Exile on Main Street
The Lizzie McGuire and Kelsey Peters of newsletters is back with catty mamas, rent-a-mamas, one wild-eyed MAGA mama, and a new theme song.
Welcome to Spreadlandia, where two veteran editors read it ALL to winnow out only the best: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, and hot goss—aka, the full Spread. Plus: original interviews, podcasts, and more. Come hungry!
Spreadbeauties,
We greet you as our identities as brilliant editors with impeccable story sense face a new challenge: A viral story penned by a woman who once uttered the words, “The old Sharpay knows what she wants and get what she wants,” in a film called High School Musical 2. Yes, we’re talking about “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group Chat,” by Ashley French (née Tisdale). Catchy headline, sure. But the essay itself is so boilerplate, so blah, such a—as an editor with seniority once described a manuscript to young us—”snoozecream sundae with yawnsauce,” that had it come across our desks, we’d have scrawled “nothingburger” across the top, killed it, and moved the bleep on. (In a gracious and encouraging way, of course, because we are girls.) Shows how much we know. Some genius at the Cut (and we use that word with all sincerity), read the same piece, leaned back in her chair, and said, “sure, let’s lob that thing onto the internet and see what happens.” What happened? Online sleuths immediately uncovered the identities of the mom group members who had made French feel left out enough to whine about it on the internet, and—yep—they are: Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor (whom we’re proud of for making the cut if not the Cut). Since these “mean moms” were identified, madness has ensued, including the Instagram-unfollowing of Tisdale by Duff, the dragging and redemption of someone named Matthew Koma (?), and no fewer than six updates on People.com (Duff is “tuning out the noise with a new song”). Not to mention 217 comments and untold traffic for the New York Media.
Lesson learned. Now here’s to the year of the horse.
Giddyup buttercups,
Rachel & Maggie
PS: Though it’s a fast, furious, and terrifying news week for, you know, the world, Spreadlandia has a taste for stories that spend a little longer in the oven, and in that category, post-holiday pickings remain slim. We’ve done our best, and yes, while we try to Spread the love, we realize that this week we have multiple Cut stories in the same issue. Thanks for playing!
PPS: If you’re as happy to be back here in this space as we are, please make sure to bang that ❤️ button!
Robyn is Mother
Let’s hear it for the Paul Shaffer of Spreadlandia, Robyn, for birthing “Sexistential,” which a press release explains is “possibly the world’s first rap about having one-night stands while 10 weeks pregnant after IVF.” Which sounds frankly awful to us but really seems to work for her. Here she is debuting it on Colbert. Sample lyrics, kid you not:
My body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive
Got a whole universe inside that exists in between my thighs
Do I have a consistent will to persist and finish this ride?
My babymaker’s got twenty in the clip, ready to fire
The Wolff in Chic Clothing
New York Times Styles has really outdone herself with a profile of Victoria Wolff, the 45-year-old influencer wife of 72-year-old “writer” (look at us not taking the bait) Michael Wolff. The crux is that Victoria has parlayed their Meyersian house in Amagansett and Michael’s “newsiness” into a social media mini-empire, with a sizable Instagram following and a thriving Substack presence built around the couple’s lifestyle. The article, by Rory Satran, is an exercise in raising one eyebrow on the page, with our favorite backhanded compliment arriving at the end: “The Wolffs’ home is smaller than it appears onscreen. With its swimming pool, expansive garden and high-ceiling kitchen, it’s enviable, but more World of Interiors quirky than Architectural Digest impressive.” Southern translation: Bless her heart.
Read “How to Live Like a Wolff” here.
Welch Out
Those who caught our end-of-year wrap-up(s) will recall that, with all the Vanity Fair hoopla and Devil Wears Prada 2 anticipation, we’d convinced ourselves that maybe, just a little bit, in some way, somehow, magazines were kinda sorta back, baby? But on Tuesday, our freshly pumped tires met a Louis Vuitton-monogrammed bayonet: GQ global editorial director Will Welch is leaving not just the title, but publishing altogether. He’s heading to Paris to work with shorts-suit trailblazer Pharrell Williams. It’s a blow to magazines in general and Condé Nast in particular: With brand new leadership at Vogue and Vanity Fair, this is the third top-of-the masthead vacancy at one of the publisher’s four flagship titles in eight months. (We got David Remnick’s voicemail when we called to tell him to just go ahead and give his two weeks for retirement.) Welch, with whom we had a rip-roaring conversation on the Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) podcast last year, was among the last couple of magazine editors bridging the old school and the new (cc: Sarah Ball, with whom we also ripped and roared recently). He’d studied under GQ’s Jim Nelson for a dozen-plus years before getting the top job, and took the responsibility of stewarding the title into its next chapter seriously. His GQ was edgier, more fashiony, and as he told us, “a little dangerous.” GQ fashion writer Sam Hine1 and Cosmopolitan editor Willa Bennett (not to brag but we also podded with her) are at the top of the goss list to fill Welch’s seat, which…OK! Au revoir to all that!
OMG MTG WTF
While we were out, both the New York Times Magazine’s Bob Draper and the New Yorker’s Charlie Bethea (no idea if anyone has ever called Charles Bethea “Charlie” but it’s 2026 and we’re feeling emboldened) delivered profiles of newly awakened, freshly resigned Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in a move of total kismet turned over a new leaf at the exact moment Trump dropped her faster than green vegetable over the Epstein files. What comes across in both profiles is that Greene, who is inexplicably still 51 years old, is a total kook and also, perhaps out of necessity, does seem genuine in her attempt to evolve. (Does that earn her our forgiveness? That’s a different question.) She told Draper that her literal come-to-Jesus moment occurred at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, when Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s murderer moments before our president declared his unyielding hate for his opponents. MTG even regrets accusing Nancy Pelosi and AOC of treason. Her new thing, she says, is trying to behave like the Christian she is. Both profiles are, no surprise, solid and lengthy. If you only have only 8.5 minutes, though, may we recommend a change of course: Here’s Marjorie yesterday on TV’s most powerful political gab show, The View. Joy goes hard-ish! Sunny too!
Read the New Yorker story, which definitely won the art contest, here.
Read the New York Times Magazine story here.
Watch The View here.
