Dear Loyal Readers,
If you’re a longtime subscriber, you know that from time to time, the universe aligns. When that happens, you get a theme issue!
Past theme issues have been extremely popular. For example, I continue to receive thoughtful notes from you about “The Capitalism Issue,” “The Man Issue,” and “School, Three Ways,” — just to name a few.
This week’s issue puts the idea of “the female body” at the center and includes four pieces that explore the theme. First up is our lead article by Margaret Atwood. Partly autobiographical, and written with incisive, ironic humor, “The Female Body” offers a introductory context for the pieces that follow. I encourage you to start with this article, even though it might take a few reads to discern its deep meaning.
But if you’ve already read Ms. Atwood’s piece (entirely likely), I’ve included three other great articles for you in today’s issue. They’re about:
If you like one or more of the articles, go ahead, hit reply or email me. I’d love to hear from you. Or if you prefer, tell your friends and family to sign up for Article Club.
⭐️ Big news: Author Gail Cornwall will join us on August 25 to discuss her article, “Is the hardest job in education convincing parents to send their kids to a San Francisco public school?” I’m excited and grateful. Want to participate?
We’re meeting on Zoom on Sunday, August 25, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. It’d be great to see you there. All you need to do is sign up below. If you have questions, feel free to hit reply or email me here.
1️⃣ The Female Body
Margaret Atwood: “The Female Body has many uses. It's been used as a door-knocker, a bottle-opener, as a clock with a ticking belly, as something to hold up lampshades, as a nutcracker, just squeeze the brass legs together and out comes your nut. It bears torches, lifts victorious wreaths, grows copper wings and raises aloft a ring of neon stars; whole buildings rest on its marble heads.
“It sells cars, beer, shaving lotion, cigarettes, hard liquor; it sells diet plans and diamonds, and desire in tiny crystal bottles. Is this the face that launched a thousand products? You bet it is, but don’t get any funny big ideas, honey, that smile is a dime a dozen. It does not merely sell, it is sold.”
By Margaret Atwood • Michigan Quarterly Review • 5 min • Gift Link
2️⃣ What Tweens Get From Sephora
Jia Tolentino: “I approached a pair of employees at Sephora and asked them if they saw a lot of tweens in the store. They let out simultaneous groans. ‘Girl,’ one said. ‘They come in with their little lists, from TikTok, they know exactly what they want, and they laugh at you. Like, if you tell them they don’t need a serum, they will literally laugh.’
“These days, children want to look like tweens, tweens want to look like teen-agers, teen-agers want to look like grown women, and grown women — dreaming of porelessness, wearing white socks and penny loafers and hair bows — evidently want to look like ten-year-old girls.”
By Jia Tolentino • The New Yorker • 11 min • Gift Link
Max, who belongs to loyal reader and VIP Melissa, loves tug of war, food, and belly rubs. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets
3️⃣ Bama Confidential: Rush
Anne Helen Petersen: “The best way to describe Kylan’s appearance is that she looks like a doll. Big brown eyes, perfectly highlighted hair, fake eyelashes, uniform spray tan always tastefully applied. That might sound like pageant glam, which it is, but it’s increasingly just everyday glam for a certain type of woman between the ages of 16 and 26. (If you’ve watched any of the ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos for people doing #Rushtok, you know exactly how formidable their makeup skills have become. I didn’t even know this many types of foundation existed).
“To an outsider, Kylan looks like someone who’d easily get a bid to every house on campus. But anyone fluent in the Greek system knows that the criteria can be very opaque and very narrow. She might have looked the part, but I also knew that there were houses that looked at Kylan’s Ohio address and her TikTok popularity and thought: not one of us. Put differently: it doesn’t matter if you’re a beauty queen if you’re not following the top sorority’s inscrutable rules for acceptance.
By Anne Helen Petersen • Culture Study • 23 min • Gift Link
4️⃣ Pause
Mary Reufle: “I recently came across an old cryalog that I kept during the month of April in 1998. ‘C’ stands for the fact that I cried, the number of C’s represents the number of times I cried, and ‘NC’ indicates that I did not cry on that day.
“The saddest thing is, I now find the cryalog very funny, and laugh when I look at it. But when I kept it, I wanted to die. Literally, to kill myself – with an iron, a steaming hot turned-on iron. This was not depression, this was menopause.
“Reading this, or any other thing ever written about menopause, will not help you in any way, for how you respond to menopause is not up to you, it is up to your body, and though you believe now that you can control your body (such is your strength after all that yoga), you cannot.”
By Mary Ruefle • Granta • 5 min • Gift Link
Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀
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