The Stepford Diaries
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Spreadskinnies and Spreadflares both,
“When did we all get so obsessed with personal style, anyway?” So asketh Vox’s Constance Grady as she set out on a quest to crack that code, as well as locate the mythical style identity that must be hiding within. Grady makes the case that somewhere between the What Not to Wear heyday of the 2000s and now—due to body positivity, pandemic panic, new fabric technology, and a significant softening of the rules on what’s in and what’s out—everybody decided we needed to develop our own individual way of dressing. Grady speaks to all the experts that we, too, would have called upon on a pilgrimage to Personal Style City, Utah: The Washington Post’s Rachel Tashjian, the New York Times’s Vanessa Friedman, Unflattering’s Dacy Gillespie, and David Kibbe (OK, he’s not on our speed dial but we do go back). Ubiquitous as personal style is in the year of our lord 2025, these experts explain that it is also hard won. We nodded furiously at these insights—code crackers, they were! And then we looked up and across the room at each other. Staring back at each of us was a woman in baggy jeans, a Doen blouse, loafers, and a chore coat, her lob artfully mussed. Then we zoomed out to the rest of the moms at school pickup: baggy jeans, blouse, loafers, chore coat, mussed lob. Were we—gasp—Stepford Moms?! Or were we working women who eschewed fast fashion to prioritize investing in a few good seasonal pieces—and ended up accidentally looking just like everyone else we know? Paging Constance: Does “everybody” have more personal style these days? Because from where we sit, women of a certain age seem to be more stuck in our mildly stylish yet strangely identikit uniforms than ever before. Spreaders, how’s it looking where you are?
Copying is the sincerest form of flattery?
Rachel & Maggie
The Limitations of “Let Them”
We’ve been curious about the rise and rise of Mel Robbins—she of the $1500 speaker-circuit tickets and the #1 or #2 spot (ahead of Rogan but, as of today, behind Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson!) on Apple Podcasts. She of the extremely simple, some might even say thin, “Let Them Theory” that is maybe plagiarized—not that that’s slowing her down (but then, we elect rapists to the White House in this country so what’s one teeny little IP theft, after all?). In the Cut1, Katie Heaney does the work, putting Let Them to the test to see what it can and can’t help with. Can: Dealing with those dim-witted dullards holding up the airport security line. Can’t: Basically anything more complicated than the airport security line. “If The Let Them Theory empowers women to favor singlehood over dating assholes — and to leave men who fail them by every possible standard — great. But what if you’re married? What if you have kids? It’s harder to see how the book’s axiom applies to any relationship with real stakes involved or huge and unexpected changes in one or both partners.” Read it here.
Who is the voice of the resistance?
Recently, we got word through the grapevine that a deeply respected Spread reader had praised our newsletter for resisting “mission creep,” despite the current headline hellscape. Thank you, gentle and generous reader—we feel so seen. While many a Spreaditorial meeting has been dedicated to how and whether to attempt to address the ways in which Trump/Musk are feeding our democracy into the woodchipper, so far we have made a conscious choice to keep on keeping on. That is, to point you to reading material that covers these mind-bending times in a specific and Spready way, while also keeping up your spirits (inasmuch as that’s even possible) with distractions about our personal style “journeys” and breaking news about men in fake boobs (keep reading!). But this week, over at How Not To F*ck Up Your Face, our pal
notes that a reader recently canceled her subscription because Val was “too political”—which: high praise for a beauty newsletter!—and we thought maybe we need to be a little more explicit: The Spread is not, in any way, a neutral party. We are “political.” This weekend your Spreaditors will be dropping boatloads of pink postcards in the mail informing That Man of all the reasons he deserves to be fired. Nay, imprisoned. And while we do not think you come to the Spread for breaking news of the resistance, we wonder: Who do you go to for that? Who is the voice of the resistance? We’re not talking about someone like , national treasure though she may be. We’re looking for more of a Jia Tolentino or Rebecca Traister or Doreen St. Félix of Trump II. Someone insightful, fired up, and—well, you know what we’re thinking here—fun, fearless…female? Maybe you’ve heard, the future of news looks niche. Which means there must be somebody out there devoting a Substack to the issue of the resistance, with the same vigilance and gusto with which Jessica Valenti has been a heat-seeking missile with . This moment calls for its own activist-journalist June Osborne! Folks, tell us who’s leading the charge, because we are itching to SUBSCRIBE and willing to PAY. Also if you think you could be that person and we just gave you a business idea, please remember to thank us in your Pulitzer acceptance speech.We love a good jab at the manosphere.
Friend-of-Spread Carrie Battan travels to Sweden to prove that the oral accoutrements of choice among finance bros, brawny podcasters, and maybe RFK Jr. during his confirmation hearing is in fact, “the girliest thing” most Swedes can imagine. We’re talking about those small, fruity-flavored white pillows of nicotine known as “snus”—not to be confused with Snoos, the robot baby bassinets—commonly tucked inside the upper or lower lip for a quick burst of nicotine. Marketed here under the Phillip Morris-owned brand Zyn (which Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone to bat for), the white pouches were developed in Sweden, where yuckier brown snus are in fact a centuries-old tradition (huh!), as a cleaner, prettier alternative in “diet conscious flavors,” meant to appeal to the ladies. Apparently, they are radically safer than cigarettes or vapes, and a mainstay of Vogue Skandinavia editorial meetings. Just don’t tell Tucker Carlson, whose avid support of the product made him a laughingstock in Stockholm.
Read “Zyn and the New Nicotine Gold Rush” here.
Middle Sister
Because we are insecure, we thought Tara Palmeri must have been mad at us when we stopped getting emails from her. Turns out, she’d just left Puck for a place we’d never, ever find her without the help of the New York Times’s Jessica Testa: YouTube. The supersourced politics reporter defected to the Land of MrBeast, not to join its partisan ranks but to report from the far reaches of…the middle. “I’m not sold on either party,” she tells Testa. “That’s why I don’t really have a lot of friends.” At least for now, she will also have less money, after giving up her $260,000 Puck base salary (okie dokey!) to fund her business largely with her savings. Read “A Political Reporter Takes Her Scoops to YouTube” here.
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