Tacky : love letters to the worst culture we have to offer
(Book)

"TACKY is about the power of pop culture -- like any art, low or high -- to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These fifteen essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we've learned to hate to love -- frosted tips and glosses, Sex and the City, The Cheesecake Factory -- into kinder and sharper perspective. Each essay revolves around a different maligned (and yet, Rax would argue, vital) cultural artifact and its entwinement with Rax's millennial coming-of-age: an essay about the gym-tan-laundry exuberance of Jersey Shore morphs into an excavation of grief over the death of her father, who loved the show; in another, Guy Fieri helps her heal from an abusive relationship. The result is a collection that captures a personal and generational experience with clarity, humor, and heartfelt honesty"--