Recommended Reading: Male Escorts, Hypergiant Stars, and Slushies.

Hello and welcome to the second installment of my weekly Recommended Reading, where I share the best of my recent browser history in hopes that I might inspire others to have more interesting conversations around the water cooler, or whatever it is people with office jobs and less time to click on articles in their Twitter feed do.

“I Went to the Woods So I Could Steal Candy From Children”: The Maine Hermit Is A Terrible Hero To Have by Mallory Ortberg, The Toast
     Last week I recommended an essay about the infamous man who lived in the woods of Maine for almost thirty years, surviving not by hunting and gathering, but by stealing things from nearby cabins in the middle of the night. I maintain that it was a fascinating article about someone whose way of thinking is completely unfathomable to me, but the incomparable Mallory Ortberg points out exactly why all the people who have since idealized the hermit's pseudo-back-to-nature, away-from-humanity mentality are a bunch of morons and, in fact, the hermit was kind of a jerk who kept people from feeling safe in their own homes and has terrible taste in music and is yet another false idol of tortured masculinity in a world that has too many of those. There's a difference between living deliberately and being a selfish leech on the very society one scorns, and at least Henry David Thoreau was a good writer.

Story of a male escort by Will Thorr, The Observer
     I have complicated feelings about prostitution. As a feminist, as a human rights advocate, as a believer in bodily autonomy, as a social liberal, as a sex-positive person to whom the idea of treating sex as yet another purchasable commodity nonetheless does not personally appeal, as a person who worries about large-scale issues like human trafficking and power dynamics and wishes there were a way to ensure sex workers' safety without compromising their ability to make a living and would be concerned, justifiably or not, about the well-being of any friend who entered the industry, I spend a lot of time trying to understand sex work. Accounts like this, told from the perspective of the UK's highest-paid male escort (where "escort" in the US is usually a euphemism for prostitute, here it seems to mean it explicitly), help with that attempt to understand. Josh Brandon's story, of getting into drugs and trouble in school and growing up in a dead-end Welsh town with nothing to look forward to but a job in a grocery store, makes sense to me. It's a rags to riches story with a mostly happy ending, really, only with clients who pay extra for their weird fetishes.

Experience: I was a male escort by Anonymous, The Guardian
    This is an older piece that predates the Josh Brandon article, and was suggested as "related" to it. The anonymous writer gives a similar account of the financial freedom afforded by his escort work on top of a steady job "in the creative industry, in an area rich in job satisfaction if not remuneration," but he's much more conflicted about the moral compromises involved.

How dare anyone criticise British food? Indigestible dinners made this country great by Stuart Heritage, The Guardian
     I enjoy a hearty pub lunch as much as the next alcohol-abstaining expat in England, but there's a hefty pinch of truth to the stereotype that British cuisine consists mostly of beige and brown lumps of varying consistencies but minimal gustatory appeal. Then again, to avoid sounding like an ungrateful foreigner in the country responsible for Cadbury chocolate, I'll let a native poke fun at British food instead.

What Happened to Jennifer Lawrence Was Sexual Assault by Anne Thériault, The Belle Jar
     Callous as it sounds, I am burnt out on coverage of the celebrity photo hacking incident. I'm no less sympathetic to the victims now than I was when the news first broke, but I have much less patience for the abundance of thoughtful, well-intentioned, but ultimately useless think-pieces littering the internet right now. This is an issue on which I have no tolerance for dissenting opinions: the women targeted in this crime didn't deserve such a gross violation of both their privacy and ownership of their own bodies, and anyone who disagrees can very rapidly exit stage left. Again: this was not a "leak" or a "scandal," it was sexual assault.

Diablo Cody Is Known and Loved at Her Local Taco Bell by Siera Tishgart, Grub Street
     The Grub Street Diet is a feature I'm always excited to see cross my newsfeed, so much so that I'll even read ones featuring a famous person/food-eater whose life and work I wasn't previously familiar with. The chance to read someone else's food diary for a week deeply satisfies my desire to become acquainted with other people's most mundane behaviors and preferences, which some might call a voyeuristic instinct, but I prefer to think of as a scholarly absorption with human social behavior. I have a B.A. in Psychology, so I can get away with saying that.
     This particular Grub Street Diet takes a peek at the eating habits of Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno and some other movies (Jennifer's Body, Young Adult) that may be entirely adequate but will never live up to Juno, so I haven't bothered to see them. This is the same woman who wrote the line, "Can you hold on a second, I'm on my hamburger phone," so I had high expectations. Her meals of Five Guys for lunch, "some Special K Pastry Crisps, which are like fake-ass Pop Tarts for self-hating idiots," and most of her son's slice of chocolate cake at a child's birthday party did not disappoint. I won't ruin the final line of the piece for you, but it's killer.

The Columbia Student Carrying a Mattress Everywhere Says Reporters Are Triggering Rape Memories by Katie Van Syckle, The Cut
     Emma Sulkowicz's performance art piece requires a lot of courage to carry out, and while I hate that reporters have so few qualms about harassing her for the sake of a story, I'm glad this is getting so much coverage. This interview is further confirmation that she totally rocks.

Eleanor Catton sets up grant to give writers 'time to read' by Alison Flood, The Guardian
     Eleanor Catton's novel The Luminaries won this year's Booker Prize (and is on my to-buy and to-read list), so in gratitude for the honor, she's putting her prize money towards the establishment of a grant that will provide financial support to young writers, giving them time not to worry about putting words on a page or making ends meet, but simply to read. I love her idea for what to name it: "Catton said that the word which keeps coming to her as a possibility 'is the horoeka, or lancewood, a native tree that begins its life defensively, with sharp rigid leaves and a narrow bearing, and at a certain point transforms into a shape that is confident, open and entirely new – so different, in fact, that the young and old versions of the tree look absolutely unalike. That is what I believe that reading can do.'"

My Parents Have Elder Care Insurance, But Daughters Are Apparently the Next-Best Thing by Marci, XOJane
     "Women appear to provide as much elderly parent care as they can, while men contribute as little as possible." Ugh. Of course.

Wanna renounce your U.S. citizenship? It’s gonna cost you more. by Colby Itkowitz, The Washington Post
     Let's be real: this isn't going to "make it more difficult for tax-evading Americans to hide money in offshore accounts." It's just going to enact a stronger financial penalty for people living and working abroad who decide that not even an American passport is worth paying income tax to two different governments at once. Tax-loving Democrat that I am, I still think that's ridiculous.

The Original Patent for the Slurpee Maker by Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic
    I'm fond of slushies and weird trivia. This has both.

Twenty Days of Harassment and Racism as an American Apparel Employee by "Jane Doe," Gawker
     There are plenty of retailers I avoid for ethical reasons, making various degrees of sacrifice to do so: Wal-Mart, Urban Outfitters, L'Oréal, the company that makes shockingly adequate frozen pad thai meals but sources its shrimp from slave ships. For a long time, I was torn about American Apparel: former CEO Dov Charney has been a notable creep for as long as his company has been around, and his recent dismissal was well overdue, but their commitment to manufacturing products in the United States under reasonable labor conditions is rare and admirable in the garment industry; plus, they do produce some quality basics. I largely avoided brick-and-mortar American Apparel stores before now because I could tell, instinctually, that I wasn't thin or alternative enough to look anything but out of place browsing racks of metallic leggings and spandex crop tops; after reading this hellish account of working in an environment that normalizes racism and sexual harassment while repressing dissent, I have even more reasons to find my solid-colored t-shirts and skater skirts elsewhere.

4 Mind-Blowing Facts About Space by Tim Urban, Wait But Why
     Space is the coolest. I took an astronomy class as my lab science requirement in college, which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite experiences with one of the smartest men I've ever met -- shout-out to Professor Lombardi, Jr. at Allegheny College! -- from which I've retained a surprising amount of information, yet I'll still be engrossed in articles like these about facts I already know because I never get tired of reminders that looking through a telescope is like time traveling, there are 10,000 times more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth, and the entirety of human existence is a speck in the fathomless universe. That's either bleak or inspiring.

You Almost Certainly Have Mites On Your Face by Ed Yong, National Geographic
     Haha, just kidding. I didn't read this because I don't want to know.