Emer McLysaght Author and journalist

In Nobody Needs This, a new series for The Journal, Emer McLysaght focuses her eagle eye on the trends, products and notions we can do without. It’s not all giving out, however. She’ll also be keeping up with what’s catching her attention, keeping people interested and, quite frankly, driving her mad.

ALLOW ME TO introduce you to Brigette Pheloung.

She’s an American influencer, better known by the handle @AcquiredStyle, with 1.8 million followers on Instagram. As I type, she’s on a trip to St Tropez sponsored by Michael Kors.

She’s a fairly typical twenty-something US content creator. Blonde, tanned, always travelling, big, bouncy hair, clean girl aesthetic. She loves to travel, she’s trying out the latest viral food trend (Dot cakes. Expect them to make it to Ireland in 6–8 weeks), her teeth are so big and so white they’re bordering on terrifying.

She’s also getting married this year, so she’s getting married this year, so she’s leaning heavily into bride content. And this is what’s made her hit the headlines.

Pheloung’s entire Bachelorette party (that’s a Hen to me and you) was sponsored by a brand behind an $800 AI mirror. Swan Beauty paid for Brigette and sixteen of her nearest and dearest to fly to St Barts on a private jet.

In exchange, she posted about and tagged the brand multiple times, allowed Swan Beauty to deck the St Barts villa out with multiple AI mirrors and even had the founder of the company (presumably not one of her nearest and dearest) along for the ride. The mirror, by the way, can analyse a user’s skin, record videos, build skincare routines. It also offers a “smart” makeup artist, a product marketplace to shop and an “embedded social community”.

It’s more Black Mirror than beauty mirror, if you ask me.

Look, Brigette Pheloung isn’t really the issue here. I don’t have much of a problem with influencers and content creators being paid and compensated for their work. Advertising and marketing have evolved and producing branded content is a bona fide career, as evidenced by thousands of extremely successful individuals across the globe.

What I would like to discourage is anything that emboldens the already deranged wedding industry. The absolute last thing we need is weddings getting any more berserk than they already are.

Weddings have become multiday affairs, with the “day two” now almost a given. I’ve heard tell of guests provided with outfit colour palettes, so they don’t clash with the bridesmaids and the theme of the event. Hen and stag parties are eye wateringly expensive. Brides assemble wardrobes full of white outfits, lest anyone might not be able to immediately identify them as one half of the happy couple. Invites come complete with links or QR codes so that cash gifts can be funnelled directly into the happy couple’s bank account.

Call me Scrooge, but I have never been fully on board with the practice of shoving several fifties into a card just because two people invited me to a party. Getting married is a decision, not an achievement. If I threw a birthday party and expected people to give me money to cover the cost of them being there, it would still be spoken about at my funeral. I get that it’s tradition to give the couple something to help set them up for their new life together, but do you know what else used to be common? Women having to give up their jobs once they were married.

I’ve attended and been delighted at countless weddings, but the arbitrary over-the-top celebration of this milestone above all others genuinely baffles me. The last thing we need is the overzealous brides and grooms getting it into their heads that they need to emulate Brigette and pals and get Mattress Mick to sponsor a long weekend in Fuerteventura.

This week I’m reading:

• Anne Enright’s essay The Tally in The New Yorker, a story about her mother, Fergal Quinn and a turkey!
• CMAT’s gorgeous Substack post about how Olivia Rodrigo covering her song this week couldn’t have come at a better time
• Abigail Radnor in The Guardian about grief and the clothes her mother left behind

In the journalism trenches

The hunt for the perfect mint choc chip ice cream is in its final stages. New Africa / Shutterstock New Africa / Shutterstock / Shutterstock

I have been on the hunt for the perfect supermarket mint choc chip ice cream for some time now and I have two frontrunners. The first is Lidl’s offering, mostly because it’s a true choc chip experience. I have been burned by both Tesco and Aldi in the past, because the ice cream has turned out to be merely mint choc flavoured, but absent of chips. The current queen of the ice creams though comes from Cavan company Moo’d. They are producing a mint choc chip that would bring a tear to your eye. The choc chips are the size of raisins! It’s available in Centra and SuperValu stores.

Watch this

• The series of the US Traitors featuring Maura Higgins has been added to the RTÉ Player. Her rise to fame really does need to be studied.
• Widow’s Bay on Apple TV is about a cursed town trying to make it as a tourist destination. It was sold to me as a cross between Schitt’s Creek and Mare of Easttown
• Sam Campbell’s absurdist comedy is brilliantly on show in his Channel 4 mockumentary series Make That Movie. Campbell is coming to Vicar Street in Dublin with his show Kid Giblet on 2 October.

Emer will be back next Friday morning with more recommendations.