Staunchly, vol. 40: Happy Holidays from Staunchly!
(Originally posted 12/23/17)
Happy Holidays my treasured Staunchly readers!
Keeping it short and sweet this week—just a hearty collection of deep reads to keep you company while you ignore your fam. (I’ll spam you with some end-of-year reflections next week).
I, myself, am looking ahead at a messy few days in which I will attempt to bathe myself in Christmas cheer like the seasonal ham I am and also avoid a significant portion of my own broken family, including my older brother who I haven’t really spoken to since his pirate-themed Wednesday wedding of 2013...
Here’s hoping your holidays are a smidge less…complicated.
So much love to you all and also immeasurable gratitude for not being related to me.
xo
Cardi B serving sexy Grinch / Fran Drescher-fashion-fur-realness and stunning yappy Jimmy Fallon into silence is the antidote to all the pain of 2017.
The #MeToo movement finally comes to working class women: a long-awaited piece on the degrading culture of sexual harassment at Ford.
Speaking of #MeToo: Aaron Sorkin uses a five-cent word (“picayune”) to articulate his fear that this whole “believing women” thing could turn into a mob. Peak f*cking Sorkin. Read the room, dude.
Speaking of reading the room, no one is doing a better job of that right now than Kirsten Gillibrand.
Boston Ken Doll / Casey Affleck Hype Man / Professional White Liberal Matt Damon wants you to know there’s a difference between groping and rape, ok? Did you know? Human Werther’s Original Matt Damon is here to tell you. Also, have you thought about all the good blue-eyed men out there who aren’t predators?? Think of the men!! Sentient Butter Rum Candy Matt Damon wants you to think of the men.
The video of John Oliver grilling Dustin Hoffman a few weeks ago over his alleged sexual misconduct was so immensely satisfying, in that way that watching apparently very decent men do the tough, awkward work of holding other men accountable always is. Turns out, where there’s smoke, there’s (more) fire.
This New Yorker piece by Helen Rosner on the abusive, epicurean lust of Mario Batali will make you never want to eat again.
Today in: the lengths institutions will go to silence women and girls.
“It feels like being boiled in oil”—Mimi O’Donnell, the widow of Philip Seymour Hoffman, on loving an addict. This piece devastated me.
Also devastating: I finally saw I, Tonya this week. The violence on screen was numbing, in a way I imagine it is for people who grow up in a situation like Tonya’s. The movie reminded me of one of my favorite New Yorker articles ever about her gritty hometown: “Figures in a Mall” by Susan Orlean (from 1994!).
Joe Manchin, please never open your mouth again. Unless it is to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” while robbing a speedway (this sentence = v. offensive to West Virginians probably).
Feeling insecure about your presents? Remember that Republicans have already given America the actual worst Christmas present so the pressures off the rest of us.
Jia Tolentino on the hope and utility of a skin care regimen that presupposes Trump won’t destroy the earth before you can see the effects of that new retinol serum.
(obsessed with this line about Big Beauty’s marketing shift from “anti-aging” to “radiance,” i.e. how the new standard is “an aesthetic of militant naturalness surrounded by an unambiguous aura of money and work”)
VOTE, PEOPLE. Any chance you get.
Staunchly yours,
Carey