Search Results for: Love

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bod

Longreads Pick

Influenced by media, Canadians, like Americans, suffer from unrealistic standards of beauty and conflicted feelings about their naked, natural bodies. One woman in Toronto runs the Body Pride workshops to help reverse that.

Source: Maisonneuve
Published: Jul 26, 2016
Length: 9 minutes (2,415 words)

What ‘Ask Polly’ Columnist Heather Havrilesky Learned About Love as a Video Game

At The Atlantic, Julie Beck talks to Heather Havrilesky about her new book How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly’s Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life, a collection of her “Ask Polly” advice columns on New York Magazine‘s The Cut blog (originally at The Awl) plus some that haven’t been published before.

In a voice that’s simultaneously compassionate, confessional and no-nonsense, Havrilesky regularly decodes the most frustrating human tendencies and the motivations behind them, leaving you to wonder how you never saw them so clearly before. Like this video game/manipulation analogy:

More and more, the longer I do this, I notice how much there’s this illusion that people have, especially with love, that they can control what happens next. It’s like they’re playing a video game, and if they play everything the right way, they can affect the outcome. It’s like, you meet someone, you decide this person is the person who is going to make everything right, who’s going to be your partner forever and ever, and you’re never going to have to solve this problem again. And then once you’re locked into that idea, it’s like you’re playing a video game.

It’s hard not to develop that idea that you can control the people around you. When you’re young, you suddenly realize that when you’re not interested, other people like you. I was literally just speaking to my 7-year-old, and she said when she wants to play, her big sister doesn’t want to play, but when she doesn’t want to play, that’s when her big sister wants to play with her. It makes her crazy. It’s like when you’re dating someone and you suddenly realize they’re losing interest, if you start acting like you’re losing interest—Ding! They’re back in the ring with you. So it’s hard not to believe you can manipulate your circumstances in various ways, because you can. It’s just, you’re not going to get what you want doing that, you know?

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They Loved the Church. They Loved Each Other More.

Longreads Pick

In November 2015, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a change to the Mormon Handbook that would force LBGTQ members to choose between their religion and their sexuality: Those in “same-gender marriages or similar relationships” were now considered apostates. O’Neil tells the story of Garett Smith and Kyle Cranney, a couple who ultimately chose their devotion to each other over their commitment to the church—and who plan to marry in October.

Source: Esquire
Published: Jun 24, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3,939 words)

How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru

Longreads Pick

The story of how Subaru cultivated its image as a car for lesbians—and did so at a time when few companies would embrace or even acknowledge their gay customers.

Source: Priceonomics
Published: May 23, 2016
Length: 12 minutes (3,024 words)

My Autistic Brother’s Quest for Love

Longreads Pick

On the spectrum and in search of a long-term relationship.

Source: Esquire
Published: Feb 17, 2016
Length: 16 minutes (4,197 words)

14 Stories About Love: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

Revel in all the feels with these 14 (get it?) essays and interviews. A Valentine’s Day reading list from Emily Perper.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 14, 2016

14 Stories About Love: A Reading List

Photo: fly

Heartbreak, desire, dating, romance—Valentine’s Day brings all of these experiences to the forefront of our minds and hearts. Revel in all the feels with these 14 (get it?) essays and interviews.

1. “A Modern Guide to the Love Letter.” (John Biguenet, The Atlantic, February 2015)

2. “Love is Like Cocaine.” (Helen Fisher, Nautilus, February 2016)

3. “Unlove Me: I Found Love Because I Was Lucky, Not Because I Changed Myself.” (Maris Kreizman, Brooklyn, February 2016)

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Eileen Myles on the Excruciating Pain of Waiting for Love

Longreads Pick

An essay about yearning, and an affair begun at an artist colony.

Published: Feb 8, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,077 words)

Speed-Dating in Shanghai: Finding a Mate at the ‘Love and Marriage Expo’

The Panda and The Bear - 3 by Andrew Baldacchino (CC BY-SA 2.0)

As a 23-year-old only child from a working-class family from Shanghai, I am in no rush to find a girlfriend. But marriage at a young age in China is considered the norm right now. My parents certainly think it should be. Since I got a job, they’ve now and then asked me euphemistically, “Do you have a direction?” By “direction,” they mean a girlfriend—one with whom I’m in a stable and serious relationship, and can bring home to visit at the Chinese New Year.

My mother didn’t force me to go to the matchup event. She just hinted that I should—every time we talked on the phone. “Nothing wrong with just having a look,” she told me. So here I was, dressed decently, and looking at a huge noticeboard, on which I saw my picture alongside hundreds of others, and below it the words:

Name: Mr. Huang
Education: Master’s degree
Birthdate: March 1992
Yearly salary: …

I’m listed on the wall for buyers.

I had filled in my yearly salary when I’d registered online—it’s a required question, along with those about your height, weight, zodiac sign, and whether you have a property or own a car. But I didn’t expect they would make rows and rows of “wanted” posters for every participant with his or her salary visible to every passer-by.

At Quartz, Zheping Huang navigates the highly competitive sea of red tables in search of wife at the Love and Marriage Expo in Shanghai, China.

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Can Americans Learn to Love China’s Favorite Booze?

Baijiu, which is typically bottled between 100 and 120 proof (compared to roughly 90 proof for whiskey), is fermented in mud pits or jars buried underground, distilled, and aged in clay vessels. The drink is often divided into four different “fragrance” categories: sauce (as in soy), rice, light, and strong. In its best iterations the flavor notes range from smoky, not unlike mescal, to fruitcake, like sherry-cask-aged whiskey. Mike and Eric are novice baijiu drinkers, and our first taste does not bode well. While I find the shot to be surprisingly smooth and fruity, at least as far as baijiu goes, I notice a grimace on Mike’s face. I can tell he’s struggling for something to say. “It’s got a pine-nut thing going on,” is all he musters.

Mitch Moxley, writing in California Sunday magazine about baijiu, China’s national drink. Made from sorghum, this clear white spirit lubricates social gatherings and facilitates business, and few Americans have heard it. Those who have tasted it rarely want more, though businesses in both China and the U.S. are trying to change that.

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