Links for Wednesday, May 10th

oh my god, what

. . .

“He’s become more famous than me”

Okay, speaking of . . . surprises? . . . this matchup did not go the way I would’ve expected. Neither did this one.

I was so glad to read this article about Misty Copeland’s incredible acting ability, which is all anyone could talk about in the absurdly long line for the women’s restroom at the intermission of Romeo & Juliet at Wolf Trap last year!

Yes, she is Ballet Theater’s first African-American female principal, but Ms. Copeland has, perhaps more subtly, carved out another space for herself: as a ballerina with true acting chops.

“You feel the age and the injuries, and you realize the importance of character,” she said in a recent interview. “I used to muscle through these things. I can’t do that anymore. There needs to be something more, something else.” . . .

“Misty clearly has an aptitude for acting,” Mr. Stevens said. “Ballet in some ways is so competitive that it’s not unusual for dancers to forefront their strengths and background their weaknesses. She goes right there and isn’t afraid.”

And that bravery serves a purpose. For Ms. Copeland, becoming invested in her characters helps her get through highly technical parts. “It’s making the character,” she said, “so much more important than the steps.”

I continue to speak with Jesus about these films and I am running out of patience. It’s almost like they haven’t been reading our thinkpieces.

Deep in Macron Country:

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I say. “I’m here from a British magazine to discover why this populist surge has swept France.”

One of them, Jean-Luc, pauses for a long moment. “I would say that perhaps France has some experience of what happens when a country elects a right-wing authoritarian who likes to blame everything on people from a religious minority.” He leans in. “My father was in the maquis.”

On his left, Antoine takes up the tale. “The thing is, the political class don’t listen to people like us. People call us extremists, but we just want someone who will make sure that the lights stay on and not do something stupid, like take us out of the European union.”

“Hurrah. Patriarchy is over”: Jess Zimmerman on the ridiculousness of the (not-even-body-shaped) Dove bottles:

. . . the problem with women’s self-image has never, ever been that our bottles of soap are not shaped enough like our bodies. In fact, isn’t part of the problem that our bodies are treated like objects? Perhaps making our objects look more like our bodies is not the way to go . . . The ways that we talk about women’s body shapes have always seemed designed to dodge the actual reality of bodies. The most common approach to classifying body types makes us sound like a sort of Renaissance memento mori still life: the apple, the pear, the hourglass. Other times we’re reduced to simple geometric forms, like diamond and triangle. Some clothing companies develop their own cute taxonomies; Lane Bryant, for instance, used to sort waist-to-hip ratios into red, yellow and blue. Often they congratulate themselves for acknowledging that women come in as many as six or eight shapes.

Uh, so, who knew that “birthday spankings” of children were making a comeback? Can no tradition, no matter how gross and unnecessary, be left unmemorialized and unmissed? In any case, Mallory has the very best advice for someone shunned after making a joke about spanking the birthday girl: “the appropriate thing to do when someone is offended by a joke you made about their kid is to apologize—not to die on the hill of ‘Well, this was normal when I was a kid.’” YES, THANK YOU, RINSE AND REPEAT

This is sad and infuriating and also unsurprising.

“The AHCA came that those who are wealthy may have life and have it abundantly.”

I heard that some non-zero number of people I work with haven’t yet seen this video, so this link is for you guys. No need to thank me; I am paid for this.

What if we don’t WANT to find him, though??

Yep, sounds about right.

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