Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
The Camp North Star and Camp Mohawk of newsletters is fanning ourselves with faux Prada while rebooting our addled brains.
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!
Spread Hot & Blues,
With the heat index climbing into the 100s on the daily, the New York Times knew just what to gift all of us air-conditioning-dependent indoor cats: An interactive, play-along-at-home ranking of the 100 best movies of this century. (The formula is pulled straight from their blockbuster 100 best books of the century, which surprised and delighted us last summer.) So far, they’ve released numbers 40 to 100, which includes quite a few Spready picks (Black Swan, Fish Tank, Frances Ha) chosen by Spready celeb panelists (Sofia Coppola, Lena Dunham, Ava DuVernay, Danielle Brooks, Julianne Moore). Because we are competitive1 and have no interest in debating the finer points of Inception, next month we’ll be releasing our own 100-strong list of 21st-century films, The Spread 100™. Weigh in by emailing us your top-10 list (reply to this email or send to this extremely breezy email address: rachelandmaggie@thespread.media), made especially easy with this handy-dandy Times widget, while the getting is good.2 It’s truly the best procrastination tool we’ve come across since the invention of the Wordle archive.
Today, since Maggie flew the sweltering coop of the east coast to view all manner of geyser and bison across the West (and since “the media” is publishing at a molasses-like clip already this summer), we’re coming to you with a briefer than usual—but still really useful, we promise, we hope!—reading list.
Two thumbs up,
Rachel & Maggie
From the Sex-and-Bodies Department:
In the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino investigates (via a book review): Are young people having enough sex? Read it here.
In New York’s Hamptons Issue, Candace Bushnell investigates (via good old-fashioned shoe leather): Are old(er) people having enough sex? Read it here.
“The Body-Positivity Movement Is Over,” declares Annie Joy Williams in the Atlantic. The article is mostly about SkinnyTok (also covered by the Cut recently) and Williams’s take is surprisingly ambivalent. Read the Atlantic’s piece here, and the Cut’s here.
What if you could hook yourself up to a machine and minutes later have improved brain function? This is a real thing, according to the L.A. Times, and it’s called “ExoTMSTM.” Read it here.
Katie Arnold-Ratliff, a freelancer for the Cut, has officially zapped the very last iota of “fun mom” from our beings with her story “Are You in Trampoline Denial?” Read it here.
From the Seans Department:
The New York Times finally did the story that Rachel has been calling for for months now: A profile of Sean Duffy, The Real World: Boston beefcake turned Trump Transportation Secretary—with a hearty helping of family values-focused social media stardom.3 Read it here.
Sean Combs’s former publicist “speaks out” (attempts to make good) in the Hollywood Reporter, which…feels like a good time to remind you to read (or reread) queen Danyel Smith’s spectacular essay on her professional relationship with Combs! Smith’s story ran in the Times Magazine last summer, and we’re still thinking about it. Read it here.
From the Fashion Department:
Bloomberg Businessweek digs into how counterfitters are able to keep up in the luxury handbag derby—a question that’s been on our mind since reading an account from one faux-bag slinging Hamptonite in New York’s new issue. Read “Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags” here or via Apple News here.
The fashion internet lost its dang mind last week when test shots surfaced for Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story…with its actors in cheap John-John and CBK drag! Puck’s Lauren Sherman got Murphy on the horn for an emergency interview, the highlights of which you can read here. (The gist: They were just test shots, people!)
“People” are also low-key freaking out over Brad Pitt’s (summer??) blue-velvet garb, and the stylist responsible.
Newsweek swears that flying cars are in for summer. Read it here.
From the “Media” Department:
Can you imagine working as a staff writer at a place where there was an “A Team” of staff writers that you were not a member of?!?! (Fine, clearly you would be a part of it but imagine the little people!) New York’s Charlotte Klein dishes on the Atlantic’s hiring spree and hierarchy4. Read “Are You a $300,000 Writer?” here.
“Condé Nast Was Always a House of Cards. One Man Kept It Standing for Too Long.” A juicy headline for a juicy review of a juicy book (that we’ve already got queued up on audiobook for mid-July). Read it in Bloomberg Businessweek via Apple News here.
And the Award for the Meme that Was Sent to Us the Most Times this Week Goes To…
Competitive with the New York Times LOL.
Spoiler: This list will not include Materialists! Still, we think you should see it so we can talk about it together.
“The Media” truly can’t get enough of Christian influencers these days, and you know what? It’s wearing us out. The Hollywood Reporter just staked their claim on the Schnackys—the “first family” of influencing in the name of Jesus, to the tune of 30 million followers. Read “God’s Influencers” here if you’re into this kind of thing. We’ll be inside rewatching The Righteous Gemstones instead.
Spreaders know that we ride or die for the Atlantic’s S-Team: Sophie Gilbert, Helen Lewis, Xochitl Gonzalez, Jennifer Senior, and Sarah Zhang. All of whom deserve to bring home at least $500K annually.
Re: Candace Bushnell, like so many of the other commenters on the article, it provoked a tear for what AJLT could have been. Instead, it's such a disaster that even my gay bestie threw ink the towel (I had given up after Season One). Everything I've read indicates is gone from Hate Watch to just Hate.