The Week In Recommendations 5.24.23

The sweetest new Netflix show, a podcast about betrayal, reasonably-priced resortwear and must-have hair clips.

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 uncomfortable feelings about motherhood. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

We’ve been reading…

Piggybacking off of our conversation about motherhood, in which I discussed my own confused ambivalence about whether I want to become a parent, a close friend of mine sent me this beautiful Dear Sugar advice column. I have long loved to read and re-read Cheryl Strayed’s old columns in The Rumpus, but I had never seen this one, #71 from 2011. In it, she’s answering a letter from a 40-year-old man who doesn’t know how to decide whether to have children. Strayed has no easy answers, but her beautiful writing broke me open: “I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” -Emma

My TBR pile is suddenly overflowing with stuff I can’t wait to read, but this week I’ve been diving into two upcoming books that take on the world of influencing from quite different angles: Stephanie McNeal’s nonfiction history of the influencer space, “Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers,” and Jessie Gaynor’s “The Glow,” a satirical novel about a publicist who hopes she can finally pay off her medical debt by taking a little-known wellness retreat and its uncannily gorgeous cofounder and turning them into the next big thing. Both books combine the frothy fun of gazing into an aspirational world (Utah mansions with walk-in closets full of free clothes and glassy skin, respectively) with the darker pleasure of examining the sometimes grotesque process through which that beautiful sausage is made. -Claire

We’ve been watching…

This past weekend I was upstate for a delightful bachelorette weekend for my friend Vicki, and the rain pushed a few of us to use the AirBNB’s dedicated theater room to start “XO, Kitty,” the Netflix spinoff of Jenny Han’s “To All The Boys I Loved Before” trilogy. The sweet series follows Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty, now in her junior year of high school, as she goes abroad to spend a year at KISS, the Korean Independent School of Seoul. In just 10 25-minute episodes, “XO, Kitty” gets close to perfection. It is full of heart and teen angst that will be relatable to Kitty’s peers and adults alike. It wonderfully plays with K-Drama tropes. And, in contrast to Lara Jean’s fated love story with Peter, “XO, Kitty” provides our heroine with three truly viable love interests. I deeply hope this show gets a season 2 because I just finished the first season and I’m desperate for more. -Emma

I’ve also been watching “XO, Kitty” (stay tuned for a pod, lol). Plus, “The Other Two” is back!!! It’s now season 3, and the forgotten older siblings of teen star Chase Dreams are still futilely seeking fame and fulfillment. The height of the pandemic has passed, and Cary (Drew Tarver) is finally celebrating the release of his new straight-to-streaming film, “Night Nurse”; Brooke (Helène Yorke) is spinning her wheels as a talent manager and barely holding in her resentment of her fiancé Lance, who became an actual nurse during the pandemic and is constantly basking in the gratitude of strangers. I deeply appreciate this show for its refusal to either go “Ted Lasso”-sweet or full cynic. Brooke and Cary love their dopey little brother, Chase, and their exceptionally basic mom, Pat, who has suddenly become an Oprah-level talk show host herself. They also loathe living in their family members’ shadows, and are not above a shady move or two to take advantage of their proximity to fame. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

I tear through mini-series style podcasts at such a fast clip that I am always looking for more. Somehow I had missed the “Betrayal” podcast during its first season, but was served a recommendation for it now that its second has begun, and I am officially hooked. Season 1 follows Jennifer Faison on a journey of healing, a handful of years after her seemingly perfect husband is arrested for sexually abusing a teenage student of his. Faison uncovers lies upon lies, affairs upon affairs, but instead of the show feeling like pure voyeurism or some sort of vigilante project, Faison truly connects with the other women her husband victimized in the hope of helping others who may have experienced trauma like they all did. Season 2, which just started, dives into the story of Ashley Lytton, who discovered her husband’s terrible secret — a secret which changes their lives forever. -Emma

I’ve got nothing this week, except that I’ve been listening to this song on repeat a lot. If I haven’t convinced you to let a little Frightened Rabbit into your life yet, consider giving this a try:

-Claire

We’ve been buying…

Summer is just around the corner, and when I hit my mid 30s I decided that I was in my resortwear era. Last year I was in Miami with some friends and was admiring every elegant woman’s beautiful AND functional cover-ups, and since then I have been collecting my own. I got this Recife Skirt To Dress cover-up in black from Bromelia Swimwear. It’s light and falls nicely and I love that you can wear one garment three different ways. Also snagged the Vivianne high-waisted bottom / tie-front top bathing suit in Coconut Skin. The lining is thick enough to really make you feel secure and I absolutely love the texture of the fabric. Take me to a beach stat! -Emma

Hair clips! I have been growing out my bangs and overall length in order to prepare for postpartum life — shortly after I trimmed my bangs and got pregnant, I suddenly remembered how annoying it was, the last time I had an infant, to not be able to put all of my hair back in a bun for days on end — and they are officially at That Awkward Stage where I can’t quite tuck them behind my ears. So I got some cute tortoise snap clips, which look relatively elevated while also being easy to wear, plus a new retro claw clip large enough to hold my longer and longer locks.

And though I am mostly committed to the giant-dress lifestyle now that I’m in my third trimester, I thought at least one pair of non-bike shorts would be advisable (it’s good to have options). So I grabbed these smocked-waist linen-blend shorts from Old Navy, which blessedly provide some belly coverage without relying on those annoying black elastic panels that, in my experience, are always getting exposed when my shirt rides up and ruining my whole look. They’re also cute, comfy, and very practical. -Claire

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