Manosphere, Schmanosphere
The Candyland and Twister of newsletters is leaning into wisdom from our elders, gossip about our idols, and Marc-style renovation projects (or at least we would, if presented with the opportunity).
Spreadlings,
Was it only a few feverish months ago that we were blithely rapping about the “Wife Guys” happily enjoying the view from the passenger seat while their female partners put the pedal to the metal? Bahahahahaha. [Pause. Wait. Nope, not done yet.] Bahahahahahahahaaaa. In the last few days, when we weren’t reading yet another lame if well-intentioned attempt to rationalize how everything went wrong, we found ourselves deluged with (related) stories about Wife Guy’s polar opposite: wrastlin’, denigrating, incelling, “left behind,” angry young white bros (“Your body, my choice!” Clever!) and their acolytes, like shadow son Barron Trump, who it turns out can speak—and used that power to turn his dad on to this potent slice of the manosphere. The past week has delivered hot takes on how to understand men; how to fix them; how to live without them entirely. Additionally, there was this funny plea: Dudes, stop bloody talking about Burning Man! And this one about teaching boys about sex via the sex scenes in movies. And, perhaps in subliminal anticipation of the vindication of the party of Matt Gaetz, there’s been a little boomlet on the rise of the male face lift (T&C) and the rise of filler in men (Vogue). And look, we do need to deal with this problem, the male of the species. And maybe you’re already there, readers—maybe you’re ready to think about men again. Maybe you’re ready to think, period, again. If so, we applaud your fortitude, and invite you to feast upon the afore-linked content. Your Spreaditors are moving a little more slowly. In phase two of our recovery effort, we finally peeled back the duvet only to be hit with a wave of Trump appointments that make Emperor Palpatine look like a rainbow flag-wafting hippie. Now we’re back here in the hole, accepting only feel-good reads and listens, Bad Sisters, and a steady blood sugar-spiking rush of intellectual junk food. Next week, we promise we’ll be back in fighting mode, or at least some version of it. This week, we invite you to join us in our cozy cave of self-indulgence and denial.
So long,
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. On that note, who among you has found a story on the interior design in the Alfonso Cuarón/Cate Blanchett Apple+ joint Disclaimer? Not only is this thing highly watchable (a fromage-fest, yes, but we say in a good way—don’t believe the New Yorker…or Vulture…or the Times!), but it’s also a veritable Noguchi lamp showroom, with a strong throw pillow game. Deets are proving inexplicably impossible to find. Interiors insiders among you, hit us up!
Making His Marc — Har!
People are ecstatic about the new issue of Vogue, guest-edited by Marc Jacobs, and…we get the hype! It’s great! Jacobs is the first guest-editor under Queen Anna’s rule, and the result is truly the aforementioned candy that we are all jonesing for at this moment, starting with its duel Kaia Gerber covers: The first is shot by Steven Meisel, styled by Grace Coddington, and features Gerber in a mega-bouffant and Marc Jacobs gown—we’re having fun! The second is a spellbinding portrait by it girl painter Anna Weyanthttps://www.gq.com/story/anna-weyant-profile; it’s so gorgeous we would not kick a poster print out of our office—hint, hint, Santa! The highlight of the whole stunt, though, is Gregory Crewdson’s haunting portrait of Jacobs at home in his Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house, with his husband, Charly, in the foggy distance. The portrait anchors an essay from Jacobs about falling in love with, purchasing, and restoring the Westchester architectural gem (which he bought for a darling $9.17 million in 2019 before pouring untold millions into its restoration), often comparing the process to birthing and raising a child—to which we say…really, Marc? And then we say…OK, fine, Marc, let’s go with it! We highly recommend watching the accompanying video about the making of the photograph, which involved a crew of 40, and many a bathrobe for Crewdson to choose from.
Read “Marc Jacobs on Making a (Historic) House a Home” and watch the video here.
The Mothers Are Mothering
Two pods remind us that we need the long-range wisdom (and humor, and survivalism) of more seasoned women right now. In Season 3 of Wiser Than Me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a meeting of the minds with Catherine O’Hara, talking pope socks, Gilda Radner, and why O’Hara missed John Candy’s wedding. And in the inaugural episode of her new Legacy Talk podcast, Lena Waithe talks to Broadway legend/Abbott Elementary wonder Sheryl Lee Ralph and—the highest compliment from a Spreaditor—Waithe comes prepared! Having studied Ralph’s back catalog1, she lavishes her career with the attention that we’re embarrassed to admit we didn’t know was this overdue.
Listen to JLD and COH here, and SLR and LW here.
Golden Opportunities
Maggie Jones’s New York Times article about online dating after 50 isn’t brand new (August), but it’s an uplifting read that felt worth digging up in honor of pioneering Golden Bachelorette Joan Vasos’s finale, which airs tonight on ABC. (She’s gonna pick Chock, right? He’s a little possessive for our taste, but we want Joan to do whatever feels right.) Fans of Joan’s season—and fine, Gerry Turner’s (pronounced Gary, still shaking our heads) Golden Bachelor season before it—will find that much of the article checks out: Dating later in life has its upsides, sayeth both practitioners and experts, because its participants know themselves so much better than they did in their twenties. That’s why the Goldens make better TV than their straight-out-of-sorority counterparts who dominate Bachelor Nation’s flagship shows. Which leads us to our soapbox: What this franchise—this country!—needs is a spinoff whose cast is made up entirely of Gen Xers. The article also benefits from a supporting role from Spread-beloved, dearly departed relationship guru Helen Fisher, who explains stuff like why physical chemistry is more important to older daters than younger daters. (Fisher, ever the giver, doled out this advice just before she died in August; thank you, Helen, for your many years of service!) Who’s with us? We demand a Gen X Bachelor/Bachelorette! Let the letter-writing campaign to ABC begin.
Read “Online Dating After 50 Can Be Miserable. But It’s Also Liberating.” here.
Wild, Juicy Tales from the Lit Crypt and Beyond
Lili Anolik’s new book Didion & Babitz (about Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, for those in the back) is out this week, and the literati are predictably a’buzzin’ about the double bio of the friends and rivals who represent “two halves of American womanhood.” Lena Dunham, in particular, was absolutely beside herself as she wheeled out the welcome wagon for the book. (At first glance, we thought this Daily Mail headline was crowing that Nicole Richie and Emma Roberts were playing Joan and Eve in some experimental adaptation, but we are not that lucky.) Though the book is bringing in some iffy reviews from critics who apparently do not live for gossip about the lives of deceased literary figures—can you imagine?—we have read the book and are here to say that it is indeed very fun and quite juicy. Because we go way back with the ponytail-swinging author, we’ll have an exclusive Q&A with Anolik in the coming weeks; we tell you this now so that if you’re not yet a paid subscriber you can sign up and get the goods. Bide your time by reading the actual book and also—especially if you still have to wait for shipping (unglamorous)—the essay that Lili wrote for Vulture this week, wherein she interrogates the fine line between love and violence in her work excavating the actual lives of literary lionesses. In the piece, she tackles Didion, whom she is tough on in the new book, and also Donna Tartt, whom she pissed off in her Bennington College podcast a few years ago. You know, with love.2
Buy the book here and read “The Literary Assassin” in Vulture here.
Further reading: “How Joan Didion and Eve Babitz were the ‘Madonna and Courtney’ of Their Time,” by Samantha Leach, in Nylon.
Cue the villain!
If you’re still reeling from the explosive 2022 podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong, get thee over to the Atlantic, where Spread writer crush and lauded scapegoat correspondent Helen Lewis delivers a follow-up in the form of a profile of fallen literacy rockstar Lucy Calkins. In the audio series—which, fine, doesn’t exactly deliver on “escapism” (George W. Bush makes an appearance, and may surprise you!) but will keep you on the edge of your seat—Calkins was taken down as our national reading calamity’s leading if unintentional baddie thanks to her success in popularizing a curriculum that eschewed phonics for “cueing”—or teaching kids to kind of guess at words instead of sounding out each letter. (If you’ve not yet listened to Sold a Story but are interested in education and/or scandal, it’s time to download what very well might become your own personal Serial.) Lewis’s piece complicates the narrative we’ve been, uh, sold via the American Media podcast, and paints a portrait of a well-meaning woman (Lewis describes her as having a Nancy Pelosi vibe) who has been hung out to dry by much of her industry. It’s also an interrogation of what Lewis describes as “the competing currents in American education and the universal desire for an easy, off-the-shelf solution to the country’s reading problems.”
Read “How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis” here.
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While doing our own homework, we came across this 1992 Jet cover of Sheryl Lee Ralph, and just had to share it with you. Here go!
If all this salacious literary intrigue has you drooling for more, Sloane Crosley’s New Yorker piece from a couple weeks back, “Dorothy Parker and the Art of the Literary Takedown,” may do the trick.
I wish I could print this out and leave it on my coffee table; there's so much great stuff to read in here and I don't want to miss any of it! xo
A delicious Spread this week, Rachel and Maggie! Particularly the end tidbit of Sloane Crosley’s New Yorker piece “Dorothy Parker and the Art of the Literary Takedown." Which I would have missed had it not been for you!