Emma Copley Eisenberg calls out the publishing industry for weight prejudice in this fascinating essay. Reading the piece makes you will realize how few times you have experienced an overweight main character while reading fiction. And that will make you think.
Thinness is routinely associated with morality and fatness with immorality. Characters are often made fat as a shorthand to tell the reader that they are gross, weak, evil, cruel, stupid, unimportant, or mentally ill (as I’ve previously noted over on Substack). “My body was a beautiful, perfect economy, every feature calibrated, everything in balance,” writes Gillian Flynn in Gone Girl(2012) of the character’s form before she gains weight. On the first page of The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff (2023), a character is described as “a woman whose capacity for food was exceeded only by her capacity for venom.” And in Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry(2022), the main character is sexually assaulted by a professor named Meyers who is described as “a big man—nearly 250 pounds—his strength a product of density, not fitness.” With few exceptions, such remarks serve no narrative purpose.
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About 100,000 people in the United States have sickle cell disease. Roughly 90 percent of them are Black. And many of them have harrowing, even devastating experiences with reproductive health care. For this investigative feature, Eric Boodman, one of the finest writers covering science and medicine today, speaks to 50 women with sickle cell disease about their experiences. They describe being pressured into having tubal ligations, hysterectomies, and abortions. “Some stories carry echoes of ‘Mississippi appendectomies’ of the mid-20th century, in which Black women would go in for a different procedure and wake up to learn that their uterus had been removed,” Boodman writes. His sources also talk about being judged, scolded, and shamed by doctors, which Boodman describes as “a kind of verbal sterilization, when doctors express the pernicious belief that people with sickle cell disease cannot or should not have kids.” Boodman examines the meaning of “informed consent” and reveals how the strict definition of the term can be exploited by doctors, protecting them from liability while still ruining the lives of patients. This story is beautifully written to boot, amplifying its impact. It is the first in an ongoing series. I am excited—and terrified—for the rest. —SD
Ann Neumann | The Baffler | June 4, 2024 | 3,561 words
In the aftermath of the opioid crisis, have we gone too far in restricting access to pain medication, creating agony for the terminally ill and stigmatizing those with a legitimate need for pain relief? Writing for The Baffler, Ann Neumann thinks so. “Opium and its derivatives are the most effective pain relievers known to man,” she writes. Because heavy restrictions have reduced morphine demand, it’s less profitable for drug companies. Less profit ensures drug companies are less motivated to produce it, causing shortages. This means you or someone you love may not have access to morphine, which the World Health Organization notes is “the most basic requirement for the provision of palliative care.” Neumann delves into the history of opium and its derivatives, revealing a centuries-old cycle of “use, abuse, and control” that has failed those struggling with addiction and those who require pain management. Her approach is a compassionate one, which I deeply appreciate. My mom suffers from sudden debilitating pain that can last for days, yet she’s loathe to take what she’s been prescribed because she’s worried about becoming addicted. The stigma runs deep. “Rather than shame and blame the drugs, the drug manufacturers, or the drug users, we will see no real progress until we compassionately tackle addiction’s roots in poverty, trauma, racism, policing, and inadequate health care,” she writes. “A society that has seen the kind of abuse of opioids the United States has experienced, along with widespread confusion about their proper use, is a society immersed in many varieties of pain.” To vary an old idiom: if only an ounce of compassion could be worth a pound of cure. —KS
Amos Barshad | The Lever | May 30, 2024 | 3,701 words
I had a surprisingly decent Caesar salad at my second nephew’s birthday party recently—at a bowling alley. In addition to the spread of food, I was impressed by the setup, from the party decor the facility provided to its modern and comfy lounge seating at each lane. But I didn’t know, until I read this story about the Bowlero Corporation, that this place is part of an empire of bowling centers that’s wiping out independent bowling alleys across the US—and that it isn’t meant to be a bowling alley at all, but an “upscale entertainment center.” Reading Barshad’s piece on the rise of the private equity-backed firm Bowlero, which is the largest bowling center operator in the world, put the experience into context. Yes, we sipped craft beer and cocktails, and the food wasn’t that bad. But the kids spent more time at the arcade and laser tag than actually bowling, and gone was the no-frills feel of a neighborhood bowling alley. I realize that’s a plus for some people, but it honestly made me sad. When I was a kid, I loved bowling with my dad at our local spot (shout-out to Bel Mateo Bowl, which still operates in San Mateo, California!). I remember all the league signs hanging above us with bowlers’ highest scores. The shop where they measured my tiny grip and drilled holes into my very own eight-pound ball with my name on it. My dad hooking his ball perfectly, alongside other silent and methodical bowlers, throwing strike after strike. This is the bowling experience I grew up with—a culture, Barshad writes, that’s under threat as Bowlero expands. My pick last week was similar in that it commented on the privatization of another beloved pastime—surfing—but in that piece, the author laments changes in the sport while seeing the positives of riding an artificial wave inside a mall. Barshad’s dive into the inner workings of Bowlero, however, reveals a monopoly with no redeeming qualities. From discriminatory hiring and employment practices to a CEO who’s only interested in lining his pockets, it’s clear that the people running the company don’t care about the sport. “I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,” the CEO once said. “Why would you?” This is a great but depressing read from Barshad. There are 3,500 independent bowling centers left in the country; if yours still stands, support it. —CLR
Rosecrans Baldwin | GQ | June 5, 2024 | 4,971 words
For some reason, I have a bottomless appetite for the ways people try to crystallize the zeitgeist. Pantone has its color of the year. (Peach fuzz.) Oxford and Merriam-Webster, their words of the year. (Rizz and authentic, respectively.) Time, its Person of the Year. (Taylor Swift, though it’s only a matter of time before “insufferable 20-person polycule” breaks through.) And of course, writer after writer tries to coin the next “vibe shift.” For GQ, Rosecrans Baldwin investigates a corporeal version: men who are getting yoked and/or staving off aging by any means necessary injectable. Maybe you’re blessedly unaware of this phenomenon! Maybe your personal algorithm has avoided the onslaught of mesomorphs preaching the iron gospel on TikTok. Maybe you’ve not yet hit the age at which the word “testosterone” magically proliferates in your inbox and podcast feed. But with weight training bigger than it’s ever been, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has exploded in parallel. Baldwin talks to an endless array of people who augment themselves from every apothecary aisle; steroids, SARMs, peptides, growth hormones, and more. These confer varying effects and pose varying degrees of risk, but the most shocking thing about the piece isn’t the horror stories about things gone wrong. It’s the ubiquity. Then again, it’s yet another symptom of the mass image-driven insecurity fed by—and even accelerated by—social media. “The platforms are super apps for performance enhancement,” writes Baldwin. “[P]laces where the curious can be inspired by (edited) photos, introduced to (sketchy) regimes, and directed where to (illegally) purchase them, before finally sharing topless mirror selfies, to display their boost-gotten gains.” Yet, you won’t find Baldwin moralizing, hand-wringing, or psychologizing. Instead, he lets his sources do that work, and simply provides the scaffolding and context necessary to turn that into a story. And an illuminating one it is. —PR
Danielle Elliot | The Guardian | May 28, 2024 | 4,326 words
I have had two sets of friends go through the intrauterine insemination (IUI) process, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of buying sperm. I have already been confused—when, on being shown a donor, I was presented with a picture of a child (sperm banks use pictures of donors when they were children). I’ve been flabbergasted—at the cost of a single vial of sperm. Been dismayed—when it didn’t work. Delighted when it finally did. But, as knowledgeable as I thought I was on this topic, Danielle Elliot showed me I still had much to learn about this world. Sperm is a hot commodity, with low stock levels post-pandemic and a screening process that accepts only about 4 percent of donors. Elliot’s piece is a rollercoaster ride as she races to meet her ovulation cycles. With securing a vial of sperm akin to getting a Taylor Swift ticket, I felt my stress levels rising as Elliot dithers on the phone during plummeting stock, wanting to yell, “Just buy it!” at her. Even when sperm is secured, there are many hurdles to cross. One particularly frustrating moment is when Elliot misses a cycle because, as a doctor informs her, “The woman who facilitates sperm shipments will be on vacation next week.” Navigating logistics and expense, Elliot begins to consider other options: after all, $16,723 in, she is no closer to having a baby. Written with a searing honesty, you will find yourself deeply invested in this journey. —CW
Audience Award
Which story did our audience love most? Let’s hear some timpani!
Maria Iqbal | Toronto Star | May 25, 2024 | 2,935 words
An Italian woman named Antonietta spent her last years in a care home, with no visits from anyone that knew her. But she was not friendless. So why was no one in her community informed of her whereabouts? A heart-wrenching story of a woman, quite literally, lost in the system. —CW
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Whether or not you agree with the headline’s hyperbole, there’s no denying that steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are more widespread than they’ve ever been—another foul tributary branching out from the social media cesspool. For GQ, Rosecrans Baldwin talks to the men and women who have taken the syringe route to Swollsville. Natty or not? Definitely not.
Still, Nick stuck with them and gradually added other compounds. He rattled off some of the drugs he tried during his career with such familiarity, they sounded like underground hardcore bands. Anavar, D-Bol, NPP. At times, depending on the compound, he was shooting every day, a thousand-plus milligrams per week. And he grew muscle, lots of it—and he also grew paranoid, and felt extremely lethargic outside the gym. And yet: “The second you touch a weight, you’re a god. I was gaining 20, 40 pounds on my bench press every two to three weeks. It was madness.”
Meanwhile, one of the drugs turned his sweat yellow (also his semen). His hairline receded and he switched to a mohawk. “This is the progression of bodybuilders: full hair, mohawk, bald.” Plus, he experienced such bad acne, he started going to a tanning salon multiple times a week, mainly to roast his back.
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Disney is a global cultural force. But in China, the Chinese population—not the company—sets the trends. At Shanghai Disney Resort, the most beloved character isn’t Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, or princesses like Ariel or Belle or Elsa, but instead LinaBell, a pink fox. For The Dial, Lavender Au writes about the culture of Disney in China, and how, in the ’90s, Disney invested heavily in the country and had big expectations, but ultimately, the formula for success in Asia is much different than in the US. “Disneyland is popular in China,” Au writes, “but not in the way that Disney intended.”
Disney spent more on Shanghai Disneyland ahead of its grand opening in 2016 than it did on Disney World. The Florida theme park, which opened Magic Kingdom Park in 1971, cost $400 million to build, which is equivalent to $2.2 billion at the time that Shanghai Disneyland began construction in 2011. Shanghai cost $6 billion to build, according to Iger.
LinaBell’s success has bucked the Disney formula. The long-held belief was that characters or brands need stories to be successful. But in China, no-back-story LinaBell is arguably the brand’s greatest success. For a lot of people, she is what you go to Disneyland for.
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As a child with large ears and prominent teeth, I was far from immune from the threat of bullies. Bullies latch onto a person’s most obvious weakness, and physical characteristics that differ from the perceived image of perfection make for excellent targets. Facial features, body shape, hair or skin color—the more obvious, the better. It’s little wonder that many of us have grown up with lasting insecurities concerning our physical appearance. But never before have so many people sought medical intervention to address those insecurities. The cosmetic surgery industry is worth nearly $60 billion, and increasing yearly.
The reasons behind this are manifold: the steady advancement of medical techniques and the concurrent fall in the cost of procedures; a burgeoning surgical tourism industry; the ubiquity of social media (essentially visual in nature) and online porn (ditto). But we’ve also been thrust into an inescapable relationship with our own image. From Zoom meetings to photo-packed smartphones, we’re confronted with ourselves daily, and psychologists are noticing the results.
For me, what leaps out from the pieces collected below isn’t just the normalization of cosmetic surgery—with patients routinely likening it to dieting—but the normalization of extreme procedures. Getting your ribs trimmed, having your shoulders or legs broken and reshaped, or being implanted with objectively oversized testicles (seriously) may assuage that tiny voice in one’s head, but they may also leave you in a far worse situation than when you started.
Oddly enough, there’s a parallel here with the current hand-wringing over the rise of artificial intelligence. Once out of the box, it’s extremely difficult to put something back, especially when people are growing rich from the profits. Cosmetic surgery has its undeniable benefits, of course—for burn victims, for amputees, for those born with restrictive conditions—but it seems that we can’t have one end of the spectrum without the other. (AI, in fact, is set to play a large part in the cosmetic surgery industry of tomorrow.) As with the impact of AI, what the eventual landscape will or should look like is a matter of fiery debate. Do we need strong, international regulation and a limit on available uses? Will future generations not know life without augmentation? Are we simply overreacting? No matter which side of the fence you sit on, these stories provide fascinating insights into the world of extreme surgery as it stands today.
Those of us of a certain age grew up with the well-worn trope of women asking their partners, “does my bum look too big in this?” Nowadays, that concern has reversed itself: large, prominent buttocks are desirable. This isn’t of itself new—in the ’90s, Jamaican women took “chicken pills” to attain the so-called “Coca-Cola bottle” shape. What’s changed is the breadth of the ideal. One obvious reason lies in the form (excuse the pun) of Kim Kardashian, whose rise to prominence mainstreamed callipygian ideals long before her 2014 Paper photo shoot introduced that woeful bit of hyperbole known as “breaking the internet.”
As we know, what constitutes the perfect body varies over time and place, and will continue to do so. Whatever the cause, big butts (and I cannot lie) remain firmly in fashion. Combine that with daily assaults on women’s self-confidence through all manner of channels, and it’s no surprise that the Brazilian Butt Lift—whereby fat from the belly, hips, lower back, or thighs is surgically transferred to the buttocks—is in great demand. Tragically, the procedure is also among the most dangerous: fatalities occur regularly.
As you’ll glean from this wonderful article, it’s not just women who seek BBLs. The number of men undergoing surgery may be considerably smaller, but is rising quickly. Financially, it makes sense for would-be recipients to travel to countries such as Turkey, which has rapidly become a cosmetic surgery hub, but with the cheaper prices come more relaxed regulations. Despite the pain, despite the fatalities, the BBL is a procedure that gains popularity year after year. Beauty cycles being what they are, at some point the “ideal” image will change and the industry will move on. Perhaps we’ll go back to ”less is more.” Whatever happens, it’s important to try to understand the individual stories and the personal motivations of those who feel compelled to risk their health, even their lives, in a quest to obtain the perfect derriere.
Even if the surgery goes ahead without complication, British patients travelling can suffer multiple complications. “The biological time for a wound to heal is six weeks,” Dr Stefano Cortufo, who runs a clinic in Harley Street, tells me. Patients are expected to wear a body compression suit—or faja—for at least that amount of time, if not longer, and cannot sit or apply any pressure to the site of surgery for at least two weeks.
“That is the minimum time that doctors and patients need to be together. If I operate on you, you need to see me every week for six weeks.” Sitting on a plane for hours, days after an op can put a patient at risk, he says. Indeed, a quick search on TikTok and YouTube shows women going straight to A&E in the UK, suitcase in hand, after stepping off the plane. One was admitted with sepsis, a life-threatening infection. “The NHS is full of people coming back with infections,” Cortufo says.
Designer Parts (Melanie Berliet, The Atlantic, April 2012)
There are two types of FGCS (female genital cosmetic surgery, not to be confused with gender confirmation surgery): vaginoplasty (tightening tissue for enhanced sexual pleasure) and labiaplasty (reshaping labia purely for aesthetic reasons). The author of this frank and, at times, cringingly humorous piece, Melanie Berliet, understandably focuses on the latter, asking why many women are willing to pay thousands of dollars to reshape an area that is hardly ever on display. To try and answer this question, Berliet takes the admirably brave step of exposing herself (literally) before one of the many surgeons who offer this procedure. As a heterosexual man, I can honestly say that I do not have, nor have ever had, any concept of what the ideal female genitalia should look like. Sadly, there are men out there who do fixate on such things. Perhaps the more interesting question is why? Berliet posits a link to the ubiquity of online pornography, a connection that feels as disturbing as it is obvious.
“Fifty-nine hundred bucks for a tighter vagina,” I muse. Internally, I consider what else I might buy with that kind of disposable income if I actually had it. Fifty hour-long hot stone massages! A dozen tickets to The Book of Mormon! A lifetime supply of Bazooka gum!
“Well, if you do the vaginoplasty and labiaplasty simultaneously, we charge $9,900 for what we call vaginal rejuvenation.”
As a 2023 paper in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association unsurprisingly revealed, “[h]air loss causes many men significant psychological distress.” After all, male baldness has been associated with lower social status as far back as the 17th century. The first-ever hair transplant was undertaken in 1952, but surgical intervention dates back much further: in the 19th century, surgeons used a technique known as the “scalp flap,” which doubtless was as grim as it sounds.
By the age of 50, 30-50 percent of men will have experienced some degree of balding. (As I write this, I am steadfastly refusing to look in the mirror.) I can empathize all the more, then, with Rudi Zygadlo, the author of this piece, whose hair loss began at the age of 18, and who has taken the increasingly common step of traveling to Turkey for treatment. It’s a booming industry but, like any invasive surgery, should not be taken lightly. Zygadlo writes with an endearing honesty and narrative panache, revealing insecurities most of us would rather not share. Nor does he shy away from providing gruesome details—eight hours under the knife, with plenty of gouging and scraping, plus 50 injections directly into the scalp. Happily, for Zygaldo, the pain was worth it.
Obviously I’ve known about hair transplants for years, but I thought the window had long passed for me; I’m too far gone, I can’t afford it. I have also avoided Googling all things hair-related because I know how quickly one’s algorithm turns into an obstacle course of triggering adverts.
But, six months ago, a good and fellow-afflicted friend encouraged me to have a WhatsApp consultation with an outfit in Istanbul that he visited for a third of the price of UK equivalents. I know Jamie has done boatloads of research; unlike me, he has tackled the problem head-on and now flaunts a resplendent mop. I trust him. I have the consultation and, assured my situation is salvageable, I get a quote and mull it over. It’s now or never. Hiding is exhausting. Either embrace what I have or take a punt with the Turks. I book.
It should come as no surprise that the penile enlargement industry is experiencing sustained growth. (Fill in your own joke here; I’ve already written and deleted a half-dozen of them.) Historically, women’s looks have come under far more scrutiny than men’s, and they’ve been subject to higher levels of insecurity as a result, but if there’s one area in which men are particularly susceptible to self-doubt, it’s the size of their genitals. Recent studies suggest that just under half are dissatisfied with the length of their penis.
Here, in a ProPublica investigation co-published with The New Yorker, Ava Kofman brings sensitivity and tact to the true tale of “Mick,” one of an increasing number of men going under the knife in search of extra inches. It’s a gruesome story, and one which advocates caution. One of the surprising revelations is the woeful lack of regulation when it comes to genital implants. That said, there are many questions we could ask of Mick, whose lack of preparation and research might seem astonishing, but Kofman is never judgemental, instead teasing out the humanity and emotion with which we can all empathize. Indeed, it’s impossible not to feel for him. Be warned, though; the graphic descriptions are not for the faint of heart.
The basic operation would cost $15,000—roughly half of Mick’s life savings—though he added in a pair of discounted testicular implants, at seven grand more. He put down a deposit, told his long-distance boyfriend that he was taking a work trip and, on a sunny morning in September, arrived at Elist’s office, in Beverly Hills. A framed copy of the GQ story—cover line: “We Have Huge News About Your Manhood”—hung on the wall of the exam room. Elist strode in, directed Mick to drop his pants and rolled Mick’s scrotal sac appraisingly between his fingers, as though it were a piece of fruit at a market stall.
You may have never heard of “gymceling,” “jelqing,” or “mewing,” but chances are you might soon. As if women didn’t already have enough reason to fear men, the rise of the incel (involuntarily celibate) movement surely represents one of the most disheartening and dangerous subcultures to have sprung from the internet’s rotten skull. If you haven’t heard of them, I advise you to read up—but just a little, lest you lose all hope for humanity. The incels’ basic premise is that attractive women are cruel and shallow creatures who will only tolerate “ugly” men when they themselves are old and used up. Therefore the incel, who is not conventionally attractive, finds himself at a distinct disadvantage, which is solely the fault of said beautiful women. (The incel’s double standard in only desiring conventionally attractive partners is neatly sidestepped in such thinking.)
For a fascinating and disturbing cinematic tale on this subject, watch John Frankenheimer’s 1966 cult classic, Seconds, starring John Randolph as Arthur Hamilton, a middle-aged man who longs for a new life, and the great Rock Hudson as the man he becomes. Fair warning: Seconds contains one of the most brutal endings ever committed to celluloid.
One sector the incel phenomenon has been good for is cosmetic surgery, with an increasing number embracing face and body altering surgical techniques to transform themselves from “beta” males to “alphas” or “Chads.” Those with such a mindset are all too easily entrapped by grandiose promises of physical enhancement, and can find both brotherhood and easy enticement on TikToks and online forums that amplify and bolster their opinions. If your entire worldview, your whole sense of self-worth, revolves solely around your looks, set in relation to Hollywood hunks, the chance of transforming yourself into the latter must seem far too good an opportunity to pass up. Here, we have another tale of a surgeon who is literally operating without moral responsibility. This article presents a compelling account of what happens when these two worlds meet.
Eppley’s not sure exactly why a patient would want testicles of dinosaur-egg size. But that’s true of many of his procedures, which he tends to design in response to patients’ requests. If his practice had a slogan, it would be “We don’t care why you want it,’’ he tells me. “And I suspect patients seek me out because they know I won’t ask them. I don’t see it as my job to cast a judgment.”
Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.
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Lydia Davis reflects on and describes the rare and singular experience of finding herself in total darkness while out in the country one evening—a feeling of expanse and quiet she now craves.
I also thought more carefully, after that experience, about what darkness feels like. In describing deep darkness, I want to use words like velvet or soft or blanket. Is that because darkness conceals the edges of what we see in light? The room I am in, illuminated by daylight, has many edges in it—not only the hard edges of the furniture but also the softer borders of a rug or the lines where the walls meet each other and the ceiling. A forest, though it is, in season, full of soft-seeming foliage, is also striped by the vertical hard trunks of the trees. Even the vast, billowy body of water that is the ocean is defined by the straight edge of the horizon. Absolute, unbroken darkness feels like one massive, enveloping substance, though it is not a substance and is not palpable. It feels close to the face, right up against the face.
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Why did our ancestors draw on cave walls—in the dark? Izzy Wisher takes a fascinating look at the possible psychology behind cave drawing, and how it reflects the way we think to this day. Once she invites you to imagine yourself in a cave, you will be captivated: “You’re standing in a cave, tens of thousands of years ago.The damp, earthen smell mixes with the warm smoke from your firelit torch and saturates your nostrils. The muted silence is broken only by the subtle crackles of the fire and distant drips of water that echo around the space.”
What we do know is that during the Upper Palaeolithic (c45,000-15,000 years ago), our distant ancestors ventured deep underground to make these images. In these unfamiliar environments, they produced a rich display – from unusual abstract forms to highly detailed renderings of animals – under the dim glow of firelight cast by their lamps. Naturalistic animal outlines, rows of finger-dotted marks and splatter marks preserving the shadows of ancient hands remain frozen in time within the caves, representing tens of thousands of years of people returning to the darkness to engage in art-making.
This curious, yet deeply creative, behaviour captures the imagination. Yet as Jean Clottes – a prominent Palaeolithic art researcher – succinctly put it, the key unanswered question for us all is: ‘Why did they draw in those caves?’
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As Ann Neumann notes in her latest for The Baffler, morphine is the only reliable source of pain relief for those in palliative care, yet restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the opioid crisis have reduced demand, making the drugs less profitable for drug companies to produce. Shortages have meant that many people the world over are dying in needless pain. Neumann delves into the history of opioids, reminding us that the war on drugs is a failure, harming addicts and those who need pain relief most.
Truly facing and addressing addiction requires a new vocabulary—and accepting that “say no to drugs” is an inadequate response. It also requires an examination of far-reaching economic and social challenges in our culture: lives of despair, racial prejudice, economic insecurity, isolation, inaccessible health care, expanding police forces and prisons, and, of course, politics.
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An Italian woman named Antonietta spent her last years in a care home, with no visits from anyone that knew her. But she was not friendless. So why was no one in her community informed of her whereabouts? A heart-wrenching story of a woman, quite literally, lost in the system.
But those feelings soon gave way to sadness and bewilderment. Antonietta always wore her dentures in public, her friends said. She took pride in her appearance. Why didn’t she have her teeth at the senior home?
And why had her friends and neighbours been left in the dark about where she was?
“It was cruel,” said Eileen, adding Antonietta might have still recognized her, or just have been happy that someone came to see her.
“Everybody needs a visitor. Everybody needs a friend.”
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Danielle Elliot gives a brutally honest account of her battle to conceive in this fascinating piece for The Guardian. With vials of sperm selling like hotcakes, the road to finding the right donor is an arduous one.
The pandemic added unforeseen pressure. With lockdowns and contact-tracing requirements, it became hard to recruit donors. California Cryobank raised prices in 2021 in an effort to slow sales, as they feared running out entirely. Brian Hyde, its director of sales, told me last year that one donor’s 30 vials had sold in 30 seconds. “There was a three-month hiatus, March, April, May of 2020 where we were selling next to nothing and then from June until November it was insane. It was crazy. Being here and being part of it, it was crazy. We were selling more vials than I’ve ever seen before … If sales didn’t slow down we would have run out of donors to sell.” California Cryobank had more than 550 donors available when the pandemic started; by December 2021, the number had dropped to about 200. Hyde said that in January the company had added more vials than it sold for the first time in three years.
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The residents of Grand Marais have had a lot to discuss in recent years. A suspicious fire that destroyed the historic Lutsen Lodge. The suicide of their neighbor Mark Pavelich, a star on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that defeated the Soviet Union. Plans for the 40 acres near town owned by convicted sex offender Warren Jeff’s fundamentalist clan. All those events stirred plenty of talk.
But nothing has captivated local conversation quite like what happened between Larry Scully and Levi Axtell in March 2023. A shocking act of violence attracted international attention and split the town over questions of truth and justice. Grand Marais is still trying to piece itself back together.
Every small town has its cast of offbeat characters. Larry Scully was one of Grand Marais’s. Larry, who was 77 in 2023, dwelled on the fringe of town, where Fifth Street meets Highway 61, and on the fringe of reality. His two-bedroom house, which used to belong to his parents, was crowded with items he’d hoarded over the years. The mess spilled into his front yard, which was cluttered with satellite dishes, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a wood-frame sign advertising “antler bone art.” The sign was decorated with several of Larry’s scrimshaw carvings, which he hawked at art fairs. In addition to carving, he’d tried his hand at an array of other pursuits: refurbishing broken electronics, selling solar-powered generators that could run home appliances in the event of an emergency, and even fashioning leather lingerie that he peddled to women. Larry had had no stable career to speak of since he arrived in town in the early 1980s.
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Larry was a conspiracy theorist. On his Facebook page, he posted videos and articles declaring that the federal government controlled the weather, that Sandy Hook was a hoax, that Timothy McVeigh was a “CIA patsy,” that the totalitarian New World Order was real. Around Grand Marais, Larry was also known to be exceedingly religious. He attended Mass on Saturday evenings at St. John’s Catholic Church, always sitting in the front row, and he believed that the statues there cried actual tears—sometimes of blood. He carried a lock of hair that he said once belonged to Father Mark Hollenhorst, a priest at St. John’s who died in 1993, in a leather pouch around his neck; he claimed that it could effect miraculous cures.
Larry referred to himself as a prophet and would often appear around town dressed in a cloak and sandals and carrying a wooden staff. He once showed up on the courthouse steps for the National Day of Prayer clad all in black, his head covered by a medieval-type chainmail hood, and fell to his knees screaming. Another time he berated a group of gay people who’d gathered in downtown Grand Marais, shouting through a bullhorn that God didn’t approve of them.
Many locals found Larry’s zeal exhausting. “When I’d see him, I’d know I was going to be there for a long time, because he’d go on and on,” said Laura Laky, a Grand Marais resident. “He’d talk about the end-times, the Book of Revelation, Christ coming again.”
Other people were scared of Larry. Rumors that he abused children circulated around Grand Marais for years. People whispered about him watching kids from his parked car. There were claims that he’d videotaped girls’ volleyball games and children at Sven and Ole’s, the local pizzeria. A member of the nearby Chippewa tribe told me that Larry had been banned from the Grand Portage powwow after parents complained about him passing out candy to their children.
Larry once approached a man named Gary Nesgoda at a gas station and asked if he had kids. When Nesgoda said that he did, Larry showed him pictures of a fairy garden he’d built behind his house. There were miniature staircases and doors, and little figurines set amid tree roots. Larry insisted that Nesgoda, who had recently moved to Grand Marais, should bring his kids over to see it. “Everything he was telling me sounded pretty neat,” Nesgoda told me. Then, in the gas station parking lot, someone who’d overheard the conversation stopped Nesgoda. “Do not bring your children over there,” they warned.
This was a common theme. “Larry was the boogeyman,” said Brian Larsen, editor and publisher of the Cook County News Herald, who is a father of four children. “You’d tell your kids to stay the heck away from him.”
In 2014, Larry decided to run for mayor of Grand Marais. In a candidate forum broadcast on WTIP, a community radio station, he ranted about Christianity. “We can’t sit by and let our government stop us from having the Bible in the military, taking out the crucifixes, taking out the Ten Commandments in our federal buildings and establishments,” he said. Then, just before election day, the Cook County News Herald ran a front-page article that seemed to confirm the longstanding speculation about Larry. The piece detailed his criminal conviction for the sexual assault of a six-year-old girl.
Take whatever treatment is available to you,” the judge said, “because this type of conduct, of course, is just wholly unacceptable.
Before he became an object of fear and fascination in Grand Marais, Larry was married—twice. For a time he lived with his second wife, Sheila, in Ramsey, about 25 miles outside Minneapolis. On Ash Wednesday in 1979, Sheila went to evening Mass and then to bowl in her weekly league, leaving Larry home alone with their five children: three young boys from his first marriage and six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, from hers. While the other children slept, according to police and court records, Larry invited his stepdaughter into his bedroom.
The little girl later told a police investigator that he showed her “pictures of naked people,” touched her “potty area” with a vibrator, then stuck his tongue and finger into her vagina. She said it wasn’t the only time he’d touched her, and that he’d warned her not to tell anyone, but she went to her mother anyway. Sheila reported the incident to child welfare services, who notified law enforcement. She told the police investigator that her husband had also recently become violent and suicidal.
The police arrested Larry. In a recorded statement with investigators, he admitted that he’d had sexual contact with his stepdaughter on two Wednesday evenings while his wife was bowling. A psychiatrist determined that he was competent to stand trial, finding no evidence of “any kind of psychiatric disorder.” Rather than face a jury, Larry confessed to second-degree criminal sexual conduct, and the prosecution recommended a sentence of five years. Two court psychologists submitted reports indicating that Larry wasn’t open to receiving treatment. At an October 1979 hearing, the judge urged Larry to reconsider. “Take whatever treatment is available to you,” the judge said, “because this type of conduct, of course, is just wholly unacceptable.”
Larry was incarcerated in Minnesota’s Stillwater prison, and in records from his time there, there’s no mention of him receiving counseling or treatment, though he did join a Bible study. Soon, changes to the state’s sentencing guidelines allowed Larry to seek early release. Since the state did not provide evidence that doing so would “present a danger to the public,” the court approved Larry’s request. He left prison on January 19, 1982, after serving a little more than two years for his crime.
In those days, there was no sex offender registry in Minnesota, or in most states. Larry was at liberty to go where he liked. Sheila had divorced him by then, and his three sons were living with their mother. Larry, who was 36 at the time, hitchhiked to Grand Marais to move in with his parents.
Three decades later, Larry lost the town’s mayoral election, 345 votes to 42. Many locals were surprised that he’d gotten any votes at all, especially after the story broke about his criminal record. “Forty-something people voted for him,” said Amber Waldrop, who lived down the street from Larry. “They knew about this guy. For anybody to even think that someone like that should become mayor of this town is sickening.”
Some of those votes came from Larry’s friends, many of whom shared his belief in conspiracy theories. Perhaps it’s no surprise that they also believed what Larry told them: that the accusations against him were made up, that his ex-wife had encouraged her daughter to lie to the police, that he only took the plea deal to avoid a long prison sentence.
Larry’s friends knew that he tended to hijack conversations and go on at length about topics ranging from the Rapture to homeopathic cures, and that he engaged strangers in ways many people found uncomfortable. But being an oddball, they said, isn’t a crime. Some of his friends thought Larry was on the autism spectrum, which made it hard for him to read social cues and show empathy. “This man has been persecuted all of his life,” said Bob Stangler, a Vietnam veteran who knew Larry for years. “The citizens of the area have labeled him a pervert, and he’s not a pervert at all. He’s a genius with Asperger’s who’s overcaring of people.”
A woman I’ll call Carol, who asked that her real name not be used, said she was so close with Larry that she spoke to him almost daily for 12 years. She knew him to visit sick people, distribute food to the needy, and take care of his ailing mother, who died in 2013. At her memorial service, Larry displayed his mother’s ashes in a cookie jar resembling the Star Wars character R2-D2, saying that it was what she wanted. (His father passed away in 1997.) “As long as I’ve known him, he never hurt anybody,” Carol told me.
She knows that hers is a minority opinion, that for many people in town Larry was foremost a convicted sex offender. “You can never get rid of that label,” she said.
Once they learned about his 1979 conviction, many parents in Grand Marais were more worried than ever that Larry posed a threat to their children. It’s a common enough fear. On the far right, popular conspiracy theories such as QAnon decry a global cabal of child molesters, but even among the general population, concern about the danger posed by pedophiles is widespread. In a Lynn University poll, 75 percent of roughly 200 Florida adults said they believed that sex offenders would reoffend. Yet according to a meta-study conducted by researchers at Public Safety Canada in 2004, one of the most comprehensive available, only 23 percent of people convicted of child sexual abuse were charged or convicted of a similar crime within the next 15 years. (The study’s authors concede that many victims never come forward.) In interviews for this story, researchers noted that recidivism rates have declined even more in recent years.
No one came forward to accuse Larry of more recent abuse after his 1979 conviction. Still, perception alone was enough to put many Grand Marais parents on edge. For one young man, that concern became an obsession.
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Amos Barshad reports on the rise of Bowlero, the empire of entertainment centers gobbling up the bowling industry in the US. There are about 3,500 independent bowling centers left in the country; depending on where you live, it’s possible that your local neighborhood bowling alley may have already shuttered or is soon to close—to be taken over by the bowling giant. The company boasts upscale entertainment and expensive cocktails, but there’s a lot more to Bowlero under the surface, and none of it is good: poorly maintained centers, questionable hiring and toxic employment practices, a CEO lining his own pockets while the company amasses debt, and probably the worst thing of all: a business that doesn’t care about the sport itself.
It all feels thoroughly American: In the interest of short-term profit, a corporation goes about methodically worsening a beloved national pastime. Do you sometimes ask yourself, why does it feel like everything is getting worse? Bowlero provides one possible answer: because somewhere, someone’s making money off the decline.
Shannon is a business owner, not a bowler. He got his start in the nineties, originally under the name Bowlmor, with one bowling center in New York City. It was there that he developed his big idea, the one that would become the Bowlero template: a bowling center as a glitzy all-in entertainment palace, where anything from cocktails to video games can draw your attention away from the lanes. In a 2011 interview with Bloomberg, just a few years before Bowlero began its aggressive expansion push, Shannon made an infamous and illuminating comment. “I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,” he said. “Why would you?”
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The Silver Lake Reading Club at the Lamill coffee house in Los Angeles is open every Tuesday evening for two hours. Here, close to two dozen readers pay $17 to enjoy their books in silence. Helen Bui, the club’s founder and organizer, is surprised at how popular the club has become, but when you think about it, spending a few hours to get lost in a different world—and then coming together to chat with other readers about the stories they’re immersed in—is heaven for book lovers. Thomas Curwen captures the magic in this light and breezy read.
So much of L.A. life is about coming and going, but the readers here inhabit an in-between space where motion has stopped and time is suspended, filled with the wonder, anger, humor and passion of writers — Paul Murray, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kurt Vonnegut, David Sedaris.
Their books are their calling cards, signals of taste and interests (spiritual, historical, popular, esoteric) that link the private with the public. Forget swiping right; this is the prospect of a post-pandemic meaningful encounter.
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About 100,000 people in the United States have the sickle cell disease, and roughly 90 percent of them are Black. In this investigative feature, the first part in an ongoing series, Eric Boodman speaks to 50 women with the illness about the challenges of accessing non-coercive, non-judgmental reproductive care. They describe being pressured into having tubal ligations, hysterectomies, and abortions:
Some stories carry echoes of “Mississippi appendectomies” of the mid-20th century, in which Black women would go in for a different procedure and wake up to learn that their uterus had been removed. It was a sickle cell crisis that brought Shirley Miller into a hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla., around 1984. She was 26 or so, newly married, and a few months pregnant, in so much pain and on so much medication that her consciousness was flickering in and out. She remembers being informed that the doctors were going to give her an abortion. When she came to, she learned that they’d tied her tubes as well. Her then-husband had given consent.
“They didn’t believe that I was ever able to carry a child. But whose decision is that to make?” Miller said. She doesn’t tell this story when she gives talks as a sickle cell patient educator; she worries the audience wouldn’t remember anything else.
It happened to Tonya Mitchell twice. “You can always go back and get your tubes untied when you are ready to have more children,” she remembers her doctor in Little Rock, Ark., saying around the time her younger daughter was born, in 2004. But that wasn’t right. The procedure is considered “permanent contraception,” and involves severing, crushing, blocking, or removing the fallopian tube, disconnecting ovary from uterus, preventing eggs from slipping toward fertilization. Reattachment is possible in some cases, but by no means certain.
For Mitchell, that was a moot point: A few years later, around 2008, she felt a pain in her abdomen, and a different doctor said her left ovary was dying and needed to come out. Then, at the last appointment before her scheduled surgery, he told her that within a year, many patients like her ended up having the same issue on the other side, and suggested removing both ovaries at once.
“Definitely not standard practice,” said Cara Heuser, an OB-GYN in Utah who specializes in complex pregnancies and is a spokesperson for the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, when asked about that recommendation. There are some tumors and cancer-associated genetic mutations that might have warranted discussing such an extreme procedure, but Mitchell didn’t have a family history of the cancers in question, and at her age, the benefits of keeping one healthy ovary outweighed the risks.
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