Are my cheeks chubby?
And other interesting stuff I read this week that I thought you might like too.
I’ve been in Paris this past week. I was particularly excited about this trip because I’ve been putting in some serious hours on the little green owl app. I’ve mentally unlocked every possible interaction in a restaurant and had rote learned how to navigate a reformer pilates class like someone playing a video game who has died a thousand times but now knows exactly how to complete the level.
Not that any of that mattered. Regardless of how many times I have tried to greet people in French to get the ball rolling, they almost always reply in English. I’ve asked if it’s my accent that gives me away and people have politely said no. But on Tuesday when I was greeted in a shoe store in English before I even uttered a word, I demanded to know how she knew I didn’t speak French.
The woman said I had classic Parisian style (which was the biggest bloody compliment and it took everything in my being to resist the kiwi urge to bark back “thanks this whole outfit was on sale/thrifted/stolen!!!”) but then she tapped her cheek bones and said, quite simply, that I did not have a Parisian face.
Excuse me? What the hell did that mean? Was she calling me insufficiently malnourished? Tragically well-fed? A nutritional overachiever?
I left the store nodding and smiling like a well-adjusted person, but internally, I was spiraling. Had I just been Frenchly negged? I suddenly felt like a medieval peasant who accidentally wandered into a Chanel campaign. Was this some avant-garde way of telling me my face wasn’t angular enough to qualify for a cigarette, black coffee and existential despair by the Seine?
I’m choosing to believe she meant it in an timeless, exotic, beauty kind of way. But deep down, I fear I’ve been politely informed that I have the bone structure of a well-loved marshmallow.
Weekly reads
The Troubling Trend In Teenage Sex by Peggy Orenstein for The New York Times. I read a lot that I think is too inappropriate or controversial to share in my weekly reads. This was one such piece that I was sitting on for that reason, but I’ve decided it’s really important. Young women who are being choked during sex are exhibiting similar MRI results to football players with C.T.E - the degenerative brain disease caused by cumulative, seemingly inconsequential knocks to the head.
How The Trump-Zelensky Talks Collapsed In Ten Fiery Minutes from The BBC. Trump has well and truly broken the illusion that diplomacy is anything but a ruthless game.
The Beauty Of Concrete by Samuel Hughes for Works In Progress. Since the Second World War we’ve stopped building pretty buildings. Some people think this happened because it's became too expensive to bother, when in truth it’s never been cheaper. We’ve invented machines that could carve wood once crafted by hand, created affordable materials like concrete that look just like stone, and found ways to make copies of decorations quickly in factories. So the real reason isn’t cost, buildings became simpler because the people designing them - architects and their clients - started to prefer a modern (boring) style.
How Many New Yorkers Are Secretly Subsidised By Their Parents? By Madeline Leung Coleman for The Intelligencer. The global wealth transfer currently taking place is fascinating. Boomers are the wealthiest generation ever to have lived (the right-place, right-time winners of both the housing and stock markets.) The upcoming transfer of that wealth to their Millennial children will create new forms of entrenched inequality.
Are Private Schools Better Than Public Schools In New Zealand? by Serena Solomon for RNZ. A hill I will die on. Thanks for this one Henry.
Graph of the week
Public Service Announcement
It has recently come to my attention that too few men in my life seem to know what toxic shock syndrome is, so I’m leaving this article on it right here. I feel like the fear of it is drilled into young women, but it turns out men can get a strain of it too.
Tweet of the week
Book of the week
Of Boys And Men: Why The Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, And What To Do About It by Richard Reeves. This is the most consequential book I have read since Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, which was my 2024 book of the year.
Fact of the week
Michael Phelps has won more Olympic gold medals than 80% of countries. His 23 golds are more than entire nations have won in Olympic history.
Quote of the week
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it fish” - My wonderful friend Anna
Happy reading,
Maddy xx
You have the cadence of a writer, my friend!