This vegan creamed spinach uses cauliflower purée as a stand-in for the cream. The most amazing part: The dish tastes just as creamy, but is actually more intensely spinach-flavored as a result, since dairy can mute flavors. It's a win-win.
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THE BOOKS I LOVED SO MUCH I WANTED TO SEW THEM INTO MY SKIN AKA MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson Today I Am a Book by xTx The Three Woes by Casey Hannan A Bestiary by Lily Hoang Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee The Mothers by Brit Bennett Commonwealth by Ann Patchett The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
THE BOOK THAT OPENED MY EYES AND MIND AND BROKE MY HEART WITH THE PAINFUL REALITY TOO MANY AMERICANS LIVE WITH
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
THE BOOK THAT WAS TOTAL TRASH AND I THINK THE WRITER HATES FAT PEOPLE WHICH IS FINE BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE OUR ISSUES BUT STILL, GIRL, WHAT….
Maestra by L.S. Hilton
THE COMING OF AGE PROSE POETRY THAT MOVED ME IMMEASURABLY
The Pocket Knife Bible by Anis Mojgani
THE BOOK THAT MADE ME THINK HILLARY CLINTON REALLY WAS GOING TO WIN THE PRESIDENCY
All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister
THE STRANGE BOOK ABOUT LONELINESS AND THE THINGS WE DO ONLINE THAT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND
Valletta78 by Erin Fitzgerald
THE POETRY BOOK I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND AT ALL THOUGH I COULD TELL THE POEMS WERE SUPER SMART
The House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson
THE ACTION THRILLER THAT HAD LOTS OF HYPE BLURBS BUT WAS ONLY SO SO
The Second Life of Nick Mason by Scott Hamilton
THE RETELLING OF A CLASSIC THAT I REALLY ENJOYED, WHICH SURPRISED ME AND ALSO THE AUTHOR WROTE ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME, AMERICAN WIFE
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
THE BOOK THAT MADE ME CRY BECAUSE IT HELD SO MUCH I COULD RELATE TO AND THEN MADE ME A LITTLE MAD
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
EXCELLENT SMALL PRESS BOOKS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT
Pink Museum by Caroline Crew The Farmacist by Ashley Farmer The Voyager Record by Anthony Michael Morena Massive Cleansing Fire by Dave Housley
THE BOOK I READ TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE A COMIC BOOK SERIES EVEN THOUGH I WAS WRITING FOR THEIR MAJOR COMPETITOR
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil
THE COMIC BOOK I LOVED AND RECOMMEND OFTEN
Saga by Brian Vaughan
THE COMIC BOOK ISSUE I READ AND THOUGHT WAS NOT SO GOOD SO I HAVEN’T READ ANY OTHER ISSUES IN THE SERIES
Wonder Woman Rebirth #1
THE BOOK I WROTE AN INTRODUCTION FOR (OUT IN 2017! FROM BEACON PRESS!)
Like One of the Family by Alice Childress
THE BOOK I REVIEWED FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
THE BOOK I WANTED TO LOVE THAT HAD GORGEOUS OBSERVATIONS OF WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS
Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam
THE BOOK ABOUT CHEFS AND THEIR TATTOOS WITH FASCINATING STORIES OF WHY PEOPLE PERMANENTLY INK THEIR SKIN
Knives and Ink by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton
THE BOOK I READ BECAUSE I SAW A PREVIEW FOR THE TV SHOW AND LEARNED IT WAS BASED ON A BOOK SO I STARTED WONDERING IF THE BOOK WAS GOOD
Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte
SOME VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT BECAUSE THE STORIES ARE WARM AND/OR INTELLIGENT AND/OR STRANGE AND/OR GRIPPING AND/OR INTENSE
Turner House by Angela Flournoy LaRose by Louise Erdrich The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang The Story of My Teeth by Valerie Luiselli You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
THE HEARTBREAKING BOOK ABOUT BEING GAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST DURING THESE TUMULTUOUS TIMES FROM A WRITER WITH A LOT OF POTENTIAL
Guapa by Saleem Haddad
GORGEOUS BOOKS OF POETRY I REALLY LOVED
Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong L’Heure Bleue by Elisa Gabbert The New Testament by Jericho Brown Look by Solmaz Sharif There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker
THE EXCELLENT BOOK I CHOSE AS MY SELECTION FOR BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
THE BOOK I READ BASICALLY TO IMPRESS A GIRL AND IT WAS A PRETTY GOOD BOOK ALSO AND I HOPE THE GIRL WAS IMPRESSED BY MY DEDICATION BECAUSE THE BOOK WAS VERY LONG
The Fireman by Joe Hill
THE BOOK WITH AN AMAZING TITLE, SOME REALLY GOOD STORIES INCLUDING A RIFF ON ANTIQUES ROADSHOW AND ALSO SOME STORIES I LIKED LESS
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
THE BOOK THAT WAS EXCEPTIONALLY WRITTEN BUT I WANTED THE ACTUAL RAILROAD PART TO BE MORE FULLY REALIZED
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
FUN BOOKS THAT WERE FUN
The Assistants by Camille Perri China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
THE BOOK ABOUT BEING SINGLE TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF YOUR LIFE THAT PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE IS GOING TO LOVE WHEN IT COMES OUT
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
THE EXCELLENT SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS COMING OUT AROUND THE SAME TIME AS DIFFICULT WOMEN THAT MADE ME JEALOUS AND ALSO SCARED OF THE COMPETITION
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh Always Happy Hour by Mary Miller
THE BOOK THAT WAS NOT MY CUP OF TEA BUT IT’S ME NOT THE BOOK
300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
THE BOOKS I BLURBED (AND THEREFORE REALLY ENJOYED)
You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened by Arisa White In the Not Quite Dark by Dana Johnson I Almost Forgot About You by Terry McMillan The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky Feminist Baby by Loryn Brantz Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy by Tressie McMillan Cottom Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz Sing For Your Life by Daniel Bergner Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
Bravo to National Geographic for putting a transgender girl on the cover of the magazine. Editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg explains why:
Today that and other beliefs about gender are shifting rapidly and radically. That’s why we’re exploring the subject this month, looking at it through the lens of science, social systems, and civilizations throughout history.
In a story from our issue, Robin Marantz Henig writes that we are surrounded by “evolving notions about what it means to be a woman or a man and the meanings of transgender, cisgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, agender, or any of the more than 50 terms Facebook offers users for their profiles. At the same time, scientists are uncovering new complexities in the biological understanding of sex. Many of us learned in high school biology that sex chromosomes determine a baby’s sex, full stop: XX means it’s a girl; XY means it’s a boy. But on occasion, XX and XY don’t tell the whole story.”
As part of their coverage, the magazine went out, asked kids from around the world their thoughts about being boys and girls, and came back with this video.
There are many things that people do that don’t sound like jobs but actually are. One of those very things is emoji translator, a real position advertised by Today Translations, a London-based translation firm.
The job of the emoji translator is to simply translate emoji into English and other languages — sounds fake, but stay with me. Emoji are a language used by people who speak a wide variety of other languages and the interpretations of each little icon varies wildly by culture. In the example Today Translations CEO Jurga Zilinskiene provides to BuzzFeed, the 😇 is used generally after the sender has done something good — say you take out the trash and the recycling and also do the dishes, and you inform your roommates that you’ve done so. But, in China, users interpret that literally, indicating that someone has died.
That’s likely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to emoji use and so a translator will be hired to research trends and look into emoji usage across different communities throughout the world. Honestly, this sounds like a great job for someone who has a background in linguistics and is also quite good at figuring out rebuses, because that’s what emoji are.
The job listing lives here and there’s also an extremely difficult test that asks you to translate emoji into English as well as translating tweets about Brexit into emoji. I stared at the first page of the test for what felt like hours before realizing that my skill set does not lie in this particular area and that’s okay.
When I was a girl, my father once told me that women weren’t good for much. We were parked at the mountain overlook just outside town. I was in the backseat, staring at my shoes, chewing my fingernails. He was in the front seat, drinking Maker’s Mark from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He and my mother had just had another heated argument and he had dragged me out of the house as if I would ever choose his side. He said, “Don’t become like your mother. She is a small woman.” My father didn’t love my mother. I don’t even think he loved me but he did love making us miserable by refusing to leave.
President Obama has authorized a larger-than-expected pay increase for federal employees, just in time for the Christmas bills. In letters to the House and Senate, Obama authorized an average pay raise for 2017 of 2.1 percent, instead of the 1.6 percent he submitted in August. “However, in light of the decision of Congress to provide […]
Last month when we announced we were hanging up our blogging hats (can you imagine any less-cute hats than blogging hats??), we asked for any thoughts or requests about what you wanted to see before we go.
We couldn't agree more. Those cook-along projects are some of our most favorites things to have come out of this blog. It's such a fun way for all of us to connect.
So we couldn't say goodbye without doing one final cook-along challenge.
And this time it's pie.
Here's how it's going to work:
If you're interested in participating, sign up before 6 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 30. Then, on Halloween or shortly after, we'll send you your assigned recipe along with instructions about what to do. You'll have a week or so to bake your pie, and then you'll report back to us what you thought about it.
We'll feature the Pie Challenge pies in the lead-up to actual Thanksgiving, letting everybody know whether a particular pie might deserve a spot on their Thanksgiving day dessert table.
In an episode of Doctor Who from 2010, the Doctor and his companion Amy take Vincent van Gogh, who was not a commercially successful artist in his own lifetime, to the Musée d’Orsay to see an entire room filled with his paintings. The resulting scene is unexpectedly touching.
Hold up! There’s an amusement park in NJ right outside of Philly called Diggerland USA where you can operate construction equipment, dig holes with backhoes, and drive asphalt rollers?!? How is this not the most popular amusement park in the entire world?
After a few hours, I couldn't take it any more. I slipped away like a thief, skulking about the house, searching for a place where it was quiet. I came across a half-lit room and saw my future brother-in-law sitting in there, staring out the window. Knowing him to be an introvert himself, I decided this was my best option for escape and sat down across the room, wrapping my arms around my knees. I remember hoping he wouldn't think I was intruding upon his own solitude before I allowed myself to zone out, letting my thoughts drown out the raucous laughter from downstairs, breathing deeply and feeling the tension drain away. I don't know how long it was before my now-husband came looking for me, but I remember him laughing at finding the two introverts seeking refuge together.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I travelled to a friend's wedding but got to town a few days early to go see a show and meet up with some other friends. By the time the wedding rolled around, I had spent time with so many people in different social groups that I left after the ceremony and didn't stay for dancing and karaoke or anything (sorry!). I didn't even get to congratulate the bride (so so sorry!!)...I was just done. After that, I mostly just holed up in my hotel room, reading, and walked around by myself, even though there were so many other things I could have been doing with so many other people. Several years ago, I would have felt weird and horrible about this, but I know myself well enough now that I just roll with it...I read so much of a book I was enjoying that the time spent can hardly be considered a loss.
Ocean's Eleven director Steven Soderbergh, who is based in New York and is expected to be deeply involved with the spinoff -- perhaps taking on a below-the-line job like he has done on other studio films like Magic Mike XXL -- is producing solo (Oceans Eleven producer Jerry Weintraub passed away last year). Olivia Milch and Ross wrote the screenplay.
And while we're at it, let's reboot everything with female leads. We've already got Ghostbusters and Ocean's Ocho. Someone I was talking with at a party last week suggested an all-women A-Team reboot, which would be fantastic.1 What else? Reservoir Dogs? Indiana Jones? Back to the Future? Any movie Tom Hanks/Cruise/Hardy has ever made?
The same person also suggested a Charlie's Angels reboot with male leads. Charlie is a woman and they're still referred to as her Angels. I am also on board with this.↩
@Charity "Spending hard earned money on makeup isn’t what the feminists pioneers had in mind, methinks. Then again it’s something that I bought with my own hard earned money that I wanted for myself so that is feminist! Ha! Take that, Susan B. Anthony!"
I mean, technically it was $15 with some taxes and about $8 shipping. So there’s that.
What the fuck did I just do?
No, it’s okay. This is my money. $25 won’t send me back or forward too dramatically. I have to chill out.
Seriously, Ellie? $25 on one tube of lip gloss? Are you an idiot?
I could buy like 4.5 chai lattes with soymilk for the same amount of money. With soymilk!
Spending hard earned money on makeup isn’t what the feminist pioneers had in mind, methinks.
Then again it’s something that I bought with my own hard earned money that I wanted for myself so that is feminist! Ha! Take that, Susan B. Anthony!
I have to intercept this package before my parents see it and give me hell for it.
It’s my money! I worked for this. I can buy whatever I want. At least it’s not meth.
It’s not like I’m being careless with my money. I’ve made sure there’s money for gas, food, and loan payments. So what if I buy one gloss?
I mean I could get a similar quality gloss for $5 at CVS but that’s not what this is about.
I am a young woman with no dependents and my own job. I bought one luxury gloss. So what? I’m a good person!
I can’t believe I did this. Fuck.
I wonder if Snapchat has brainwashed me.
But I deserve this.
Careful, now. Equating hard work with deserving material things is how people go bankrupt after buying seven Lamborghinis.
Ellie, it’s a GLOSS. Take that stick out of your butt!
It’s a $25 stick so it’s wedged in there.
Okay, let’s prioritize. Will I care about this purchase in five minutes? Yes. Five days? Yes. Five months? Yes.
Jane Elliott asks an audience a very simple question about being black in America. (via @carltonspeight who says "No BS, I wish every white person on Twitter could see this. Maybe it'll help")
The new episodes of Making A Murderer will provide an in-depth look at the post-conviction process of convicted murderer Steven Avery, and his co-defendant, Brendan Dassey, as their respective investigative and legal teams challenge their convictions and the State fights to have their life sentences upheld.
They will also offer access to Avery's new lawyer Kathleen Zellner and Dassey's legal team, led by Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin, as well as the families and characters close to the case.
Designer Tina Gorjanc plans to create a collection of leather goods made from skin grown from human DNA, specifically the DNA of fashion designer Alexander McQueen. McQueen died in 2010, but he sewed his own hair into the items in his first collection, which is where Gorjanc is sourcing the genetic material for her leather.
The Pure Human project was designed as a critical design project that aims to address shortcomings concerning the protection of biological information and move the debate forward using current legal structure.
Furthermore, the project explores the ability of the technology to shift the perception of the production system for luxury goods as we know it and project its implementation in our current commercial system.
In other words, should we be able to make handbags from of Alexander McQueen's DNA without his (or his estate's) permission? Dezeen has more details on the project. BTW, the handbag pictured above is a mockup created from pigskin, onto which freckles have been applied. Other mockups include replicas of McQueen's tattoos, which, you know, wow. (via @claytoncubitt)
Totally trying this. Good advice for anxious kids as well!
Some recent research suggests that if you're feeling anxious, saying "I am excited" can switch your heightened emotional state from negative (anxiety) to positive (excitement).
It's also counterintuitive: When most people feel anxious, they likely tell themselves to just relax. "When asked, 'how do you feel about your upcoming speech?', most people will say, 'I'm so nervous, I'm trying to calm down,'" said Alison Wood Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied the phenomenon. She cites the ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters as partial evidence.
But that might be precisely the wrong advice, she said. Instead, the slogan should be more like, "Get Amped and Don't Screw Up."
That's because anxiety and excitement are both aroused emotions. In both, the heart beats faster, cortisol surges, and the body prepares for action. In other words, they're "arousal congruent." The only difference is that excitement is a positive emotion' focused on all the ways something could go well.
Calmness is also positive, meanwhile, but it's also low on arousal. For most people, it takes less effort for the brain to jump from charged-up, negative feelings to charged-up, positive ones, Brooks said, than it would to get from charged-up and negative to positive and chill. In other words, its easier to convince yourself to be excited than calm when you're anxious.
If Barack Obama were your dad, you would know you shouldn't ask him for help with your government homework, but you’d do it anyway, and he would go on and on and on for so long it would be like the damn State of the Union. You wouldn't be able to escape, so you'd start keeping track of how many times he said "Let me be clear" (15).
Baby hippos are the cutest babies, and you can't convince me otherwise.
Keepers at Zoo Wroclaw put on their dancin’ shoes to celebrate a new Hippopotamus birth! The calf, named Zumba, was born May 21 to mom, Rumba, and dad, Váleček. Big sister, Salsa, and proud Grandma, Samba, also welcomed the young Hippo into their herd.
The Zoo reports that Zumba timidly follows mom about in their exhibit, including, of course, dips in the pool.
Photo Credits: Zoo Wroclaw
The common Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or Hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous, semi-aquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. They are one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the Pygmy Hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis).
The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος). After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common Hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans (Whales, Porpoises, etc.).
Common Hippos are recognizable by their barrel-shaped torsos, wide-opening mouths revealing large canine tusks, nearly hairless bodies, columnar-like legs and large size; adults average 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) and 1,300 kg (2,900 lb) for males and females respectively, making them the largest species of land mammal after the three species of Elephants and the White and Indian Rhinoceros.
Despite its stocky shape and short legs, it is capable of running 30 km/h (19 mph) over short distances. The Hippopotamus is highly aggressive and unpredictable and is ranked among the most dangerous animals in Africa.
Female Hippos reach sexual maturity at five to six years and have a gestation period of eight months. Baby Hippos are born underwater at a weight between 25 and 50 kg (55 and 110 lb) and an average length of around 127 cm (4.17 ft), and must swim to the surface to take their first breaths. A mother typically gives birth to only one calf, although twins also occur.
The young often rest on their mothers' backs when the water is too deep for them, and they swim under water to suckle. They suckle on land when the mother leaves the water. Weaning starts between six and eight months after birth, and most calves are fully weaned after a year.
Hippopotamus amphibius is classified as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. According to the IUCN: “The primary threats to Common Hippos are illegal and unregulated hunting for meat and ivory (found in the canine teeth) and habitat loss. Illegal or unregulated hunting of Common Hippos has been found to be particularly high in areas of civil unrest (Kayanja 1989; Shoumatoff 2000; Hillman Smith et al. 2003). A recent field survey found that Common Hippo populations in DR Congo have declined more than 95% as a result of intense hunting pressure, during more than eight years of civil unrest and fighting (Hillman Smith et al. 2003). Widespread poaching for meat has also been reported from Burundi and Ivory Coast (Associated Press 2003; H. Rainey pers. comm.)...Although it is likely that the majority of the total Common Hippo population occurs in some form of protected area (national park, biosphere, game or forest reserve, sanctuary, conservation area), the proportion of protected Common Hippos likely varies among countries. For countries with a high proportion of Common Hippo populations outside protected areas, the likelihood of persistence is much lower as there is no impediment to hunting or incentive for habitat protection.”
We exchange recipes. More often, I am sent recipes and I mean to do something with them but then I am too lazy or too busy or, as has been the case lately, I am simply not home to cook. But I had a week, well, three weeks at home. That time is coming to the end. I am not thrilled about it. I need more time to just decompress. I kind of ran myself ragged this academic year. I will not be doing that next year. Something’s gotta give and so, something will, and it will be the right decision.
But at the beginning, I had this recipe for a kale salad and it required massaging the kale which demanded an intimacy with roughage I had never anticipated. Massaging kale is a fairly literal practice. You drizzle the kale with olive oil and then you rub it between your fingers until it wilts, until it decides to be less like kale than it is naturally intended to be. That is, you rub the kale into submission.
After separating the kale leaves from the stems, I massaged a good quantity of kale, wondering what had become of me. I am inherently opposed to kale. It tastes gamy, in the vegetable sense. It takes so much effort to chew. This was tiring, and it took a long time. It was tiring because I did it after a long day at work and I’m lazy. We’ve established that.
When the kale has been thoroughly massaged, it takes up less room. It seems meeker, more tender, almost edible. It’s still kale though. That vegetable can’t fool me.
I keep waiting to be treated badly. Does anyone else do this? Literally every day I think, Today is the day when things will change, when I will overstay my emotional welcome, when this person will decide that treating me well is beyond what I deserve. Every nicety, every act of kindness feels like something I need to lock in a vault. It all makes me realize that my threshold for being treated decently was desperately low for like, all of my adult life. I am full of great advice and lofty standards for my friends. Do this, don’t put up with that. When it comes to myself, it’s like, well, you’re garbage so the rules aren’t the same for you. I get mad at myself when I realize this, when I realize how passive I can be, how I try to be invisible in my own life, how I try to not take up space or require anyone else’s attention or energy. Seriously, I am not a role model. I am 41 and I am basically a trainwreck. I am sitting on my sexy couch chewing ice. The ice is great. My teeth are like, “Girl, what is your fucking problem?”
Meanwhile, everyone I know is getting engaged and having babies and getting married. I know this because Facebook throws that shit in my face to remind me that for the 12th year in a row, I live alone in a rural college town full of both polite and impolite racists who are likely to vote for a man with a fake tan and a bleached toupee.
I am happy for everyone having Facebook official life events. Unless I hate you, in which case, fuck you.
I added shredded carrots and shredded purple cabbage to the kale. So so pretty. Food is better when it is colorful. Life is better when it is colorful. I don’t mean that in a cheesy way. I just mean that, sometimes, my world is exploding with color, and I want that full time instead of in irregular but regular spurts.
Blah blah blah. There was a bunch of emotional vomit here but then I deleted it.
I am going to write a movie this summer. I am going to write other things, too, but I am going to write a movie!!! I need to read a book on how to do that.
I chopped up some almonds and added those to the mix along with some feta cheese. While all this was happening, I was roasting chicken breasts in my oven.
Our Queen, Beyoncé, as if she needs to be named, released a new album and I love it. I love it from front to back and all the way through. I am writing about it. I want to take my time but editors are all, “What’s the status of this?” and I’m like, it’s been three days. Earlier in my writing career, I could churn work out at a rapid pace because I had to. I could still do that if I had to. I am lucky I don’t have to, anymore. I don’t want to. I want to like, take a few days or weeks or maybe even longer. I’m learning and growing as a writer and that takes time. Each time I write an essay, a story, a book, I want it to be better than the last.
When the chicken was ready, I cut it up and added it to the salad along with raisins because raisins are delicious and I was pretty skeptical about most everything else in this salad. I needed a friendly food item in the salad. (I do also love carrots and almonds and purple cabbage, but they were connected to the dreaded kale.)
I exhaust myself. I am bored with myself. I want to be bold and make a bold change that will push me closer to happiness. I am terrified.
A few weeks ago, I came home and there was a bottle of wine and a card from two neighbors who said they were fans and had just figured out I live in their building and they didn’t want to be intrusive but they wanted to say hi. I was so touched! I don’t know any neighbors.
Anyway, I texted them, because they left their number on the card and we recently went out to dinner. They are a hot Brazilian couple with amazing haircuts, fashion sense, and good taste in wine. One is a vet and one is a molecular biologist, NO BIG DEAL. I was like, “Umm, I’m a writer? I write things?” They are funny and I think we will be friends. I am sharing this so you know that not EVERYTHING is morose and gloomy.
I tossed the salad together and it was quite pretty and healthful looking but I wasn’t psyched to put it in my mouth. There was so much kale and I could hear it taunting me. Basically, the kale was talking shit to me, saying, “You can’t handle this, go eat a french fry and make the same bad choices you’ve been making for the past twenty years.” Well, I hate being taunted so I told that kale, “I’ll show you.” And then I stared at it in what I hope was an intimidating way.
I wrote a book about me and my body and I’ve dragged my heels on it but it’s about done now, so many months late, I am carrying some deep shame about it and putting this book out into the world is one of the hardest things I will ever do but I am going to do it because I think the book is okay and I think people will at least find some solace in the book, some recognition that living in a body, living in a fat body in this shitty world, is hard.
As people are wont to say, this is not like coal mining or anything, but why do people qualify what they find difficult in terms of extremes? Why is it so uncomfortable just owning that sometimes, life is difficult, and books are difficult and exposing yourself is difficult even if it is something you have chosen to do, with sound mind and body.
I put some of the salad in a pretty dish in the hopes that it would somehow, by aesthetic virtue, make the salad more edible. I dressed it with a balsamic dressing. I took a bite and it was okay and then I took another bite and another, and turns out, the salad is excellent, delicious even. It lasted five days! I ate healthy for five days in a row, by choice. I don’t even know what’s happening to me.
What’s worse? Looking jealous or crazy? Or like being walked all over lately? I’d rather be crazy.
One of my girlfriends and I always talk about what we consider to the basic fact of life: women need to be able to provide for themselves (and their kids) on a moment’s notice. While being a mother and wife are both some of the most important roles in our lives, our most important job—actual job—will always be the one that pays the bills. Why? Because men can be dumb. Because you never know.
Beyoncé dropped Lemonade late this past Saturday night. It started with a bang: an hour-long, shots fired out of the gate, visual album on HBO, followed by the release of the audio album. All of this was expected—after “Formation,” we knew something was coming, and we all know that Beyoncé can drop an album without any prior notice. But what nobody saw coming was the true nature of Lemonade itself: a rageful, reflective, powerful, and profoundly intimate raw discussion on marriage. On life. On infidelity, and specifically, on how Jay-Z (allegedly) cheated on Beyoncé and the ensuing emotional fallout—and eventual redemption—that followed.
Lemonade is for women, but even more importantly than that, it’s an album by a black woman for black women (which was most excellently noted by Luvvie, of course). In “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” Beyoncé offers up this famous Malcolm X quote:
The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.
She doesn’t stop there—Beyoncé enlisted an incredible team of black women for the video experience. In the track “Forward” (introduced as the “Resurrection” section of the visual album), the mothers of young, slain black men have their own moment. In fact, these women own their moments as they unflinchingly stare into the camera while holding a photo of their murdered child, ending with Michael Brown’s mother’s unbroken gaze, a single tear falling down her face.
She also pulled together a collective of some of the best and most powerful celebrities, athletes, and actresses on the planet: in “Sorry,” Serena Williams, a woman who has been bashed for her appearance and her domination of women’s tennis, twerks and gyrates Beyoncé-style all over a mansion while sending out a silent “Fuck you” with her eyes. Simultaneously, Beyoncé is draped across a throne a la Serena’s Sports Illustrated cover from last year. Quvenzhané Wallis, most recently from the remake of Annie, holds hands with Beyoncé’s daughter in “Freedom.” Poet Warsan Shire worked closely on the creation of Lemonade. Disney star and activist Zendaya appears throughout the hour, and Amandla Stenberg—who you might recognize from Hunger Games and/or her powerful Tumblr—is also present. Beyoncé brings two of her recently signed artists, Chloe and Halle Bailey, into the fold, along with Winnie Harlow. The message? This isn’t just about Beyoncé: It’s not just one woman’s story.
Lemonade is also about the state of a marriage, the power of women, and what our unchecked rage can look like. It’s 2016, and Beyoncé no longer has to sit quietly, smile prettily, and defer rumors about her husband’s possible infidelities. In 2016, Beyoncé—and the album implies #allwomen—can grab the reins of power and put her husband publicly on notice. As she says in “Don’t Hurt Yourself”:
This is your final warning. You know I give you life. You try this shit again, you gon’ lose your wife.
The pain Beyoncé is speaking to, and the experience she is bringing to the forefront isn’t anything new, and it’s not something unique to her—which is part of the power of the album. I mean, who in the world would cheat on Beyoncé? Obviously someone would, or at last might have, and in doing so she joined the legions of women who have come before and will come after—the women who will wrestle with this pain. She’s not even the first in her family to experience it (though we all knew that). She contextualizes her pain in the context of generations of her family and generations of women:
You remind me of my father, a magician… able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding? The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse.
While putting the power not with her father, exposed as a cheater, but with her mother:
Mother dearest, let me inherit the earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Did his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband, or you father?
But it was as Beyoncé’s unchecked rage played across the screen, that I realized that this album wasn’t just about the pain of betrayal, it was also the portrait of the depth of married love. Because while—twelve years into my relationship—I haven’t experienced this particular pain, I have experienced other kinds of pain. Death, childbirth gone wrong, the depths of depression. And as Beyoncé sums up in one powerful lyric—the act of being a woman in a relationship is both powerful and vulnerable. We’re the ones who have the power to bear the children, while counting on our partner’s devotion.
So, what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy who, because of me, sleep evaded.
By Sunday night, almost every woman I know went to bed angry with her husband. Because if Beyoncé can be cheated on, what does that say for the rest of us? What does that say about men in general?
I was angry enough to sit my husband down and make him watch the full hour of Lemonade without interruption, I went to bed that night feeling like marriage is more powerful than I even knew. Because as the album closes, Beyoncé says:
Why do you deny yourself heaven? Why do you consider yourself undeserving? Why are you afraid of love? You think it’s not possible for someone like you? But you are the love of my life… There is a curse that will be broken.
But for all that Lemonade ends with adorable home video footage of their wedding, and Jay-Z and Beyoncé playing with the world’s cutest child, Blue Ivy, Beyoncé ends with one final warning:
Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.
did you see lemonade? how did it make you feel about yourself? Your marriage? Race, culture, legacy? This is your open thread to work out all of those lemonade thoughts.
my friend Amy messaged me a photo of a product label
just a dumb photo to shared with a couple friends, sure.
in retrospect these look mean but you’ve got to trust me here, we’re just three dummies fascinated with a hotmail email address printed on a label.
so I figure I’ll write this company a silly email real quick, asking them a very dumb but easy question. I’m not trying to be mean here. (I try to be kind whenever possible.)
here’s the email:
Amy and Andrew are not happy with me
and honestly i don’t understand why they’re mad at me.
but somehow it hadn’t clicked yet
I should mention, despite all the talk about syrup and pancakes, I sincerely thought I’d just emailed an apple juice company. despite the words “syrup” and “pancakes” getting thrown around, I guess I saw that yellow label and that sugar content and thought, “yep, definitely apple juice” and then wrote an email to a small maple syrup company to tell them “i’m lovin that juice” and “what type of apples are in the juice” like a proper idiot
In my attempt to be silly, I ended up being kind of mean, so i sent a followup email to hopefully make up for the first email:
i am stupid. and i hope i didn’t annoy the apple juice company maple syrup company too much
henry no
i cannot stop laughing at this? I GET TO WORK WITH THESE PEOPLE EVERY SINGLE DAY :D
What a completely delightful video of 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin visiting the White House and meeting President and Mrs. Obama. This is the Webster's definition of pure joy.
I don't know much about McLaurin's life story -- she's originally from South Carolina, first married at 14 -- but when she was 10, the Civil War had ended only 55 years earlier. As a child, she likely knew and talked with people who were former slaves. And now she's dancing with a black President in the White House. The Great Span continues to work its magic.
Pants are cut higher in the back to cut down on bunching in the front and riding down in the back and shirts are cut so that they drape right at the waist and hips.
