Cynthia Nixon Posted a Photo with a Lobster. Big Mistake. Huge.
#ISTANDWITHCYNTHIANIXON
This Thursday, for the weekly paid post, we’ll be unpacking the cognitive whiplash of the Olympics, and how the promise of joy and celebration has been marred by controversy and unrest.
Are people okay? No, of course they’re not.
In 1941, the Kennedy family lobotomized their daughter, Rosemary, over mood swings and seizures and locked her away in a care home. In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner killed someone with her car. And in 2019, Tom Hooper made Cats. But none of that holds a candle to what Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City and the viral Charli XCX “Apple” dance fame did on July 26 when she posted a photo of her lunch, a lobster. The caption, intended to be cheeky, set off a maelstrom on the broken-beyond-repair Internet. “When your lobster brings its own side of butter,” she quipped, adding the lobster emoji. Cue the swift outrage.
“Lobsters are sentient beings and they are alive when they are boiled. Super cruel.”
“Animal cruelty isn’t funny.”
“When your lobster was screaming and exploded its guts while being boiled alive.”
“Ironic you care so much about human life but don’t give a damn when it comes to other living beings? Do better.”
“Please don't post dead animals killed with such cruelty. With your wealth and fame, please do something to save these beautiful creatures. We're exploiting sea resources without thinking about the consequences.”
“Noooooo poor lobster 😢😢😢”
“Oh no!!! I never thought you would actually eat one. Do you know how they die?? It's the most cruel of deaths!!! I urge you to please learn about it. You'll see 🦞s in a whole new way. Let's practice care & compassion. Please Aunt Ada!!! 😭💔”
“#StopLobsterCruelty.”
“I love you Cynthia, but posing with the corpse of a sentient being is not cool at all. He/she just wanted to live…”
PETA, of course, had to weigh in.
(I’ll sidebar here to encourage folks to read The Atlantic’s “PETA's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad History of Killing Animals.”)
I think “he/she just wanted to live” takes the cake for inducing the biggest belly laugh, but PETA calling the lobster “an individual” also had me chuckling like Kamala. Other comments, like this one, simply had me questioning reality:
“Respectfully, standing up for sentient beings in Palestine while posing for a photo with a sentient being that was boiled alive for you to eat is… wild. Collective liberation means all beings.”
Are we actually comparing Cynthia’s outspoken advocacy for the people of Palestine to her eating a fucking lobster? Cue the Meryl scream. It seems, for some, these are proportionate.
Now, I’m not one to browse the musty halls of the New York Times opinion section (cue Cole Escola saying, “What do they know?”), but there’s a 2021 essay that stays burned in the brain. It’s titled “We Should All Know Less About Each Other.” I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually read the piece, but reference it often as something akin to a life mantra I wish we’d all collectively adopt. I’d be remiss not to make a Sex and the City reference given the subject matter at hand. In Season 6, Kristen Johnston’s Lexi Featherston famously snaps:
“No one's fun anymore. What ever happened to fun?”
And though she proceeds to fall out a window and plunge to her untimely death, I’ve long thought about Lexi’s famous last words.
In this particular instance, I have some questions. Why does this feel like such a coordinated attack? It would be one thing if it were a handful of comments, but the comment section is flooded with the kind of vitriol you might expect to see on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s page. Another question: How is this any different from anyone else taking pictures of their food, which many folks, famous and not, do on the regular? Also — and sorry to keep making Sex and the City references (although, that’s nothing new) — to paraphrase what Carrie once told Miranda, RE: Paris, “Then don’t you [eat a lobster].”
Maybe it’s residuals from Trump’s presidency or side effects of long COVID or perhaps a yet-to-be-discovered parasitic amoeba running amok, I’m not sure, but there’s been an influx in brain rotting that’s expanding beyond the MAGA/QAnon set and spilling over to the collective consciousness. As one of the few funny commenters noted:
“Oh, this world is cooked. More than that lobster.”
If this was James Corden or the ilk, I could at least understand the misplaced venom. But Cynthia Nixon? She’s given us so much. And this is how we treat her? Shame!
Gonna make one last SATC reference to close out and quote none other than Miranda Hobbes herself:
“Do you know what I say? Fuck them. Exclamation point!”