This edition of the Top 5 looks at Ukraine’s defiant underground beauty salons, the fight for a wild butterfly population, the meaning behind the quilts crafted in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, the world of Criterion Collection, and the shifting role of the call center worker.
1. Inside Ukraine’s Wartime Salons
Sophia Panych | Allure | February 22, 2024 | 4,531 words
As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, beauty salons in the country have become symbols of perseverance and resistance. Salon owners go to work despite the constant threat of missile strikes. They’ve moved their businesses underground. When they have no access to electricity and water, they run on generators and use bottled water. They’ve also adapted to working in the dark, painting clients’ nails under the glow of headlamps. Unfazed by air-raid sirens, they’re accustomed to calculating risks. Sirens can sound up to a dozen times a day, a cosmetologist from Zaporizhzhia, a city close to the frontlines, tells Sophia Panych: “At that rate, it would take all day to finish just one facial.” In this piece, Panych asks, “Does beauty even have a place in a society at war?” For many salon owners in central and eastern Ukraine, the answer is an emphatic yes. Many Ukrainian women have felt a deep sense of patriotism and duty to jumpstart the economy, while salon patrons get their hair cut and nails done to take control—and find normalcy—in an unstable time. “Every blowout, every massage, every pedicure they provide is a statement of defiance against an enemy that wishes to see them destroyed,” writes Panych. They’re also communal acts of self-care. A longtime beauty editor with Ukrainian roots, Panych had been looking for a way to write about the country since 2022, but she hadn’t found an appropriate angle. But her reporting here, on the unexpected resilience of Ukraine’s beauty industry, comes together beautifully in an inspiring piece on the courage and resourcefulness of ordinary citizens in a time of war. —CLR
2. The Butterfly Redemption
Brian Payton | Hakai Magazine | February 27, 2024 | 4,000 words
For more excellent writing from Brian Payton, read “The Naturalist and the Wonderful, Lovable, So Good, Very Bold Jay,” also from Hakai Magazine.
In his latest for Hakai Magazine, Brian Payton creates excitement from the start: “They are ravenous and roving. Newly emerged from a six-month state of suspended animation, over a dozen larvae scale the crumpled paper towel inside a plastic cup.” I love Payton’s writing—I don’t yet know the name of these creatures, but I am already rooting for them. These are Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly larvae; they favor “bright, moist, open wildflower meadows” and were once abundant from Willamette Valley in Oregon to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Today, only 13 wild populations remain, but conservationists in the US and Canada—including some incarcerated women who care for the butterflies—are trying to change that, for the butterflies and for humans who may not understand the critical role insects play in life on our planet. “Insects help create and sustain the natural systems terrestrial life depends on,” he writes. “A world with fewer insects is a world with less flora, fauna, and food.” Payton’s piece is educational and entertaining, a welcome and necessary spark of joy. This butterfly is particularly magnificent and Payton records them with thoughtful detail: “In April or May, they emerge as adults and take to the air on wings of vivid red or orange and white, outlined in black, calling to mind the brightly hued geometry of stained-glass windows.” What’s perhaps most beautiful (in addition to learning that the collective noun for butterflies is a kaleidoscope)? The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly lives for only 14 days, but in that time, it does its part to help life on this planet to thrive. That humans are banding together to help the species? It sets my hopes aflutter. —KS
3. The Black Women of Gee’s Bend Work Hard and Easy
Jeannette Cooperman | The Common Reader | February 21, 2024 | 5,680 words
Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is famous for its quilters. Maybe you’ve seen their work in a museum or on a US postal stamp—it is abstract, geometric, and arresting. The quilters are Black women descended from slaves, and their craft is a tradition born of necessity. To keep warm, have a soft place to sleep, and swaddle newborns, the quilters’ forebears made what they needed with what they had. How, then, to view the contemporary acclaim for Gee’s Bend quilts that focuses more on aesthetics than function? Or the forces of capitalism that invited the acclaim in the first place? There’s a moment in this essay by Jeannette Cooperman when one of the quilters asks the author, “Who discovered art, do you know?” The line took my breath away because it’s a Russian doll of questions. To address it in any meaningful way requires asking other questions about the nature of art, the power dynamics of discovery, and how knowledge is shared across time and space. Cooperman does a splendid job lacing these lines of inquiry through the essay while also suggesting that trying too hard to answer them risks missing the point of creating and experiencing beauty—which is to say, the doing and the feeling. “Quilts were about loving people. And saving and re-using honored the material world,” Cooperman writes. “When Missouri Pettway’s husband died, she made a quilt from his old work clothes . . . so she could warm herself with the memory of him, ‘cover up under it for love.’” —SD
4. Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?
Joshua Hunt | The New York Times Magazine | February 29, 2024 | 4,230 words
There are three primary kinds of business profiles. You’ve got your classic schadenfreude-fueled Rise and Fall, your everyone-loves-a-comeback Redemption Tale, and your Company at the Crossroads. All can be compelling. All can also feel like sponsored content. Joshua Hunt’s feature about Criterion Collection, that beloved reissuer of movies, manages to skirt that issue by being a culture story rather than a business one. Criterion started with LaserDisc, then moved to DVD and streaming; what’s remained constant is its seemingly bottomless love of film and commitment to supplemental materials, which Hunt conveys through director interviews as well as Criterion employees. Cinephile icons (Jim Jarmusch, Kelly Reichardt), A24 darlings (the Safdie Brothers), and even Michael Bay show up to discuss their favorite Criterion memories. Criterion’s warts are on display as well—its tendency to ignore Black filmmakers, the heavy toll exacted by its streaming strategy—further helping steer the piece away from Valentine territory. Obsession is as universal as it is single-minded, and stories like this bear that out perfectly: I may never have the encyclopedic knowledge that these filmmakers do, but I’ll also never tire of reading about another person’s lifelong passion. —PR
5. The Last Stand of the Call-Centre Worker
Sophie Elmhirst | 1843 Magazine | February 2, 2024 | 4,739 words
“It reminds me of processed cheese, Sophie,” says Gary, a call center worker, during his chat with Sophie Elmhirst on AI technology. Gary tells it how it is. I love Gary. An instantly endearing character, he epitomizes the sense of personality that could be lost as call center work edges further into the realm of the robot. Don’t get me wrong—we don’t always get a Gary when we call a customer service line. Elmhirst recounts, with her trademark dry humor, some of her less enjoyable calls (you will relate). But Gary from Vision Direct has her laughing as he guides her through ordering new contact lenses like they were “engaged in some kind of high-stakes joint project.” Roping him into an interview, she discovers more about the infectious joy he brings to customers, even after 20 years of working in call centers. Can AI ever replicate this? Perhaps. Developments are happening faster than the public or regulators can keep up with, and automating empathy is already in the works. In fact, as Elmhirst notes, ChatGPT recently scored better on standardized emotional awareness tests than the general population, according to a paper in Frontiers in Psychology. (Not sure if that says more about ChatGPT or the general population.) As is often the case with AI, there is much talk of hybrid roles, but inevitably, there will be less room for the traditional call center worker. The topic of AI use in customer service calls had the potential to be incredibly dull. Elmhirst makes it wildly entertaining. Gary makes it human. —CW
Audience Award
What did our readers devour this week?
What Really Happened to Baby Christina?
Matthew Bremner | Esquire | February 15, 2024 | 8,100 words
Twenty-six years ago, Barton McNeil called 911 to report that his 3-year-old daughter had died in the night. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to any parent. Then a new nightmare began. Matthew Bremner tells the harrowing story through a personal lens. —SD
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