After a Year Without Crowds, Caroline Polachek Takes the Stage
The singer-songwriter tries to hold down an uncertain moment.
Jia Tolentino
Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare
How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years.
On Practicing the Discipline of Hope
An interview with Jia Tolentino.
The Age of Instagram Face
How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.
How TikTok Controls Our Attention
“I found it both freeing and disturbing to spend time on a platform that didn’t ask me to pretend that I was on the Internet for a good reason.”
Athleisure, Barre and Kale: the Tyranny of the Ideal Woman
How we became suckers for the hard labor of self-optimization.
Losing Religion and Finding Ecstasy in Houston
Christianity formed my deepest instincts, and I have been walking away from it for half my life.
Interview With a Woman Who Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks
“This baby was unviable, basically. That’s what they say. They say that the baby is ‘incompatible with life.’”
Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun
Does the ubiquitous dance troupe really present five thousand years of civilization reborn?
Why Marlon James Decided to Write an African “Game of Thrones”
The Booker Prize-winning novelist on fantasy, reality, and a religious crisis that has never ended.
The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul
Kids have taken a technology that was supposed to help grownups stop smoking and invented a new kind of bad habit, molded in their own image.
Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus?
A team of researchers at Columbia believe that small changes to college life could make campuses safer.
Gloria Allred's Crusade
A profile of the attorney.
All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me
On affirmative action at the University of Texas, the essence of privilege, and getting what you deserve.
This job—writing college essays for Abigail Fishers—was the only job I have ever been truly ashamed of, and I am so ashamed of it now that it hurts.
Is This the End of the Era of the Important, Inappropriate Literary Man?
“He was untouchable, or he thought he was. But that era is over, for all those guys.”
What Should We Say About David Bowie and Lori Maddox?
“Word choice is hard here. Should we say “raped” automatically if a grown man has sex with a teenager? Does it matter at all if the 15-year-old, now much older, describes their encounter as one of the best nights of her life? What is our word for a ‘yes’ given on a plane that’s almost vertically unequal? Does contemporary morality dictate that we trust a young woman when she says she consented freely, or believe that she couldn’t have, no matter what she says?”
No Offense
On feminism and the limitations of outrage online.
Rush After 'A Rape On Campus'
A UVA alum goes back for the first rush week since the Rolling Stone story.
