Your Etsy Order From “That’s My Towel!” Charm Inc. Shipped

America's towels have gone charmless for too long

Former Second Lady Karen Pence managed to keep a relatively low profile throughout the four years of her national political relevance. But when details about her did emerge, they seemed to describe a supporting character in a Baptist adaptation of The Stepford Wives. There were her husband’s twin pet names for her, “Mother” and “prayer warrior.” There was the fact that she is a painter by trade, whose work looks like this. There was the anecdote that, mere months into dating Pence, she became so convinced he would propose that she engraved a gold cross with the word “Yes” and carried it around in her purse until he did. Mike followed through at the eight-month mark, burying the ring in a loaf of bread. To commemorate the occasion, Karen got the loaf shellacked.

But the best detail about Mother Pence is that she once ran a “towel charm” business called “That’s My Towel!” Charm Inc. This company was incorporated in the state of Indiana; it had both a website, towelcharm.com, and a now–defunct Etsy store. Pence had the name trademarked and copyrighted and applied for a utility patent on the concept. For just $6.25 a charm, anyone could own silver dangling ornaments shaped like French fries, starfish, cameras, dogs, trains, or pizza for their towels. Why would someone want a towel charm exactly? Here’s how Karen put it on her website’s About page:

Most of us have matching bath and beach towels, so it is easy to get them confused. I have had so many times where I was swimming at a friend’s beach house, pool, or lake house, using their matching beautiful beach towels. Lo and behold, I would go in the water for a dip or up to the house for a beverage, and when I came back to my towel, it was gone! Someone else had grabbed my towel unknowingly…because all of the towels looked the same.

When the bathroom holds not merely one’s own towel, but their husband’s towel, and the towels of all their evangelical, unaborted children, the average towel-owner might ask: “Which towel is my towel?” That’s where the charm comes in. Continue reading

The Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, social media, and the pandemic played a role

There has always been a revolving stable of careers seen as “cool”: fashion designers, screenwriters, pro gamers. In recent years, the job of recipe development — previously primarily known to food-world insiders — has joined that pantheon. There are now career guides about how to become a recipe developer, TikTok creators documenting the work that goes into it, and more than 400 U.S. jobs on LinkedIn that list “recipe development” in the requirements. But how, exactly, did this role slip into the popular lexicon and become widely considered a cool, desirable job?

The phrase “recipe developer” has been on the gradual, but steady, rise over the past decade, but it reached new heights of cultural saturation in 2020, the year that millions of people found themselves newly working from home and in need of inspiration, education, and entertainment. The popularity of one food-media brand’s videos, in particular, helped push the job of “recipe developer” into the public consciousness in that early pandemic period: the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, whose sunny programming captivated millions of viewers on YouTube and birthed a new cohort of culinary stars (and major cookbook deals). Those purported halcyon days of the BA Test Kitchen, although they would swiftly come to a dramatic end, played a role in introducing a large, mainstream audience to the career of recipe developer, formed in the image of this particular test kitchen’s apparent camaraderie, decent pay, and personality. Continue reading

Do I have it?

Here are some things about me that, up until recently, were just normal ways of being:

— I love to lay down — in fact, I’m lying down at this very moment.

— I cannot be truly comfortable in a chair unless my legs are crossed.

— Sometimes, when I’m lying down, I like to roll on my side and just stick my arm up in the air

Apparently these are actually symptoms of something called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a chronic condition that affects how blood moves through your body. It ranges in severity, with some people just experiencing lightheadedness and a need to be reclined, and others regularly fainting and requiring mobility aids. I had never heard about this disorder until recently, when the TikTok algorithm decided that it was done showing me videos about women diagnosing themselves with autism, and that it was time for me to wonder if I have a different thing.

The POTS hashtag on TikTok has over 900 million views, although admittedly some of those videos are about ceramics or cooking. Google Trends shows that searches for “POTS symptoms” had a huge spike in both April and June of this year. Anecdotally, I’m seeing POTS content all over my For You Page. This can only mean one thing: We have a new hot girl affliction to fixate on. Continue reading

Why would you even think that?

A subplot of the ongoing drama happening at Funny Girl has been Jane Lynch’s departure schedule. Lynch was originally scheduled to leave the role of Mrs. Brice on September 25 to coincide with Beanie Feldstein’s departure. When Feldstein declared that she would actually be leaving the show on July 31, the production announced that Lynch would also be leaving early, two days before Lea Michele takes over the role.

Fans came to the obvious conclusion that Lynch, like several other Glee stars, does not like Michele that much. A lot of funny tweets ensued, but in a new interview with Deadline, Lynch says that it is not like that.

“We have been in touch about it,” Lynch told Deadline. “You know, it was just a really strong idea to have [Tovah] Feldshuh and Lea premiere together. That’s the only reason [we won’t appear together.] I adore her. She’s just going to take this show and make it her own. I’m so glad she’s getting the opportunity in real life to do the show and not just on Glee.” Continue reading

(He didn't die)

While hiking around Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano best known for destroying the Roman city of Pompeii, one has to imagine a single thought looms heavy in a hiker’s mind: Do not fall into Mount Vesuvius. And yet.

CNN reports a 23-year-old tourist from Baltimore, MD, fell into Mount Vesuvius. The man, whom NBC News identifies as Philip Carroll, was hiking along an unauthorized trail with two relatives in the time immediately preceding his fall. The trail was reportedly marked clearly with signs of “danger” and “forbidden access,” which we can only assume this man took as a dare. At the top of the 4,000-foot-high mountain, he stopped to take a selfie.

Of course, in the process of taking a selfie, he dropped his cell phone into Mount Vesuvius. While another might think, “Well, I shouldn’t attempt to go into Mount Vesuvius to get my cell phone,” this man has a mind unlike any we might routinely encounter. Indeed, he attempted to go into Mount Vesuvius to get his cell phone. Continue reading