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The Nearly NORMAL YOUNG ADULTHOOD of VIVIAN WILSON
New York magazine
|The Cut Special Issue - Fall 2025
Her father is the richest man alive with an anti-trans vendetta. She's still figuring out what she wants to do when she grows up.
GIVENCHY BY SARAH BURTON Dress, at givenchy.com.
How the fuck do you eat these?” asks Vivian Wilson, staring skeptically at the oysters on the dinner table in front of us. “Oh my God! They smell like the ocean!” It was her idea to order them. She couldn't remember whether she even liked oysters, so instead of getting a full dozen, she asked the waiter for two, one for each of us. “I feel so fancy ordering appetizers! I haven't had fancy food in forever!” she tells me when the two lonely bivalves arrive on ice. “I don’t even know if this is fancy.” It’s not really: We're sitting on the sidewalk patio of an unremarkable seafood joint on Ventura in the Valley, and, honestly, the oysters don't look entirely fresh. Wilson takes a second to psych herself up. “I love seafood, I love seafood, I love seafood,” she mutters before finally committing to it. She grimaces, then promptly washes it down with a sip of her piña colada. “Oh, girl. This is so strong, girl,” she says, sliding the cocktail across the table. “Have a sip, girl.”
Finally, Wilson is starting to show some spirit. When I picked her up at her house an hour earlier, she barely made eye contact or spoke above a whisper. She blamed her state on staying up till well past 5 a.m. that morning getting stoned and watching The Hunger Games. “I can be a bit closed off,” she tells me. “I have a lower social battery than most people.” As she gradually opens up over dinner, I learn that, in addition to staying up too late too often, she subsists on takeout, mostly “cheap” sushi; she doesn’t call her mom enough; she loves video games and K-pop and
This story is from the The Cut Special Issue - Fall 2025 edition of New York magazine.
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