Reading List: 21 Outstanding Stories from Women's Magazines and Websites
Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious.
The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as “serious journalism.” We’ve seen serious storytelling in both.
The other problem is that we’re still relying on National Magazine Awards and print-only publishers to reflect the zeitgeist. I’ve mentioned that 65% of all #longreads started out in print, but we also should spotlight the work of online publishers who are pursuing in-depth storytelling.
So, here’s a start: 21 stories from women’s magazines and sites that we’ve featured on Longreads. On Twitter, Rebecca Traister is curating some of her favorite serious work. And we’d love for you to add your favorite women’s magazine stories in the comments.
Allure
• The F Word, Jennifer Weiner
Marie Claire
• The Big Business of Breast Cancer, Lea Goldman
Tiger Beatdown
• The Percentages: A Biography of Class, Sady Doyle
O, The Oprah Magazine
• ‘I Will Never Know Why’, Susan Klebold
• ‘We Thought the Sun Would Always Shine on Our Lives’, Paige Williams
• Promises of an Unwed Father, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Is Ecstasy a Viable Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?, Jessica Winter
Rookie
• Higher Learning, Staff
XO Jane
• How A Gun-loving West Texas Girl Learned to Fear Assault Weapons, Haley B. Elkins
• It Happened To Me: My Parents Adopted a Murderer, Amity Bitzel
More
• How I Lost $500,000 for Love, Aryn Kyle
Vogue
• Notes on a Scandal: Jenny Sanford Vogue Interview, Rebecca Johnson
• Sheryl Sandberg: What She Saw at the Revolution, Kevin Conley
• Susan Rice: She’s Got Game, Jonathan Van Meter
Elle
• I’m For Sale, Genevieve Smith
The Hairpin
• My Brother, My Mother, and a Call Girl, Mara Cohen Marks
• He’s So Unusual, Jane Marie
• A Goodbye to Ambien in Dubai, Amy Schumer
• The Evolution of Ape-Face Johnson, Carolita Johnson
Glamour
• Relationship Violence: The Secret That Kills 4 Women a Day, Liz Brody
Jezebel
• What Can a Civilian Possibly Say to a Wounded Soldier?, Chloe Angyal
***
Share your picks in the comments
"Tagg’s biography is littered with similar stories—short cuts he couldn’t have taken without his last name, obstacles that melted away before he was even aware of them. And yet, thanks to the Romney myth, he and his family believe that most of what he has achieved comes from old-fashioned industriousness, not older-fashioned status and wealth."
tnr.comNoam Scheiber, “Growing Up Romney”
“Considering the fact that so many kids could realistically answer “what the fuck is juice,” why don’t we just start banning all drinks that aren’t coffee, tea, and water? Oh wait, we banned bottled water (because you know, poor people can’t like sparkling). Because poor people have always been poor, and have never known otherwise, and they’ve never had nice things, like water that bubbles. And poor people don’t need to exercise choices over what food they eat and what food they prefer because poor people aren’t allowed to have preferences. We aren’t allowed to access nice things.”
—If You Haven’t Been On Food Stamps, Stop Trying to Influence Government Policy | Racialicious
I am quoting a tiny, tiny portion of a piece that says everything I’ve been trying to write about ever since I started this blog: food politics, poverty, how and what people eat (and how we have no business policing it), etc. etc.
Only that, since this is written by Latoya Peterson, it is better articulated than I ever could.
