Five years after her mother’s death, while still grieving and suddenly middle-aged, Abby Mims turns to beauty products to cure what ails her.
Feature
The God Phone
What happens when ordinary people play God to strangers? Leora Smith explores the history of one of the oldest art installations at Burning Man and the conversations that unfold there.
The Price of Dominionist Theology
After leaving fundamentalism, Eve Ettinger grapples with the loaded theological heritage of evangelical personal finance teachings.
Elizabeth Wurtzel Made it Okay to Write ‘Ouch’
Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.
What I Did for (Strange) Love
As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.
Addiction’s Seismic Effects on a Family
A mother confronts the painful truths of trying to save a son who’s a danger not only to himself, but to the rest of the family as well.
Infatuation
Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.
(Who Gets to) Just Up and Move
Nicole Walker contemplates the nature of migration, and realizes there are two places you can never escape: the planet and your own head.
Deconstructing Disney: The Princess Problem of ‘Frozen II’
Audiences wanted Disney to give Elsa a girlfriend. But the Frozen franchise is at the center of the corporation’s latest princess project, whose nationalist concerns are decidedly here for the gay agenda.
If My Scars Could Talk
Tega Oghenechovwen contemplates the ways in which acute childhood trauma can infect and compromise relationships later in life.
