You don’t have to be named Molly to be a Molly, though it helps. Mollies Lambert, Young and McAleer got attention not merely for their Ringwaldian monikers but for their coyly insightful writing about pop culture, their minute observations, and the manner in which they promoted themselves via social media. They’re not the only ones, of course. Here, then, the full lineup.
The New York freelancer took down her Tumblr, but observers fondly recall its curation of self-portraits and observations about interesting foods. Everything seemed new when seen through the eyes of “Magic Molly,” which now directs to a list of Ms. Young’s clips. Sample sentence: "Forget the weenie-tuggers of ChatRoulette and the would-be American Idols on YouTube."
The Grantland writer's true métier is Twitter, where she provides energetically witty mini-dispatches on the Hollywood scene she deconstructs for Grantland. Sample sentence: "I have to sleep but first I have to tell you that toto means pussy in African slang which means Toto's "Africa" is still the pussiest"
The L.A. comic writer lives a life she’s unafraid to microblog, from declaring her love of The Real World on Tumblr to raving about cookies on HelloGiggles, the site she co-runs, to posing nude to illustrate a story about her bedbugs on The Awl. It’s intriguingly mundane—“Molls” may not yet be a star, but she’s just like us. Sample sentence: "DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY SPEED: What? I’m being honest. I’m not saying you have to do drugs or something, but I certainly wouldn’t shy away from popping a stray adderall come finals time."
The wacky-story blogger rose to prominence with a series of ultra-voicey columns mocking women’s magazines, then brought that same voice to men’s magazines, subverting the GQ cover profile with a tweenishly lovestruck and self-deprecating tone that brought the usual implied romance between profile writer and subject (Chris Evans) a bit closer to text than subtext. Sample sentence [from above-linked Chris Evans profile]: "When I awoke at 5:30 a.m., I slipped quietly out the front door, Googling 'cabs la,' 'taxis los angeles,' 'help me california,' on my phone."
The writer, whose rumpled-bed Times Magazine cover raised eyebrows and ginned up blog comments, knows the value of a personal brand, if she’s ever forsaking it. Her serious considerations of web culture in Technology Review and her memoir are buttressed by cute photos of food and cats on her blog. Sample sentence: "German word for: the icky feeling of being tempted to write, on your blog, about something you know you’ve written about before — made ickier by the fact that the revisited subject is 'stumbling on a stack of your compulsively maintained teenage diaries, opening one, reading just a sentence which is still enough to disgust and embarrass you and also fill you with a strange pride-shame.'"
The freelancer and nonfiction book author applies a serious lens to subjects like Sassy magazine, riot girl music, and the “hand-heart” gesture, subjects she considers in a more lighthearted tone on her Tumblr. Sample sentence: "I’m not a teenager, but I play one in my life."
A he-Molly? Well, if the shoe fits--a shoe bedazzled with infinite shiny observations on sex, boys, clothes, Hollywood starlets, and ordering takeout during Hurricane Irene, doled out daily on the breezy site Thought Catalog--wear it, once you've finished posing for a cute Facebook photo in bed. Sample sentence: "You know what, I bet the people who listen to Plain White T’s and Orgy have so much more sex because there’s freedom in having bad taste. It’s like when you see two hideous people walking down the street holding hands."
The o.g. Molly? Ms. Pratt brought a singular, obsessive, quirky, mischievous voice to Sassy and Jane, magazines that often seemed cults of personality and brought the untrammeled energy of youth into print media. That she hasn’t yet had similar success with xoJane, her well-funded website-cum-Tumblr where she posts snapshots of her text messages and outfits alongside meditations on her cool friends and adventures in publishing, indicates only that Mollyism is a young woman’s game. Sample sentence: "98 percent of my lifetime orgasms have been faked. Not anymore, though."
No, she’s the o.g. Molly. Her meditations on her headaches would make a brilliant Tumblr post. Her jacket-photo—emaciated, grimacing, smoking—remains the best avatar we’ve ever seen. Sample sentence: "Three, four, sometimes five times a month, I spend the day in bed with a migraine headache, insensible to the world around me."
![The wacky-story blogger rose to prominence with a series of ultra-voicey columns mocking women’s magazines, then brought that same voice to men’s magazines, subverting the GQ cover profile with a tweenishly lovestruck and self-deprecating tone that brought the usual implied romance between profile writer and subject (Chris Evans) a bit closer to text than subtext. Sample sentence [from above-linked Chris Evans profile]: "When I awoke at 5:30 a.m., I slipped quietly out the front door, Googling 'cabs la,' 'taxis los angeles,' 'help me california,' on my phone."](http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/zimmerman.jpg?w=386)
THAT’S WEAK DOG, WHO THOUGHT THIS SHIT
Why does this have to be so gendery?