Postcards from the Edge
Postcards from the Edge
The spooky-scary Esther Perel & Orna Guralnik of newsletters—the people have spoken!—is getting big stuff off our chest, voice-acting Vanessa Carlton’s forthcoming memoir, and swimming quite fast.
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.
Spreaders,
We wish we really were Esther and Orna, for a multitude of reasons, not least that those two always know the right thing to say, whereas Rachel and Maggie decidedly do not (just ask our spouses). It’s been 19 days since the horrific terrorist attack on Israel, and we have yet to speak of the Israel-Hamas war here. Of course, like you, we have been thinking and reading about it, doomscrolling and weeping about it, and checking on friends. When Spread Tuesday rolled around two weeks ago, we were too paralyzed by current events to even make an issue that week—and, in retrospect, that’s probably what we should have told you: We are too rocked to even pretend that the shit we talk about here every week matters right now, but we are sending love to you and your families. But we didn’t do that. And since then we have wondered, earnestly, what cause any teeny, tiny effort we might make at participation in this narrative would serve? Let’s be honest, a Spread hot take has no real “value add” here. And as Elizabeth Spiers1 so astutely wrote in her recent New York Times op-ed, so much of what’s been going on in the rush to express personal and/or corporate solidarity in X-land has been about keeping up appearances, hasn’t it? On the other hand, how do we not talk here about the thing that keeps us up at night, and that we talk to each other about extensively—isn’t the whole idea here that we’ve invited several thousand of you into our ongoing, ever-unfurling group chat?
One of the Spread’s many mottos: When in doubt, farm it out. So we point you now to the work of our big sisters over at NPR: This article is the best roundup of ways to support humanitarian efforts in Gaza and Israel we’ve found. It was first published October 13, but the resources it offers are solid. Or you can go straight to CharityWatch here.
Love,
Rachel & Maggie
Way superior to a pumpkin-spice latte.
Like a total lunar eclipse or a mass emergence of cicadas, a season of Annette Bening comes upon us only every several years. And here we are, arms reaching up to the sky2, praying that the SAG-AFTRA strike will finally end so that Annette may emerge once again to promote her new film, Nyad. In it, she plays the real-life 64-year-old who embarked on a 110-mile swim—a physical and mental grind not so dissimilar from an Oscar campaign (get ready to hear that joke on repeat through early March). And while we’re sure the performance is impeccable, we’re most excited to have Annette just, you know, around. To kick off the festivities—make that deal, Hollywood!—we recommend this T Magazine video, where Annette appears, powerfully, age spots and all. (The interview happened in June, before the strike began on July 14.) It’s part of the magazine’s “The Greats” issue, also featuring Queen Latifah, Miuccia Prada3, and Henry Taylor.
Watch the video here, and experience the package here.
For a primer on Nyad, we recommend this Elle story by Rivka Galchen, edited by friend-of-Spread Claire Gutierrez, from 2012. Read it here.
The Red Badge of Courage went to the movies and we G-Chatted about it.
Rachel: OMG CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE OPENING GAMBIT OF NETFLIX’S FAIR PLAY??? (Not to be confused with the 1995 Cindy Crawford flop-classic, Fair Game.)
Maggie: You watched that? I thought you were anti-Phoebe Dynevor! Anyway, the blood? Yes. My toes are still curled.
RB: The movie itself is, at best, a fun way to spend a Friday night in. But that scene4 is brilliant. Like, yeah, we’re willing to go there (paging Katie Couric). And yeah, THERE WILL BE BLOOD in this movie. You could almost hear first-time director Chloe Domont announcing from behind the camera, I have arrived! (She talks to Time about the meaning of the scene and also male fragility here.)
MB: Rachel, did you realize there are 5,000 different euphemisms for the word menstruation, including the French Les Anglais ont debarqué which translates as, the English have landed? And not one of them did 36-year-old Chloe Domont employ in this movie. Pretty sure I’ve never watched a scene this un-euphemistic about the intersection of sex and—wait, let me pull up that listicle again—“checking into the Red Roof Inn,” or as I like to call it, the moontide. It was great that Alden Ehrenreich’s character was not remotely turned off by it; even better was that Dyvenor’s character is shocked but, crucially, not embarrassed. Disappointingly, I found that I was embarrassed, deeply, and dying for it to be OVER while also appreciating the guts of the whole thing….wait, ew, guts.
RB: Call me old-fashioned, but I usually reach for the term “period.”
MB: I think I’d call you moderne! Isn’t this what the Gen Zers keep asking for: less beating around the bush—ahem—when it comes to female biology? Remember that Times piece earlier this month about sex health companies like Honey Pot: young’uns like the real talk but health experts worry these companies aren’t much better than the Summers Eve of yore, negating the “self-cleaning oven” beauty of female anatomy and selling-all-over-again the idea that vaginas are dirty and need fixing. Speaking of real talk: How do you really feel about the “realism” of period-product companies switching the liquid in their ads from blue to red because, again, I’m all for destigmatization in theory, but in practice I’m learning that I’m a closet neocon. Also: CBD-infused tampons, yay or nay?
RB: As someone with three daughters, I’m all for the lowercase-R red wave5. In eighth grade I went on a beach trip with my friends’ Presbyterian church; the guest preacher characterized a “menstrual rag” as mentioned in the Bible as the most filthy thing in all of God’s creation. Every girl in the room left with a red-hot face, whether from shame or rage or both. My inner Chloe Dumont had been unleashed. Plus, growing up, there was something about the blue in those ads that kind of stung—like someone was going to pour Windex in my undies (ouch). Roll the crimson tide!
Wild. We’re still talking about Britney.
It may be the dawn of Annette Season but we don’t have to tell you that it is also full-on Britney Week. Shout out to ghostwriter Sam Lansky, who as critic Christine Smallwood points out in Vulture, did the Lord’s work turning her narrative into a legit readable book. There’s a lot of heartbreaking detail, but it’s her muffled cries for help that move us most—like when a depressed Britney, who knows audiences read her onstage hair “thrashing” as a sign of happiness, opts for stiff, thrash-proof wigs during her Vegas residency. (“If your hair’s moving, they can believe you’re having a good time.”) But even as we’ve feasted on the details of her ex’s 2002 guitar-strumming douchebaggery, something feels a little off: Have we all collectively decided to ignore the part where Britney6 quite recently appeared worrisomely unstable? Um, who is taking care of this woman right now? Are we the only ones feeling, to put it softly, revisionist pop-history vibes? Also, what is going on with Hollywood and book publishers? In the grand tradition started six months ago, when HarperCollins bagged Meryl Streep to read Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake—as we’ve already stated, the pairing has ruined all other audiobooks for us in perpetuity—now we have…five-time Oscar-nominated emo Brooklynite Michelle Prada-Lovin’ Williams reading Spears’s The Woman in Me. Braver souls, please report back on what it’s like to listen to Williams read this line, from that time Justin, a “white boy” who maybe “tried too hard to fit in,” ran into “a guy with a huge, blinged-out medallion” on the streets of New York: “J got all excited and said, so loud, ‘Oh yeah, fo shiz, fo shiz! Ginuwiiiiiine! What’s up, homie?’”
Spreaders, what’s next? Will Jessica Chastain do a dramatic interpretation of Paris Hilton’s memoir aka Paris: The Memoir? John Stamos’s big tell-all [pause for satisfying chuckle] is next up. Will they pull Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement?
Read “Ghost Child” in Vulture here.
While La Streep is fresh in your mind….
Yes, she and Don Gummer have also been separated for six long years and didn’t bother to tell us—truly, has everyone out there secretly split?—but it seems like less of a betrayal/obfuscation than last week’s Smith/Pinkett revelation because, look, Meryl never got herself a “televised” Red Table to talk out her truths!
But, OK, fine, let’s revisit Jada for a sec…
Or rather, let’s let Jemele Hill do it, since she says it so much better than we can:
“For weeks, Pinkett Smith has been the subject of widespread criticism and mockery over revelations in her 400-page memoir…. For describing her sometimes-messy and seemingly unconventional marriage as she saw it, she has become the villain…. Unfortunately, when Black women take the courageous step of voicing their pain, trauma, frustrations, and vulnerabilities, they are routinely met with derision, skepticism, and disdain. The message they receive is: Shut up and prioritize everyone else’s needs but yours, even if it means losing important pieces of yourself.”
Read “What Jada Pinkett Smith’s Critics Don’t Understand” here.
Dr. Becky is the new New Yorker-approved Parenting Guru du jour.
Recently at a kid’s birthday party, a really lovely dad told one of your Spreaditors that he’d listened to Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside audiobook twice, once focusing on the parental perspective and then again focusing on the children’s perspective. Our point: This woman has some serious believers! Now you can get the CliffsNotes on her wildly popular nonreactive approach to raising kids via her new New Yorker interview with the magazine’s parenting journo-goddess Jessica Winter.
Read it here.
Hey Dr. Becky, what does it say about us as people when our tweens get hooked on Drunk Elephant? Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Damn you, Tiffany Masterson, for making Drunk Elephant Littles so cute and cunningly candy-colored that—if you’ll allow a moment of hyperbole here—they’re like the skincare equivalent of Juul: a product nominally intended for adult use but packaged and marketed to appeal to kids. The phenomenon of too-young girls thinking they need/deserve/are entitled to expensive products is nothing new; when your Spreaditors were coming up, our moms were scandalized when we asked for Clinique’s three-step system (the nerve of us, begging for department-store skincare in middle school!). As both Linda Wells in Airmail and Daisy Schofield at the Cut have recently pointed out, the difference is today’s 12-year-old is already hooked on the elaborate skincare content on TikTok (SkinTok? We dunno) and thus demands, like, 16-step systems: double-cleansing, toner, vitamin C serum, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid, multiple types of moisturizer—all, Schofield reports, because they’re terrified of eventually, one day in the distant future, actually aging. We shiver, imagining the cumulative hours this generation will log staring in mirrors and/or iPhone screens in pursuit of “self-care” and “staying young.”
Read “Pretty Baby: Tweens Using Expensive Skincare Products in Airmail here.
Read “They Always Say the Younger You Start, the Better” in the Cut here.
Cherry on top.
In the seven days since our last issue, we’ve quiet quit all long-form press covering Taylor Swift. We’re just too tired. But Reeves Wiedeman’s profile is of his own hometown, Kansas City, newly whipped up into a frenzy because of you-know-who. The story gets the Spread equivalent of a SAG-AFTRA waiver because of its indirect nature (we never actually encounter Swift herself), and friends, it’s delightful. It also got us thinking, what celebrity would work Spreadtown, USA, into a merch-printing, tabloid-tipping lather? Could it be Melanie Lynskey, Rachel wondered? Perhaps Mary-Louise Parker, suggested Maggie? Or what if we dressed for the job we wanted, so to speak, and trained our gaze upon Julia Roberts? Maybe? And then, there she stood, right before our eyes in downtown Manhattan on Monday evening—as headbanned as Nan Pierce herself: It was Cherry Jones. And we had our answer.
Read “31 Days of Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce Mania in Kansas City” here.
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More wisdom from Spiers: Knee-jerk posting on social media “discourages shutting up and listening and letting the voices that matter the most be heard over the din.”
Can't resist pointing out here that this arm-waving stance is very Nell, and Jodie Foster is Annette’s co-star in Nyad and isn't there something just...mind-bending...about seeing Foster and Bening together on the same screen?
You’re gonna make us spell it out for you? Within the first 10 minutes of the new Sundance-to-Netflix erotic thriller, we see a scene showcasing…bloody cunnilingus!
Re: the tweens ands Drunk Elephant. My 22 year old daughter works at Sephora and was surprised at the tweens coming in asking for DE specifically, and using retinols in general. So much harshness on skin that doesn't need it! I also work retail and was witness to a child who couldn't have been more than 10 asking for Dior Lip Oil ($40 lip gloss!).
And I feel you on the Britney. Her eyes always look so sad to me, even on the People mag cover (that awkward pose is the best they could get? Also, the photo shoot was done for People but the interview took place via email, which means anyone could have answered the questions). Interestingly. the inset photo, where she is topless, she looks much happier than in the fully covered pic.