MAHA-HA-HA-HA-HOLIDAYS!
The Yukon Cornelius and Abominable Snowman of newsletters is wrapping up our clutter, counting down to the apocalypse, and participating in the year-end-list industrial complex.
We’re here to reclaim the “women’s magazine.” Every week, two veteran editors read it ALL to bring you everything we believe women’s media should be: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, hot goss, and the odd shopping tip—aka, the full Spread. Plus: original interviews, podcasts, and more. Come hungry!
Spreadarlings,
This week, in our grand finale of 2024, we just could not decide what to serve you. Should we fill you up with juicy, meaty new stories, per usual? Perhaps you would prefer a pick-n-mix smorgasbord of fun, sparkly bits to keep you entertained without, as they say, the bloat? Or, now that the media’s gift guide industry has been “enhanced” by its annual “best of” list-a-palooza, do you really want a stroll down memory lane, recapping the year’s most delicious stories in our annual Spreadie Awards? As a pair of Southern-born women (as longtime readers know, Rachel originally hails from Mississippi, Maggie from North Carolina) with not-so-demure appetites, minimalism does not come naturally to us. So we decided to cook up all three for you—heaven forbid you leave this Spread hungry. Dig in!
Let’s all savor what remains of 2024. We’ll be here for you in what is sure to be a wild and wooly 2025.
Rachel & Maggie
PART I: Stories to make a meal out of…
MAGA wasn’t bad enough, now we have to deal with MAHA?
Like us, you probably spent time you didn’t have over the past few days digesting a fun new acronym that was not here last week and this week is suddenly, queasily ubiquitous. Make America Healthy Again doesn’t sound so bad, right? We can all get behind healthy, right? If only it were so simple. This new “alliance,” or worldview, or movement, or “politically right cry of health freedom and choice” is explicated in a seven part New York cover story, if that tells you anything, as well as in Lisa Miller’s New York Times story, “How the Right Claimed Crunchy.”1 The Spread’s itsy-bitsy CliffsNotes version: RFK’s conspiracy-fueled wingnuts, Goop-y wellness fanatics, raw milkmaid dress-wearing tradwives, toxin-obsessed moms, seed oil-lovin’ hippies, plenty of celebrities, people who are still mad Anthony Fauci made them mask up, and (according to New York) “all manner of disaffected people, from the crunchy to the paranoid to the chronically ill, who have been searching for a charismatic outsider to launch an assault against the powerful forces that have kept Americans unhealthy for so long”... ALL these folks have in common a new idol, Kennedy, and a politico-cultural intersection, MAHA. (Not in this cohort, we’d like to note: Ozempic converts.) With bird flu on the horizon and a vaccine skeptic running things, this could be an epic disaster. Or? “Only a movement so heretical and cross-pollinated and possibly dangerous could summon the political muscle to heal what truly ails America.” Our prediction: When next year’s Spreadie Awards roll around, there’s a good chance we’ll be calling 2025 the Year of MAHA (and other horrors, TBD).
Conquer New York’s mega-package here.
Read Miller’s story here.
We’re in this mess together.
Has a story ever hit us in exactly the right (optimally meat-tenderized) spot at the exact right (cusp-of-panic) moment the way that Jennifer Wilson’s New Yorker book report on More Than Pretty Boxes—Dr. Carrie Lane’s sociological look at the rise of the “professional organizer”—does, landing a week before the inevitable influx of more shit in our homes? Okay, fine, probably, yes. Nevertheless! This story—and, evidently, the book it’s based on—is chock full of great details2 on how our homes got so overloaded in the first place, why professional organizers (mostly women, go fig) rose to the rescue, and just how much riches/resentment/capital-C crazy these organizers reap as a result. We’ll say this: It put the kibosh on our last minute holiday shopping. Stick a fork in these wallets, they are d-o-n-e.
Read “What Professional Organizers Know About Our Lives” here.
“Reading ‘Prozac Nation’ felt as if I were reading my own story, as if Wurtzel and I were both trapped in the same meta-realm where the mind exists detached from the self, forever sentenced to endlessly analyze its performance in the tragic theater of life.”—in the Washington Post, writer Laura Delano considers the legacy of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation on its 30th birthday. Read it here.
Hard Feelings
We’re guessing one particular detail stood out to you about this week’s school shooting at Abundant Life High—what a name—in Madison, Wisconsin: The shooter, who killed another student and a teacher before killing herself, was female. While American school shootings are hideously commonplace, that part, at least, is rare. According to one Northeastern University criminologist, 95 percent of mass shooters are male. Here’s hoping one of the writer role models we trust with this kind of thorny and heartbreaking subject matter—thinking here of Lisa Miller, Jennifer Senior, Hanna Rosin—is out reporting on and thinking through this factor, and what we’re to make of it. Ladies, we’re grateful and ready to process.
“Hike! Hut! Ball!” Yeah, what she said!
Remember back in college, when you’d be hanging out at sporting events (not a euphemism!) and some athlete or sports-loving male would approach, wanting to chat—maybe about the game at hand, maybe about what was going on in their hearts and minds? Okay, nothing even close to this has ever transpired in the vicinity of either of your Spreaditors, one of whom was recently chided by a family member for using the term “golf mallet” and both of whose favorite sport (other than Taboo!) is bocce ball. (Also: We have both watched all seasons of Friday Night Lights multiple times.) But you know which lady person it did—does!—happen to, lots, according to Esquire? Thirty-two-year-old NFL sideline and NBA courtside reporter Taylor Rooks, that’s who! Rooks knows more than the actual rules of football and basketball; she’s conversant in the rules of life, which is why professional athletes and the people who worship them are “baring their souls” to her “ like they’re confiding in a trusted therapist.” We’re sure it’s mere coincidence that she’s rather attractive, too.
Read “The World’s Best Athletes Tell Her Everything” here.
PART II: A smattering of small-yet-delectable morsels…
John Waters’s much-anticipated-to-your-Spreaditors annual best movies list for Vulture didn’t disappoint, tipping us off to the very Spready-sounding film Messy from filmmaker Alexi Wasser, which we somehow missed this fall. Thankfully, there’s a Cut interview with Wasser at the ready to catch us all up.
In a New York Times op-ed, Katrina Onstad offers a fresh take on Nightbitch, recasting what is on its surface a movie about parental drudgery as, in fact, the opposite: the rare movie that also makes parenting look fun. Who’s a good girl?
The Atlantic’s Stephanie H. Murray—whose value has shot up on the Spreadlandia Stock Exchange this year—delivers the timely “Why Do Big Families Get Such a Bad Wrap?” wrestling with the concept of resource depletion in what’s ultimately a valentine to her brothers and sisters. Awwww.
“Senator Lara Trump.” Ah hell, could be worse, argues Michelle Cottle, to our amazement, in the New York Times. Read “A Mild Defense of Lara Trump” here.
With A Bad Moms Christmas season officially upon us, the TikTok generation has discovered the therapist-beloved eye-opener, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Read “It Wasn’t You. It Was Your Parents.” here.
In each other, New York Mag bon vivant Brock Colyar and $125 million sex podcaster Alex Cooper meet their match at the launch party for Cooper’s new electrolyte-enhanced drink, Unwell Hydration. (Does this make her MAHA or anti-MAHA?) Read “Anybody Thirsty for Alex Cooper’s Girlie Gatorade?” here.
Here’s your latest Anna Marie Tendler update—because we have a job to do here—at Buzzfeed. Also, let’s all give
a warm welcome to Substack.
PART III: Drumroll please. And now for the best-of list to top all best-of lists…
Welcome to 2024’s third3 annual Spreadie Awards: 16 Stories that hit our sweet spot of woman-y excellence and now live on in our heads and hearts. If you missed them the first time, now’s your chance!
The Best Bio-Doc of the Year: The Disappearance of Shere Hite, now on Hulu
We said: “A post-Kinsey, post-Masters and Johnson sex researcher and author, Hite was late-night-show famous in the eighties; her survey of American women’s sexual experiences and attitudes, The Hite Report, has sold more than 50 million copies since it was first published in 1976…. also a glamourpuss: gorgeous—a leggy strawberry blonde—extremely stylish, liked to party…So why, according to our own highly scientific survey consisting of half a book club and a couple other group chats, isn’t she on our generation’s radar?” Read more here.
The Best IVF Story of the Year: “In Vitro” by Julianne McCobin, The Point
We said: “…the most accurate depiction I’ve read of what it feels like to do IVF. ‘In Vitro’ recounts [McCobin’s] experience teaching Frankenstein to a high-school class while going through the bizarro drudgery of the long, final step of the infertility gauntlet.” Read more here.
The Best Nice-Lady-Celeb Profile of the Year: “Julianne Moore’s Dangerous Housewives” by Jazmine Hughes, New York Magazine/The Cut
We said: “As with Hughes’s Viola Davis and her Whoopi Goldberg, the Julianne portrait fires on all cylinders: The quotes, the observations, and the writing, which stopped me dead in my tracks more than once.” Read more here.
The Best Gut-Punch of the Year: “Letting Naomi Die” by Katie Engelhart, The New York Times Magazine
We said “...as sold, [the story is] about anorexia. But it’s also a deep dive into the field of psychiatry—its ethics, its politics, and its unique reliance upon human connection as compared to other areas of medicine—and the question of whether a condition caused by mental illness should qualify for palliative care or even assisted death.” Read more here.
The Best Can’t-Believe-Your-Eyes Essay of the Year: “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” by Charlotte Cowles in New York Magazine
In our Spread interview with Cowles, she told us, “After I got scammed, I was desperate to understand how it happened. Why were the scammers’ tactics, so transparent in retrospect, so effective on me in the moment? I kept replaying that day over and over in my head like a psychological crime scene.” Read more here.
The Best Artist-We-Cannot-Identify-with-Whatsoever Profile of the Year: “How Anna Weyant Became The Most Talked About Painter In The Art World” by Carrie Battan, GQ
We said: “Anna Weyant is the Dolce & Gabbana-clad 28-year-old It-girl painter hottie whose moody Dutch masterpiece-y paintings have sold for as high as $1.6 million at auction and who looks like Elizabeth Berkley circa Showgirls (if only Nomi were shorter). She’s an art-world darling who liberally applies St. Tropez self-tanner. As I was recently told during an enraging meeting at one of my kids’ schools: Sit with the cognitive dissonance.” Read more here.
The Best Director-We-Can-Identify-With Profile of the Year: “‘Nightbitch’ and the National Mood” by Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker
We said: “About as Spready a story as they come, packed with ideas about marriage, ambition, Hollywood, and, yes, the body.” Read more here.
The Best Science-Plus-History Story of the Year: “The Vatican’s Secret Role in IVF” by Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair
We said: “[What a time] to learn that the Vatican, of all places, played a crucial role in the development of the science of IVF—specifically, in supplying the 30,000 liters of post-menopausal nun pee-pee that helped create the first ovulation-stimulating drug, Pergonal, in the 1950s.” Read more here.
The Best Parenting Essay of the Year: “Blighted Horizons” by Noelle Bodick, The Point
We said: “Roasts our Oster-backed data-crunching parenting culture with a light touch, and approaches the pitfalls of hiring someone else to care for your own children with tenderness and lolz.” Read more here.
The Best Writer-Subject Pairing of the Year: “Florence!” by Lauren Groff, T: The New York Times Style Magazine
We said: “Divine…does not disappoint.” Read more here.
The Best Profile About the Other Side of the Year: “From Mommy Blogger to MAGA’s Most Powerful Weapon: The Story of Jessica Reed Kraus” by Laura Bassett, Elle
We said: “A wise psychological portrait of Kraus, who’d be a lark of a batty, self-aggrandizing character if her whole enterprise weren’t so dangerous.” Read more here.
The Best Classic Ladymag-Story-With-a-Twist of the Year: “The New Business of Breakups” by Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker
We said: “A deep dive/test-drive into the burgeoning heartbreak-recovery industrial complex…The emotional payoff, expertly seeded throughout the journey, was worth the momentary inflight heartburn.” Read more here.
The Best Pair of Ezra Eps of the Year: “Birthrates Are Plummeting Worldwide. Why?” and “The Deep Conflict Between Our Work and Parenting Ideals,” The Ezra Klein Show
We said: “[The shows] are so satisfying, answering so many burning questions that we hadn’t ourselves managed to put into words, that we found ourselves breaking our own rule and texting episode links to friends mid-listen.” Read more here.4
The Best LOL of the Year: “3AM Phone Call Between New Dads Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro” by Bess Kalb, The Grudge Report
We said: [Post-Oscars] “Bess Kalb reached deep into our psyches to give us what we didn’t know we needed.” Read more here.
The Best Trad Ladymag Essay of the Year: “Why I Cut Off All My Hair” by Elizabeth Gilbert, O Daily
We said: “A typically beautiful, funny, moving personal essay about beauty but more so… priorities.” Read more here.
The Best New Yorker Interview of the Year: “Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace” by Rachel Syme, The New Yorker
We said: “Among the most satisfying back-and-forths we’ve consumed this year.” Read more here.
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“How the Right Claimed Crunchy” is a mind-bending headline for Maggie, who lives in the adamantly crunchy and also adamantly liberal Amherst, Massachusetts—home of the kind of old school crunch that Miller sums up as “lumpy hand-knit sweaters...unkempt hair.” How this identity could ever overlap with Trumpism is… inconceivable. But apparently not impossible.
“There are now more self-storage facilities in the United States than Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Pizza Hut locations combined.”
Wowzer, a third anniversary! Does that make us legacy media?
We *also* said: Everyone is Horny for Ezra Klein
I usually read your column the day you send it, always with delight, and even though the holidays got in the way, I remembered to catch up. I feel bad that you don't get many comments because you put so much work into keeping up with legacy (!) media. I generally read at least two of the pieces you recommend, and am grateful for your take on what else is out there. Thank you, and I'm glad you'll be reading ahead of me in 2025.