Staunchly, vol. 115: A Jade Egg Walks Into a Bar
9/30/19
In her Crazy Salad essay “Vaginal Politics,” Nora Ephron condemns extremists in the feminist self-help movement, women who toured the country in the seventies teaching their peers how to self-administer a cervical exam, perform a DIY abortion, and use something called a “period extractor,” which is legitimately one of the most horrifying devices I’ve ever read about (I should note it seems that the period extractor is also the device you would use to perform your abortion, making it the spork of ill-conceived hobbyist gynecological tools).
Ephron is perplexed and dismayed by these women. On the trend of, for lack of a better descriptor, “cervix-viewing” parties in New York, she writes, “it is hard not to long for the days when an evening with the girls meant bridge.” She continues:
“On the other hand…
“On the other hand, the self-help movement and the concern with health issues among women’s groups spring from a very real and not at all laughable dissatisfaction with the American medical establishment, and most particularly with gynecologists.”
On that note, I’m on an episode of the new podcast America Dissected with Abdul El-Sayed, out today, half-defending Goop and full-admitting on-air that I tried to buy a jade egg. More broadly, I talk about what it feels like to have to turn to a business like Goop for care, for guidance, when you feel like the medical establishment has failed you—because it has. Because historically, and can I be dramatic for a second—the medical establishment has not given a shit whether you as a woman live or die. If you are a poor woman of color that is a truth multiplied.
I joke a lot about the time I almost bought a jade egg. Truth be told, if the egg had not been sold out, I don’t know if I would have actually been able to press purchase. Imagining the experiential whimsy of getting stoned and messing with a yoni egg is very different from typing in your credit card information, your billing zip-code, and your delivery address in the service of receiving said yoni egg.
But I do know that I was drawn to the idea of the egg out of desperation, out of a hope that it could maybe, somehow, regulate my hormones. I don’t know! Like I said, I was desperate, and modern medicine sure hadn’t been doing its job. I believe in hard science over ovular crystals, of course, but I also felt like very many times a year my hormones liked to get drunk and play Russian roulette with my vital organs, deciding on one to ambush and destroy, which I suppose isn’t how Russian roulette is played, but I think what I’m trying to say is that it always felt scary and random. And here was something that promised me not so much a cure, but a possibility. Imagine how alluring that is when your body feels impossible.
(For good measure, and clarity, here are some things I believe in: vaccinations; antidepressants; 3D mammograms; that holding a crystal in your hand with intention can make you feel more powerful, more resolved, and that resolve can be the start of something good; that the wellness industry is exploiting us, that every industry in late-stage capitalism is exploiting us).
Back to Nora. Two things are scary about her essay, and both in regards to its relevance: It could have been written about Goop; it could have been written about the medical landscape for women today. How are we still here?
“And so the doctors work for the drug companies and prescribe accordingly, the hospitals take advantage of the poor, the laws are antiquated, it goes on and on. Knowing what your uterus looks like can’t hurt, I suppose, and knowing more about your body can only help, but it seems a shame that so much more energy is being directed into this sort of contemplation and so little into changing the political structure.”
December, 1972.
Crooked Media has a helpful chart on the impeachment process. I made this silly graphic because I’m still finding it a little hard to be really ~present~ in this moment.
The toll of #MeToo on the women who spoke up.
Why it matters that “Emily Doe” in the Brock Turner case is Asian-American: for one, it spotlights the particularly onerous, historical ways the justice system fails women of color.
The future of abortion rights in America could be effectively decided in the next week, as the Supreme Court begins its new session.
This is a fascinating look into the racist origins (and present?) of California surf culture, a story that should ring true to anyone familiar with the state’s cozy relationship with American Nazism and eugenics. A good reminder that while the values I believe California stands for today are not the values this state was founded/anglicanized with—namely, genocidal racism—intolerance is still a cornerstone coil of Californiat’s DNA.
What it’s like to break into the business as a first-generation mortician.
Hey hey, um, in all this impeachment excitement, please don’t forget that Joe Biden doesn’t really treat women as equals and makes a lot of us very uncomfortable.
Oooh guillotine haircuts were chic! Pinning to my aesthetic vision board for the climate wars.
Wow, comedy bois cannot fucking get over Al Franken. Gonna say it one more time for the Lampoon Larrys in the back: Eight. Women. Actually, now it’s nine.
I’ve been quiet about books here for a while, but I’ve finished a few recently so let’s do some micro reviews!
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
I wanted to like this book less than I did, wanted to have some cool intellectual distance. Because it’s not cool to be a stan. And if there’s anything I want in this world it’s for Jia Tolentino to think I’m cool. Have I said the word cool enough? I think Trick Mirror is a brilliant collection of essays that will hold up as a time capsule of this moment in history, in capitalism, in America, when it seemed that, in every sense, we’d never had more and never had less. When everything and nothing felt possible.
Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
I love love Taffy and I wanted to like this book more than I did. I think the problem is this: in order to find the twists of the narrative really satisfying, you have to like the male protagonist. I’m just not in a place to do that right now! I did think Taffy (look at me thinking we’re friends how cute) had really sharp and searing things to say about the foundational imbalance at the heart of long-term love, but still: I needed less fucking Toby.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
I think this is a bold project that doesn’t actually work because of a fundamental flaw in the thesis. By that I mean: it’s impossible to cull universal truths about female desire from the stories of three white women in mostly hetero relationships from mostly insular, provincial, religious communities. In her telling of these women’s stories, I feel Taddeo reaching for significance more than I sense actual significance.
Very excited to introduce the I Feel Bad About My Staunchly t-shirt collection, a bootleg homage to the books and essays of Nora Ephron, icon of incomparable wit and heart and knowing where to get the best chocolate chip cookie in New York. Browse the whole collection in the Staunchly shop now!
I’m really obsessed with the “historical punk” twisty rolls Sam McKnight gave Bella Hadid at Vivienne Westwood. Everything about this look says “experts-only” and yet….cache me in my bathroom trying to make lil turkey roll-ups out of fourth-day bedhead.
