The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Amanda Mull, Allegra Hobbs, Andrew O’Hagan, Andrew Kay, and Joe Veix.

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1. Body Positivity Is a Scam

Amanda Mull | Racked | June 5, 2018 | 9 minutes (2,447 words)

“How a movement intended to lift up women really just limits their acceptable emotions. Again.”

2. Gentrification’s Empty Victory

Allegra Hobbs | The New York Times | June 1, 2018 | 11 minutes (2,887 words)

Since the turn of the century, local artists have wanted to revive a once-thriving arts center in an abandoned schoolhouse in the East Village. A developer who purchased the building at an auction in 1998 wants to turn it into a dormitory for college students. An influential historic society has lobbied the city to landmark the building to limit the developer’s options. Even the Latin Kings once attended a Community Board meeting to try to stop its sale in the first place (the “board sided with the gang members, but the city was unmoved”). P.S. 64 has been languishing in this legal purgatory now for two full decades. Is its shell doomed to remain vacant forever, or will someone in a position of power finally make a decision to determine its fate?

3. The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan | London Review of Books | June 4, 2018 | 240 minutes (60,028 words)

In an epic seven-part piece, Andrew O’Hagan writes on the harrowing Grenfell Tower fire that took place in London, England on June 14th, 2017. Telling dozens of individual stories of survivors and victims of the catastrophe, his essay posits that shoddy renovations and a poorly managed fire response that urged residents to “stay put” and wait for rescue — a policy only rescinded until it was too late for residents on the upper floors to evacuate — cost 72 people their lives.

4. Wrestling in Paris

Andrew Kay | The Point | April 20, 2018 | 43 minutes (10,997 words)

A pilgrimage to the 2017 World Championships makes Andrew Kay wonder: is wrestling a metaphor for current global politics, or have global politics become increasingly wrestling-like?