Mustafa Zaidi and his friend Shahnaz Gul.

I don't wanna do a cocktail party, I'd rather people left my shows and vomited, I prefer extreme reactions.

Alexander McQueen

Articles no. 17

We've Forgotten What Human Faces Actually Look Like by Katherine Gillespie Paper Magazine September 2019

Gabriel García Márquez wanted to destroy his last novel by Alexandra Alter The New York Times March 2024

The 'mob wife' trend is fake by Jo Piazza Back Row February 2024

Tainted love: why women still pay for adultery by Molly McCloskey The Guardian August 2017

The rise of the unapologetic female adulterer by Shanda Deziel Chatelaine October 2018

How infidelity helped create the novel by Daniel Mendelsohn Town and Country May 2019

'An act of betrayal': Gabriel García Márquez's son on publishing his father's work against his will by Alex Clark The Guardian March 2024

The Sadness of Jean Rhys by Mariah Kreutter Gawker December 2021

The Hyperlinked Hyperfeminine by Michelle Santiago Cortés Lux Magazine Issue no. 9

Storytelling and Deception in a Magic Kingdom by Michiko Kakutani New York Times June 2008

Men who are too exclusively taken up with women receive their punishment, in due course, from the women themselves.

Colette, Chance Acquaintances

I stared at him with that disagreeable brand of pity one reserves for a man whom one would have preferred to find strong and sure of himself. He looked at me from the remote blue depths of his eyes like a blind man, and with an air of bewilderment that I found particularly distasteful. He consulted his watch and left me hurriedly.

Colette, Chance Acquaintances

Nothing seems shady, or even cynical, in the eyes of a man who, certain of one faithful love, is at liberty to suffer for another.

Colette, Chance Acquaintances

“The transformation of concrete labors into abstract labor renders the labor into something akin to the notorious pink goo or pink slime that industrial, processed meat now contains,” the scholar McKenzie Wark wrote. On the ground, the work of girls is being mined for profit in concrete ways: As India becomes a hub for tech manufacturing, Apple contractors like Foxconn and Tata Group are working hard to recruit more women workers as contract labor for their iPhone assembly plants. As many as 85 percent of factory workers in India working for such Apple contractors are women. While contract work is precarious and doesn’t include benefits, companies like Foxconn offer free food, housing, and transportation. The last time these subcontractors rushed to hire hoards of new workers, over 250 workers fell sick due to tainted food, triggering protests and factory shutdowns. According to Reuters, Foxconn told Indian state officials that it had “ramped up production too quickly” ahead of the iPhone 13 launch. By the time the Apple icon turns up on your screen, the device has already been shaped by the hands of women hard at work. When creating and sharing ourselves through the internet, we become enmeshed in the abstract labor of being a girl online. If we extrude ourselves through the filters and hashtags, we come out the other side as a sludge of marketable microtrends, aesthetics, subcultures, and niche celebrities — our own version of the notorious pink goo.

Michelle Santiago Cortés, The Hyperlinked Hyperfeminine

It depends. If it’s a good day, I have ideas and inspiration. I begin with my coffee and cigarettes and I write, write, write. I don’t use the internet and I turn off my phone so I am totally alone. If it’s a bad day and I have no inspiration, I can’t write. I smoke a lot, I start drinking at noon and then I watch TV and pretend I’m writing. But the truth is: I’m watching Netflix, I have a nap, I drink wine, I smoke and at the end of the day, I pick my children up from school and I am drunk! I smoke more cigarettes and I smell like a hobo.

Leïla Slimani [x]

I needed arrogance and violence to rid myself of the past.

Édouard Louis, Change

For Barash, who’s written 13 women's studies nonfiction books, including A Passion for More: Wives Reveal the Affairs That Make or Break Their Marriages, this is a case of literature catching up with a social trend. She's been interviewing female adulterers since the '90s, and has found they feel their affairs are deserved — 90 percent report no feelings of guilt. Instead, they are empowered by the decisions they've made. According to Barash, women were sold a picture of romantic love and marriage by society, but woke up to a very different reality. "We expect our husbands to be the lover and the best friend," says Barash. "But it turns out, sex, passion and love do not always come in one package. So women feel entitled to look elsewhere or at least follow after it when it finds them."

Shanda Deziel, The rise of the unapologetic female adulterer

I’m not surprised that it's gotten enough attention to have entered the lexicon. It’s a clicky, visual story. But more than anything, the #mobwifeaesthetic presents a particularly delicious idea. Women want fashion to be fun again. We want it to be unique and exciting. We are sick of being told the ultimate luxury is to make everything in our wardrobes and homes — including our kids' stuff — sad and beige. But more importantly, we are desperate to be seen and heard.

For the past couple of years, social media trends have flattened and dimmed us. The biggest fashion craze of the last couple of years was stealth wealth (or "quiet luxury,” brought to prominence by Succession). Stealth wealth was about understated sweaters, white tees, navy blazers, inconspicuous trousers — all the things you could either buy at an Ann Taylor factory sale for less than a cocktail in Manhattan or for thousands of dollars from Loro Piana.

The world has never been an easy place for women, and in many places, it gets harder by the day. Is it any surprise that women want to be loud, bold, and simply seen? 

Jo Piazza, The mob wife trend is fake

I live in Philly (where I was born) so I see plenty of Carmela Sopranos at the Wawa (our local convenience store) in the morning, but they aren’t doing this for TikTok. They’ve been committed to this look since 1987. The other night I went to an Andrea Bocelli concert in South Philly. I saw plenty of big hair and big lashes and skin tight black sequined dresses cut up to the thigh. But again, that definitely wasn’t for social media. It was for Andrea. 

Jo Piazza, The mob wife trend is fake

Whatever you see in your dreams, it is only one possibility. The future is a fluid thing, it's always changing. The future isn't set until it's the past.

Laura Sebastian, Half Sick of Shadows

Articles no. 16

These Collectors Filled Their Traditional Japanese Home with Worldly Possessions by Camille Freestone Coveteur June 2023

Honoring heritage: The journey behind Filipino-led Japanese clean beauty brand DAMDAM by Bianca Custodio Vogue Philippines February 2024

Giselle Go Drops Her Skin Care Routine by Ariana Yaptangco Glamour May 2023

The Met celebrates women designers without enough reflection Hyperallergic February 2024

Trapping bobcats for fur in the U. S. is going strong - and it's grisly: An interview with Tom Knudson by Rachael Bale National Geographic January 2016

The Makings of a Literary It Girl by Sophia June Nylon February 2024

Two Paths for the Novelist by Laura Miller Slate September 2023

Retail Confessions: Tiffany by Amy Odell Back Row January 2024

I think every author ends up finding out that you really kind of have to make it as big or as exciting as you want it to be, just because I think the idea that they're going to get the big Zadie Smith-style giant auditorium event and a big party — that's so rare. I think it's way more fun to use the book as an excuse to gather your community and celebrate something you've done. Kind of like a birthday.

Delia Cai [x]

It’s not just that I find Granados’s city unrecognizable. It’s boring! The parties are lame, the dialogue is tedious, the sex and pathos occur offscreen. Here’s what gets me about the whole Literary It-Girl discourse — if you’re gonna write a novel, you can’t be too cool for school. Yes, literary fiction is stuffy and pretentious. But prose isn’t a visual medium: if you want to be an influencer, a ringlight and an ab routine will pay quicker dividends. The coolest thing you can do as a novelist is go for it. I’m not saying you need to write The Recognitions, but the format lends itself to characterization and detail. Why read a novelist who’d rather be on Instagram?

Pete Tosiello [x]

well I'd do anything for a blonde dyke

Kanye West, "Stronger"