Happy Olympics! If you’re looking for our figure-skating coverage, it starts here, and will be continuing through the next week.
Can we offer you something to read?
At Vanity Fair: The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon. This piece is, as you may have heard, so so so so so so good. To wit: “That’s a feeling perhaps uniquely particular to the gay experience, the muddied confusion over whether you want to be someone’s companion or if you want to step inside their skin, to inhabit the world as they do. Watching Rippon have his triumphant moment on Sunday night—and give a funny, frank interview afterward—I felt the kind of yearning for a celebrity that I haven’t felt since I was 17, half my life ago. How strange to experience that while watching sports, an area of culture I’m usually pretty alienated from unless it’s Olympics time. Sure there have been plenty of swimmers and gymnasts and whomever else to lust after in Olympics past, but Rippon is something else—a sassy beacon of hope, a gay angel sent to delight and, sure, sadden us a little with all his distant beauty and poise.” You should read the whole thing.
Related (well, kinda. It’s about skating) at Vulture: Baz Luhrmann on Figure Skating’s Love Affair With Moulin Rouge!
This is good and interesting, at Slate: Costume Designer Ruth Carter on Creating the Afro-Futurist Look for Black Panther
At Lainey: here’s some hot hot hot hot Oscar Isaac. ENJOY.
Fascinating, sad, and extremely well-written; both true crime, and an elegy for a friend, at Wired: The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus.
Robin Givhan argues: It’s time to start respecting Victoria Beckham as a fashion designer. [WaPo]
Also from Givhan at the Washington Post: The Michelle Obama portrait is striking — and so is the gown she wore for it. This is its story.
At Revelist: Don’t you want to see Amy Schumer’s wedding gown? (She got married on Tuesday.)
This is BRILLIANT, at McSweeney’s: If Literature’s “Complicated Men” Were On Tinder. For example: “Name: Odysseus Age: 38 Occupation: King of Ithaca who is 100% NOT having a midlife crisis. About Odysseus: I’m all about that wanderlust life: it’s about the journey, not the destination, you know? Especially when the destination is full of ‘responsibilities’ like ‘governance,’ ‘parenthood,’ and ‘marriage to a woman who is clearly smarter than me as she evades being sold like sexual chattel for ten years while I doof around banging random witches and blinding one-eyed giants.’ Join me on the journey, baby.”
At Pajiba, this is right up our street: Pajiba Matchmakers: Let’s Play ‘Couples We’d Like To See’!
At Fashionista: I’m Tired of Not Seeing Myself Represented in Street Style Photos.
At Celebitchy: What even is HAPPENING with Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall? Ladies! Take this offline! (Except I’m a nosy bench who loves drama, to quote The Good Place, so also maybe don’t.)
