Why Did Dawson's Creek Teach Us This Was Romance?

Did I mention I have a new podcast?

The year was 1998, and a teenage Jessica was crammed onto the couch in the basement of my pal Rosie’s house in South Seattle, swooning over the hot-and-heavy “love affair” between Pacey Witter and “Tamara” on what was then America’s No. 1 teen show — Dawson’s Creek.

Remember that plotline? It look me a minute.

Pacey lost his virginity to Tamara, and back then, sophomore year of high school, a bunch of virgins squeezed onto a dingy couch, we were all desperate to lose our virginities.

The only thing: Pacey was 15, and “Tamara” — aka “Ms. Jacobs” — was his 36-year-old high school English teacher.

Ew?

This is one of those subjects that looks, in retrospect, a little bit different — and it’s also part of the reason I’ve been absent from this newsletter for a minute: I’ve been working furiously on a podcast that brings that idea to light.

It’s called IN RETROSPECT, you can find it any and everywhere you get your podcasts, and I co-host it with my longtime pal and Emmy-winning journalist, Susie Banikarim. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we just wrapped our first season. Season 2 is coming next month.

(That’s our logo below. It’s inspired by TAB Cola and was designed by Pentagram. Rejected logos coming in a future newsletter, because they were all really so much fun!)

Each week on IN RETROSPECT, we revisit moments — fictional and real, tabloid and titular — from our 90s youth, in order to unravel what they taught us as teenagers back then, as well as the messages that have stuck with us to this day.

No, we’re not here to scold you about all the “problematic” media you consumed as a kid (us too!) but we are here to unpack the sometimes insidious ways those storylines stuck with us, as well as what was playing out in culture and politics in the background.

So, Pacey?

Sure, he was just a fictional character on a show I didn’t even like that much (I was a My So-Called Life girl). But in the background of that show was the real-life statutory rape case playing out in my hometown, the one that inspired the Netflix movie “May December,” that of Mary Kay Letourneau — who was impregnated by her 12-year-old student, whom she would later marry, and whose extremely creepy interview with an Australian TV station a few years back has recently resurfaced. Layer onto that the (multiple) cases of sex between teachers and students at my high school, including one that my friend Rosie (the one at the top of this newsletter) helped expose for the student newspaper and… well, that stuff sticks with you. (Rosie, now a middle school counselor, also makes an appearance in our episode.)

So, in need of holiday listening? Dinner table fodder? High school nostalgia? Might I suggest you listen here.

And if Dawson’s Creek isn’t your thing, might I offer a few other subjects:

• Pamela Anderson and That Cherry-Red One-Piece: What’s the cultural impact of a single bathing suit? You’d be surprised. 🍒
  

• The Vilification of Robin Givens 🥊 : The actress and wife of Mike Tyson gave a stunning interview to Barbara Walters in 1986, in which she revealed — with Tyson by her side — that he had abused her. The result wasn’t what you’d think.
  

• The Marriage Myth: The Newsweek story that proclaimed a woman was “more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry” past age 40, scarring a generation of single women in the process (don’t worry they turned out OK!) 💍
  

• How Amy Fisher Became the ‘Long Island Lolita’ 📰 : A teen girl from Long Island became a tabloid sensation almost overnight, when she shot the wife of her much older “boyfriend” Joey Buttafuco.
  

• Plus, our own stories of regret. A riff on Axe body spray, and Susie explains Hallmark movies to me. 🎄

Happy holidays — and enjoy!

PS — Got a subject for IN RETROSPECT you think we should look into? Tell me in the comments!

👀 spotted in Brooklyn