Delving "Into the Gloss"

I am Frenchwoman, oui? So I do not believe in wearing makeup. I am natural, effortless and comment dit-on insouciante? I do not wear hair ex...

Pickitarianism

These days, we as a society are more accommodating than ever about a diverse array of dietary restrictions. Get a group together, and there ...

Why high fashion is about pleasing straight men

Recently , I speculated about the relationship between, on the one hand, the ubiquity of ever-younger, ever-thinner high-fashion runway mode...

Emily Yoffe on Rescue Culture

A must-read . I'm amazed it applies to cat and guinea pig  adoption as well. It makes me wonder if most New Yorkers are qualified to ...

Why you should buy those lattes

Every so often , the NYT discovers that the sky is blue, the earth is round, and if you spend $3 on coffee every day, 3x365 amounts to a bi...

Baking woes

Got butter at Wegman's rather than Whole Foods. Land o Lakes rather than 365. Took it out of the wrapper and was inundated with that hor...

Word-association: Princeton

Popped collars. Tanned, blond, long-limbed young women, and young men with III or IV after their names. Lacrosse. Binge-drinking good-ol...

Choice, feminism

Cynthia "Miranda" Nixon chose to be gay . Good for her? Not so simple! The principle controversy here is that if homosexuality is ...

The forest and the trees

I haven't had a haircut since August. In theory, twice-yearly haircuts should mean it's fine for me to spend a lot each time. In pra...

Your pearls are showing

In recent days, weeks, I'd noticed references to "pearl-clutching," and hadn't thought much of it. Slate's Torie Bosch...

Hags

Yet again , the question of very young (think too young for middle school) fashion models is  phrased in Think of the Children terms. Guar...

The week, it ended

-Parchment-paper fish (cod fillet, in this case, with lemon, garlic, olive oil, dried thyme, salt, pepper) really is better. Whole fish is ...

Excessive humility

Flavia has a great post up about the phenomenon of (academic, in this case) high-achievers, already well-established in their professions, ...

The Tracy Jordan of gay men UPDATED

Defying what one would expect, going by stereotype, from a gay men who works in the fashion industry, Simon Doonan took a break from telling...

"Whenever a non-Jew uses the word 'goyim' to describe Jewish attitudes to Gentiles, look out."

A thousand years ago, for a publication that may or may not still exist, I wrote up something about the Walt-Mearsheimer book. You know, th...

Murky pre-modernity

January 31 is my self-imposed deadline for this chapter. This chapter, alas, is the one where I cover material that has nothing nothing noth...

OK, one more genre: The "Bad" Jew, Redux

It's like Philip Roth, Woody Allen*, that entire generation, that entire outlook, never happened, and it's still provocative - still...

Two new genres for 2012, two examples for each

-Defending the Glamorous: We saw this with the pains a former prof of James Franco took to insist upon the movie star-scholar's academi...

"But Israel was like Christmas: something I’d never do."

Last night, midway through my one and only drink of the evening, a gin martini from which I am recovering today, I got into a discussion wit...

Adam Gopnik Petstoregate

It is now done to mention, even in your standard here-are-cute-dog-photos Internet posting, that a dog has been  rescued . As Rescue Culture...

Insensitive Knick-Knack Week

Your Tucson coverage continues . It's a safe bet that any of the well-shot dramatic landscape photos were taken by one of two astrophysi...

Where every teacher is above average

Teaching (as in, elementary-though-high-school), like any other profession, has pros and cons. Summers off! Low pay. A chance to shape the m...

Hidden gems

In the Gawker comments , of all places, is perhaps the best retort to an anti-Semite... ever? Huh! Backstory: it's in a thread respondin...

Venerable magazine reveals: women are like so

I'm not sure if Simon Rich's recent " Shouts and Murmurs " is  offensive  to women who work in fashion, but if you remove ...

Class evasion

Amber links to an interview with comedian Louis C.K. (of whose work, disclaimer time, I'm a fan), and points us specifically to his op...

Where arugula and terrorist-hunters collide

Why does Mexican food, more than any other, inspire online reviews for each and every establishment that center on the place's inauthent...