|
hello friends! i’ve felt wonderfully productive this week, which has made my mood considerably lighter, but it’s also unmistakably summer in new york! i don’t love summer weather (understatement of the year; i am a grouchy blob in the summertime during the day), but i do love summer nights in the city, when everyone is sort of lounging around outside after work in the warm summer air, when groups of jazz musicians gather around washington square park and central park, and it all feels very romantic. i’ll miss that this year. but i’m hoping, really hoping that if we do this well, we’ll be out by next summer. even with the social distancing circles that new york has mandated, i don’t feel comfortable being outside. i want it all, or i want none of it. hope y’all have a great holiday weekend! five things i loved this week: pork belly bao using this recipe for the pork and this recipe for the bao (these took so incredibly long to prepare, but they were so delicious and these might be the things i’m most proud of in my culinary life. would i recommend them? yes. would i do it again? probably not, but i will also never again complain that they’re expensive because i understand how much effort they take)
little alchemy (i used to play this a lot in college during finals week when i was procrastinating on writing essays, and i forgot how fun it is, but i’m stuck at 80 and there are 500 more that i’m missing)
youtube: manufacturing authenticity (for fun and profit!), lindsay ellis (she makes a lot of good points about the inherently paradoxical notion of “authenticity” in influencer relationships, but also the emotional labor that comes from being a creator. i feel like it’s really hard to empathize when influencers complain about having to stick to schedules and having privacy, because your business is literally contingent upon people having access to your life and you monetizing that access, but i do concede that emotional labor and the resulting burnout is completely valid)
jjapaguri (this week, we had a date night where we watched parasite on hulu and made jjapaguri, or “ram-don,” to see if it was delicious as the movie makes it out to be, and the answer is yes it is! i used this recipe from youtuber yb chang, since she’s actually korean, and sirloin like they do, for the sake of authenticity. i got the noodles from asian mart, but you can find them at h mart or 99 ranch)
five things i read this week: what weird things do you do to feel better?, cup of jo (my things are, in no particular order: watching food network, baking really unnecessarily complicated recipes, composting, listening to my disco or broadway playlists, hand lettering, watching restoration videos, playing word games on my phone, eating excessive amounts of pasta, doing a really intricate eye makeup look and going absolutely nowhere)
dancing in the street: elaine welteroth got married on her brooklyn stoop, then threw a virtual block party, vogue (god, i love weddings so much and i can’t wait to go to one in person again when all of this is over, but how beautiful is this stoop wedding? the pictures are stunning, she looks gorgeous; it’s just such a beautiful expression of joy amidst everything. i also really love elaine welteroth for the direction she took teen vogue when she was editor-in-chief. i’ve always thought most lifestyle magazines were silly, indulgent trash—which is why i used to love them—and i commend her for positioning around the idea that teen girls can care about applying glitter nail polish and lgbtq rights; it’s very appropriate and respectful of her audience and i wish i’d had her version of teen vogue when i was younger)
stewed awakening, eater (yeah, i’m still thinking about this, especially after lana del rey’s recent controversy...i cannot believe she thought it was a good time to make those comments, given the alison roman controversy just happened. and as with all of these controversies, it’s less about the actual “calling out” or the cancellation of these people, and more about them understanding the microaggressions that are constantly leveled at minorities, particularly black women, that make existing in the world—medically, socially, professionally—so much more difficult. and it’s even more egregious when white women, who are notoriously the biggest beneficiaries of white supremacy after white men, complain about oppression in a system only when when that systemic oppression suddenly affects them medically, socially, professionally. i’m not saying lana del rey’s comments were unwarranted, but it was such an inappropriate and super racially-coded way of making them. if you’re not aware of the history of white women claiming “delicate,” it’s what got black men lynched and has been historically used to make black women appear angry, aggressive, and less sexually desirable. the irony of lana del rey claiming there was no space for “personalities like [hers],” is that modern feminism caters to personalities and races like hers, and hers alone)
|
