HELLO and welcome to the 243rd installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about LaCroix! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
She Thought She Was Irish — until a DNA test opened a 100-year-old mystery, by Libby Copeland for The Washington Post, July 2017
You send out for a 23andme kit and then shit gets complicated.
It is astonishing what DNA testing can do. The same technology can cleave families apart or knit them together. It can prompt painful revelations, and it can bring distantly related members of the human family together on a quest, connecting first cousins who look like sisters, and solving a century-old mystery that could have been solved no other way. It can bring to light a split-second mistake committed by someone long dead, in a city across the country, in a building that no longer exists. It can change the future and it can change the past.
The New Rules For Making It In Hollywood, by Zach Baron for GQ, July 2017
There are so many shows & movies and so many platforms and so many cool kids and so many idiots who want to be in those shows & movies on those platforms! All the rules are new rules and what now!
The Lawyer, the Addict, by Eilene Zimmerman for The New York Times, July 2017
Using the story of one man’s overdose and death as a departure point, this story discusses how the lifestyle of lawyers at busy firms can often lead to and obscure drug and substance abuse in an industry that celebrates aggression and working way too many hours.
The Future of Media is Here, And I Was There, by Sean Cooper for Tablet Magazine, May 2017
I’m always a sucker for dystopian content marketing stories live from the belly of the BEAST!!!
Dark Skin, Whitening Masks, by Lamya H for The Offing, January 2017
Everyone in my mother’s family sitting in this room is darker, and I’m one of the darkest —a deep shade of chestnut to everyone else’s wheatish complexion. Even at 11, I’m constantly offered suggestions that I ignore: scrub my face with besan, eat lots of cream, dab almond oil on my face at night.
Queering the Rural, by Bryony White for Hazlitt, July 2017
This very good essay which has everything including hidden lesbian history and queer theory will rub up against you in some spots, maybe.
Believing that the city is the only place of queer self-intelligibility upholds the fact that I am somehow in the closet in my rural home. I spent a long time allowing this idea to sediment. When many cultural and social representations of coming-out tales portray the urban as the only platform for queer visibility, it is easy to allow this to become the dominant narrative.
Vanishing Point, by Sarah Carpenter, Brian Howey and KR Nava for Laney Tower, July 2017
Oakland was a real cool place to be an artist but now gentrification and the Ghost Ship Fire and the tech boom have all conspired to make Oakland a real shitty place to be anything besides Super Rich and what happens to cities when they lose their artists! They start to suck. This article is real thorough and long and great.
Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner for The new York Times Magazine, August 2017
Diets used to be commonplace, a thing every woman was doing, had done, or planned to do. Then science started shifting, body positivity gained momentum, and now in this new day and age how do companies like Weight Watchers survive and appeal to a new audience that wants to diet but doesn’t want to call it a “diet” anymore.
How Instagram is Reshaping Restaurant Design, by Casey Newton for The Verge, July 2017
They put that mural there so you would take a picture in front of it. They did that for you.
The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice – The New York Times, by John Leland for The New York Times, July 2017
I definitely wouldn’t have read this if Liz Smith wasn’t a lesbian, but she is, so I read this.
Why LaCroix sparkling water is suddenly everywhere, by Libby Nelson and Javier Zarracina for Vox, June 2016
Sometimes you wonder about a thing for a long time and then you decide, “today I am going to get answers!” and then you do.
The Turkey in the Left Turn Lane, by Julie Beck for The Atlantic, August 2017
Um hi this is my turkey. I mean — it’s not my turkey. But this is the road I drive down 2-6 times a day, and this is a turkey I saw on many of those rides, and I admired it. I admired how it would just sit down in the middle of a crowded road with a 45 MPH speed limit and hang out as cars wove delicately around it.
Then a shrine sprung up on the corner where the turkey used to live and apparently had since died, and I thought, “oh wow, my whole community loves this turkey as much as I do!” and also “OH NO THE TURKEY IS DEAD” and I almost cried about it.
This week, Laneia came across this article and sent it my way, as obviously everybody who has ever visited me has seen the turkey and also because I had already told everybody about how the turkey had died and I was sad.
riese: this turkey article
laneia: the fucking turkey article like, sit down and take a fucking minute
riese: i just !
i thought it was a little thing i had no idea!
i honestly wasn’t sure if that many people had noticed him
laneia: i don’t think anyone was ready for what a thing it had become
riese: i remember when heather saw him and was like “omg is he okay” and i was like “i promise you he somehow is” and she was like “okay if you say so”
laneia: yes!
riese: maybe now somebody will buy my house to be closer to this world monument
laneia: stranger things have happened
probably just this afternoon
riese: i think the thing with the turkey is that
lately, everyday life can often feel like
a bunch of cars are coming at us from both directions
so many near-misses
and we’re freaking out like frogger
so it’s so peaceful to see a turkey just standing in traffic
cool, confident
laneia: eye of the storm
riese: it’s happening to the turkey too, the chaos coming in from all sides, but the turkey is a cool customer
we want to be the cool customer
laneia: we strive to be the turkey
In conclusion, I would like to leave you with this excerpt from the turkey article:
“Indeed, he exhibited a blatant disrespect for the killing power of cars, often pecking at them, or lying languidly in the road as they rolled by.”
The “Queering the Rural” piece is beautiful in general, but especially this part: “Part of what has always been so compelling about queerness is the potential it offers to create alternatives modes of being, doing and living. There is such unprecedented joy to sidestepping the seemingly binding structures that you have simply been given and not asked for.”
Also, “a vast universe of strangers’ spit” from the genealogy piece might be my new favorite phrase.
Well, you saved me the horror of coming home (which I will do… one day) and looking like an asshole for wandering around the midwest pronouncing LaCroix like it’s French.
I don’t think I’ve ever had it though, Clearly Canadian was the sparkling not-quite-soda beverage of my youth. I wonder how easy it is to find these days?
Fifteen years ago I quit my bad habit of coca cola with polar seltzer. I was bad. But in the middle of a hot july afternoon a new friend gave me lime seltzer and it allowed me to get rid of my habit. Honestly, the stuff is methadone for coca cola addicts. Its not the caffeine you crave its the carbonation. Once you get the carbonation, you trick the mind into thinking its coca cola and you ween yourself off of it.
“we want to be the cool customer” have truer words ever been spoken
Man, one story I wanted to read after another, this week. Nice round-up!
As someone who designs things for people to take their photos in front of, I feel SEEN.
As a person, though, my bigger goal is to be the turkey.
That DNA test article was totally fascinating.
Wow what timing! Just today I sent a vial of spit to 23andme! I’m genuinely excited about the possibility of unearthing long-hidden family secrets… which means my family will probably turn out to be as unsurprising as possible.
I just wanted to say, these past two TIRTILs have been so great. I’m excited to read every link.
Still working my way through these over three weekend!
That DNA one is interesting though. I wonder if more Americans take the tests because of their immigrant heritage or if it’s just a fact of money and trend.
Also I was super confused about Christian Lacroix releasing a line of carbonated drinks…