The Week In Recommendations 3.15.23

Tea on a Scandoval, drapey clothing, and four farmers who really need wives.

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest podcast was about part 2 of “You” season 4. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

We’ve been reading…

I have found the entire media blitz surrounding Ozempic and other semaglutides used off-label for weight loss to be extremely triggering and stressful and fraught. And that is why I so appreciated Casey Johnston’s recent essay, “The Yassification of Ozempic,” which she published in her She’s A Beast newsletter. Highly recommend reading the whole thing (it’s nuanced and contains a lot of research!), but I loved these lines: “Body positivity or neutrality isn’t and never was a destination, and it’s sure as hell not a set of goalposts some guy on the Internet gets to move wherever needed in order to taunt people who don’t live up to today’s definition of behavioral purity. It’s a practice everyone is entitled to, to which many people have unequal access.” -Emma

This week I’m on a bit of a holding pattern with my book (still chipping away at “Biography of X”) because a confluence of extra “Bachelor” episodes, a daycare stomach virus, and a friend’s visit to the city took care of all my usual pockets of reading time and focus. But I did find energy for this mesmerizingly absurd New Yorker profile of Agnes Callard, a University of Chicago philosopher best known on Twitter for her admission that she usually throws all her children’s Halloween candy away as soon as they go to sleep.

With the delicate restraint appropriate to a New Yorker piece, the profile (by Rachel Aviv) recounts Callard’s primary academic focus: her own romance with a graduate student in her department, which ended her first marriage to another UChicago philosopher and led to her second marriage. The result, it seems, has been a series of books and papers that put into philosophical language the somewhat common experience of falling passionately and idealistically in love and then grappling with the human disappointments and conflicts that follow. One of her colleagues supportively says, ““Part of what I take to be her bravery is that she is looking around, asking, ‘Hey, I know all these couples have gotten rings and gone to the courthouse, but are they married?’” What does marriage really mean? Truly a question no one else has ever been wise enough to ask. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

Kristen Doute’s podcast on #Scandoval. Stassi Schroeder’s podcast on #Scandoval. Lala Kent’s podcast on #Scandoval. Scheana Shay’s podcast on #Scandoval. I cannot stop and I make no apologies. In my defense, I was asked to write about the whole thing for MSNBC. -Emma

Georgia Hassarati on “The Viall Files,” doing her first big interview since some very messy social media posts lashing out at some of her ex-castmates, including her co-winner Dom Gabriel. She cries (a lot), apologizes (a little), fills in her version of the timeline of her relationships with Dom and Harry Jowsey which, counter to some allegations, she insists did not overlap in any way, and accuses Francesca Farago of bullying and manipulating her throughout the show and afterward. As ever with these things, I cannot decide where the truth lies, and am left merely to wish everyone peace and healing. -Claire

We’ve been watching…

Honestly, a lot of screeners so that I can prepare for the podcasting we’ll be doing in the upcoming months. I started season 4 of “Love Is Blind” and season 2 of “Yellowjackets,” and while I can’t say much, I can say that I am very excited to discuss all of it with this community when we’re allowed to. -Emma

“Farmer Wants a Wife,” the extremely Fox new reality dating show, which features four eligible farmers and a horde of city gals eager to try out (and possibly embrace forever) that ag life. Only one episode has come out so far, and so far the leads mostly seem like they would be more comfortable going back to living with a solid couple of miles between themselves and the closest human immediately. The overall vibe of the show is somewhere between “produced on a shoestring for an obscure cable channel called Farm Life USA” and “lead-in to Tucker Carlson.” Can’t wait to get some more episodes to digest. -Claire

We’ve been buying…

The world’s softest (but also chic!) lounge pants. I realized while en route to the airport a week and a half ago that I didn’t have non-legging lounge bottoms that were truly comfortable — especially for a long-haul plane ride. Enter Quince, a brand I’ve really grown to love for its well-made, reasonably-priced home and clothing basics. I’m gonna be living in these SuperSoft Fleece Wide Leg Pants (the wide waistband! the pockets!) for the rest of winter and spring. -Emma

I did a splurge. Through years of cottagecore-inflected dressing, I have never tried out the dreamy romantic retro brand Dôen, official fashion purveyor of the kind of crunchy-aesthetic moms who have so much money they’ve transcended pedestrian concerns like babies having blowouts all over the outfit you literally just put on. Because I do not have enough money to transcend that pedestrian concern. However, I finally just … got too curious, and wanted a really pretty spring-to-summer blouse, and how much damage can a child’s bodily emissions really do to black, anyway? Here is the top that broke me, and my budget for the month: the Frances blouse in black. Now that I have tasted the forbidden fruit, I am being duly punished; it’s so dainty and soft and flattering and drapes so perfectly that I will never be happy with my less expensive tops again. -Claire

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