This week, we’re sharing stories from Nell Boeschenstein, Hannah Giorgis, David Davis, Chris Randle, and Kelly Conaboy.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
* * *
1. A Few Words about Fake Breasts
Nell Boeschenstein | Granta | August 20, 2018 | 25 minutes (6,409 words)
Nell Boeschenstein, writing almost seven years after her prophylactic mastectomy, examines how breasts — whether real or fake, attached to or removed from their original owner — carry an overabundance of personal and cultural meaning.
2. How the ’90s Kinda World of ‘Living Single’ Lives on Today
Hannah Giorgis | The Atlantic | August 22, 2018 | 53 minutes (13,416 words)
An oral history of the groundbreaking hit show “Living Single.”
3. Sex, Steroids, and Arnold: The Story of the Gym that Shaped America
David Davis | Deadspin | August 21, 2018 | 42 minutes (10,642 words)
A sprawling oral history of Gold’s Gym recounts bodybuilding’s transformation from a small, niche scene to a mainstream cultural phenomenon (thanks, in no small part, to one entrepreneurial Austrian immigrant).
4. The State of the Bestiary Is Stable
Chris Randle | Hazlitt | August 22, 2018 | 13 minutes (3,455 words)
Through personal history, the history of a company, and the history of games writ large, Chris Randle explores the enduring appeal of Magic: The Gathering, the trading card game which has persisted in comic shops, convention centers, and basement rumpus rooms for twenty-five years.
5. Do Men Enter Bathtubs on Hands and Knees?
Kelly Conaboy | The Cut | August 21, 2018 | 9 minutes (2,428 words)
A BabyCenter message board post launches a writer into an investigation with hilarious results.
Longreads 