Approved

Recovering from ACL surgery means I’ve spent the last week mostly holed up at home (except for me and Katel’s little roadtrip). So this week, I’ve got a load of recommendations perfect for staying in for the evening...or the whole month.
—Sara

❤︎ To binge.

If you loved Nanette, then you should know that Hannah Gadsby was also a writer and supporting cast member on Please Like Me, an Australian dramatic comedy. Josh Thomas stars as a newly out gay man trying to navigate grown-up life, including his mom’s severe mental illness. It’s been out for a few years, and all four seasons are on Hulu. Also, have you watched Schitt’s Creek yet? I skipped over it for way too long, thinking the name looked cheesy. It’s incredibly funny, and you will love it. Season 4 just launched on Netflix.

❤︎ To primp.

I hate not washing my hair. Not only does it get flat and greasy quickly, but I also like to exercise most days—so it’s sweaty, too. But for the past week, showering has become a complex and mostly uncomfortable ritual: carefully remove my brace, saran wrap my incisions, tape that on, put the brace back on, put a trash bag over the brace, tape that onto my thigh, and then awkwardly hover in the shower for a few minutes before toweling off and removing everything again. But there’s good news: I finally found a dry shampoo I like! It’s Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo, and it smells great, doesn’t leave a weird residue, and mostly brought my hair back to life today. Small victories.

❤︎ To curl up.

It’s crisp fall weather outside, I’m wearing a leg brace the size of a small country, and everything hurts just a little. I simply cannot bother with structured clothing this month. So I just picked up my new favorite cozy thing: this Pranayama wrap from Athleta. It’s so, so soft, and it’s made from a sustainable beechwood fiber harvested from certified or controlled sources.

❤︎ To read.

When I’m not bingeing TV or doing endless physical therapy, I’m reading The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon. It’s a short, intense novel about elite college students who join a domestic terrorist group, and I can’t put it down.

❤︎ To support.

One year ago, writer Moira Donegan created the Shitty Media Men list. Now Stephen Elliott—one of the purportedly shitty men her list outed—is suing her for $1.5 million. Moira’s a freelance writer who’s faced tremendous harassment over the past year, and she could use our help. Donate to her legal defense fund.

Faved

⭐️ Six reads we starred this week:

(1) The Cut released its Women and Power issue this week, and you’ll want to read all of it—from Lena Waithe to Jenny Holzer. And this interview with Stormy Daniels is amazing: “I really just wanted to save my own ass. Now I’m in charge of saving the world. What the fuck?”

(2) Celeste Ng (author of Little Fires Everywhere) writes about the internet’s underbelly of Asian men’s rights activists who harass Asian women who marry non-Asian men.

(3) Helen Rosner goes deeper on two of the women featured in The Cut this week—restaurateurs Gabrielle Hamilton and Ashley Merriman, who took over New York’s famed The Spotted Pig after a stream of horrendous allegations against its male owner came to light last year. They’re part of a long line of women in the food world who’ve been used as battering rams and fixers—thrown out into the limelight and left to “clean up the mess” left by prominent men.

(4) A new organization is shipping abortion pills to Americans for the first time, in an effort to get affordable abortion access to those who need it.

(5) It’s funny because you wish it were true: introducing Matreon, the Patreon for emotional labor.

(6) We absolutely squealed with delight when we saw the news that Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection Her Body and Other Parties will be adapted for television by FX. Can. Not. Wait.