Hello and welcome to kelsey’s corner, the only newsletter on the internet written and lovingly curated by me, Kelsey. This week is all about red pandas, irritable bowels, and maybe my favorite article of the whole year?
Things For Your Ears
Put your loving arms around me once more
And we'll go crashing into folks on the dance floor
And you can walk all over my shoes if you want toOh, someone new walks along, steals the weight from your war
Flickers of light, and you're sure that you have been here before
Oh, she could have anyone, but she's asking after your dreamsAnd you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me
And at every table, I'll save you a seat
Things For Your Ears and Eyes*
The Green Knight was simultaneously Not for Me and Very Good. Put Dev Patel in every movie, forever. I’m begging.
Teeth are for rich people! I know this because I’m getting my wisdom teeth removed soon and slowly learning even getting rid of teeth can be awfully expensive. Tiffany Ferguson breaks down the history of “nice teeth,” it’s place in modern society, and what the heck influencers are doing to their mouths. (Hint: it’s almost always veneers!)
Things For Your Eyes
Who lives, who dies, who owns your story? I don’t fully agree with Amanda Knox’s reasoning here, but I do think it’s a conversation worth having - when we don’t ask to be thrust into the public conscious, is there any way to take back our name?
I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen again. I went back to school and fellow students photographed me surreptitiously, people who lived in my apartment building invented stories for the tabloids, I worked a minimum wage job at a used bookstore, only to be confronted by stalkers at the counter. I was hounded by paparazzi, my story and trauma was (and is) endlessly recycled for entertainment, and in the process, I’ve been accused of shifting attention away from the memory of Meredith Kercher, of being a media whore.
Why are millennials so obsessed with dogs? Putting everything aside - things are too expensive, we have enormous debt, it’s unlikely some of us will ever own homes - it’s because they’re really neat.
Dogs are, for some of us, a perfect balm for purgatorial anxieties. If you have time and care to give, they love freely, they put you on a schedule, they direct your attention and affection and idle thoughts toward something outside yourself. The desire to turn outward and spend energy nurturing others is a mark of emotional maturity, but that nurturing needs a vessel.
I’ve seen BBL content on Tik Tok but I never fully understood what it was. A butt thing? But the procedure is a) kind of insane and b) screwing up the way young women see themselves online.
The BBL aesthetic of the 2010s and the present day, however, is most often associated with the Instagram influencer, whose body exists to be consumed by the most people possible (whether or not it has been photoshopped is almost beside the point). After Kim Kardashian, one of the ur-examples of the modern influencer, proved with an X-ray that she hadn’t had butt implants, the next logical question was, “Well, how?” The answer, many have speculated, is that she and some of her sisters had gotten Brazilian butt lifts, which wouldn’t have shown up on an X-ray because the procedure involves the removal and retransplant of one’s own fat.
[screams directly into Lake Michigan for 45 minutes]
If you’re single in a pandemic, you will develop such a crush on the idea of having a crush that you will Google: “up-and-coming models U.K.,” “new celebrity chefs,” “list of footballers 2010–2020,” “cool bands.”
content warning: 9/11** | This is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and loving things I’ve read all year. I’m going to be thinking about Bobby and the people who lost him for a long time.
Yet somewhere amid all the passages of exasperation and dread—and many of them are quite detailed—Bobby comes to a much larger realization. It’s an epiphany, I’m guessing, that made it possible for him to stick with his plan to ask Jen’s father for permission to marry her, though he seriously questioned during those months whether she was ready. The date was August 20, 2001.
There are people that need me. And that, in itself, is life. There are people I do not know yet that need me. That is life.
Things
I am not a great baker. I think it’s because I don’t have all the fancy tools but I think it’s also because I’m not very delicate. However, this sugar cookie recipe was 100% idiot-proof and beloved by friends, Grandmas, and kickball teammates.
Things to Make You Smile
I haven’t showed you Bucky in a while! He’s still very handsome, loves to be seen in profile. I will give him ear scritches on your behalf.
This one is more for me than for you if we’re being honest.
I’ll be back on August 27 sweatin’ and frettin’. So, nothing different.
If you liked this newsletter, please share it with a friend or an enemy using the button below. If you double-liked this newsletter and want to fund my Slurpee habit you can do so here. Until then, please keep wearing your mask and be nice to people. I’ll be thinking of you.
Your friend,
Kelsey
*I know this is out of order but like, let’s all deal with it. Also - do you like the added excerpts from the articles? I thought it would give you a nice little preview of what you’re going to read. Let me know!
**Sophia, don’t even try it!!!