The Week In Recommendations 4.3.24

Gaslighting, tradwives, herby skillet chicken, a sexy forthcoming rom-com, and the best stylish baseball cap.

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 the deranged Lindsay Lohan movie “Irish Wish”! (A pod about The Cut’s latest viral troll essay is coming later this week.) Rich Text is a completely reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

Claire has been reading… 📖

Everything my New Yorker subscription affords me the opportunity to read!

Leslie Jamison just published a sharp new essay on gaslighting (see Emma’s recommendation below).

The most feared interviewer in media, Isaac Chotiner, has continued to do really vital work exposing the conditions in Gaza and elucidating Israeli and American policy there. His latest interview, with a former American peace negotiator and State Department official, provides an unsettling look at what thinking and priorities might be undergirding Biden’s policy in the region, ending with this chilling statement: “Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t.”

And finally, I devoured Sophie Elmhirst’s “The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife,” which sounds like a premature epitaph for a thriving archetype but mostly tells the story of how it became what it is today. Elmhirst focuses her lens on one of the original trad wife influencers, Alena Kate Pettitt, who rose to unexpected fame by writing and posting about the joys of traditional femininity: serving your husband, raising your babies, and running your household. As the trad wife concept has caught on, and become more and more overtly linked to rightwing politics, Pettitt seems to have lost interest in the label and the role of trad influencer. She’s alarmed that what she saw as a movement to allow women to take pride in their calling to traditional homemaking has been turned into an aesthetic fetish and a political cudgel. She suggests to Elmhirst that the trad movement has become “its own monster,” and hints that she might go back to work now that her son is getting older. I vaguely remember when Pettitt was all over U.K. media announcing that she loved ironing her husband’s shirts (it wasn’t so very long ago), and I still feel the same vexed blend of frustration and sympathy that I felt then. I don’t think she should feel ashamed for loving the work of running a home; I’m also troubled by the political work that is done, intentionally or not, by starting a movement to fetishize traditional housewifery. It’s fascinating to see her, in some way, contend with the same dilemma.

Emma has been reading… 📖

Leslie Jamison’s deeply reported and deeply thoughtful essay on gaslighting in the New Yorker. She talks to people who see gaslighting in their own pasts, researchers on the subject, and philosophers. The end result is a far-reaching definition of the concept, giving the reader a greater understanding of why gaslighting has become such a widely evoked concept. (Something that Claire and I have been trying to pull apart for years!) Jamison also indicts us all in engaging in gaslight-esque behaviors in daily life, while still acknowledging that extreme gaslighting exists and can cause deep harm. The essay challenges us to resist the urge to sort the world into gaslighters (bad) and victims (good), and instead use the framework as a way to examine our own behaviors, desires and impulses.

This paragraph in particular will stay with me:

Part of the tremendously broad traction of the concept, I suspect, has to do with the fact that gaslighting is adjacent to so many common relationship dynamics: not only disagreeing on a shared version of reality but feeling that you are in a contest over which version prevails. It would be nearly impossible to find someone who hasn’t experienced the pain and frustration—utterly ordinary, but often unbearable—that comes when your own sense of reality diverges from someone else’s. Because this gap can feel so maddening and wounding, it can be a relief to attribute it to villainy.

Claire has been watching… 📺

The first 20 minutes of “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour”… over and over again! One day I will see the last three hours of it, but my four-year-old is on spring break and my baby has an ear infection, so we’re surviving by letting the big brother repeatedly rewind to the beginning so he can stare raptly at Taylor strutting around to “Cruel Summer” again. I have heard Taylor make the corny “You make me feel like I’m ‘The Man’!” transition innumerable times. Sometimes he makes it through the “Fearless” era as well, but he always loses steam once the “Evermore” trees appear. However, it has been a true joy to see him trying to learn the words and sing along, and pretending to be Taylor by strumming on his teeny toy guitar (not to mention taking breaks to “write songs”).

I have found ages 3-4 extremely challenging; the minute he learned to talk, he asked us “why?” over and over again all day and often freaked out when we didn’t give exactly the right (mysterious) answers. But we’re starting to reach that magical moment when we can have real conversations with him and introduce him to things we love, and it rules.

Emma has been watching… 📺

I gave the first episode of “Vanderpump Villa” a try, because apparently the Bachelor finale ads were just compelling enough to me? For now, I’m undecided if I’ll continue with the show, which follows the young staffers of Lisa Vanderpump’s French Chateau. It feels like a version of “Below Deck” on land, mixed with a much less compelling early “Vanderpump Rules.” What reality TV producers need to realize is that you can’t just engineer a Jax Taylor and Stassi Schroeder. They have to be discovered in the wild!

On a more exciting note, Claire and I went to an in-person screening of the forthcoming Anne Hathaway / Nicholas Galatzine movie, “The Idea Of You” (coming to Prime Video on May 2nd), and… I loved it? It’s not a perfect movie, and I’m excited to dig into what worked so well about this film and what worked less well in a podcast episode next month, but if you’ve been craving an engaging, sexy, wish fulfillment-filled rom-com with two talented actors and a solid screenplay… IT HAS FINALLY ARRIVED. Hathaway and Galatzine both have the kind of star power paired with a relatable softness that I want from my rom-com leads, and Jennifer Westfeldt brings the perspective of a woman over the age of 40 to the writing. (That awful Sydney Sweeney-Glen Powell movie has nothing on “The Idea of You.”)

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

So many episodes of Bachelor Happy Hour, Off the Vine and The Viall Files to get caught up on post-finale interviews, now that the single best season of “The Bachelor” (in my heart) is in the books. Plus, I’ve caught some post-“Love Is Blind” interviews with Chelsea and Jimmy, and they’re only making me more conflicted and unsettled about what went on in that relationship – especially their uncomfy joint appearance on Viall Files, during which they each insisted the other was fantastic as a person and friend, and then undermined each other’s narratives at every turn. What is really going on with them?? What I wouldn’t give to have complete clarity at last!

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Beyoncé’s ambitious, genre-bending “Cowboy Carter” album on repeat. TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and 16 CARRIAGES were already in frequent rotation, but the whole album is a gift. I especially love II MOST WANTED. I didn’t know that I needed to hear Bey singing with Miley Cyrus “I'll be your shotgun rider 'til the day I die,” but apparently I really really did!!!!

I also found NPR’s Fresh Air episode on country music’s Black roots to be a great companion piece to the album.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

This was a really good week for my not-buying initiative! Some perks of not buying stuff: No stress about missing deliveries and items getting stolen. No tower of cardboard boxes in the corner of the apartment until recycling night. No list of returns to tape up and walk to the post office. A palpable sense of pride and satisfaction about saving for my family’s future (and, let’s be real, their very current need for daycare and groceries). Time and energy to take genuine pleasure in the home and wardrobe I already have.

I did indulge a little in Easter treats. Aside from Christmas, I’m not a big holiday person; I don’t give them gift baskets for every holiday and I often forget they’re coming up at all. But I loved Easter as a kid, so I made the effort, and it was absolutely worth the special trip to pick up candy, plastic eggs and a couple small gifts to see my son’s glee in the morning. (You’ll never get me to make them Valentine’s baskets though. Enough is enough!)

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I have six (!!!!) weddings this spring and summer, which has not been great for my trying-not-to-overspend vibe. I’m proud to say that though I ordered a bunch of expensive gowns, I decided that they all should go back. I’m instead going to try and borrow something from a friend or rent. (If I’m going to spend real money on a formal dress it needs to be absolutely fabulous, and none of these passed that high bar.)

One recent purchase I didn’t send back? My Anine Bing Jeremy Baseball Cap in Dark Sage. I thought I wasn’t a hat girl, but I’ve recently realized that I just need to be discerning about the structure of the hats I’m wearing. After some weeks of use, I can say that Anine Bing makes the best, stylish baseball caps I’ve seen. It’s not flimsy and comes in four neutral colors, which pair with a plethora of outfits. Plus, built-in sun protection! (Can you tell I’m in my late 30s?)

Le cap!

Claire has been making… 🧶

Melissa Clark’s herby skillet chicken! I fell prey to the Times’s framing of this as an “easy” “weeknight” meal (not if you have a preschooler and an infant, it isn’t!), but it was indisputably delicious, even without the butter. I’ve never had kale more delicious than it was in this dish, chopped and tossed with plenty of fresh basil and simmered in chicken stock, drippings, and browned garlic. I usually don’t bother with broth-based chicken recipes, but it did ensure that the thighs remained succulent even when a little overdone, and the greens were soft and luscious. We ate it with roasted sweet potatoes and crusty bread, which was indeed, per the Times, perfect for soaking up the drippings. 

Emma has been making… 🧶

I said I was gonna make the Instagram salad, and I did indeed make the Instagram salad. I think the real reason this salad shines is because of the toasted panko breadcrumbs, which add depth of flavor and texture, which is often missing from greens. To make it a full dinner, I added chopped avocado and crispy chickpeas (just throw a can of drained chickpeas into a pan with some olive oil and salt) to the original recipe, and made it vegan (swapped parmesan for nutritional yeast) because my partner is currently off dairy. I also air fried some salmon fillets for some extra protein, marinated in dijon and honey, and threw them on top of the salad. It was delicious, filling and I also now have leftovers for a couple lunches. Ideal! Unfortunately I *did* forget to photograph it.

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