Mon. July 9
The Daily Scene
Good
How Coconut Water Built a Health Empire–Good
Electrolytes, Rihanna, and human blood.
Fifty Shades of Grey and the Illusion of Sex–LARB
We like stories where guilt is followed by redemption and sex is tied to emotion, not pornographic tales of domination and submission. Having a traumatic backstory to explain the inexplicable, and having love transform a would-be predator, are formulae that have worked throughout the history of romance literature and obviously continue to do so.
Andy Warhol’s Weird Relationship With Food–Slate
What do you get when you put a chocolate bar between two pieces of white bread? Andy Warhol called it cake. Warhol’s relationship to food is manifest not only in his art but also in the frugality and deprivation of his childhood, the time he was from—America in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s—and in his flip philosophy and deadpan sense of humor.
The Golden Age of the Single Person?–Salon
Singleness, the message seems to be, is merely an unfulfilling wind-up for the far greater thrill of a real romantic relationship. But what would happen if we stopped hating on singledom, and started loving it?
The Hubris and Despair of War Journalism–Guernica Mag
War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was a household name—epitomizing bravery, glamour, and political commitment—to previous generations of Americans, especially in the 1930s and ’40s when she covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Nuremberg trials for mass-publication magazines such as Collier’s.
