I Don't Care

*Actually I really do

Jun 06, 2026

I REALLY DON’T CARE. DO U?

Perhaps those are the true inaugural words of our era, as emblazoned on the back of Melania’s Jacket in the early years of Trump Presidency 1.0, when we were young and green and thought this (a Trump Presidency, a Melania First Lady) could never happen again. Writes Vanity Fair:

Remember, back in 2018, when Melania Trump visited a detention center housing migrant children, and inexplicably chose to make the trip wearing a jacket with the words “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?” emblazoned on the back? At the time, the reaction was a deafening “What in God’s name is wrong with this woman,” on account of the fact that the garment appeared to send the message that she didn’t care about the plight of the kids who’d been separated from their parents thanks to her husband. In response, said husband insisted that the first lady was sending a message to the “Fake News Media” that she didn’t care what it said about her, a claim she later doubled down on. Yet according to a forthcoming book, the jacket’s message was actually meant for a party of one: Ivanka Trump.

The article goes on to say it was the First Daughter with whom Melania was battling for premier status in the East Wing and Melania had reached the point in the tension where it was time to just put a sort of screw-you to Ivanka on…a jacket? I really don’t care though what this petty nonsense was about, do you? Because ultimately the timing for wearing such a bold-backed announcement was atrocious and tone-deaf, or simply cruel in light of her husband rounding up our immigrant children, but maybe she’s too dumb or self-interested to even notice. I don’t care about her intentions or mindset or lack thereof. Just the fact that she did this. And also, there’s no more East Wing, so…

WE DO NOT CARE

Now we are older and know better. We know so much we are frozen ice queen bitches. If Trump can win twice, then these pigs really can fly, and I may very well be a monkey’s uncle. We know anything is possible and at the same time: nothing at all. We (women of a certain age) also know the patriarchal machinery of the world seems endlessly eager to devour nubile breeding-age ladies and just as happy to then discard them chewed up on the other side of menopause, which is where we languish now in the shoals of this societal ambergris limbo. The Guardian writes of our fearless feckless new hero for this new liminal space:

If you’re a woman of a certain age with a phone, you’ve probably seen one of Melani Sanders’ We Do Not Care Club posts. In a fleecy dressing gown with reading glasses hanging off her like Christmas tree baubles, a sleep mask wonkily on her forehead, Sanders stares deadpan at the camera. “We are putting the world on notice that we simply do not care much any more,” she says. She uncaps a highlighter with her teeth, spitting the lid out of shot, then starts flatly listing stuff members of the We Do Not Care Club, her virtual community of menopausal women, don’t care about. “We do not care we have to go to therapy weekly; you are probably the reason we are there.” “We do not care if we asked you the question 13 times. We do not remember the answer; say it again.” “We do not care if you realize we are not wearing a bra: this, my friend, is freedom.

I’ll add that her club includes the peri-post-menopausal, here here, so many of us teetering for years on this precipice with no clue what we’re getting into because (surprise surprise) the science hasn’t really gotten that far, or at least any science that anybody talks about or doctors even prescribe. We certainly didn’t learn any of this from our mothers. For Melani, this started from surgery, in only her mid-40s just over a year ago in May 2025.

…when Sanders, 45, sat frazzled and sleep-deprived in her car, fetching the supplements that kept her (somewhat) sane since entering surgically induced perimenopause, she was wondering if she was alone. Pre-hysterectomy, she was a perfectionist, running her home, family and life with military precision; no more. Her sports bra was skew-whiff; her hair dishevelled. “I said: ‘Melani, you really just don’t care any more … Is it just a me thing? I just hit record.’”

2.2 million followers on Instagram and 1.5M on TikTok, a book, a website, and whatever else later she clearly has her answer. This is a movement, a sisterhood. We are not alone. Together, we share what we don’t care about in the comments and she gathers our rage/indifference to announce from her spiral notebook.

We do not care if we are looking for our glasses and they are on our face; be careful how you let us know that information.

We do not care if the veins in our legs look like road maps; if we’re lost, we will use them.

We do not care if we rest more, say less, and choose ourselves unapologetically.

We do not care if you miss the old version of us, she has retired.

We do not care if you are offended by our boundaries, [they weren’t] built for your comfort.

We do not care if we made plans with you today and we don’t want to do it today. We are the not same person we were yesterday.

Melania Trump was 48 when she donned that Don’t Care coat. Was she the earliest foremother of the “We Do Not Care” club and this is our long lost (false) flag? I think I know what the sisterhood might say and it sounds like this: [insert chorus refrain here].

I DON’T CARE

As a PBS kid a few things were true. Mr. Rogers would reliably switch his jacket for a cardigan sweater upon entry and an ornery, misguided boy would end up in the stomach of a lion. I loved the carton version of this Pierre story by Maurice Sendak from 1962, sung by Carole King in 1975. The full text here, because it’s fun if ultimately preachy:

There was once a boy named Pierre
Who only would say, I don’t care!
Read his story, my friend
For you’ll find at the end
That a suitable moral lies there

One day his mother said
When Pierre climbed out of bed
-Good morning, darling boy, you are my only joy
Pierre said-I don’t care!
-What would you like to eat?
-I don’t care!
-Some lovely cream of wheat?
-I don’t care!
-Don’t sit backwards in your chair
-I don’t care!
-Or pour syrup on your hair
-I don’t care!
-You are acting like a clown
-I don’t care!
-And we have to go to town
-I don’t care!
-Don’t you want to come, my dear?
-I don’t care!
-Would you rather stay right here?
-I don’t care!
So his mother left him there

His father said-Get off your head
Or I will march you up to bed!
Pierre said-I don’t care!
-I would think that you could see--
-I don’t care!
-Your head is where your feet should be!
-I don’t care!
-If you keep standing upside down--
-I don’t care!
-We’ll never get to town
-I don’t care!
-If only you would say, I care
-I don’t care!
-I’d let you fold the folding chair
-I don’t care!
So his parents left him there
They didn’t take him anywhere

Now as the night began to fall
A hungry lion paid a call
He looked Pierre right in the eye
And asked him if he’d like to die
Pierre said-I don’t care!
-I can eat you, don’t you see?
-I don’t care!
-And you will be inside of me
-I don’t care!
-Then you will never have to bother--
-I don’t care!
-With a mother and a father
-I don’t care!
-Is that all you have to say?
-I don’t care!
-Then I’ll eat you, if I may
-I don’t care!
So the lion ate Pierre

Arriving home at six o’clock
His parents had a dreadful shock!
They found the lion sick in bed and cried
-Pierre is surely dead!
They pulled the lion by the hair
They hit him with the folding chair
His mother asked-Where is Pierre?
The lion answered-I don’t care!
His father said-Pierre’s in there!

They rushed the lion into town
The doctor shook him up and down
And when the lion gave a roar
Pierre fell out upon the floor
He rubbed his eyes and scratched his head
And laughed because he wasn’t dead
His mother cried and held him tight
His father asked-Are you allright?
Pierre said-I am feeling fine
Please take me home, it’s half past nine

The lion said-If you would care
To climb on me, I’ll take you there
Then everyone looked at Pierre
Who shouted-Yes, indeed, I care!
The lion took them home to rest
And stayed on as a weekend guest
The moral of Pierre is: CARE!

If you want to sing along:

I DON’T REALLY CARE

And now look how we’ve come full circle. History is a pattern and patterns repeat. The obvious lesson has not been learned. The all-caps moral was not integrated into our collective being. Trump 2.0, so much worse than the first. How did we get here again? Not caring enough is how we got here, and not caring enough is how we might stay here forever. We are stuck in the belly of the lion where spitting highlighter caps willy-nilly is our only weapon and Melania doing…whatever is Melania doing? Does anyone care? Not even our President apparently, not even him. She flicks his hand away with only slightly disguised disgust. She says “I don’t give a f* about Chreestmas” to her good friend on the phone with the same embittered ease she used to back-billboard with that coat. Honesty so awful it’s hard to believe.

The ambivalent wife of the Not-Care in Chief.

Trump is in his own zero f*s era. As he wobbles toward 80 some call it “sunsetting” and define it as end-game dementia, others just see him leaning into his true terrible self the same way a Melani/Melania menopausal woman might. Just this week from Time, his filter of course is off despite fragile negotiations with a country he stirred a war with:

When asked by CNBC about the possibility of Iran ending talks, Trump said that Iranian officials had not told him they would stop negotiating, but added that if the talks were over, “I don’t really care,” saying the exchange had “started to get very boring.”
“If they’re over, they’re over,” he insisted.

As he builds a ballroom, gilds everything in sight, demands a giant Arc de Trump, puts his ugly mug on a $250 bill for the anniversary of our American revolution against monarchy (ahem), and lines the National Mall’s reflecting pool with tacky Florida blue pool liner, Trump also admits out loud that he gives not-a-toot about the state of crisis in our wallets. Writes the Guardian,

Donald Trump has said the growing financial pressure inflicted on Americans by the war on Iran is “not even a little bit” motivating him to make a peace deal with Tehran.
With US inflation at a three-year high, and fuel costs still climbing after a sharp rise in oil prices, the US president said on Tuesday that he is not focused on the economic hardship sparked by the conflict.
“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran [is] they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House before boarding a plane to China. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
The remarks come ahead of a US midterm election campaign season which looks to be defined by mounting concerns around affordability.

There’s so much chaos and inflation coming at us in a flotsam drip all day long, it’s too much to care about. It doesn’t all fit in the crowded cranium. We’ll drown. Or just die of despair. Best to just float here on the lazy river with eye blinders and ear plugs and our soggy summer escape fiction and…

*BUT WAIT!

May I have a word? Yeah me in the back. Well, mid-section of the theater for a late-run showing of a feature-length film moments before the end of its cinematic lifespan, for a matinee, or if I have a coupon, or if it’s a space movie that requires a big screen to get the full infinity-and-I’m-just-a-speck-of-dust effect. I finally took my girls to see Project Hail Mary because I’m usually the last to know about anything popular, and here I go crying before the movie even gets started. I know how this will go without even seeing the trailer. I am moved in advance just from a hint of the premise in the opening seconds. Here we are again in a cellulose world where the world is ending. Yup I feel you. And here we are again where a few lucky folks have the power to actually stop it.

This is a stupendous thing to me on multiple fronts. I cry because I’m massively envious. I envy a planet where people know the world is in imminent danger and are somehow actually collectively activated to do something to stop it. And then secondly, I’m envious of the folks chosen or self-selected to be the ones to stop it. How thrilling would that be? Talk about being “present”! Ryan Gosling’s Ryland is the charming reluctant hero but of course you know he will deliver despite all his attempts otherwise. How could you not say yes and step up in such a moment (even if you need to be kidnapped and drugged). But no one here on “this” earth at “this” time apparently would.

I cry at the beauty of what he gets to see outside his spaceship window. I cry when he gets to go witness the problematic but sparkling space phenomenon that is eating the sun and when he will risk his life (again) to take samples that will save not just one solar system but two. I cry when he really does save multiple civilizations—ours and one made from animated stacked rocks or whatever that is. I cry when he turns back for his special rocky alien friend and chooses love.

I cry because he gets to be the hero and oh what I wouldn’t do to be so big and so selfless. I want to live a giant, important life like that. If hapless (but genius) teacher Ryland can do all this while scooting across galaxies, then I can do whatever I want here in my little house in my robe, all day everyday, because life is short and democracy is dying and money is paper which may or may not have Trump’s face on it, and well screw it.

I can say that because I do care. I care very much. I am inflated with hope, if temporarily, as these movies intend. Ryland didn’t want to go on this mission because he cared too much, I think. He was afraid he would fail. Fearlessness is required even if we have to fake it, even while we remain very afraid. Can we hurry up with our own Hail Mary already? Some real final threatening push to wake up and launch a ship or something dramatic to save us? We need our this-is-it moment. Because being a member of the “We Don’t Care Club” doesn’t mean we don’t care about anything; it means we get to discard worry and effort and time over things that don’t matter. To make room for what does.

I want to add something important here about obstinate Pierre. It’s not the lion that just gobbles up the kid. The kid opens up the jaw of the lion and steps—willingly!—in. He does that to himself. And he can just as easily undo this error. It’s never too late.

I don’t care if you see me crying. That’s what I do at interstellar/armageddon movies when it’s time to press eject. Let’s go!

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