#doing cressidas makeover has made me love her!!

[nectar-cellar]

rest of the cook family: lady cook & cressida wells makeovers

the lore says cressida is lady's personal, live-in esthetician but in my mind, cressida is more like lady's esthetician + personal assistant + babysitter for the family's teen daughter + captive audience for lady's emotional breakdowns.

in her youth, lady used to be a model and actress in bridgeport before she decided to marry jeffrey cook for his money, and to live the life of a pampered stay-at-home trophy wife. 20-ish years later, she finds herself painfully bored, lonely, and absolutely hating her husband and her daughter. the only things that distract her from her misery are her shopping trips, consulting her plastic surgeons for procedures to try next, and getting treatments at the spa. recently, she has been trying to spend more time at the upscale SOLSTICE members-only gym wellness club downtown, taking yoga and pilates classes in the afternoons and evenings. she hopes to make some girlfriends, and well, the attention from the hunky trainers and gymgoers is nice too. for a few hours, she's in a luxurious bubble full of beautiful people and organic handcrafted fruit smoothies and eucalyptus-scented towels, where none of her troubles can follow her.

cressida hates her job but at least the cooks pay well, and at least she isn't hunched over all day at the spa giving massages and pedicures and breathing in the fumes of god knows what chemicals. occasionally lady even gives her some designer items she doesn't want anymore, which cressida promptly sells off at the consignment.

on cressida's rare days off, she likes to go out dancing with the other girls from the spa, drop the customer service persona, and catch them up on the latest cook household drama. all of them take turns venting about their wealthy clients' bullshit shenanigans over drinks and appies. cressida wants to eventually meet a guy, settle down and start a family, but she's not in a hurry. working for the cooks has taught her the importance of choosing a partner wisely because she knows she doesn't want to end up miserable like them.

[titikawai]

Why show Polin disappointed me :

Hi everyone, back on another long as rant. I just finished this season and felt betrayed so I decided to type !

I read the 4th book not really knowing what to expect as I boycotted season 1 (left traumatised from reading half of the first book) only watched season 2 (which I love so much) and didn’t like the Queen Charlotte season (sorry not sorry).

To be fair, when I started reading the book, I couldn’t care less for Polin as I did not like the way show Colin treated Penelope like a dog, only there to make him feel better about himself. I had hopes that Penelope would run away to find a better suiter after that terrible finale on season 2. I actually loved the way Eloise confronted her about being LW and the fact their friendship is challenged.

Even though I heard Colin was going to be an ass in this book I still gave it a go. I was surprised and ended up loving the book so much I bought it to put it on my shelf. I found out that, in the novel, Colin was way less of an ass and a much more sensitive character that sometimes did not understand his own feelings. I absolutely loved the plot involving his jealousy towards Penelope’s writing in comparison with his own. I understood his fear to become a nobody, to not find his purpose or something he would be « good at », known for. His need to prove himself to his family and others that he is more than a pretty face.

I also loved how fervently Penelope defended her work as an extension of herself, someone she wanted to be, had always been but was to scared to be in real life. I loved how the book explained how one would feel if they had never received loved and thought they were doomed to never get it so much so that they do not even try anymore.

Finally, I loved how pure their loved felt. In that regard how their relationship was more love than lust (even though there was still some heavy smut scenes). I loved how they did not just f*ck, but MADE love! I felt like their relationship wasn’t the « passionate » type which to me is a good thing because it means you love the person much more than you love their body that you worship because of the soul that inhabits hit. I felt like Polin was the perfect couple as they completed and accepted each other (apart from that scene where he grabs her by the arm and every mention of anger management like WTF stop giving main male characters toxic traits to try and make it seem hot to the audience, it is not). Also, I especially loved how Colin made it his priority to protect Penelope and especially her emotional state. He is often portrayed fearing for her reputation as he does not want her to isolate herself and go into a pattern of self hatred. He hates the way she speaks ill of herself and will not let anyone, that involves her mother, to disrespect her.

I now realised why I didn’t like show Polin as much as book Polin : it is because Show Colin has nothing in common with his book alter ego. In the show, Colin didn’t even realise how bad he hurt Penelope and managed to rekindle their friendship by telling her how SHE make HIM feel (here again taking the spotlight from her and drawing it to him) and not how much he cared about her well-being and self-image.

I absolutely hated how they turned Colin into just another rake turned right by the « ugly girl who had a makeover and that he now notices because of that particular reason and how fuckable you now look ». This storyline should have stayed in the 2000s ESPECIALLY with Polin. Indeed in the book Colin gets feelings for Penelope once he grew up and became more mature enabling him to love someone. While Penelope matured and started to loved herself and that helped her accept love from someone else and expect nothing less.

In the series, I hated how helpless Penelope felt. Firstly because she did not clap back to haters as she did in the book but also because Colin did not come to defend her once. He didn’t not care to stand up to Cressida or his friends / the gentlemen when they insulted Penelope. Wouldn’t you stand up for anyone if they were insulted and ran of crying!? ESPECIALLY if you are supposed to be in love with her. He did not care to embarrass her before a room full of people and her potential future husband while he could have just asked to see her in person (this element was added for drama but still gives huge red flags)

I hate how they turned Colin’s passion for travelling into a joke or a metaphor for sexual tourism. This only makes him appear more shallow (even though he came up with gifts for his family which I found cute). It makes it seem like him travelling is just an excuse to appear deep in society and this gives such fratboy vibes it almost made me ill. Where is the poet, the writer who paints landscapes in his mind and puts it on paper! He was turned into a smut writer!!!! How disappointing!

Why is it that he didn’t get to find out LW’s identity before he asks Penelope to marry him?!? What about their common love for writing? Him wanting to marry her anyway because her being LW makes him love her even more : because he loves her for her, their relationship and not because he had wet dreams of her. I wish they put in scenes where they had openhearted conversations about for instance : her feeling bad because of her spinster status, how she is scared no one will ever love her; his writing; his quest for purpose and put in none of that rake or Lord Debling/husband nonsense they created because they needed to fill a whole they dug!

Oh and WTF was that carriage scene music choice!?!?!???!!!!!!?? I cringed so hard. I liked the carriage scene overall even though I didn’t like the events that led to it

On what I loved…

I ugly cried when Portia was surprised her daughter ever believed someone would love her and refrained from holding her when she desperately needed a hug => if you are the child of a narcissistic mother, this hits so freaking deep

I loved Francesca’s storyline with the earl!!! It was genuinely sweet

I loved seeing Show Colin jealous

The modiste!!!! I love lady Delacroix so much and would have liked to see more of her friendship with Penelope. She could have helped her boost and confidence past the physical makeover level

I liked Cressida’s backstory and the comment on internalised misogyny

Wished there was more Penelope / lady Danbury moments

Loved Penelope’s sisters and her mom. I like how they portrait her toxic relationship with her daughters by focusing on her small remarks (it makes it much more realistic)

Kanthony

Wished Polin dance scene on Snow on the beach lasted longer to show their attraction without needing to make it too sexual (the eyes are the door to your soul)

Costumes, décors etc. As always

Weirdly enough, the first kiss scene

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

[soulstirringly]

i saw some theories about eloise befriending cressida and i have some thoughts about it, so stick with me for a sec, will ya? i think we'll get penelope trying to apologize to eloise right at the beginning, before the makeover, and eloise won't be willing to listen. so with that, pen's sisters probably getting married and colin being away, she decides to change things a little and stand up for herself more. then we get to the ball, her first ball with her new wardrobe. eloise is there too, and as we know from the netflix event, el will try to be more accepting of society rules just to know what is all about, keeping that in mind, she decides to socialize with the popular lot, hence cressida and her minions, and of course, cressida being the bully that she is, she notices the obvious changes that penelope made and says cruel things to her. eloise doesn't say anything as it happens, and pen leaves, as she leaves, eloise goes off on cressida and as she is doing that, we have pen going outside and the mr bridgerton scene happens. the clip that netflix netherlands posted is bit longer so we can see the camera panning on colin after pen leaves, so i think that we'll get eloise going after penelope and instead she finds colin freaking out. shonda said that peneloise is the second love story of the season so i think that they being separated won't last more than 2 episodes, if it happens to be more than that, will be to show eloise realizing that her brother is in love with lady whistledown, and that lady whistledown, or better, her best friend pen, has been in love with colin since forever.