HELLO and welcome to the 283rd 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 XXX! 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.
My Life at 47 Is Back to What It Was Like at 27, by Megan Daum for Medium, February 2019
This essay sort of faded for me near the end, but there was some stuff at the start that resonated intensely and that’s why I’m here, now, sharing it with you!
A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions, by Ian Parker for The New Yorker, February 2019
I sometimes go through Psychological Thriller phases on Audible and while in one of those, this guy’s book was suggested to me EVERY TIME I looked for a new book to download and I was consistently baffled by its existence and flattering blurbs because it was THE EXACT SAME PLOT AS THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN???!!! Like, what? Anyhow, this dude was a liar anyhow, surprise!
The Serial Killer and the ‘Less Dead, by Jillian Lauren for The Cut, December 2018
A journalist sits down with Samuel Little, who got away with killing more than 90 women across the country because he chose victims who would not attract too much police interest. Also, at one point he was given a THREE MONTH SENTENCE for rape and assault and then let right back out to kill more and more women! The criminal justice system, everybody!
It’s All Fun and Games Until You Run Out of Coins, by Stephanie Stephanie Georgopulos, August 2018
She quits smoking and an iOs game about gardening picks up where that left off. I usually don’t like reading about gaming but I loved this!
Cult Status, by Alex Esculapio for Vestoj
The sartorial choices of the Heaven’s Gate cult and what our reaction to them said about the cult’s bizarre existence at the axis of U.S. consumerism, new age spirituality and then-emerging technologies.
The Russia Left Behind, by Ellen Barry, October 2013
Honestly I think about how big Russia is a lot? This gorgeous piece of multimedia journalism (read it on your laptop) addresses the huge chunks of this country that are being altogether neglected and this is a gorgeous piece of multimedia journalism highlighting those forgotten villages and the people sticking it out within them.
The Fallout From Sportswriting’s Filthiest Fuck-Up, by Jeff Pearlman for Deadspin, August 2017
The circumstances under which and the terrible fallout from the guy who put “Dixon sucks Donkey Dick” into a newspaper piece about a local youth soccer club, expecting it to be edited out before printing, only to see it right there in newsprint the very next day!
The ugly — and, yes, slightly gross — truth of stadium bathrooms, by David Fleming for ESPN, February 2019
At venues like sports arenas, nearly every guest will, at some point, use the bathroom. So what if those bathrooms didn’t totally suck? This is about that, and about gendered bathrooms and how that contributes to long lines.
50 Years of Sunny Days on ‘Sesame Street’: Behind the Scenes of TV’s Most Influential Show Ever, by Marisa Guthrie for Hollywood Reporter, February 2019
It’s a cold hard world out there but then there’s this! I watched a 2-minute 30-second video that Elmo was in and I felt like 30x better than I did three minutes ago, and then I read the whole article and felt like, wow, it’s 1985 and I’m wearing a striped t-shirt and everything is fine.
Why Does It Feel Like Everyone Has More Money Than You?, by Jen Doll for Harper’s Bazaar, February 2019
On how help from family members is often erased from contemporary millenial success stories. Noted bisexual millennial Gaby Dunn is quoted a few times!
the queer art of fucking your friends, by Sophia Giovannitti for Mask Magazine, June 2017
That summer let me reveal something to myself, in full, that I had always known but been afraid of – the line between friend and lover is so thin so as to be barely there. I have always been someone who is made anxious and upset by arbitrary boundaries. I like to know why limits are drawn where they are; I need a reason. I see nothing wrong with keeping sex out of a friendship in order to sustain a less complicated dynamic. Sex does complicate things, there’s no denying that. But it felt intolerable to me to pretend that sex was intrinsically outside of the friendship dynamic. I am attracted to my friends in so many ways – why would sexual attraction be out of the question?
The article about money was really interesting. My main problem with adults having their parents pay for them is that so many don’t seem to appreciate it or are buying frivolous things and then complaining they have no money, asking for more and just being given it. Financial education and taking responsibility should be a condition of parental support in my eyes.
My parents couldn’t afford to support me as an adult so I’ve not had any financial support from them since I moved out at 18. It infuriated me during uni that I had to work alongside getting student loans to afford to pay my rent and eat while other people were just handed £1000 here and £2000 there and weren’t learning how to take responsibility for themselves. So I like the idea of people with that privilege of family money should use that to improve things for the rest of us. A lot of my friends have been in the same situation where we can’t take opportunities that are unpaid or expensive and those opportunities need equalising.
The article about money was hilariously dumb and very ‘lean in’ feminist. I wish I had the problem of wanting to hide my parents helping me with down payments and business startup loans. Eat the rich.
Wow did the money article make me angry. Not the information in it, but the way it was constructed. Its got a real case of New York blinders.
I read that article about Dan Mallory and just… stared at the wall for ten minutes wondering what tf I had just read.
Ahhh so much goodness here, and I was going to bed on time until I opened this and couldn’t stop reading all of them.
The money article. I read it feeling smug that I hadn’t benefited from those kinds of handouts, not least because I got a big scholarship for college. And then, I remembered that the only reason I got that scholarship was because I was privileged to have the opportunities to perfect the things that were being tested to get it.
All of this to say… the money handouts inspire so much rage because it’s a way of specifically quantifying the privilege that is so unfair anyway. It is ridiculous to expect anyone not to take help wherever they can get it when they’re young. It’s ridiculous to expect parents not to do the best they possibly can if they can for their children (I know, having those kinds of parents/any at all, is still a massive privilege). So what’s really broken here is a system where college is that expensive (eesh the US scholarship system is ridiculous) perpetuating terrible inequality that’s getting worse, lowering social mobility, and even allowing this much movement of cash between generations- it is entirely the government’s decision to allow more than $11 million (?!?!?!) tax free inheritance!
And… it seems a little bit pointless and mean to shout at a 20-something New Yorker fool on instagram, writing about their own experiences (they’re not allowed to write about any other or they get shouted at for that too), rather than shouting about the systemic failures of the social system. Is my two pence worth. Which I did earn. Probably while I was writing this comment- don’t read AS at work everyone… :-/
Oh, thank god. That article about fucking one’s friends is the bomb. Loved it.