In The Buzz Cut, we give our take on all of the intellectual and Internet-famous, celebrity and bizarre, buzzy and overlooked family and parenting news we gossiped about all week.
The long game. Congratulations to Michelle Williams on her secret wedding to now husband Phil Elverum. The private actress who was at the center of the equal pay firestorm recently thoughtfully discusses the gender pay gap, single-parenting, and finding love after tragedy. Also, congrats to Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas who maybe got engaged. Speaking of blissful unions, here’s an exploration into why, even in more egalitarian societies, men don’t consider taking their wife’s last name after marriage. And this story of Karam and Kartari Chand, who, with their 90-year-long marriage are believed to be the longest-married couple in the world, is the ultimate example of ‘making it work.’
The trade-offs. This retrospective on ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,’ written by 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is a look back at feminism’s roots — important in this era of misunderstanding the movement. Over at the New York Times, Jessica Valenti argues that equality can’t be achieved without inculcating the right attitude in young boys. (Preach!) Finally, this collection of real life ‘would you rather’ choices that women have to pick from in their day-to-day lives will make you laugh while you cry — and appreciate the previous pieces all the more.
The search for control. After getting pregnant while using an app that touts itself as birth control, one woman looks into the commodified field of contraception, only to find that women tend to have limited understanding of their full range of contraceptive options or the trade-offs between them. Speaking of women not having all of the info they need, this woman’s grueling 9-year journey to conceive reveals dueling theories in the field of IVF that most patients aren’t aware of. Elsewhere, the story of a comedian taking the selection of a sperm donor into her own hands via a podcast, or as she calls it — a Spermcast — is both hilarious and poignant.
The two sides. Are we living in an Orwellian nightmare? Maybe. There sure are some disturbing similarities between Orwell’s 1984 and our present self-enslavement to technology. But the fallout might be more cultural than health-related; this piece argues that claims of a tech-addiction crisis are wildly off-base.
