Earlier today, in the Phoebe Bridgers post, I praised Teen Vogue for picking the most interesting photo for the cover rather than trying to stay within some imaginary lines. Here, I think Self may have left its best picture in the interior batch. But my real issue with this is, I haven’t paid attention to Self’s rebranding until now, and I only just noticed its new masthead. It’s terrible? It looks like when people write words on fogged-up windows or mirrors. And that junior-varsity word effect on that headline reminds me of when it was 1994 and I was helping use Print Shop to publish our school paper (which was really just pages stapled together by the photocopy machine). Is that how Self is being printed now? Magazines are having trouble, so… it might be.
The opening of the piece is a super anecdote. But I’ll quote a shorter one from further down, about how she got her start in acting:
The subject would come up again years later, around seventh grade, when her class was preparing to stage a production of the popular Zimbabwean play My Uncle Grey Bhonzo. Casting was to be collectively decided by the class, and as she remembers, she and another boy were the only students competing for the lead role. She read for the part first. “I auditioned, and then he forfeited,” she says with a laugh. “So that’s how I got my first role.”
I wonder if that boy watches The Walking Dead and thinks, “Yeah, in 7th grade she blew me so far out of the water that I didn’t even get in the pool.” Anyway, it’s a good read.
