hello! once upon a time, possibly more than five years ago, you signed up for this newsletter. originally it was meant to discuss literary events in New York City. now it is many years later, i live in a different state and have a very different job, and the pandemic has led to a lot of thinking about how i do and do not connect with relatives, friends, acquaintances, my industry, the intertubes, you name it, and what i would like to talk about as a person who is Pretty Online. so here we are, blowing the dust off this TinyLetter and giving it a fresh coat of paint.

if you'd like to hang around, you can expect more of what follows -- definitely musings on what i've been reading or thinking about in the world of publishing, and then some other stuff. if you'd rather not (especially given how many newsletters are in the world at this point, for which i am both grateful and dismayed by the impossibility of keeping up), that is 100% fine by me. happy unsubscribing! otherwise, thanks for sticking around. let's talk.
 

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📚 today, i finished WHAT WE DON'T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT by Aubrey Gordon.


this book has been, sadly, a complete revelation to me. Gordon delivers bomb after bomb of heavily researched real-talk about the ways that fat people move through the world and the personal, institutionalized, and/or systemic abuse they are subjected to. it should not be shocking, and yet here we are. i think probably every human in the world needs to read this book, whether it's (like me) to discover just how much you've internalized anti-fat bias and been oblivious to the ways it is incorporated into all facets of life, or to be validated that yes, your experiences of anti-fat bias are real and, like all abuse, entirely undeserved. i originally heard about it from Patricia The Great, a.k.a. The Infophile's excellent newsletter and just plowed through my library hold, but i think i might have to own this, because that's how important it is. not only will i need to revisit it, but i need to lend it!

so far the thing i keep coming back to is just how much documentation there is that calorie-restriction diets don't work in any real, long-term, long-lasting way, AND how much harm they can do to a person's metabolism -- AND YET, doctors and other health professionals still regularly promote, recommend, even mandate them. we have the science! we all know BMI is bullshit! why are we still doing this!?!?! the answer, just like with so many other forms of discrimination against marginalized communities, is in large part "because we've woven it into the system, and because not enough of us care about making the changes required to untangle it." anyway i'm late to this party but glad to finally be here, and will be over in this corner doing some internal work and finding a bill (or two, or five) to yell at my congresspeople about.

as i started texting friends to see if WHAT WE DON'T TALK ABOUT was already on their radar, the answer generally was "Oh, Aubrey Gordon! I follow her but haven't read this yet!" somehow Gordon wasn't already on my radar, so i will be working on fixing that, but if you too didn't realize she had a book, consider yourself notified! i really do mean it when i say that every human needs to read this; it's the book about body justice that will sit next to the other essential social justice books (shout outs to DISABILITY VISIBILITY, edited by Alice Wong, and WHITE TEARS, BROWN SCARS by Ruby Hamad, as two others you need to read).

🪴 in non-book news, i recently asked a friend who is an accomplished antiquer and scavenger to keep an eye out for bird cages, because this is my new idea of how i am going to have plants that the cats can't poison themselves with and/or ruin by gnawing on their precious leaves. he texted me about a week later that he had found one for $6, did i want it? i said yes! then this monstrosity arrived at my house. i am going to call it Plant Jail.


actually i probably won't (that's a terrible idea), so if you can think of a good name for it, hit reply. now i have to find the right inhabitants for it! recommendations welcome.

(yes i know that there are nontoxic plants you can get and just leave lying around your house or apartment, but my jerk cats will chew off flowers and leaves just to be jerks and i would rather have nice-looking plants in bird cages! plus, decorating whimsy.)

🪐 in conclusion, Mercury is in retrograde in Libra until October 18th and that's probably why i can't find a chiropractor -- the first one's office was! not! masking!!!! causing me to walk out of my evaluation appointment before it even started; the second was weirdly aggressive and intrusive and confusing; we'll see how Wednesday a.m.'s appointment goes. my 70-something-year-old neighbor recommended this third one and i both really like her and figure she's probably dealt with back pain for much longer than i have, so fingers crossed for the third-time-charm.

yours in "have i told you about my acupressure mat already,"
jenn