My poor teenage eyebrows

Plus my weekly Obsessed rec!

You’d think that after 41 years on this planet, at least half of which necessitated a basic understanding and practice of sunscreen application, I would be able to avoid sunburns by virtue of creams, sprays, and minerals. Apparently not, because at the end of my first day of our February break spent in Florida, I was sporting a beautifully nonsensical sunburn. The type of sunburn you’d think was the result of lots of fun drugs, not the more prosaic reason, which I guess is a lack of attention to detail. While most of my epidermis was spared, a random triangle of side-boob, the parts of my chest where my bathing suit straps hit, and a large-ish blotch near my right ankle were all compromised and I have the peeling skin to prove it.

Despite that (and a very disconcerting Red Tide, which caused coughing amongst beachgoers and deaths amongst marine life), I had a nice break (and enjoyed a much-needed injection of sunshine), and read more than usual largely because Brett is the Beach Parent for which I’m eternally grateful. (I am the Beach Chair Parent.)

Reading/Read

I finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and if you like books about complicated platonic love, the late nineties Boston/Cambridge college scene, and the stories we tell ourselves, I think you’ll also like this book. (If you have any nostalgic memories about The Oregon Trail video game, you’ll extra like this book!)

Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica (here’s a great interview with Rowbottom in Jessica Defino’s

The Unpublishable

) is a difficult read (at least it was for me) but such a smart, important one. The book tackles influencer culture, beauty culture, and how we choose to perform ourselves under patriarchy’s eye. Here’s an excerpt.

“Not anti-aging, graceful aging,” I say, and load women’s shopping baskets with promises of transformation, erasure, control. Empty promises, I’ve always thought, illusory. The women shouldn’t trust me. Even as a child, I believed the solution to age and plainness was to transform the body itself, not cover it; to shrink or expand as needed through starvation, exercise, the Adderall girls in my high school took to stay satiated and small, the injectables and surgery that came later. I never bought into the surface stuff: serums, creams, makeups. The only meaningful change comes from within, I still believe that.

I’m not sure how I’ve just finished my first Emily Henry book, but I did! People we Meet on Vacation was exactly what I needed after the darkness of Aesthetica. As a newbie to the beach read genre in general, I’m loving it so far. This might also be classified as a romance? Light, sunny, smart.

On Social

Anyone else getting this ad? Frankly, I wish I was because it’s perfect.

Giving me major Alfie the frog vibes!

Truth.

Truth.

Obsessed

Ok, so this is very much a momfluencer-friendly product. It’s probably been promo-coded by a momfluencer you follow if you follow momfluencers. But this is one such product I’d happily click through affiliate links for!

Like any gal who came of age in the frightening era of over-plucking (see below photo of yours truly and her much-beleaguered brows), muddy shades of maroon and teal, this facial scrub, and this compact, I grew up to fear oil at all costs.