This was finished and ready to go out as planned on Saturday but family stuff meant I forgot to hit send. Here it is as a bonus Tuesday newsletter. I’m still trying to find a catchy name for my weekly culture roundups ala “Haterade” for my sports roundups; any and all suggestions welcome!
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Before we get into the reading, I have one little bit of self-promotion to get out of the way. This Sunday, May 5, the Boston Independent Film Festival is screening the documentary The Herricanes, which I appear in as a talking head! The film is about the Houston Herricanes of the National Women’s Football League, which I wrote the literal book on (and if you’re here, you probably know that already). I will be participating in a Q&A directly following the film, as well.
You can get tickets for the screening here, purchase a Houston Herricanes (or other NWFL team) shirt here, or grab a copy of my book, Hail Mary, here.
Onto the fun(ner) stuff!
It’s been a big week for The Girlies talking about being gay: Billie Eilish made some comments about wanting to put her face in a vagina; former Spice Girl Mel B confirmed that she had a five-year relationship with a woman; Chrishell Stause opened up about her coming out process; Sophia Bush finally confirmed her relationship with former soccer player Ashlyn Harris.
Meanwhile, a quote buried at the bottom of a Politico piece about election coverage at the New York Times “inadvertently confirms every theory that A.G. Sulzberger is a giant TERF and is elevating editors that are sympathetic to that view and that’s why a lot of the Times’ gender coverage has that bent even in stories that shouldn’t,” Sydney Bauer noted on X. She’s right.
The quote in question was from an anonymous NYT reporter who said that their nonstop coverage of Biden’s age is retribution for not giving their boss an interview: “It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.” As political data analyst Tom Bonier noted, this insight “further undermines the credibility of the NYT's coverage of this election.” As Bauer points out, this should also further undermine the credibility of their coverage of trans and gender issues, too
For more on the Politico piece and what it means for the Times, see
at :Some Swiftie journalist humor for you:
Culture-related reading
I really appreciated this story about the work that the Columbia University student newspaper, The Spectator, is doing to cover the student and faculty protests related to the war on Gaza, and the university’s troubling response to those protests
Over 60 journalism professors call on New York Times to review its Oct. 7 report
Following months of escalating protest over the organization’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, and the recent withdrawal of over a third of this year’s nominees, the 2024 PEN America Literary Awards have now officially been cancelled. From the press release:
Of the 61 authors and translators nominated for a book award this cycle, 28 authors chose to withdraw their books from consideration.
Nine of the ten authors recognized as nominees for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award withdrew their work from consideration.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Wendy Vanden Heuvel, and Bill Clegg, on behalf of the foundation and the Literary Estate of Jean Stein, provided the following statement: “Jean Stein was a passionate advocate for Palestinian rights who published, supported, and celebrated Palestinian writers and visual artists. While she established the PEN America award in her name to bring attention to and provide meaningful support to writers of the highest literary achievement, we know she would have respected the stance and sacrifice of the writers who have withdrawn from contention this year. To honor their decision the Estate of Jean Stein has directed PEN America to donate the $75,000 award to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.”
With the Met Gala a week away, the Condé Nast Union is prepared to go on strike, bringing management to the bargaining table Monday with a work stoppage pledge signed by a majority of members
'Mary & George' Lets Us Reimagine All History As Queer History: “What makes this kinky, corseted brand of representation different from, say, ‘Gentleman Jack’ or any number of contemporary-set queer or queerish shows? It’s the community. It’s not just that ‘Mary & George’ normalizes the notion of sexually fluid queer community — it historicizes it.”
The Spice Girls’ Mel B Opened Up About Her Five-Year Relationship With a Woman
- on polyamory had me in stitches, especially as someone who is non-monogamous in theory but really struggles with many of the community practices:
“It’s easy to have your scene ruined by annoying rich people (for example, San Francisco) or to make something cool sound uncool by talking about it too much (for example, weed) or to be right and yet still be embarrassing about it (for example, atheism). The lighthearted mockery of terms like “compersion” is mostly a harmless good time, until it inevitably provides cover for reactionary sexual politics. Suddenly someone is writing an essay in The Atlantic about how polyamory is bourgeois, and before I can even think, “That doesn’t seem right,” a bunch of revanchist weirdos eager to roll back the Sexual Revolution are chiming in on X to call polyamory both bourgeois and morally degenerate, and all the fun has been sucked out of my eye-rolling. And so I end up back in bed with the polyamorists, wishing they could figure out how to make having sex sound sexier.”
Ahead of the Curve Tells the Story of an Iconic Lesbian Magazine
Obsessed with this interview in Arch Digest with the production designer and set decorator on the original Mean Girls film about Regina’s bedroom, ahead of the film’s 20th anniversary: “‘We were trying to show that she was a spoiled brat,’ [production designer Cary] White tells AD. [Patricia] Cuccio, [the set decorator], says they had to go all out with the set dressing because the owners of the house where filming took place didn’t want them doing any repainting.”
Vulture profiled Justin Kuritzkes, the screenwriter of Challengers—which is getting rave reviews
- interviews about her write-around profile of Tree Paine in the Wall Street Journal1: “Another detail I learned about Paine that made perfect sense: She was a USC sorority girl. (Pi Phi, to be exact.) As a former sorority social chair myself (I’m sorry), I have to imagine she honed many skills then that she still uses today (obfuscation, manipulation, management of unique personalities….)”
Kristen Kish Is Using Her Platform to Wage a War Against Sleeves, and We’re Grateful
This essay about going to a New Years Pitbull show in Miami immediately after being released from prison is one of my favorite things I’ve read in a long time, and the descriptions of my home state are really lovely
The Cut asks Florida moms to respond to Swift and Florence Welch’s TTPD song “Florida!!!” and the results are exactly what you’d expect:
“Meanwhile, the Floridian Swifties I’ve met are embracing the song. Although one fan I spoke to felt like maybe it unfairly characterized the state as a Bermuda Triangle of criminality, she admitted that everyday life here can be intense. By way of illustration, she explained to me that when her husband and his friends were in college, they’d go water-skiing on a local lake, and the first lap was always meant to scare the gators into the shallows so they could ski in peace.
Another mom I spoke to wondered if Taylor wrote the song anticipating that she could license it to the state’s tourism board. There’s been a full embrace on social media — even the dudes of Florida’s Barstool Sports affiliate endorsed it. Bipartisan support indeed.”Michael Waters writes about the lost art of steamship gossip (!!!)
The History of the ‘Lesbian Masterdoc,’ a Viral PDF that Became Sapphic Internet Canon (remember when Renee Rapp said she had read the master doc?? and also Kehlani??)
Speaking of Kehlani…
Amy Littlefield writes in The Nation why freelancers need to organize and unionize: “The problem is systemic: Freelance life is underpaid. The solution must be systemic too.”
Vivian Gornick writes about Café Loup, “Where Writers Went to Gossip and Everyone Was Having an Affair”
I’m fascinated by high-profile publicists so I loved this look at Cait Bailey, the publicist to celebrities like Zayn Mailk and Alex Cooper, who would “prefer to keep a low profile”—but still agreed to be profiled by the NYT
“We won, sex is back on screen,” via films like Challengers, Love Lies Bleeding, and Drive Away Dolls, writes Drew Burnett Gregory at Autostraddle
Anne Hathaway in drag for V Magazine
This “hate read” about boygenius at
got a lot of pushback on social media but I loved it: “What if you combined three talented musicians into an insufferable cultural symbol? That is the premise of the band boygenius, currently on hiatus from making music for the nation’s premiere non-practicing bisexuals.”R.O. Kwon tackles the very taboo but not-uncommon topic of parental regret at TIME
An oral history of 13 Going on 30 was published at Cosmo ahead of the film’s 20th anniversary: “Mark [Ruffalo] almost didn’t sign on because we wanted him to dance in the “Thriller” scene, but he did it anyway. He was a reluctant participant, but then he was great.”
Spurred by new archival research and public comments by sociologist Judy Singer about trans people, a group of autistic academics and advocates argue that “neurodiversity” should be credited to the early online autistic community instead. Singer is often referred to as “the mother of neurodiversity.”
The wild story of how the anonymous blogger behind Crazy Days and Nights was finally identified
Chrishell Stause opens up about her relationship with G Flip and coming out: “after identifying as an ‘outcast’ for most of her life, she finally feels ‘embraced’ as a result of coming out as LGBTQIA+: ‘Joining the community, there is a sense of the outcasts coming together and making sure that nobody ever feels like that.’”
Last year, I looked at Taylor Swift’s career through the lens of Paine for The Daily Beast.