Holding a Candle in the Cold November Rain
We’re feeling Spread thin this week, how ’bout you? The Monica Geller and Janice Hosenstein of newsletters is counting gold bars and practicing our rodeo technique
What would make the perfect women’s magazine? Juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal examinations of women’s lives—and none of the advertiser obligations. Welcome to the Spread, where every week two editors read, listen, and watch it all, and deliver only the best to your inbox.
Spreadlings,
Feels like we’re comin’ in both a little hot and slightly undercooked this week—yes, we find that we are totally capable of being both of these at once. Like you we are busy celebrating the holiday of the year, nay, the decade. Halloween? Hardly. The Tatum-Kravitz engagement, of course! Proof that, in Hollywood at least, the social ladder is surprisingly flexible, that true love will win out, and that we have a destination wedding to start spray-tanning for. Will they ask Rachel to perform the ceremony, or Maggie? Which of us will walk Lenny down the aisle? Lordy, the dance routines that will need to be memorized. Anyway there’s a lot of planning to do, so you understand why this week’s Spread is slightly CliffsNotes in form.
To the Tatum-Kravitzes! (Taravitzes? Karatums?)
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. All jokes aside, sending 💪 to our Condé Nast brethren, who learned today the company is cutting 5 percent of their workforce—about 270 employees. Media, man. Not for the faint of heart.
Homework time, Zoë and Channing!
We need to talk about this fine institution you’re about to enter, says Rebecca Mead, dissecting “the default social arrangement” via a pair of new books on the subject in the New Yorker so we don’t have to. In On Marriage, British critic Devorah Baum investigates the culture of marriage in books, TV, movies—from George Eliot to Maggie Nelson; from screwball comedies to Normal People—as well as in her own marriage, to ask, “How is marriage unlike everything else? And why is it sometimes so very awful?” Mead also gets into The Two-Parent Privilege, from marriage-loving econ professor Melissa Kearney, who comes at it from a totally different (we think problematic) direction, considering the institution “solely as an arrangement for the raising of children”—connecting the “downfall” of marriage in the US to the decline of manufacturing in the US, and along with it, of reliable blue-collar incomes. Z and C, consider it your Spread Pre-Cana.
Read “Why We Need to Talk About Marriage” here.
In which we explicate the phrase “viral one-shoed block.”
The Athletic—that money-losing New York Times mega-acquisition that replaced its sports desk—has a profile of LSU basketball star Angel Reese, who sportier types than us know as the woman whose shoe fell off mid-game, which did not prevent her from coolly jumping up to block her opponent’s shot, shoe in hand. If you missed talk of her on SportsCenter, Shade Room, Saturday Night Live, and MSNBC—and OK, maybe we did—here’s your chance to catch up.
Read “The unstoppable Angel Reese wants more. And she makes no apologies for that” here.
That Gold Bar Lifestyle
For months, your Spreaditors have been pining for the definitive “love story” of Robert and Nadine Menendez, who so far have been charged with bribery, fraud, and making false statements. Well, it’s here, with writer Nina Burleigh’s detail-packed portrait of both the relationship and the murky New Jersey waters from whence it hails. Also, lots of references to Nadine’s “décolletage-first fashion sense.” Also, ALSO, are we the only Menendez-curious Americans who didn’t realize MSNBC anchor Alicia Menendez is Senator Bob’s daughter?
Read “Never Enough” in New York here.
Here’s the deal: All you have to do is get inebriated and/or otherwise lose it for the cameras—et voilà! Fame is yours!
For Vanity Fair, writer Anna Peele investigates the devil’s bargain between Bravo reality cast members and the network: a dark balancing act that’s being thrown for a loop as OG Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel pushes for a union and other RHONY stars file complaints relating to mental health, excessive drinking, and racism. Yikes. Are you out there, Jenna? We’re listening….
Read “Inside the Real Housewives Reckoning That’s Rocking Bravo” here.
Girls, interrupted.
Mara Gay—recently crowned powerhouse by New York magazine—brings us a heartbreaking profile of Amira Ismail, a bright Palestinian American 17-year-old who lives in Queens, and Amira’s Girl Scout troop, for New York Times Opinion. Since the Hamas attacks in Israel, these precious, do-gooding girls have experienced an onslaught of Islamophobia and racism. It’s crushing. Read it anyway.
Read “A Dispatch From the Muslim Girl Scouts of Astoria” here.
“It’s all in Miss Idaho’s crotch.”
“‘Hand me the reins,’ said Miss Rodeo America, and half a minute later she exploded out of the gate in a gallop, her crown sparkling in the spotlights, her hips flaring over the saddle, her horse snorting and sliding, her salutes popping like cherry bombs.”
In 1980, Outside sent E. Jean Carroll to report on a beauty pageant-rodeo hybrid on Mars, aka Oklahoma City. The story is newly re-upped on the site as an “Outside Classic.” Here, here! To those who know E. Jean for other things these days, it’s a reminder that she’s also a hot-fire reporter. This is her first published piece, if you can believe it, and already she has incredible style, wit, and an artful way of gleefully illuminating the ridiculous sexism at the core of the story with simmering rage yet without insulting its players, drawing characters so vivid, you feel like you’re right in the, uh, arena. Yeehaw!
“Cowgirls All the Way” is a fantabulous read, but the audio version adds a short intro/convo between E. Jean and her editor, longtime Outside-r (and subsequent Elle genius) Lisa Chase. It’s available via New York Times Audio app but sources tell us this Outside link is a smoother experience.
John James Audubon was an enslaver who mocked abolitionists working to free Black people.
Goddamnit. One more sickening reminder of the racism that can be traced back to the root of seemingly everything in this country: The Washington Post reports that birds “whose names trace to enslavers, white supremacists and robbers of Indigenous graves” will be renamed. Fascinatingly, the movement within the American Ornithological Society to re-think bird names kicked off in 2021 because of Christian Cooper, the Black birder in Central Park who was falsely accused of threatening behavior by a white woman—who can forget it, she called police after he asked her to leash her dog.
Read “Dozens of bird names honoring enslavers and racists will be changed” here.
Change makers.
The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis tackles the menopause industrial complex, and because she is Helen Lewis, succinctly gets to the crux of what’s been making your Spreaditors a little itchy about the recent “conversation” about the new “it” life health event: “What concerns me is the likely outcome of all the recent awareness raising: stealth marketing in lieu of actual help. Capitalism has gotten its hooks into menopause and wants to shake it until money falls out,” she writes, letting us down gently. “In reality, scientists don’t know enough about what the symptoms of menopause are, or the best way to treat them.”
Read “Capitalism Has Plans for Menopause”here.
The headline: “Sofia Coppola makes it look easy.”
And yeah, true. From fashion to filmmaking to all-around Hollywood scion-ing, the deeply unattainable ease of Coppola has a special power over young (and, ahem, not so young) women1. It makes us idolize her, even as we know in our right minds that her output is…variable. Still, for every transcendent Lost in Translation (made when she was just 32!) there’s a Somewhere whose heart-stabbing unwatchability makes us briefly reconsider what Kyle Buchanan calls the director’s “Mona Lisa smile”: Maybe it’s time to be a little less laid back? Buchanan’s New York Times story makes clear that ambitious filmmaking with budgets a fraction of those of her male counterparts is in fact anything but laid back. Will Priscilla fall into the Virgin Suicides column? Or will it be another Bling Ring? Well. Ben Kenigsberg calls it “stealthily devastating”! Spaeny’s performance is “sensitive, protean”! And the whole thing sounds uber-Coppola, girlish and punk all at once: In the opening credits, Priscilla preps her makeup to the tune of a 1980 Ramones song.
Read Buchanan’s profile here.
Read Kenigsberg’s review here.
The Artist Is…Happy?
Marina Abramović, whose work is largely about pain, not long ago suffered a perspective-shaking pulmonary embolism. The prolific, 76-year-old artist/queen spoke to the New York Times Magazine’s resident Tough Interviewer David Marchese about happiness (“I don’t see any good art made out of happiness.”), social media (not art!), young artists (spoiled!), and a range of controversial moves she’s made over the years. Plus, there are delightful bits like this: “[Marchese:] What do you think of my energy? [Abromovic:] Not bad at all. You’re very pedantic. You’re very clean cut. Good teeth.”
Read “Marina Abramovic Thinks the Pain of Love Is Hell on Earth” here.
Phoebe’s hotly anticipated collection is here and…sigh.
Cathy Horyn, in her infinite wisdom, calls it “completely new” and “a big step forward” for fashion and “essential, cool, and brave but not ridiculous.” So why does Monday’s release of Phoebe Philo’s eponymous collection have us feeling…meh? We don’t know what we expected—OK, fine, we do: some blueprint for feminist fashion unlike everything else out there now, clothes we might lust after and save up for (or seek lower-priced dupes of)—but in a world full of wildly expensive unwearable clothes, these felt like more of the same? Maybe we’ve officially lost our taste for Fashion. Or maybe you need to see and touch these clothes in person, as Horyn did, to get it, but that’s out of the question for mere mortals and anyway the whole thing is probably arriving on Hailey Beiber’s doorstep as we speak. Ding, dong!
Read Horyn’s review, “Phoebe Philo’s Return Is a Wake-Up Call” here.
Why do we do the things we do, Halloween Edition.
Standing in the cold street debating the existential purpose of Halloween with a five-year-old last night—MOM you’re supposed to eat every piece of candy right when you get it THAT’S WHY THEY MADE IT A HOLIDAY!!!!—we were tempted to reel off the history we’d freshly gleaned from NPR, but why bother? Save your breath for someone who might actually care, right? So, here: It starts at the turn of the twentieth century with children (BOYS, OK?) playing pranks on people; by the ’20s and ’30s, the pranks grew into full-on vandalism; grownups decided to start offering these pranksters candy and costumes to try to make it a “gentler” holiday; candy companies glommed on (capitalism!); Hollywood glommed on (more capitalism!). Eventually Freddy Krueger is murdering victims (WOMEN, OK?) and an “innocent” kids holiday is all full-on adult gore and exceedingly dark shit. Point being: Happy Tatum-Kravitz Day folks! You officially have our permission to eat ALL the candy (just don’t tell our kids).
Listen here.
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Why does Coppola keep making movies about how fame “walls us off from the world” and young women marry into royalty (Marie Antoinette, Priscilla)? “...to Coppola, who was just 18 when she gave a harshly criticized performance in her father’s film The Godfather Part III, Priscilla’s feeling of being scrutinized by an entire country at such a formative age was all too relatable.”
You know what, guys? I like this pared-down version of The Spread the best; I mean, the point of you using your highly developed, skilled magazine intellects is to bring us the most interesting stories you're reading, right? I love the curation (and, of course, the comments), and this post, for me, has it all (or all I need). Thank you! xo
MAGGIE!! RACHEL! I love a fast gallop with Spreadistas!!!