Welcome to Well Read, a monthly column featuring scrollworthy reads and links from across the Interwebs! Enjoy this supersized volume, perfect for holiday reading.
We’ll get this out of the way first…
I love it, you love it, we all rely on it. Yet there’s no escaping the fact that online shopping produces a ton of waste. In “Material World: A Column About Consumerism,” The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull has been covering what happens to all the stuff we don’t want:
The average brick-and-mortar store has a return rate in the single digits, but online, the average rate is somewhere between 15 and 30 percent. For clothing, it can be even higher, thanks in part to bracketing—the common practice of ordering a size up and a size down from the size you think you need. All of that unwanted stuff piles up. Some of it will be diverted into a global shadow industry of bulk resellers, some of it will be stripped for valuable parts, and some of it will go directly into an incinerator or a landfill.
The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants | READ IT
Earlier this month, she wrote a follow-up to the piece above, chronicling her visit to a returns processing center specializing in what’s called “Reverse Logistics.” If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the stuff you send back—well, now you know.
The Book Covers That Weren’t
Can you judge a book by its cover? Editors and agents can, and these proposed designs didn’t make the cut. A fun, quick piece on book cover designs that got scrapped, set against their final design that hit the market.
Parenting Culture Things
File these links under “Of Interest If You Parent.”
1 | First, an interesting dive into the world of the “fun” TV dad, a la Bandit from Bluey. If you’re anything like me and my husband, you have watched Bluey and found yourself measuring your parenting (and patience) against cartoon dogs. A preview:
I don’t know how [Bandit] keeps house, works as an archaeologist and serves as a full-time prop artist to his daughters, but he does it all while only feigning complaint. He is not only a good father — he is a fantasy, one crafted to appeal to adults as much as to children.
I wonder what Bandit says about the latent desires of the parents queuing up the show. After all, when I turn on “Bluey,” I am being very un-Bandit — I am not engaged in focused play that follows my child’s imagination wherever it leads. I am cleaning.
The Fantasy of the Fun TV Dad | READ IT
2 | Next, an honest, extremely relatable essay from my friend and colleague Jess, who confesses a few of the ways she tried to feel in control via performative mothering when her daughter was born:
As a new mom, I was not fine, but as a fairly public person, there was one thing I could control: the performance of my new motherhood online. While I was anything but ok, I found ways to trick myself into feeling more in control, mostly by performing “good mother.” I can assure you, a good mother it did not make (more on that later), but in the interest of transparency, here’s an incomplete list.
A new mom, in control | READ IT
3 | Making Sense of Santa: A great, short read about the whole introducing your kids to Santa Claus thing.
I remember my daughter as a preschooler, pointing to someone in a Santa-suit on a street corner. “Is that Santa?” she asked.
“That is a person dressed up as Santa,” I answered. “Playing Santa is like a big game that people enjoy this time of year because winter is cold and dark and it’s good to have something fun that we can all do together.”
I never misled my children, but I noticed that whenever I acknowledged Santa’s non-existence, I felt compelled to tack on some kind of spiritual consolation prize, like the beauty of art or the comfort of fellowship.
Making Sense of Santa, as a Science Reporter and a Parent | READ IT
4 | Finally, a wonderful piece on women who choose mothering over art—and how many of us find our ways back to our craft.
If artists are defined in part as refusers — insurrectionists against received notions of how a person should be — what happens when a woman artist takes on this most traditional and idealized of roles, the one that, historically, you’ve been expected to devote yourself to entirely? Here, too, a binary persists, embedded in male and female consciousness alike: For although we are long past the cliché of the father as a doting outsider, we are still in thrall to the idea that in motherhood there’s a quality apart, an essence of the animal, a call to the blood; that when a woman has a child, she finally understands her reason for being on earth. …The problem, then, is not just one of logistics and lack of time and financial resources. It’s a matter of vocation, that exalted notion of work as a totalizing force, not a quotidian trade but a way of life. Art and mothering, in the romantic imagination, are each cast as the kind of labor that consumes wholly, that is worth being consumed by.
When Women Artists Choose Mothering Over Making Work | READ IT
I remember
Some meaty stuff: Two fantastic essays centered around the simple prompt of I remember. There’s no setup that will do either justice other than to say I hope you enjoy the beauty these writers have created:
First an essay titled, simply, I Remember.
I remember sitting on a rock in the middle of a stream one hot summer day. Girl Scout camp. We had stopped to rest during a hike. I remember dipping a hand in the cold water and how it came to me—I don’t know whether it was something I’d heard before or something I’d arrived at just then on my own—that this was a way of describing time: a stream flowing swiftly along; it goes in one direction, it cannot be seized or stopped. And I remember finally getting why people (grown-ups) were forever pointing out how quickly time passed—which had until then seemed so plainly false to me (always happier at school than when stuck at home, I found summers endless)—and why my mother often said things like Sunday already! and I can’t believe it’s 1964! And this I connected with something else she said all the time, whenever we ran into someone we hadn’t seen in a while. No sooner was that person out of earshot than she’d say, My God, he (or she) got so old!
I Remember, by Sigrid Nunez | READ IT
Another, titled Tie-Bow:
I remember how my friend Kara said “I like to marinate in my own juices awhile” when she didn’t change out of her sweats immediately after Tie-Bow.
I couldn’t remember if Tie-Bow was one word or two, or if there were any capitalizations or diacriticals involved, so I had to look it up.
For the record, this is how you write Tae Bo correctly. Two words. Both upper-case. No hyphen. It is not the syntactical inverse of a bow-tie.
I remember when I asked what Tae Bo was and Kara told me, but I don’t remember what she said, only that she mentioned the man who invented Tae Bo was named Billy Blanks, and I asked, “Is his last name a profanity or something?” After that, I remember Kara and our other friends erupting with laughter—guffawing really—there in the University Commons, standing on the thin, stained carpet outside the cafeteria, even though I was perfectly serious.
I remember this happened a lot back then. It still happens with some regularity now. I don’t feel too bad about it.
Tie-Bow, by Julie Marie Wade | READ IT
And because I’ve apparently been drawn to work about memory and recollection, another great essay that appeared in Harper’s this fall, reconciling these two very things.
‘Tis the Damn Season
This time of year can be hard for many reasons, but all the more so if you have experienced loss. When I flew to Texas for my grandmother’s memorial, I finally listened to Anderson Cooper’s podcast All There Is, which launched in the fall of 2022. (I’d had the first season downloaded ever since, but hadn’t been in a headspace to listen. The trip to Houston felt like as good a time as any.)
Anderson’s conversation with Stephen Colbert on learning to be grateful for grief was profound and moving—and for me personally, resonant to my own experiences. In this season of reflection and family, grief resurfaces so readily—an expected but nevertheless painful groundswell. If you’re facing or refacing your own grief, I can’t recommend the podcast enough. (Here’s a link to the episode on Spotify and Apple; you can also view all the episodes here.)
(And also! Anderson was interviewed about the project in the New York Times a couple weeks ago.)
Ask a craft question
I loved this simple idea that not only allows you to get to know people better, but also exercises your curiosity muscles: ask a “craft question.” Keep this one in mind over your holiday gatherings with all the folks you haven’t seen in years, or are just getting to know! The gist:
So my challenge would be: Ask someone a craft question. Show interest in the way they do their work. Not "How's your job going?" or "What's going on at work?" More like: (barista) "How do you get those cool swirly hearts on the latte foam?" or (nurse) "When you can tell someone's afraid to have their blood drawn, what do you do?" I think you'll be surprised by how much those craft questions can energize your conversation.
This is terrific, on two levels. Not only are “craft questions” a great way to learn surprising details, but they reflect actual engagement that the person you’re asking will appreciate.
How (and Why) to Ask “Craft Questions | READ IT
The Year in Reality TV
You know we’re not going out on a serious note.
If you’re a Bravo fan (and somehow not yet subscribed to Brian Moylan’s fantastic Bravoverse newsletter from Vulture), allow me to present The Year in Bravo. From ranking this year’s crop of rookies, to a hilarious interview with Sonja Morgan, and even an interactive quiz (!), this little number has it all. In the words of Denise Richards: Thank you. You’re welcome.
Thanks for reading and being a part of Well So Yeah in 2023! I’ve loved connecting with you all online again. Wherever and however you celebrate, wishing you a beautiful holiday season.