required reading
recs include: skin acceptance, puberty, bodice ripping,
Hi reader. How are you? I’m currently recovering from one of the famous illnesses. (Shall not be named here.) (Yes I somehow got it again.) That said, I wanted to take this as an opportunity to send out a quick list of recommended reading.
Given that I work in media (hate myself) and I try to be an overall well-read person (try is the key word), I thought I might get in the habit of sharing my favorite articles from the week with my beloved subscribers, in case you’re looking for any more enlightening or informative pieces to get you through life this week. I’ll also share some of my recently published work, if I think it might be interesting to you.
I’m going to send these out on Sundays. Consider it a syllabus of sorts. (School vibes?) I’ll call this series: Required Reading. Here’s what I’ve got for you this week…
(P.S. Don’t worry. Regular newsletters still to come as well. Going to send those on Fridays.)
The Girl in the Picture by Madeleine Watts for Harper’s Magazine. I’ve been wanting to recommend this for awhile but keep forgetting. It’s incredible. (And courtesy of Ale.)
Body Acceptance Stops At The Skin. Why? by Jessica DeFino via her newsletter The Unpublishable. A favorite quote from the interview below:
“I think just the fact that normal human traits — texture, hyperpigmentation, fine lines, wrinkles, pimples — are messaged as ‘issues’ and ‘flaws’ says it all. Trying to medically manipulate your skin to meet some arbitrary idea of ‘good skin’ on a daily basis is no different from trying to manipulate your body to meet an arbitrary ideal of thinness on a daily basis.”
The new quantified self by Haley Nahman for her newsletter Maybe Baby. I read this today and thought it was definitely worth including. In it, she writes about some of the sentiments I attempted to express through my recent newsletter that mentions “book reading goals.” (Though, as always, Nahman articulates the idea much better than I can.)
The Case For Bodice Ripping by Sophie Gilbert for The Atlantic. I admittedly don’t agree with *everything* in here, but it makes a good case for lining your bookshelves with more Brigderton and Colleen Hoover.
notes from the end of summer by Rayne Fisher-Quann for her newsletter internet princess. A favorite quote from the piece below:
spend a month watching a great movie. watch the director’s cut and the behind-the-scenes documentary and then watch the films that influenced it and read the director’s favourite book. work to understand things, and not just the things themselves but the conditions that created them and the impact those things had on the world around them. let those things become a part of you instead of a distraction from yourself. i think the act of loving something should be generative and consuming — it should add something to who you are and lead you to a new understanding of all the parts that were already there. when i scroll on tiktok or whatever, i can’t get away from the feeling that almost nothing there is really meant to be loved — it’s just meant to be snorted, basically, and occasionally to get you to buy something.
Taylor Jenkins Reid Wants You to Consider the Price of Ambition by me (!) for Coveteur, where we talk about her new novel Carrie Soto Is Back. I didn’t *love* the book, to be honest, but I thought we had an interesting conversation.
Reader, that’s all I’ve got for you. Have a great week and see you on Friday, when I’ll share a conversation I had with the creators of the Good Children podcast. TTYL <3
❤️❤️❤️