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1 week ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
As a child, I was what people called "quirky," which is how adults politely describe children they suspect might one day either run a Fortune 500 company or start a cult. I hated being touched. Sunlight felt like an assault. Grass was an enemy. The absence of a cat nearby was a genuine crisis. These weren't preferences. These were non-negotiable terms of my existence. By age three, I could read newspapers to my father like some Victorian parlour trick.
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1 week ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
Let's talk about something they never cover in those clinical sex education pamphlets with the cartoon vulvas. Something that doesn't make it into Cosmo's "257 Ways to Drive Him Wild" between "tickle his earlobes" and "surprise him with lingerie." Something that should honestly be in the Museum of Revolutionary Sexual Problem-Solving, if such a place existed. Which it should. Foreplay isn't just physical. It starts in the brain hours before bodies even touch. The anticipation.
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1 week ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
A note to my newsletter subscribers:Dear Readers and Algorithm Gods,For those who may not know, back in 2016, I started something called #NotOkay. After that infamous tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women was released, I invited women to share their stories of sexual assault. Within hours, I was receiving thousands of stories per minute, and millions of women ultimately participated.
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2 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
Generation X is superior in ways so obvious they shouldn't need enumeration. And yet here I am, shouting into the void while my generational peers silently judge my enthusiasm (as a millennial cusp, it’s only natural):1. 🌚 We raised ourselves.🔐 Not because our parents were negligent but because they hadn't yet invented helicopter parenting.
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2 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
It’s the end of April. I've reached the age where my short-term memory has packed its bags and left without a forwarding address. Ask me what happened yesterday and I'll stare blankly. Ask me about a Guns N' Roses guitar solo I heard in Van Nuys last May on Victory Boulevard and suddenly I'm Rain Man with a leather jacket. This is what nobody tells you about middle age: your brain becomes a nightclub with selective door policy.
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2 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
**From:** [email protected] **To:** [email protected] **Subject:** About my third greenhouse - URGENT **Date:** April 25, 2025, 9:17 AMDearest Shirley,I'm still recovering from our birthday celebration yesterday. The lighting in the east garden was perfect for the cake, don't you think? Meryl's impression of both of us accepting Oscars simultaneously was exactly right, though I would have angled my body 15 degrees more to the left for better camera positioning.
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3 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
There's a feeling I can't shake lately. Not quite déjà vu, but something, adjacent? A persistent sense that reality has subtly shifted. Not in the way we've all grown accustomed to describing ("the world's gone mad" or "we're living in unprecedented times"), but something more fundamental, as if the underlying mechanics of daily life have been quietly recalibrated when we weren't looking. I didn't want to mention it at first. Who needs another person talking about strange vibes?
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3 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
Happy Belated Earth Day from the fashion extremist who never met a mid-range garment worth keeping. With all these sobering sustainability stats confirming what I've known since 11th grade, it feels like the perfect time to explain my philosophy. It all started with a $10 Chanel flap bag with gold chain at a Value Village in Edmonton, Canada. No vintage consignment existed for cool people in my city back then. Only University of Alberta students had dial-up internet to sell anything online.
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3 weeks ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
A friend writes a Thread, wondering something to the effect of, "I don't hear much from Gen X men online, maybe my algorithm is bouncing them out." The observation hovers in digital space like smoke in an empty room—both obvious and elusive once you try to grasp it. Most Gen X men are digital voyeurs, watching life unfold online from behind drawn curtains, bourbon in hand. They lurk in comment sections like old men at the edge of dance floors.
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1 month ago | 
kellyoxford.substack.com | Kelly Oxford
I forgot I had a garage for six months. People forget their anniversaries or where they parked at Whole Foods. I forgot an entire architectural appendage attached to the house. Marie Kondo would need smelling salts and a defibrillator if she saw how I live; everything I own is on display like a museum of mediocrity: free charge of admission. People think I'm messy, which is like calling the ocean deep. I'll only see a dust bunny after it has evolved from lint to livestock.