The Pull of the Pool
On the literary history of swimming pools, objects of menace and desire.
The End of the Art-Baby Problem
Writing in the interwar gloom of the late 1930s, Cyril Connolly warned that “there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” It was a catchy encapsulation of an idea with ancient roots, that “good art” calls for monastic devotion and insulation from the trivial worries of the world and the flesh. Young children, however, are all flesh, demanding their own abundant measures of devotion, and merrily trampling peace, attention, and boundaries.
What data taught me about my pandemic baby
On trusting an infant tracker app during lockdown
“Réveil douloureux”: France Reacts to the News of Roe v. Wade’s Imminent Demise
The Roe v. Wade leak coincides with the imminent US release of Audrey Diwan’s award-winning film Happening, which follows a young French woman’s attempt to end an unwanted pregnancy in 1963. Yesterday morning, the director shared Le Monde‘s story on the imminent ruling, calling it a painful wake-up.
HBO Max's New Show: Julia Child's American Story
Focusing on her life after France, Julia follows the machinations, compromises, and determination that led to her merrily slapping a raw chicken on the counter and booming “bon appétit!” to a bewildered television crew. The rest is as much myth as history, and the show liberally mixes the two.
The complicated story of love, a governing illusion
Is love a feeling, or a story? In this broad, breezy history of (perhaps) our most complicated emotion, the medieval historian Barbara Rosenwein sets out to classify love as a series of five dominant fantasies.
Coronavirus Diaries: I Gave Birth Three Weeks Ago
The thing about being home with a newborn, people tell you, is that time stops making sense. Days are nights are days again, and you can only see ahead as far as the next hour, the next feed, the next stretch of broken sleep.
How Not to Repeat Your Parents’ Mistakes
A popular new book argues that parenthood should come with a trigger warning.
From 'Emma' to Natalie Portman, A Dress Can Be Worth a Thousand Words
When Greta Gerwig’s widely beloved “Little Women” won its sole Oscar for costume design, the victory for Jacqueline Durran was shadowed by frustration from fans. For a film that turns on its heroines’ struggles to be treated as artists, not ornaments, it seemed an ironic accolade. But that critique itself takes costumes at face value.
“Self-Help” and “Literature” Serve the Same Purpose
Is it possible to read your way to self-improvement? The gatekeepers of literature as high art have always said no. Books are there to be studied, interpreted, admired, even loved — but not used. One is not “supposed” to turn to Jane Austen for relationship advice, any more than one should use The Odyssey to plan a sightseeing trip to the Greek islands.
Feminize Your Canon: Mary Heaton Vorse
Our column Feminize Your Canon explores the lives of underrated and underread female authors. Originally begun by Emma Garman, it will now be written by Joanna Scutts.
Mary Heaton Vorse, prolific novelist, journalist, and labor activist, spent most of her long life trying to escape her upper-middle-class origins. The heroine of her 1918 novel ’ calls the inescapability of a bourgeois upbringing life’s “blue serge lining”—a reference to the practical fabric that protected the inside of coats.
Mary Heaton Vorse, prolific novelist, journalist, and labor activist, spent most of her long life trying to escape her upper-middle-class origins. The heroine of her 1918 novel ’ calls the inescapability of a bourgeois upbringing life’s “blue serge lining”—a reference to the practical fabric that protected the inside of coats.
The Great Everywoman Outfit Contest of 1915
In early 1915, a young woman in New York City began to plot a modest revolution. Not the kind that involved bomb-throwing, riots or assassinations, like the one that had sparked a world war the previous summer — hers was to be a social revolution, a stone heaved in a lake that would ripple out and change the world for women.
The Shows We’ve Lived By
Since the earliest days of television, homes on the small screen—from the suburban ranch with its white picket fence to the loft with its views of the city skyline—have shaped our reality and our desires.
The Women Who Showed Us Life
At the entrance to the new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History looms a photograph that is oddly abstract and resolutely concrete, a row of conical towers forming part of the hulking Fort Peck Dam in Montana. The photograph covered the first issue of LIFE in 1936 and was captured by Margaret Bourke-White, the first and best known of the handful of female photojournalists on the magazine’s staff.
Load More
