‘We should use first names. We’re sisters under the mink.’
— Gloria Grahame, The Big Heat (1953)
What’s ‘Sisters Under the Mink’?
It’s an award-winning monthly newsletter, which began exploring crime movies specifically but now contains essay series and interviews exploring ALL facets of film culture old and new, from golden age Hollywood to contemporary multiplex. The first series is called Dudes Rock!, exploring everything from Kevin Costner’s mega-flop western Horizon to thinking about men while they think about the Roman Empire in Gladiator II; In Defence of Showing Your Girlfriend Miami Vice, or Toxic Masculinity and Its discontents; and Guys Being Dudes As They Run Away from Twisters. I plan to leave no stone unturned in a summer-long exploration of what, why, and how men onscreen have changed (or not) in front of our eyes, from the tennis jock-simps of Challengers to the homoerotic sexual fetishism of a leather-jacketed Austin Butler in The Bike Riders, as well as all the iterations who came marching on screen before them.
If you choose a paid subscription, each series will have its own designation of interviews, essays, and discussion. Each essay will also be uploaded as an audio podcast, recorded by me, so you can listen rather than read if you prefer. If we get to a certain number of subscriptions/upgrades, I would also like to explore further extras, including live chats and group zooms. The first dispatch will be free to everyone: the rest, available for a small monthly fee.
It’s a mere £5 to subscribe per month, or you can save £10 by purchasing an annual subscription. If you really want to show your support, you can purchase a Founding Member subscription for £120 per year or another amount to your liking - there’s no extra benefits for this one (for the time being), other than the knowledge that your generosity is keeping this project on the road.
In 2021, Sisters Under the Mink won a UK Freelance Writing Award for Best Newsletter of the Year, and was a featured publication on the Substack Discover page.
Who am I?
My name is Christina Newland, and I’m a contributing editor at Empire Magazine as well as the lead film critic for national UK daily the i Newspaper. I’m also a freelance writer on film, culture, and occasionally boxing, for places like Rolling Stone UK, Criterion, BBC Culture, Sight & Sound, and many more. I’m a displaced upstate New Yorker living in London.
I tend to write about the intersections between star power, womanhood, sex, glamour, and cinema history, as well as the depictions of masculinity onscreen during the American 20th century, from the Great Depression to the Watergate scandal and beyond.
Where else can you find me?
You can find me on Twitter or read some of my writing for BBC, Vulture, and various other publications here.
