Pop Heist staffers Megan and Ansley love so much, very specifically. Their latest obsessions include fishing rods, fancy French lipstick, vintage loungewear, stickers, and leather jackets. Pour a glass of your favorite sparkling bev and peruse the first in Pop Heist's series of holiday gift guides, all with recommendations of what we'd use ourselves (or in this case, exactly what Megan and Ansley have used and loved).
Looking for detailed, zany ideas for what to give your friends, family, enemies and lovers? Request Megan and Ansley's gift expertise here.
Ansley Pentz (she/her): I love gift guides because I love things. And not to immediately negate that with what I hate, but — what I hate is the idea that every mom deserves the same gift by virtue of being a mother, that every man likes to fish by virtue of being a man. (There is some gender essentialism wrapped up in gift guide culture. And I hate that, too.) I cringe at the TikTok trend where women ask the void, "What are the girlies putting on their Christmas lists this year?" I don't want gifts for girlies! I want what I think we all want, even if everyone isn't as brave as I am (brag) to admit it: gifts for me.
Thankfully, this brings me to what I love, which is so much. I love using gift guides as sources of inspiration, pathways of discovery, train rides to love people more deeply. Through gift guides, we can unearth writers' — and our own — desires. And I love that, because I like the feeling of desire, and I like going on treasure hunts.
You and I are here because we believe that we must create the gift guides we want to see. Starting with a gift guide for us, specifically.
Megan Magray (she/her): Yes! I love consumption. I love shopping. I think, for women, there is some shame or tension that arises navigating an anti-capitalist, maybe even a degrowth value system while also finding joy in objects and personal style. I feel the same way about social media — there's so much to hate there, but at the same time, I enjoy the process of externalizing myself, affirming my ideas and interests in the digital public sphere. But going back to things, I think something we've lost is a sense of enchantment in the material world. Why shouldn't we think of things as spirited, ensouled? Things are the embodiment of all they mean to us. They hold our memories, carry emotional weight, and adorn our lives with beauty, if we really look at them. What do we lose by treating our possessions purely as neutral, utilitarian, or aesthetic? And what do we stand to gain from re-enchanting them?
Ansley: I completely agree. Modernity has made us forget the time-honored tradition of tenderness toward the objects of our lives. That love of our things necessitates seeking them out with intention, buying, loaning, and finding just what we need. And when the time comes, repairing those items, too — taking a skirt to the tailor to fix the zipper, conditioning an old cutting board.
I have been frustrated by an argument I've seen buzz around then boil up on social media, year after year. It goes something like this: Working people do not have the time nor ability to care for our objects. We must over-consume to survive, and it is our right to do so, our fellow workers be damned. It's a ridiculous, ahistorical idea. People do, broadly speaking, have the ability to spend $5 to get a button put back on a jacket, or five minutes mending it ourselves. We do not need to buy a new jacket, abandoning the one that has already kept us warm. And dare I say — we do not deserve the jacket at the expense of a garment worker toiling away in a factory for non-survivable wages in horrific, dangerous conditions.
I believe with every fiber of my being that working people deserve abundance. But we do not deserve objects at the direct detriment of our neighbors, both locally and globally. This is a bit of a digression, I know, but I feel it's crucial to recognize in the gift guide conversation. None of us need, nor deserve (I'm going to be burned at the stake for this!), 16 lipsticks. We will survive with one, and we can wear it beautifully, love it well, use it until it's empty, and be satisfied.
Megan: Oh man, yeah. There's a whole other thread I could pull on here about how much modernity has warped our sense of time — I use the phrase "void time" to mean time where we feel truly free and unburdened to consider what we'll do next. Like, go back even twenty years and someone might actually spend a few hours cleaning their oven on a day off. Can you imagine? Maybe you can, but truly, I would never. That type of errand is so deprioritized in my landscape of "things to do" because I'm much more likely to be opening and closing Instagram on my phone or, I dunno, watching Love Island. Probably both at the same time, if I'm being honest. There's a level of exertion required in the modern day to do these small errands. I mean, it's hardly any exertion at all, really, but the principle of inertia applies. I think we have to be very intentional about protecting that empty time so that our brainspace is open enough to consider the possibility of, like, going to the tailor. So I get it, but ultimately, nothing worth having comes easy. I'd also argue that most of us are happier owning one lipstick than sixteen — it's the paradox of choice. We experience greater joy and less overwhelm when we can really absorb the breadth of our choices — like, hm, will I wear my party lipstick today or the more natural one? It's less psychic garbage to wade through.
Ansley: This brings us, miraculously (this is what the people are here for!), back to gift-giving. No good gift can be bought en masse, one click online and the absolution of responsibility. Good gifts require effort, they require time. And how deserved are our loved ones of our precious attention! My grandmother had a beautiful Christmas gifting ritual: She'd neatly write a list of everyone in our family on an index card, then go to the Hickory Farms mall kiosk and buy summer sausage gift boxes. Couples received a larger box to share.
Summer sausage is a perfect gift for me, and I'll just say it, most people. It is such a treat to eat a meat designed for snacking, to receive those little mustard jars and non-refrigerated dairy products. And there was so much effort in this gift! The handwritten list, the getting to the mall in a different county, the carrying of so many boxes.
Megan: Okay, first of all — you won't believe this — hard relate on the summer sausage. My boyfriend's father is a deer hunter! And deer season is in the fall. So after we visit his family for Christmas, we always return with tons of venison: summer sausage, deer steaks, tenderloin … my freezer is stocked for the year. It's the best. It's also one of those things I wouldn't have sought out for myself, which makes it better.
The ritual of the gift — and the fact of his labor — imbue it with so much meaning. In the same vein, my lifelong family friend Bobby brings us homemade fudge every year over the holidays. I always look forward to it and it's a fabulous deviation from Christmas cookies.
Ansley: Summer! Sausage! Is! For! Everyone! And our tree-skirts should absolutely be covered in gifts we wouldn't necessarily be bold enough or spendy enough to buy for ourselves, and ones that we really couldn't purchase, even if we tried, like Bobby's fudge. There's something, too, about our loved ones gifting us items to fill a hole they have discovered in our daily routines. A few years ago, after hearing that I was repeatedly pouring boiling hot broth and just-out-of-the-oven squash into my blender to make soup, my mom gifted me an immersion blender.
I didn't realize how much this appliance would become a part of my life, and I would have never asked for it. (I already had a blender, after all, which was working … really well for the soup situation.) Mother's intuition, I suppose. And the intuition of my mother, in particular.
Megan: I totally agree, and I love this thread of gifts that are great because they are personal to the people who give them to us. I feel like that way of gift-giving is too often overlooked because people are more focused on the recipient and try to take themselves out of the equation. But ultra-personal gifts aren't something you can engineer without the context of your relationship — they're ideas that arise from listening to someone all year, from knowing them well, anticipating their desires. (Though, gift guides can and do serve as sparks of inspiration.) I feel like everyone says this, but I truly mean it: I have been a fan of Chappell Roan since day one. A few years ago, she was performing right after my birthday, but I didn't get tickets — it was too expensive. On my birthday, my boyfriend gave me a card with concert tickets inside. He had already arranged for a group of our friends to go. It was the sweetest gift and came as a total surprise; he knew I'd love to go, but I wouldn't have done it for myself. And I got to share it with him! The year after, he got me a fishing rod after listening to me yap for months about the intrigue of urban fishing.
I won't steal any valor, as I'm still no expert angler, but I've loved spending days casting and reeling on Prospect Park Lake. PS — fishing license required.
Ansley: Ugh, what fabulous gifts!!!! So thoughtful, so kind. So you. P.S. I also was an early Chappell Roan fan!!!!! Not like those other people who claim it, I swear …
Often, too, the greatest gifts are the ones we'd want ourselves, which is too often seen as a faux pas. But that's part of the joy of the holidays! We get to share what we love with people we love! Let them into our weird little brains and weird little hobbies!
Here's one of my weird little hobbies as of late: I've always been a fangirl for stationery products, ever since I was a kid, but after a trip to Sticker Planet in Los Angeles this summer, I've become fixated on deadstock, vintage, and nostalgic stickers.
Post-LA jaunt, my partner and I drove across the country from Portland, OR, back to Brooklyn. Along the way, I sent postcards to my niece and nephew, adorning each with stickers I splurged on — scratch-'n'-sniffs and puppies and the like. In the last postcard I sent them, from a hotel in Pennsylvania, I asked my 6-year-old niece to be my pen pal. I am happy to report that she sent me a card accepting the invitation (very kind of her, she's a busy gal), and inviting me to join her sticker club. I was thrilled, glowing even, that I'd made such an impact in sharing my enthusiasm for stickers with her that she created a club in celebration. I did find out later that somehow she has involved herself in a multilevel marketing scheme for children (?), where if I were to join Sticker Club, I'd need to organize six of my adult friends to send her sticker sheets, so that she could amass 36 total sticker sheets, and become the Queen of Central New York. We made a deal that instead, the two of us would have our own sticker club, where I would write her letters with a single, curated sticker on each one. I do think that one day, she will look back and see how cool I am, how I didn't send her just any random sticker — I handpicked each one, from the sparkly to the felt, on both coasts.
Megan: Oh, these are perfect! And they make for another stellar transition — I know we both love old things. I won't go off about sustainability — I feel like there's enough oxygen spent on broad praise for ethical consumption in the discourse — but when you buy and live among pre-loved objects, you get to both give them a second life and play out a bit of fantasy in your own. My home is primarily furnished with things from estate sales — truly, there's no better way to spend a Sunday than hitting the last day of an estate — and some of the best gifts I've given myself are vintage kimonos, muumuus, and pajama sets.
They infuse my most mundane hours with glamour. Tossing a well-worn kimono over a beat-up T-shirt and Soffe shorts elevates my mood so much it's startling. I wouldn't recommend anything too sultry, because you want to be comfortable, but a cozy set of printed pajamas — maybe a vintage, patterned, shapeless cotton house dress — possesses a special kind of magic.
I feel similarly about the spa headband and wristband set my mom bought me last time she was in town.
At first glance, they toe the line of conspicuous consumption; in practice, I use them twice a day, and they truly boost my mood and the whole skincare experience. I really like accessories that put you in a certain frame of mind and bolster your commitment to a routine.
Ansley: Infusing our routines with glamour! What a wonderful pursuit. As you know, I wear nearly exclusively secondhand clothing. And I strive to buy each garment with great intention, which means that each time I get dressed, I feel some amount of joy, even if I'm just throwing on a pair of old Levi's and a T-shirt. One of my most recent secondhand purchases was a leather jacket I picked up in San Francisco. I've always wanted one, but I'd never found the right one, and I'm always willing to hold out. Plus, I love souvenirs that can worm their way into my daily life. Sweet little reminders of a life well lived.
As for the everyday glamour …! I love a simple routine that recognizes my features, rather than seeks to change them. I stopped wearing foundation on a daily basis in 2019 and haven't touched it since 2020, even for special occasions, though I am not blessed with perfectly even skin. I feel really proud of this, not because foundation is inherently evil, of course, but because I feel less self-conscious — really, I hate myself so much less — when I embrace what I look like, half-moon blue circles under my eyes and all. For the past few years, I've decided to embellish my already big cheeks with a cream blush from Merit, which has become so much a part of my routine that I wore it on my wedding day.
In the fall and winter, especially, I crave a red lip with no other makeup, save for the occasional haphazard application of a drugstore eyebrow pencil. At the recommendation of someone who replied to New Yorker writer (and the Most Glamorous Woman of Them All) Rachel Syme's request for everyday delights, and after much of my own furious research (i.e. reading too many Reddit threads about lip products and going through dozens of tagged photos on Instagram to evaluate a lipstick shade on a variety of faces), I purchased the VIOLETTE_FR Petal Bouche lipstick in Amour Fou last year. It's such a sexy color, and we should all feel more sensuous in the colder months.
A note to readers: On Love Is Blind: UK, one of the women wore a red lipstick to meet her fiancé, and spoiler — it was then, as anyone could have predicted, smeared all over both of their faces. (Also, why was every woman on that show reapplying lipgloss before kissing???????? Is that an English thing????) Though VIOLETTE_FR Petal Bouche has truly remarkable staying power, even through kissing, know that it may not withstand a wet makeout, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend you wear it to get engaged.
Megan: That red!!! So rich, so warm. I have to share a blush recommendation too — it's really the only blush I'll ever wear. I lucked into a sample-size compact of Dior Backstage Rosy Glow Blush in Pink when I was a teenager and rediscovered it after college.
My (also prominent!) cheeks came to life under this color so much that I made a New Year's resolution to "wear more blush."
Ansley: Earlier you brought up this idea of loving consumption, but not overconsumption. What is consumption to you? The pursuit of and joy in decadence, but a considered approach to it, perhaps?
Megan: I think you nailed it with a considered "pursuit of and joy in decadence." But if I pull back from thinking about the global supply chain for a second, which admittedly isn't always easy, and reconceive of goods as things — if I pull back from the emotional rush of consumption and lean into the act of inviting a thing into my life, fully contemplating its accompanying weight — I enter into relationship with that thing. I can be more present and meditative in my daily life when I'm really living with my things.
Ansley: We have so much the same brain that we both want to be flushed and feel beautiful and maybe to even wade into lavishness. Am I right to assume that you are also a big believer in expensive organic cotton underwear? Ever since I purchased a few Oddobody pairs in 2022, I've become completely enamored, and am slowly, methodically, when there are sales, reconfiguring my underwear drawer.
Megan: Ansley, are you a mindreader? Obviously I too believe in expensive cotton underwear. I've become loyal to Subset (neé Knickey) for their Organic Cotton High Rise Brief.
I think they're kind of a French cut, which is something I think girls should learn in sex education, probably — how much of youth is spent enduring mediocre underwear? A French cut is high-waisted but still sexy because they cut so high on the leg. These underwear respect the female form. No notes.
Ansley: … I am also collecting French cut underwear!!!! French cuts, French makeup, summer sausage — we have, and I really do love to report this, extremely good taste.
Looking for the perfect gift for, well, not exactly Megan and Ansley, but someone else in your life? We're taking requests for personalized gift recommendations here. For a chance for your request to be featured in our next gift guide, out on Tuesday, Dec. 10, please submit your cry for help by 12 p.m. ET on Sunday, Dec. 8. Later cries will be considered for future gift guides. (Rest assured, we really will read every submission.)
