In case you haven’t noticed, an early-aughts revival is upon us, and it’s swinging into full force. Everyone is talking about Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, Paris Hilton is making headlines again, and that comeback low-rise jeans have been threatening to make for the past few years seems destined to hit any day now. Yet another cultural hallmark of the Y2K era that appears to be having a revival? Celebrity couples wearing each other’s blood in necklaces.
For those who don’t recall, Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton infamously wore necklaces containing each others’ blood during their pre-Brangelina marriage, which lasted from 2000 to 2003. Two decades later, it would seem another Hollywood couple, Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, have taken a certain blood-stained page out of Jolie and Thornton’s book. In a Valentine’s Day tribute to Fox over the weekend, the rapper revealed he wears the blood of his beloved around his neck in an Instagram caption, writing, simply, “I wear your blood around my neck.” A series of accompanying photos includes a snap of a round pendant with a splotch of what one can only assume is probably Megan Fox’s blood.
It’s worth noting that Thornton later downplayed the media hype surrounding he and Jolie’s gory jewelry preferences. “The necklaces were a very simple thing, ‘Hey let’s poke our fingers with a pen and smear a little blood on there and when we’re away from each other we’ll wear the necklace,’” Thornton told People back in 2018. “It was that easy. But by the time it came out in the press it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks.”
However, in light of recent rumors swirling around a certain Armie Hammer — who has been accused of sending women messages in which, among other things, he claims to want to drink their blood — blood-based romantic gestures can’t help but take on a slightly darker tone in this, the year 2021. Then again, this is a much darker time. In many ways, this early-aughts revival has proven not so much a renaissance as a reckoning. Britney is in the news again not for dropping new music or producing a Crossroads remake, but for a documentary detailing the media maltreatment that led to her downfall. Paris Hilton has re-entered the spotlight not for returning to the New York nightlife scene she dominated 20 years ago, but for advocating against the private correctional school at which she was abused as a teen. The early aughts are back, baby, except now we’re all older, wiser and sadder, and we’re realizing the world is a much, much darker place than we thought it was.
Anyway, congrats to MGK and Megan Fox on their blood necklace. Love is in the air, blood is around our necks (and maybe on our hands) and soon our jeans will be around our hips.
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