Match Point
Match Point
The Kournikova and Navratilova of newsletters is getting the feeling back in our toes and sharpening up our backhands, with Guadagnino, Griner, Green (as in Gayle), and more.
What would make the perfect women’s magazine? Juicy yarns, hot goss, 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. Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.
Spreaderinas,
An interview posted on a Monday? This reading list popping up on a Thursday? As our squadron of massage therapists works to induce blood flow back into our metatarsals following a raucous night tearing it up at the Met Gala (yes that was us scuttling by beneath a beige shower curtain—we’ll do anything for the bit!) the Spread is going rogue, firing “content” at you willy-nilly. We thank you for rolling with the punches, Spreadsters! In exchange for your forbearance—and to welcome the new arrivals 👋👋—we’re sharing today’s reading list with all subscribers, not just the payers.
In the words of the man who was hired to tote someone named Tyla up the Met stairs because the [pause for rapid Google] singer was unable to take even the most mincing of steps, lest her dress disintegrate like a toddler’s sandcastle….
Shall we?
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. If you’re still wondering which jeans to buy now, you clearly missed our interview with Marie Claire EIC Nikki Ogunnaike. Don’t worry darling, it’s right here.
Challenge accepted.
As students of the Luca Guadagnino oeuvre (Rachel has viewed Call Me By Your Name no fewer than infinity times) we went into Challengers looking for similarities, and found many: LG loves ugly-pretty male beauty; highly suggestive foods; a casual penis reveal; shell-pink preppy button-downs; dancing al fresco, in blue; and a thumping soundtrack (this one, by Trent Reznor—still going strong!—will make you wonder if you’re sitting at the US Open or sweating it out in a Berlin nightclub). And speaking of sweat, we are talking liters! Gallons! A crashing ocean of perspiration! All to say: The Zendaya tennis movie serves popcorn-movie energy with art-house topspin, putting an overhead smash of sex appeal on the sports-movie genre. What, too much? If you haven’t seen it yet, just go. If you have, feast on Vulture’s ultra-micro coverage of the movie’s every stroke, and take in Town & Country’s story behind what we like to think is theeeee Loewe shirt of the season1.
The WNBA’s Other Most Famous Woman.
Like you, we were pumped to see that Brittney Griner tell-all time is finally here, with simultaneous covers (the New York Times Magazine, the Cut) timed to the release of her memoir. J Wortham’s Times profile gives the ticktock of Griner’s experience in a Russian gulag, a memoir-skimming layup of a profile with in-person observations flicked in. (Most striking to us: the shocking suddenness of Griner’s loss of freedom, and the physical fact of having her outsize 6’9” frame—with a wingspan wider than Lebron’s—shoved into confined spaces.) The Cut gives us a convo between Griner and fellow sportystar Megan Rapinoe that feels beguilingly insider-y (“Sue” pipes up every now and then, and we are itching for an invite when they make plans to get together in NYC). But we are still waiting for a story that offers deeper contextualization, and presses on the thornier parts of this story—the controversy about trading Griner for a notorious arms dealer, for starters, and bringing home a celebrity when other Americans have been held abroad far longer. Also, the wider-scope picture of pay inequity in the WNBA that forces stars to go abroad to earn even a fraction of their male counterparts’ salaries. Of course this is just the profile phase of the PR campaign; who’s gonna drop the biggie once the book is in its review phase?
Read “‘I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk” in the Times Magazine here, and “Brittney Griner’s Joyful Next Chapter” in the Cut here.
“Playful pawpats of mortality.”
In
, 80-year-old author Gayle Greene recalls the crow’s-feet she first noticed in…1972, and the many phases of aging that have followed, with rich perspective and some good news: “My 70s turned out to be better than my 20s. And when I turned 50, that unimaginable age, I’d just met the man I would marry; I still had four more books in me. I cared what I looked like, and still, when I was 60; and still, at 80.” Read it here.You’re just the right size to do the Cabbage Patch.
Maggie may be the oldest living baby Gen Xer, because she seems to be the only person alive who still remembers the Cabbage Patch Kids’ birthing center/retail establishment in New York City, where you could watch your new “baby” be “born.” Now, via Thrillist, comes confirmation that this is not just a fever dream stored in Maggie’s lizard brain: writer Joshua Rigsby and his kids tour the remaining Cabbage Patch Kids’ Babyland General Hospital in rural Georgia, and every detail is just as wackadoo as your Spreaditor remembers. Added bonus: Late in the piece, Rigsby’s one-paragraph description of his wife’s C-section hits home with Maggie (a two-time sectionee) on all the levels. Joshua Rigsby, where are you? Who are you? Should we be birth-story friends? Read it here.
Fashion is really leaning into itself this month, and we’re here for it.
Welcome to Her Dollhouse
Some things feel like a spoof when they clearly are not thus intended. For instance, it is not a joke that Julia Roberts’s niece remains worrisomely dead behind the eyes. Can we fast-forward to the inevitable and cast Emma in the next M3GAN sequel, please?
Good Mail Day.
Over in the new issue of Air Mail Look, our new best friend (hello? Linda? Are you there?) gets to the bottom (sorry) of the naked-dressing trend, a Bob Mackie-inflected salve for your Met Ball hangover; Jessica Shaw investigates the throwback Kibbe System of finding your most flattering palette (we don’t have to tell you that we Spreaditors are “Flamboyant Naturals”); and
joins us in sizing up the marital status of the moment: “Married women ask me about being divorced the way closeted men are interested in how gay guys do sex,” she writes. Proof of our new best friendship with La Wells, Air Mail has bestowed paywall-free links to these delightful reads upon all residents of Spreadlandia.You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Some of our sources smell a whiff of sexism in Justin Miller’s story on Joanna Coles’s takeover of the Daily Beast and while that’s an aroma to which we are highly attuned…eh? We’re not so sure. Coles has been vocal about leading not an overhaul but rather a high-speed pirate-style invasion of the publication. Among her first public acts on the job was putting out feelers on Instagram for a Chief Lauren Sánchez Correspondent—in an organization that thought it was about, ya know, news. (Just a joke! TDB now says.) Miller reports that she’s already locking horns with her staff, who naturally fear widespread layoffs. Yes, after our Jo-Co interview, we’re a little in the bag for Joanna, but we have to suspect that all of this, including her dedicated Meghan Markle gossip vertical, is part of some cracking-eggs-to-make-the-omelet master plan. This brand of “is she for real” shit-stirring reared its head when she stormed Cosmo, too. Within a matter of weeks, Coles has got people reading about TDB, now she just has to transition those people to reading the publication itself. Read “Can Joanna Coles Tame the Daily Beast?” here.
“I’m on it. My staff is on it. I assume everyone in New York is on it at this point.” —Dermatologist Dan Belkin, MD, in the Town & Country cultural timeline “Ozempic: the Shot Heard Around the World”
You know psychedelics have gone mainstream when…
O. Daily devotes a full digital issue to the subject and, despite the requisite warning signs and caveats, gives it an almost gleeful all aboard! In addition to ’shrooms, MDMA, ayahuasca, and ketamine, Liz Brody’s “A User’s Guide to Therapeutic Psychedelics” introduces us to a mind-altering substance we’d somehow missed. Ibogaine, a cardiotoxic (!!) staple of Bwiti ceremonies of central-African Gabon, is now a “controversial Hail Mary” for opioid addiction. One woman interviewed went from eating whole fentanyl patches to quitting completely after one ibogaine session. Read it here or via Apple News here.
Alabama, of all places, scores some points on women’s health.
Some 4,300 American women still die of cervical cancer every year, but between better screenings and the HPV vaccine, doctors are optimistic it could become the first form of cancer to be fully eliminated. (Spreaders, bag it up: Rates are dropping in every age group except ours—cases among women 30-44 rose nearly 2 percent annually from 2012 to 2019.) In Alabama, which has the fourth-highest rate of cervical cancer in the country, doctors and health orgs have pledged to wipe out cervical cancer within a decade. The Wall Street Journal’s Brianna Abbott reports that nurses are traveling to schools to administer the vaccine, while “hospitals are sending buses to screen women deep in the country, where gynecologists are scarce.” Read it here or via Apple News here.
Remember last week’s ode to The Editor?
All that cheerleading and coddling and fixing and zhuzhing that takes writing from meh to great? Please allow us to introduce Abraham & Chase, a new biz launched by the black-belt-level editors Laurie Abraham and Lisa Chase, a pair of work wives whose love has lasted even longer than your Spreaditors’. Between them, L&L have toiled at the Atlantic, New York, the Economist, Premiere, Outside, Wired, the New York Observer, Mirabella, and Elle (where we met them—and each other). They’ve edited everyone from your favorite TV shrink, Orna Guralnik, to
, Nora Ephron, Paul Ford, Rivka Galchen, Daphne Merkin, Peggy Orenstein, Akhil Sharma, Salamishah Tillet, Rebecca Traister, and Amy Wallace. They’ve worked on books, magazines, speechwriting, you name it2. They have been friends and mentors to both of your Spreaditors. And now they’re teaming up to offer their prodigious editing skills to publishers, writers, academics, agents—anyone who needs help developing a new project or taking a stuck one over the finish line. If you can get on their dance card, you’ll be one lucky ducky (apologies for the industryspeak). Here’s how to get in touch.
See that combo of headline and image? Only in print, baby. Only in print. [Never not channeling Liz Smith.]
Interview has created a power couple we never dared dream of: Hot Priest Ripley (Andrew Scott) plus Queen Anne/Elizabeth II Leda Fleabag (Olivia Colman) riffing on drama school, annoying questions that journalists ask too often3, their favorite candle scents, and why dogs are good to have, while calling each other “darling” a lot. In the grand tradition of Interview, not a word of it would make it past The Editor’s eye if this was an actual article but nevertheless, we are charmed4. It’s here.
Are you, like another reader this week, infuriated by our aggressive use of bold font? Did you read (or write) something we should Spread about? Want us to interview someone you find fascinating? You can always reach us in the comments or at rachelandmaggie@thespread.media.
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Lordy, lordy: One of your Spreaditors may have celebrated her upcoming big birthday with the acquisition of this three-figure T-shirt. Midlife crisis averted? (It’s cute, tho, right?)
Incidentally, Laurie was also the first person who introduced us to Brittney Griner, back in 2013. Read her early profile here.
FWIW, actors: We, too, wish we didn’t have to ask, What did you think when you first read the script? What drew you to this? Any funny stories? And last but not least, Who’s your dream dinner party guest?
Aren’t you always curious when the fashion credits tell you that the subject is just wearing the stylist’s own clothes? Here, Andrew Scott’s T-shirt, jeans, and socks are “stylist’s own” which makes us hope there was a torrid on-set affair and the clothes got all scrambled up and, oops, my socks or yours?
On another note: That empty "Champagne" bottle Emma Roberts stole and keeps in her house? That actually is Daniel Day Lewis, transformed, as usual, by his brilliant acting. Haven't you been wondering where he went?
I am a big big BIG fan of Abraham & Chase!
So I'm gonna quote you: "All that cheerleading and coddling and fixing and zhuzhing that takes writing from meh to great? Please allow us to introduce Abraham & Chase, a new biz launched by the black-belt-level editors Laurie Abraham and Lisa Chase, a pair of work wives whose love has lasted even longer than your Spreaditors’. Between them, L&L have toiled at the Atlantic, New York, the Economist, Premiere, Outside, Wired, the New York Observer, Mirabella, and Elle (where we met them—and each other). They’ve edited everyone from your favorite TV shrink, Orna Guralnik, to E. Jean Carroll, Nora Ephron, Paul Ford, Rivka Galchen, Daphne Merkin, Peggy Orenstein, Akhil Sharma, Salamishah Tillet, Rebecca Traister, and Amy Wallace. They’ve worked on books, magazines, speechwriting, you name it². They have been friends and mentors to both of your Spreaditors. And now they’re teaming up to offer their prodigious editing skills to publishers, writers, academics, agents—anyone who needs help developing a new project or taking a stuck one over the finish line. If you can get on their dance card, you’ll be one lucky ducky (apologies for the industryspeak). Here’s how to get in touch."