Sundays always make for the perfect time to catch up on great long reads published throughout the week that you may have missed while occupied with work, and other life responsibilities. NTRSCTN has gathered up a list of our top five favorite long reads that you may have missed because you were too busy; didn't read.
1. 'It's Not Climate Change — It's Everything Change' by Margaret Atwood, MEDIUM
In this essay, infamous Canadian writer Margaret Atwood writes a thought-provoking piece about the salient apprehensiveness of climate change and what it means for our future.
Unfortunately, like every other species on the planet, we’re conservative: we don’t change our ways unless necessity forces us. The early lungfish didn’t develop lungs because it wanted to be a land animal, but because it wanted to remain a fish even as the dry season drew down the water around it. We’re also self-interested: unless there are laws mandating conservation of energy, most won’t do it, because why make sacrifices if others don’t? The absence of fair and enforceable energy-use rules penalizes the conscientious while enriching the amoral. In business, the laws of competition mean that most corporations will extract maximum riches from available resources with not much thought to the consequences. Why expect any human being or institution to behave otherwise unless they can see clear benefits?
2. 'Grief in the Diaspora' by Tasbeeh Herwees, The Toast
In this essay, Tasbeeh Herwees explores what the conceptualization and nuances of death for exiles living in the diaspora:
Experiencing a death in the diaspora is like watching your life on a film reel. There are no bodies to bury. There are no belongings to pack away. There is no funeral tent. And even as guests come through the door, our self-made family in a self-made exile, there is a loneliness to the heartache.
A really excellent read, but proceed with caution: this one might be a tear-jerker.
3. 'How Waist Trainers Became The Biggest Thing On Instagram' by Rawiya Kameir, The Fader
The Fader's senior writer, Rawiya Kameir, explores the growing market of waist trainers—or, the modern day corsets—and what detrimental effects the new Instagram trend might have on bodies of women and their health.
On social media, waist trainers are brandished by celebrities, video vixens, strippers, and the thousands of regular women who want to look like them—cute face, slim waist with a big behind. It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely how big the market for waist trainers is. The hashtag #waisttraining is attached to nearly 600,000 posts on Instagram, many of them featuring women showing off their transformations from lumpy, normal-looking bellies to tight, flat torsos. Some of the biggest sellers, like PreMadonna, an entrepreneur-cum-socialite who is among the most visible faces of the industry, have close to half a million followers. Waist Snatchers, a competitor of hers, has nearly 120,000.
4. 'I Feel Really Bad About My Nose' by Gabby Bess, Broadly
In this essay, Gabby Bess explores the experience of body image as a woman of color in relation to her white peers.
For the most part, I attempted to partake in the rituals of girlhood like there was nothing different between me and the white girls who lined the bathroom between classes, smearing on far too much eyeliner. But sticking clothespins on my face wasn't something we could all talk about, laugh about, or share techniques for. It was a beauty ritual that I did alone, underscoring difference and the allure of eliminating it. This came with a pang similar to the one I would get when a friend would put her glaringly white arm up to mine and marvel at the progress of her voluntary tan. ("I'm almost your color!") All girls "become flesh," Simone De Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex, but then there are some who are never let to forget that this flesh is brown.
5. 'The Misadventures of Issae Rae' by Jenna Wortham, The New York Times Magazine
Jenna Wortham flew out to LA to interview the talented Issae Rae, creator of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, to catch up with the comedian and understand why she went from having a viral show on YouTube to finding difficulty with replicating that same level of success in television as a black woman.
Black television was a lifeline for Rae, especially during a period of her childhood spent in Maryland. ‘‘When I was in Potomac as the sole black girl, these shows were my access to black culture in some ways,’’ she writes in her memoir. ‘‘When I moved to Los Angeles, and the kids said I talked white but had nappy hair, I found a sort of solace in knowing that Freddie from ‘A Different World’ and Synclaire from ‘Living Single’ were napped out, too. I could be worse things.’’ Freddie and Synclaire were free-spirited black women who could be described in many ways — artsy, oddballs, sporty, cultivators of strange hobbies and affectations — and yet were unequivocally and undeniably black.
