Hello,
A lot of thoughts ruminating this week. Hopefully it’s coherent.
Thinking:
I have been thinking about this subject for a few months now: botox. More so since subscribing to The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino. And Haley Nahman recently put into words what I have been thinking about in her Maybe Baby newsletter: On cosmetic procedures and the limits of "destigmatization”. Thank you! It’s about the normalization of botox and justifying it as self-care, feminism, etc. We earnestly joke about getting a few injectables here and there, but who is losing and gaining (financially) from the beauty industry. Nahman later clarified in a followup (for paid subscribers) that she is anti, as am I.
Philosophically, I resent that we’ve become uninterested in sacrifice as a political gesture, but I worry that makes me too eager to equate sacrifice with virtue.
I really engaged with this quote because I think society has become so apathetic if anything is an inconvenience.
Are we tired of the nepo baby discourse? They’re everywhere and I am exhausted of thinking about it. Talking about it. And we should stop acting shocked when they say something stupid. Or when they were hand fed whatever opportunity in the industry. I won’t mention names, but there was a lot of dumb discourse this week lol.
Formal complaint: SSENSE needs to stop with the aggressive ESSENTIALS drop.
Reading:
Did you do your homework and read all the Weyes Blood reviews? Weyes Blood Gives Beautiful Voice to Global Pain at NYT. Weyes Blood on Having Her Music Memed and Why Instagram Is ‘Pure Satan’ at The Daily Beast. Weyes Blood Gives Soft Rock an Apocalyptic Edge at The New Yorker. It has come to my attention that I think she is bigger and more well known than she really is and that she is actually niche.
How E-Commerce Changed the Knock-Off Furniture Game at Dwell. When I move to a new apartment (eventually), I will be in the market for some designer furniture because I want to bankrupt my savings. But sometimes I just don’t know the authenticity of these DTC websites.
Much Ado about. Hummus: The Fight for Bragging Rights over a Middle Eastern Dip at The Walrus. It’s from a couple of months ago and a fun one to read. It’s a combination of history, politics and cultural identity. A Syrian friend of mine would always correct me on how I pronounced hummus and now I say it correctly with vigour.
The midterm culture war over plant-based meat at Vox. The food system is fucked. Can be applied to Canada as well.
Nebraska is home to around 100 million farmed animals, fattened up with a lot of corn and soybeans. An even bigger proportion of the state’s corn production goes to make ethanol that’s blended with gasoline, which researchers say is an inefficient use of land. Most farmers apply nitrogen-based fertilizers to make the corn and soybeans grow as big and fast as possible, which means they usually need less land to grow more feed than organic farmers — a good thing. But the synthetic fertilizer comes with a steep public health toll: Nitrogen from fertilizer leaks out as nitrate into groundwater, which some 85 percent of Nebraskans rely on for drinking water. Researchers have found that areas with high nitrate levels have higher rates of childhood cancer and birth defects, and high nitrate levels are linked to colorectal cancer and thyroid disease.
Photo:
Good Good had a black friday sale with everything 50% off. Wine, beer, snacks included! I overindulged and purchased 4 bottles and 2 bags of coffee for $100! I am proud to break my drinking rule. :) RIP Good Good because that sale coincided with the closure of all their stores.
Watching:
YouTube
Mina Le’s The Modeling Industry: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The 90’s/00’s models era was really something intangible. A few faves: Daria Werbowy, Devon Aoki, Cindy Crawford, Freja Beha Erichsen, Sasha Pivovarova, Liya Kebede, Joan Smalls, Gemma Ward, Liu Wen, Natasha Poly, Naomi Campbell, I could go on! Why Frank Lloyd Wright’s windows look like this at Vox. No one informed me that the trailer for Gossip Girl season 2 is out and the bitch is back. How Good Are French Vegan Croissants? at DW Foods. The one pastry I miss so so much.
Reality TV
I forfeit any control when it comes to real estate reality TV. The most recent drop on Netflix is Buying Beverly Hills with the most unfortunate type face. We follow the Umansky family through million dollar listings and luke warm drama. I really enjoy Farrah because she’s really easy and relatively normal, but her earnest heteronormative agenda (house, marriage, kids) based on the social clock burns my eyes. Spoiler alert - the show ends with another Umansky offspring potentially vying for a position at the brokerage while other agents fear that nepotism will take away their listings (by listings they mean commissions). Shocking.
The Big Brunch is great. It’s warm, supportive and feels like one big family. Not your typical competition. You don’t want anyone to be eliminated. At the end of the day, season your food. Home cooks tend to under salt. The last two episodes come out tonight! Maybe open a bottle of wine???
Triangle of Sadness is a satire on the wealthy. It’s also very surface level analysis on power structures. It’s trying to be deep, but ultimately falls short by giving viewers all the answers without nuance. It’s also 45 minutes too long.
If you’re feeling the urge to get stressed, might I suggest Emily the Criminal starring none other than Aubrey Plaza.
I felt like there was a lot to unpack here and things I haven’t processed yet like the shooting at Club Q in Colorado or the politics of Fifa.
—
Perry
We, too, have been watching Buying Beverly Hills and got a bottle of Afternoon from the Good Good sale. Have not yet consumed though.