Welcome to the Summer of Sin
Forget Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter rodeo and Zendaya’s tennis serves for Challengers — right now, nuncore is hotter than hell.
As the age-old proverb states: “It’s ugly until Rihanna decides it’s not”. And the latest trend she has chosen to stamp with her seal of approval? Nuncore.
The internet took a spiritual turn on Tuesday, when Interview magazine dropped its latest cover featuring the multi-hyphenate mogul lensed by Nadia Lee Cohen, wearing a Dior shirt with…a nun’s habit.
On Interview’s IG account, the image was accompanied by a blurry, 70’s porno-lens-style video of Ms Robyn Fenty pulling at the open shirt and grabbing her naked breast, while seductively snarling a glossy, red-lipped mouth at the camera. Did someone say Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded?
Styled and interviewed by Mel Ottenburg, the two are long-time collaborators who are well-versed in causing a scene. Accompanied by the headline ‘Rihanna Is Ready To Confess’ the pair discussed her recent venture into motherhood, her ongoing lack of new music, and waving goodbye to being an online troll (sob).
Naturally, they also discussed her fashion icon status, with Ottenburg saying: “For our shoot, I was like, ‘Okay, what are the people missing from Rihanna? They’re really missing the cuntiest, sickest-smelling Rihanna red carpet looks.” Then I started looking at the runways and I was like, “There’s no open necks. She’s not going to like this stuff. I need a new idea.’”
Which must have led to knocking at God’s door. But RiRi didn’t invent this trend — no, no. 2024 has in fact seen a fluster of unholy activity, with her latest addition merely solidifying it in the zeitgeist.
March was a busy month for women of the cloth. Cate Blanchett starred in The New Boy, a film set in the Australian outback during the 1940s, where a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan arrives at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun — Blanchett’s Sister Eileen. Speaking on The Graham Norton Show in February ahead of its release, Blanchett said she was “fascinated by Catholicism” and that she had “always wanted to play a nun”.
Sister Eileen is stiffly Amish looking — covered head to toe in swathes of black fabric, save the white habit and wide collar. A large crucifix dangles about her neck, and strings of rosary beads adorn her waist. In a promotional still she is wearing an apron whilst wielding a pitchfork in a field, with bits of straw circling in the air around her, all of which strikes a Biblical, post-apocalyptic image.
Exactly one week after the film came out, Immaculate hit cinema screens, with pin-up-girl-du-jour Sydney Sweeney as the pivotal role of Sister Cecilia. It also features The White Lotus breakout star Simona Tabasco as fellow Sister Mary — I’m not saying male gaze, but we’re all thinking it right?
Sweeney’s character may start off looking demure – all floor-skimming skirts and white roll necks – but as the film progresses she becomes miraculously pregnant, which in turn leads to lots of gory blood, naked shower scenes and dressing as the Virgin Mary (and all of that’s just from the trailer).
Sweeney, who was also a producer on the film, told Evan Ross Katz in a pre-release interview: “Rosemary’s Baby was definitely our biggest inspiration for Immaculate, and some of my other favourites are The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, all of John Carpenter’s OG films, like Halloween.”
Finally, completing the hat-trick with its release last Friday was The First Omen, a prequel to landmark 1976 horror The Omen. The opening shot of the trailer shows several nuns lying on their fronts on the floor, muttering to themselves and playing in reverse. Inevitably, given the original film, there is a scary baby involved and the story centres around Margaret Daino’s (played by Nell Tiger Free) arrival at a Rome orphanage, which leads to her unearthing a wicked plot to spawn the antichrist.
So, what does all of this mean? Since the pandemic, there has been a consistent media bombardment of statistics and think pieces about Gen-Z’s lack of sex. A prominent study came from UCLA in 2021, which found that 38% of Californians aged 18 to 30 reported having no sexual partners — a decade-high figure. The Guardian published an article last October with the headline “Almost half of gen Z viewers want less sex on screen” citing another UCLA survey which found that the majority (51.5%) of adolescents aged 13 to 24 wanted to see more content centred around friendships and platonic relationships, rather than romantic ones.
The article was accompanied by an image of Sydney Sweeney as her character Cassie in Euphoria. Perhaps by playing a nun she’s looking to shake off “the sex and trauma seen in the HBO show” as the Guardian put it, and appeal to the demure demands of a younger audience. However, given the raunchy trailer for Immaculate and its demonic plot, this seems unlikely. Sweeney herself has also been at the centre of media discourse lately, with several right-wing outlets heralding her boobs’ mere existence as ending all things “woke” after she hosted Saturday Night Live last month.
Women having bodies is something which has long enthralled and enraged the patriarchy. Rihanna discusses how having two children has altered hers in Interview. She compliments Ottenburg on his ability as a stylist, saying: “You’ve always taken advantage of my silhouette and what my body is doing. Like when I’m mad skinny, my boobs are, like, nothing and I have a little booty, and you work with that. And now it’s like, ‘Okay, I had two babies. You really have to push this up, snatch this in, or do an illusion of a little bit of skin here.’”
Dressing as a nun (albeit a sexy one) is a statement — my body doesn’t belong to you, the public. I don’t care what you have to say about it.
But of course, the public have a lot to say about it, just like they did her Pope-inspired Met Gala outfit in 2018. Fox News, The Daily Mail and random individuals online have got themselves into a blasphemous tiz about Ri once again ‘appropriating’ religion for the provocative purposes of fashion. Yawn.
In 2024, if people are genuinely shocked or offended by a bit of tit and a nun’s habit, then I’m afraid that’s on you. Rihanna mentions God and her own faith several times throughout the interview — now I’m no religious expert, but where in the Bible does it say Thou Shalt Not Serve Cunt?
Another thing I’m not, is a horror movie fan (too scary), but even I know that the story of a nun who gets corrupted, impregnated or murdered is one that is tried and tested. The tale of a good girl gone bad (whether she’s a devoted nun, popstar or actress) continues to hold its appeal, tiresome as it may be.
But why it is back in a big way for SS24 could be down to several things — sure, there’s the much documented younger gens having less sex, drinking less, and partying less. But there’s also the rise in conservative attitudes when it comes to women’s bodies – see Sydney Sweeney’s tits and tightening abortion laws – as well as the introduction of US drag bans, continued clampdowns on gender-neutral toilets and attacks on gender non-conforming people.
Riffing on religious figures, imagery and injecting “a touch of camp” (as the Guardian described Blanchett’s performance in The New Boy) is hitting the far-right where it hurts them the most. And with that being said, may the long, hot summer of sin reign.
