Goodbye 2017, and take your unicorns with you
NEW YORK: You know all those things you wish would disappear but won’t? Us, too.
UNICORN EVERYTHING
Please, rainbowy unicorns, stop throwing up and pooping all over everything. Also, you can keep your horns, tears and “snot” to yourselves.
The whole unicorn thing built in 2016 with special pink-adorned toast and other disturbingly pastel-colored foodstuff. The beauty industry piled on with hair dyes, nail polish, lipsticks, makeup brushes and all things glittery, holographic and sparkly that looked so darn “magical” on Instagram.
Those products included glittery “Unicorn Snot” for the face, body and lips. The makers say on their website they came up with the idea as a joke, but they perfected and persisted — and that’s when the magic happened.
Starbucks was distinctly not kidding with its Unicorn Frappuccino back in April. It “magically” started as a purple drink with swirls of blue and a first taste that is sweet and fruity, according to the company. One quick stir changed it to pink, tangy and tart. Vanilla whipped cream was involved, topped with a sprinkle of pink and blue powders. The words SWEET and SOUR don’t cover it sweet and sour next level get closer.
Katy Perry and Kylie Jenner went unicorn with cotton candy hair, along with others, but we need a truce now, dear unicorns.
That is unless you’re devotees, our little one-horned friends, of the equally magical venture capitalist Aileen Lee, who coined the term “unicorn startup” for that statistically rare startup company valued at more than $1 billion.
COLD SHOULDER ATTIRE
Brrrrr, and really? Who decided these tops and dresses were “seductive” and when? They’ve been building since at least 2013 and are all over runways and stores as an option to, what, cleavage?
Ok, that’s a lot of questions. We have cold-shoulder sweaters, button-down blouses, wispy little dresses, maxis to the floor and even bomber jackets and hoodies. What sense does that make, people?
Feedback from detractors — who don’t include Donna Karan and “The Real Housewives of Orange County” have this to say: “They look lame,” ″They are so unattractive” and, a personal favorite, “If I’m spending money on a sweater, the shoulders should come with it.”
A kissing, go-away cousin would be the bell and ruffled sleeve from below the elbow to the wrist, because who really needs to wear that. That’s not another question because those people are unicorns.
MILLENNIALS. JUST MILLENNIALS
We get that assigning common traits to an entire generation involves a dose of trickery. But we also get that Millennials are a bubble.
Now get over it. Message for some: Go get your own jobs. Pay for your own apartments. Look up from your phones occasionally. You gotta earn some stuff, like respect and raises.
Further, and this one isn’t your fault, Millennial Pink needs to go. Why it was assigned to you has to do with a growing acceptance of gender fluidity, so score! But the color has had its best day.
And what is the color? Scribes have decided it’s a range from blushy beige to a dull peach-salmon.
According to the editors over at The Strategist blog, the color was so named “for its capacity to define a generation with its perfect balance of serious and frivolous.”
SPIRALIZING THROUGH LIFE
We’re going to leave kale alone — at least for now — to keep peace at the office. We’ll be gunning for you next year, kale, if you’re still all high and mighty.
For now, we’re going to focus on zoodles and anything else spiralized. If you want to eat pasta, eat pasta. If you want to eat zucchini, eat zucchini. Does it really make you happy to turn perfectly good zucchini into pasta-like strands? If so, rethink yourself.
Veggies, good. Making them into something else? That’s just work and includes cuke noodles, too. Leave the cucumbers to be great next to the zucchinis.
Sure, spiral fries and little ribbons of carrot are time travelers. And if you simply must zoodle, so be it. It’s just, do we need another kitchen gadget taking up counter space? Spiralizers took America by storm in 2014. Can we get over it and back to our roots as natural-born choppers? Thank you.
BARE CAKES
You either say it out loud or you’re thinking it: The frosting is the best part. Make it more nutritionally sound if you must but don’t make it disappear along the sides.
This goes in particular for wedding cakes. Dare to bare without fondant or other icings for yourself, but subjecting a hall of your closest family and friends to this, well, sugar travesty, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, even with cutesy cake toppers and sugary flowers plopped onto the crumby bits.
Brides and grooms have been craving naked cakes at least since 2014 and bakeries were happy to respond, leaving buttercream or fruit preserves between layers, thank you very much. Momofuku Milk Bar and Christina Tosi were among the first to do it, explaining they wanted the cake itself to shine.
Cake, you’ve had your moment. Now get under there and re-learn your place.
