The Buzz Cut: Jay‑Z and Beyoncé’s Secret Joint Album
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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 over lunch all week.
Power couple powers through. Jay-Z, in a recent interview, speaks about his marriage to Beyoncé and how they weathered his infidelity and her very public, musical response to it. But the main thing you need to know is the couple has an unreleased joint album. Give the people what they want.
Parenting by the book. This peek into the booming business of cultural parenting memoirs-cum-how-tos (brought on by titles like Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bébé) is proof that we all want validation — as well as ideas for how to parent better. (Apparently, we can all expect to be told the German Way of parenting is best now.)
The future of porn. The porn industry has been in a bit of crisis since the advent of the Internet. VR technology and bespoke business models are changing the content of porn and likely the way we use it. Will it lead to more porn use? Who can say. If it does, at least Indians can turn to this new app that plays devotionals and prayers whenever users try to access porn sites. (Seriously.)
No thanks. The world’s first smart condom is possibly the un-sexiest thing we’ve heard about in a while.
Barbie with a cause. Barbie is possibly bisexual. Or maybe she just supports same-sex marriage. Or maybe Mattel is looking for a catchy, contemporary cause to market it’s tired, old toy — a nice try, coming off its public slut-shaming of actress Sunny Leone. Mattel: You can’t have your progressive cake and eat it too.
Echoes of a father. These two accounts — one of a gay Canadian man whose father used to work as a military investigator whose job it was to out and fire/dishonorably discharge gays and lesbians working in the public sector; and one of an Argentinian man who is seeking to testify against his father, one of the ‘death flight’ pilots from the late ’70s and early ’80s — are very different, but also similarly powerful portrayals of adult children coming to terms with their parents’ (mis)deeds.
How to say ‘bravo’ in Korean? Taboos around sex and gendered expectations are being openly challenged in this fascinating read about South Korea’s sexual revolution. When the country’s in-school sex education teaches that date rape is the victim’s fault, it seems about time. (Although… at least they have sex education in schools?)
Your weekly rage. The fact that the Supreme Court is treating an adult woman like a child.
Gymming like a mom. A new gym in the US is the first aimed only at pregnant women. Seems like a cool place, but we still dream of a world in which pregnancy fitness is a service found at any gym.