HELLO and welcome to the 322nd installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can know more about butt lifts!!! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

Will You Ever Change?, by Amelia Schonbek for New York Magazine, July 2021

In the field of restorative justice, survivors are consenting to face-to-face meetings with abusers (not necessarily their own abuser, but an abuser) to help their own process and a society “overwhelmed with bad behavior.”

The Aldi Effect, by Xan Rice for The Guardian, March 2019

I have never been to Aldi but now my curiosity has been PEAKED about this bare-bones German supermarket that slowly rose the ranks of the British grocery market. The guys who eventually founded Aldi were once the guys who opened Germany’s first self-service supermarket in the 50s! FUN FACTS EVERYWHERE. Like all good business profiles, this is about Aldi but it’s also about the supermarket industry in general.

The $5,000 quest for the perfect butt, by Rebecca Jennings for Vox, August 2021

How the Brazilian Butt Lift went mainstream and women worldwide are in search of an aesthetic “most often associated with the Instagram influencer, whose body exists to be consumed by the most people possible.”

What Happened in Room 10? by Katie Engelhart for California Sunday Magazine, August 2020

The Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, was the U.S.’s first COVID hot spot. This is how it happened. It’s a long story because it’s a long story and there’s also a lot to know about how the nursing home industry functions to begin with.

In the Food Swamps of LA, McDonald’s Was Our Lifeboat, by An Uong for Eater, March 2019

McChicken sandwiches tasted nothing like the Vietnamese food we knew, but they achieved something magical by being at once warm, filling, and cheap. There was a thrill in feeling so full after spending so little.

The Prescient Power of The Rosie O’Donnell Show, by Ashley Spencer for New York Magazine, June 2021

What a wonderful time to look back on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and how “as a gay woman running a talk show in the very much still white, straight, male TV milieu of the ’90s, O’Donnell confirms she sought to hire other women and “as many out gay people as we could.” She couldn’t be out, and Judy Gold tells Vulture, “I used to say, if Middle America only knew that this show was put on by a bunch of gay people and their friends, we would change the world.”

When Does an Accident Become a Crime?, by Michael Hall for Texas Monthly, March 2019

After a day of golfing and drinking and dinner and drinking at On the Border, James Fulton got in his car to drive home, crossed into oncoming traffic, and killed a young woman. Cops on the scene bafflingly declared it an accident and Fulton not at fault, but the Smith County DA and the victim’s family didn’t see it that way.

Gold Dust Woman, by Niela Orr for The Believer, August 2021

Few modern Americans embody this country’s fixation with quasi-majestic iconography like Whitney Houston, heir to the throne of a musical dynasty, and whose own battles with her father over money and personal freedom (he’d reportedly tried to pay someone to break her best friend’s legs) made her a kind of precursor to the Britney Spears we now know, although she is rarely regarded that way.

The Business of Marriage, by Linda Besner for Hazlitt, January 2021

I moved in with my partner not long before we got married, and for the preceding ten years, aside from a brief, sad stint at a previous boyfriend’s, I had lived alone. I loved living by myself. In the life I knew, I was dictator and sole citizen of my personal republic. Our national drink was instant Nescafé; our national dish was spaghetti. Our flora was a single valiant cyclamen. Our anthem was silence.