Making Our Own News

The Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson of newsletters—meeeeow!—is lazing out the start of the school year... in the shower... with the bots.

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! 

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Spreadalas,

Post-DNC and pre-Labor Day weekend, we don’t have to tell you it’s a slow news week, with a real dearth of substantial reads, too. But unlike in the dog days of yore, this year we decided to, as we say in the biz, “make some news” of our own with a—dom, dom, dom!—Spread Original Investigation™. Like much of our summer fodder, the notion sprang from Miranda July’s landmark “novel” All Fours; specifically, a micro-passage on p. 96¹ : To achieve baby-soft, pregnancy-glow skin, the narrator buffs her bod with baking soda, then slathers on

Hillary Kerr

’s family’s favorite body lotion, Vanicream. The results, she claims, are otherworldly. Because we at the Spread wonder about the Big Questions, we’ve lain awake countless nights, thinking: Is this two-step ritual a thing that people, like, do? Were we missing out?

A pro forma Google search turned up zero meaningful results for any combination of the terms Vanicream, baking soda, and All Fours. But we love uncharted territory! So we added a box of 365-brand baking soda to our Amazon cart, along with a pump-top vat of Vani. We were off to the races.

When Spread Wednesday dawned, per our narrator, we hopped in the shower, moistened up (sorry), and shook on 16 ounces (1 pound!) of baking soda—like Kamala’s Momala said, “never do anything half-assed!”—covering every inch from chin to toesies. Massage. Wait. Rinse. At this point we weren’t sure what was happening to our skin, but we did note that our shower was caked in sodium bicarbonate. Why not scrub-a-dub-dub the tile, too? With everything a’gleam, we toweled off and globbed vast quantities of Vanicream all over. Now here we sit before you in our royal robe. We can confirm that, at the bargain price of $16 for all supplies, our skin is indeed softer and very hydrated and—in a departure from traditional oil-based body scrub—our shower’s cleaner, too. Will we blow $20K on a motel-room reno and choreograph a dance to seduce a Hertz employee? You’ll have to wait for next week’s installment of this Spread Original Investigation™.

Always at your service,

Rachel & Maggie

P.S. Just days after Maggie’s now-iconic piece of high literature, “Is Everybody Horny for Ezra Klein?” hit the internet, New York Mag and the New Yorker followed her aboard the Ezra train, with twin profiles of our increasingly powerful intellectual daddy. Better late than never, friends. 

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Here’s what paying readers are scooping up like the last tub of Dippin’ Dots at the county fair…

• Willa Bennett’s leap from the cool kids table to the…Hearst cafeteria

• Why Dems are betting on the Alpha Wife Guy. 

• Friends obsessed with midlife weight gain? Why that’s so worrying.

• We’re not getting our lite lit from ChatGPT…yet. 

• But we are getting our book recs from the Kween of Obamacore.