny things that have happened to them and repurposing them as her own "hilarious" stories. On a hen do a few years ago, a friend was telling everyone a disastrous dating story and Dolly approached her afterwards to ask if she could claim the incident as her own for the purposes of her column & eventual book.... take everything she writes and says with a massive pinch of salt

Dolly is definitely what we called a “rah” at uni. She’s around the same age as me and a friend went to Exeter uni with her - said she was one of those posh idiots who turned up to lectures with bed head and wearing what looked like pyjamas and the obligatory Uggs

I've been following this thread for a while and have found it so insightful. I'm a foreigner who has lived in the UK for four years, and the peerage stuff still blows my mind! "If you are rich and important - and related to rich and important people - we put your name in a special book". I sought out this thread to see if anyone else noticed the eating sounds on the podcast? Makes me wonder if I have misophonia, I can't stand it! Just pause recording if you need a snack!

Otherwise, I like the podcast. Nice to hear different perspectives and all that (I rarely interact with people this posh in real life). I listen for the book and television recommendations, which I find pretty solid.

What I don't understand is why they try to be relatable? I see this across the board with celebrities, influencers and people in the media. Just own your wealth and privilege? Admit your biases and snobbery! Acknowledge that not having to worry about food and shelter has enabled you to flourish. If you're worried that your upbringing takes something away from your achievements, campaign for better living conditons for everyone! I feel like the best way to "relate" to people is to get over the idea that wealthy people are innately better than everyone else and admit that most people would thrive under the same conditions.

Debarkle said:

I wonder if because of Pandora’s upbringing and career so far this is the first time she’s actually faced any criticism/knockbacks?

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Pandora is clearly trying to shift career from fashion writer/podcaster to Serious Literary Cultural Commentator. The trouble with doing this is that no matter how good you were in your previous roles, your success/knowledge/experience doesn't necessarily translate. I'm experiencing this as a novel writer. I've had a decent amount of success in my professional career but writing novels is a whole different thing. It can be tough - but beneficial - to the ego to realise that you're a beginner again and that others have done what you're trying to do with much more skill: even if you're in your 30s, even if you've got loads of different achievements under your belt.

Here is the downside to getting a book published if you haven't been through the tough period of rejection and criticism that most authors face.

I sometimes ask myself: would I like to get a bad book published with a huge advance and then face loads of fair criticism? Or is it better to go through the difficult period of working, learning and growing with no guarantee of success, but creating something much more worthwhile? I'm on the latter path, and when I think about this in any depth (and see the type of work put out by Pandora etc) I'm ok with it.

Also: reviews are for the benefit of readers, not the author. So of course we need critical reviews. Otherwise it just turns into the literary circle jerk that has been so eloquently criticised already.

slugella said:

I can't even imagine having that sort of background and wealth. It's insane. Pretty easy to walk into journalism with that scale of help..

What's Dolly's story? What do her parents do?

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I actually think Dolly is almost average when compared to Pandora!! I don’t think she comes from family money like that, just a very comfortable London suburbs (upper?) middle class family.

Not sure what her parents do but I’m fairly sure they do not have a tennis court.
Someone with a better memory than me will be along to rehash what she gave away in her first book - all I can remember is that she went to private school but described herself as averagely middle class or similar.

To be fair, I think the problem is that the term “middle class” actually describes a huge range of different levels of income and wealth in the UK. Depending on where you live and the life you lead, you could be “solidly middle class” with wide variation of jobs, from teacher to surgeon to CEO. Ultimately it’s about much more than money. People born into a middle class family who end up on their arse financially don’t suddenly become working class, and lottery winners don’t climb up a social class either.

I think Pandora has some nerve not recognising she’s part of the “elite” she loves to talk about, though. I think less and less of her as more information arises. I think she’s a fraud. No wonder she dealt with the criticism of her book so badly - deep down she probably knows a lot of it is true, she isn’t well-placed to talk about the average female millennial’s experience.

I’m sorry if it’s nasty but I’m glad she got a backlash. I’m truly pissed off that someone listed on that peerage website with tennis courts in their family home feels they can accurately relate to someone like me or my sister or any of my friends, and our life experiences.

I think I need to revisit the book again because I seriously can’t remember any of it being “revolutionary”?! A lot of it struck me as quite self indulgent chronicling of a fairly average middle class upbringing?

Thats her being a bit tongue in cheek - have you not got a sense of humour?

I don’t believe that story. I think she didn’t want to be called something as normal as Hannah and Dolly works with her 1960s guitar girl fantasies.

soph30 said:

I wonder if her parents are ashamed of her exploits? She’s done well but I wonder if there was a grain of truth in what happened in the series with her parents (trying to be the centre of attention at a suburban event and being so look at me an ex alcoholic falls off the wagon, getting with random friends, bringing class As (from the series bribing seniors with pills seems to be how she gets what she wants (know the series isn’t gospel truth)!

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She’s very quiet about her parents which I think is a bit odd? She obviously owes a lot to them and in the TV series they are characterised as being endlessly loving and supportive. I’m surprised a self scribed exhibitionist like Dolly, who puts a lot of her life into the public arena, is so quiet about her parents. Maybe they do disapprove?

I wonder if the irony of Dolly’s character screaming at her lovely supportive parents that they “loved her too much” and then her mother the next day saying “we didn’t raise a spoiled brat” bypassed the writing team or if it was intentional. Because… they most definitely did raise a spoiled brat.

it felt like Maggie/Dolly’s mother was saying we didn’t raise you to be a spoiled brat in relation to her behaviour with their alcoholic neighbour, and Dolly/Maggie apologies for getting drunk and doing that, and that’s the end of it. It doesn’t seem to be a big wake up moment for her in relation to other behaviours

her attitude overall is very spoiled and entitled and I think the show doesn’t quite .. delve into that. It very much just treats it as if it’s part of her quirkiness. She’s so self centred and selfish and her only real likeable moments was when she was being vulnerable on the phone to Birdy.

when she let the random guys into the flat and they steal laptops…Nell is annoyed because shes lost her laptop for work. But I’d have been devastated. My photos from years back are backed up on my laptop. I have personal communications and security info, all of which could be very easily accessed. It would feel like a huge violation. Not to mention the safety risk of letting strangers into their home just so she can chase a high is deeply selfish and spoiled.

they don’t really seem to call her out on it though. She says she’ll replace the laptop and that seems to be the end of it. I don’t blame birdy one bit for wanting to get out of that mess, but it’s painted out as though Birdy is obsessed with her new boyfriend and that’s the reason for the distance.

the most relatable moment for me was when Amara was saying Dolly didn’t “get it” and that she got her job eating pizza on the sofa. Because Maggie/Dolly doesn’t get it. She doesn’t really get anything outside of her limited scope of experience, which is why her writing is so poor - she has zero real empathy. Amara didn’t want Dolly to apologise, she just wanted her “to see”. Which is what irks me so much about Dolly and her writing set. She knows girls like Amara exist, she knows working class girls like me exist. She knows she benefits from her privilege and family wealth and support. But she refuses to open her eyes and see, never mind actually do something about it. Imagine how powerful it would be if Dolly showcased talent that wasn’t middle class and white? If she highlighted that the publishing world is actually not diverse enough? If she took a step back and let someone else be the star of the show. If she let an Amara be the star instead of a Maggie.

I’m not black, but a lot of my experiences are similar to Amaras - I was told I “wasn’t the right fit” for a job and it was clearly because I was too working class. I spent 10 years working for my breakthrough in my career that my middle class peers got straight out of uni - which is similar to the dance instructor telling Amara she can dance professionally, but it’ll be hard. When Dolly, in her little bubble of delusion, dismissed Amara’s experience with online dating as a “bad batch” the look on Amaras face perfectly encapsulates SO MANY times I’ve felt fed up at my experiences of not being understood. That feeling of being a part of a social group but always being a little bit on the periphery because they are all blind to anyone else’s experiences but their own. I don’t have the experience of being fetishised in the same way as Amara, but I’ve definitely been spoken to badly by men when they realised I was from a working class background. Or they’ve seen me as a bit of “fun” before they go on to meet the middle class girl who is “wife material”. I’ve been dumped by men when they realised I didn’t have the right credentials in terms of family background. One ex explicitly told me he didn’t see a future with me because of who my father was (working class), whereas his was high up in academia.

Amara was exponentially the more interesting, powerful, intelligent and relatable character, and I’d bet the character wasn’t created by Dolly. Whoever was responsible for the creation of Amara in the writing room is probably a lot more talented than Dolly. Even though her experiences were of being a black woman in dating and carving out a career, those feelings of exclusion, of trying to fit into a world that isn’t created for you - is so relatable to so many people. There are tons of spoiled rich white girls on TV, I wish they’d made the series focus more on Amaras experiences. But we never heard from the Amaras because media is dominated by the dolly’s of the world.

queenamber said:

Even her acknowledgement of the criticism comes across as snooty and privileged.

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I do think it's shitty to directly send someone something criticising them though.

The issues with batteries on flights isn’t new at all. I remember being a teen and being told to remove li-ion batteries from check in luggage. It’s dictated by international aviation law, not EasyJet. There’s so much to unpack in that tweet; the entitlement, the ignorance, the stupidity.

most of all, IMO it’s the ultimate proof that take away her pretentious name, her family wealth and connections and she’s no different that your local idiot ranting online.

her family money and connections completely hide all that and get her the podcasts and journalism gigs. She’s mediocre in every way and isn’t deserving of the soapbox providence has handed to her.

Long time lurker here! I am really enjoying this thread and the discussion on class. I think that class is so under-discussed in the U.K, and Pandora running away from criticism instead of engaging with it just highlights that for me - it seems like it's something that people just aren't allowed to criticise or point out, and when they do, it's "unfair" and "cruel". Also just absolutely incredible that she chose to throw her toys out of the pram when hundreds of thousands of young people with A-Level results have had their lives ruined, literally (in a lot of cases) in factors that ultimately come down to their class.

I think the author of the Guardian piece has noticed this too -

Is it just me or has anyone else found the premise of - and in fact everything that pandora has said about - her new book to be completely fucking irritating and hypocritical? she is in an article with porter which she has shared on social media. is she really that blind to the irony of saying something like:

Why don’t I have that holiday?’, and the answer is that’s never the way life has worked. But Instagram makes you think that everything is just within reach. It’s a huge pressure and it’s deeply, deeply cruel.”

And yet still posting really posey images of herself with her children in her gigantic house, or on holiday, or wearing really expensive clothes etc etc?

Or in saying something like 'there is no 'right' life, just be good enough' - isn't that a bit rich coming from someone who has - in the not so distant past - appeared in home magazines, gone on sponsored holidays, done paid partnerships with expensive designers, and frankly had a relatively easy ride career-wise. It's so condescending, and unhelpful. If she really is worried about the impact of social media on young women, about the pressure generally on women to look and be everything and amazing all of the time, why does she choose to continue presenting this curated image of herself on instagram, be featured in magazines like fucking Porter, or home and garden? With a following of at least 300k followers on instagram, how on earth is she not contributing to the very thing she is complaining about?!

I get that she can't 'help' being privileged, but I do think its her privilege which contributes to her tone-deafness and completely blinkered view.

Mbella said:

I agree! And I don't think this is particularly a particularly new discussion either, other than Chrissy Teigen's strikingly raw photos. Plenty of other celebrities have spoken about baby loss and difficult pregnancies.

This reminds me of a discussion on the podcast a few weeks ago. They were talking about some celebrity who had said she was "proud" of the fact she'd given birth "naturally", and how this might affect other women. I thought that Dolly was far more sensitive and thoughtful in the discussion - she recognised that "pride" might not be the right word to use, given that childbirth is not something that most women have any control over. I certainly couldn't have chosen to have a "natural" birth - I needed an emergency C-section - so does that mean I'm a "failure"? Obviously not, but framing natural birth as something to be "proud" of risks this connotation.

Pandora didn't seem to get this, at least not as much as Dolly. I thought that was striking, given that Pandora is the one with children.

Also: "I've found myself recently grateful" - terrible wording! And what is going on with that first paragraph: word salad!

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I HATE this focus of a "natural" childbirth, there is no other medical procedure in which people would brag about not using painkillers, it is so bizarre