THE GOSPEL OF JULIA FOX

WITH HER BLEACHED EYEBROWS, HEADTO-TOE DENIM, AND ABSOLUTELY ZERO FILTER, THE QUEEN OF NEW YORK PROVES SHE WAS BORN TO BE FAMOUS.

- JESSICA BENNETT

Julia Fox is done with men. No, really, she’s had it. She is not dating, she isn’t having sex, she has no desire to be intimate with anyone. “I want to be left alone,” she says, in her punctuated vocal fry. “Like, don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t bother me.” She’s not just talking about men she’s had relationships with—although you can make your own assumptions about one of her recent exes. This is about men at large. Men who, according to Fox, don’t recognize their privilege. Men with fragile notions of their masculinity. Men who are deadbeat dads, and male politicians who make the kinds of policy decisions that leave single mothers to struggle. She’s talking about men who expect women to carry the emotional burden in a relationship (“I personally think, like, unappreciated acts of service is not a love language, you know?”) or expect their wives to take their last name “like she’s his property.”

“I don’t know,” Fox says, sucking on a vape. “I feel like knowingly engaging in a heterosexual relationship, you are signing yourself up for an unhealthy dynamic.” We are at Fox’s studio in Chinatown, surrounded by overflowing clothing and a wall full of shoes, where she comes to write, usually on Mondays and Tuesdays, when her twoyear-old son, Valentino, is with his father. (Yes, Julia Fox is raising a boy who will become a man.) “Those are, like, my only two days to work,” she says. Fox is reflecting on the past year, wearing a Fox News sweatshirt that has “The Julia Show” emblazoned across the top, which could just as well describe how it’s been going.