Will you have anxiety by the pool
or will you have yourself a Carmela Soprano Summer?
(note: this newsletter doesn’t contain any meaningful spoilers, or anything meaningful, in general.)
This is the year of Tony Soprano Summer.
Last year, after 6 seasons of watching The Sopranos, I finally finished the series - just in time for its 25th anniversary (and for the show to go viral - again). I wondered when the shoe was going to drop throughout all 86 episodes and yet the ending still managed to surprise me. The last scene felt like someone mailed me the aforementioned shoe, covered in blood, with a note that said, “Fuck you.”
I loved it.
My experience watching The Sopranos (or as my household would come to say, “watching a Gabagool”) was likely that of most liberal millennial women watching a near-vintage, politically incorrect HBO series “for the culture”. I cringed at the racial slurs, winced at the domestic violence, yet pressed “Next Episode” at the end of every episode to see what that wheezing, anxious, sexist mob boss was gonna do next. Throughout the show, I found myself googling Italian slang, racketeering methods, and HIPAA laws as they applied to therapizing criminals.
Thusly, I do have some reservations about having a Tony Soprano Summer. Despite having an affinity for being a “chooch,” I’d like to stay out of jail and/or the hospital.
HBO loves dumping us into existential crisis, which is what kept me hooked to this show. One simply cannot forget Christoper’s very articulate monologue from season one about the universally relatable depression that creeps in when you realize you are lying in the bed you didn’t realize you ran out of time to make for yourself.
Despite relating to a murderer’s malaise, I did my best to watch with little to no emotional allegiance to the Bad Italians. However, I did find it hard not to feel for a specific character. Tony’s wife, Carmela.
All this lady wanted was to flip houses and day trade in fucking PEACE. Instead, her mob-wife life was stuck in the liminal space of knowing too much, yet not enough, especially when it came to Tony’s goomahhhs (mistresses) and how she paid her bills.
The lady contained multitudes. After being lusted after by Furio, a sensitive man armed with tight pants and a hypnotizing ponytail, she remains true to her marriage. She puts a priest in his place. She hides money and shit all around her painstakingly pastel house. She threatens a college admissions administrator with a ricotta pie. She felt shame about her life being “financed by crime,” yet not only did she keep up with the Joneses, she surpassed them, with her middle finger held high. She struggles against the impervious elitism of WASP-y motherhood only for her children to become entitled assholes. Throughout the show she remained the HBIC, with her French tipped talons, ever evolving haircut, and impeccably well-balanced necklace stack.
I could write a 100 page dissertation on Adriana so I am not even going to go there, but of course she is an honorable mention in all of this.
It is not surprising that over the past year or so the chronically online, young (and mainly) white women of the internet have reduced characters and people like Carmela to leopard print, gold jewelry, and acrylics and deem the result as the “mob-wife aesthetic.” As with most trends, I assume it is over as soon as it makes its way to gen pop’s cultural consciousness.
The mob-wife aesthetic barely captures the essence of the real life Carmelas-of-it-all. The kinds of women that have an impenetrable innate strength and built-in bullshit detectors. Women who are raised to be tough, funny, loyal to a fault. They’ve dealt with generational trauma, they are daughters and granddaughters of immigrants. Okay and yes, they are very likely very feminine women from the northeastern part of the country with impeccable taste in 14K gold jewelry. Maybe they own real fur, I don’t know. I am literally just a baby with a keyboard.
Substacker Viv Chen posits that, “The mob wife persona is relationship nihilism in a fur coat, an aesthetic symbol of reverse-uno-ing the patriarchy. The nomenclature of a trend speaks volumes. Notice the contrast between clean girl and mob wife.”
This feels correct enough for me to lean into, I think.
That said, I am going to have myself a Carmela Soprano Summer and I invite everyone else to do the same as long as it’s not just wearing press-ons and drinking wine. We all now know that there is so much more to being a mob wife.
Our Carmela Soprano Summer 2024 affirmation will be:
I will persevere, but I am also gonna YEARN.
I will invest in making my home beautiful and consider textured wallpapers.
I will wear high heels in unexpected places.
I will read and sort my mail in a timely manner.
I will lovingly fret over the people I care about.
I will cold call people from a landline.
I will only accept apologies in the form of jewelry or food.
I will become more financially literate. Maybe learn to day trade.
I will forgive and mostly forget.
I am going walk with my hips loose and my head held high.
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Lastly, if you decide to rewatch or start this series for the first time, I highly recommend singing this version of the intro song over the actual intro song.
Okay, love you bye!
