Gawker - Joan Did It On Em

Oh, wow. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Oh, wow.

Rest in Power, White Ladies

By Sarah Hagi

Heaven has a smoking section

On the eve of another pandemic Christmas Eve, I am holding space for my white sisters. Eve Babitz and Joan Didion, style icons for a particular sort of woman online, both died this week. I’m sorry, please know that I’m holding you all close as you post a lot of pieces of writing I am embarrassed to say I have never heard of. I understand this is your 9/11. That Babitz and Didion were really important to shaping your personalities, and whether you thought it was better to be hot or cool. I’ll never forget reading passages from their books in your Instagram stories. I wish I could pat you all on the head and say, “That’ll do, pig.”

10 Fun Tips for Holiday Grieving

By Greta Titelman

Why not bring an urn to a holiday party?

Having lost my mother nearly 10 years ago, there is one thing I know for certain — grief never fully goes away. It lives in your bones and in your gut, and just as both of those things change with age, so does your grief. Certain things though have gotten easier, for example, I can now listen to Simon and Garfunkel and only cry a light misting of tears rather than a full-on hurricane. I can attend weddings and not audibly sob, just silently. I have even started to sort through my mother’s clothes with a more rational sense of what is sentimental and what isn’t; I have determined I don’t need to keep all of her socks.

But there is one time of year where the grief comes back with full vengeance, ready to stick you like a saber straight to the heart, where she knocks down your door and laughs manically saying “You didn’t really think you were done with me, did you?”. And when does she do that, you ask? The holidays, of course!

Christmas for One Is Also Fun

By Tammie Teclemariam

Get yourself some caviar and potato chips

Society wants you to believe that spending Christmas alone is the saddest thing in the world, but it’s not a big deal so much as a huge inconvenience. Not everyone grew up in The Family Stone, and many more don’t require the company of others to enjoy a day off. And sometimes, particularly during a pandemic, it's just circumstance that keeps you separated from your loved ones on this one day in December. But it doesn’t have to be a bad time.

That said, my first Christmas alone was wretched. I was 18 and had left pastry school in the South of France for my job placement in Lyon a few days before Christmas, a time in my life that made me less a francophile than a francophobe. On Christmas Day there was a lunch service, so I got to eat at work. But we had the night off, which for me meant being bored out of my mind in the studio apartment that came with the job. I had no internet access nor money nor food at the time, except for a bunch of random seasonings and a can of coconut milk that I thought I could turn into soup, but there was also no can opener. I knocked on every door on my floor for help to no avail. I went to sleep hungry and woke up for work the next day, ready to hustle desserts to earn my next meal.

The Sadness of Jean Rhys

By Mariah Kreutter

Long before contemporary female novelists began writing of female abjection, Jean Rhys was doing it better

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The heroine is alienated and suffused with self-loathing. Everyone who she might love is dead. She shuffles through a decadent city drinking cheap coffee and eating very little. She has arrived at an ambition: She will erase herself. She retreats to a single room, sleeps all day, drinks all night, takes pills to sleep more. Or this one: A young woman comes to rely on her older, married lover for money. She is poor, but the kind of genteel poor that can’t bring itself to work a menial job. Towards the end something goes wrong with her uterus.

The style is spiky, perhaps dominated by an upward piercing “I,” and rather less effective when it isn’t. The “I” is a woman, much like the author herself, and quite sad. The sentences are short and direct and light on commas: “Hester started talking about Cambridge. She was always talking about Cambridge.” “She was twenty-eight years old and all sorts of things had happened to her.” “I got happier when it grew darker. A moth flew into my face and I hit at it and killed it.” The humor is dark and deadpan, if it’s there at all — you can’t quite tell when and if you’re supposed to laugh. Deborah Eisenberg called it “as sharp and lucent and alarming as a piece of broken crystal.”

What Your Favorite Mint Candy Says About You

By Tammie Teclemariam

First of all, your breath is fresh

While Valentine’s Day has its chalky hearts, Easter its chocolate eggs, and candy corn rules the fall cornucopia, come December our tastes cool like the weather and long for the fresh sweetness of mint. Although there is no shortage of mint in our mouths during the rest of the year, specifically as a paste and gargle, the Christmas season invites us to move beyond the association of mint and dental hygiene to indulge our gourmet whims.

Whether you demand the punishing vapors of an old-timey pastille or a chewier experience, here’s what your favorite mint candy says about you.

TODAY IN GAWKER HISTORY:

12/23/14

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: FAO Schwarz

By Caity Weaver

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Gawker - Joan Did It On Em

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