Friday roundup

STEM isn't everything.

Gwyneth doesn't understand why people think she's full of shit. Hint: because she is.

Certain jobs require or at least benefit from certain looks. I'd like to think I'll never botox--especially after reading Holly Milea's piece in Elle--but I can see why other people would. I do identify with the (above-linked) writer's statement that sometimes a procedure just takes care of an issue or makes something better, and it's okay to be happy about that.

On a related note, I think Trevor Noah's take on Machado-gate: yes, she was Miss Universe; yes, Miss Universe is bullshit and more pertinently, it's a contest of conventional beauty standards that include thinness, so, yes, it's legitimate that thinness is expected. But there is nonetheless no virtue in humiliating and fat-shaming anyone. There's also no virtue in stiffing your vendors.

Women can't win in the framework some people are trying to stick us in:

I get the point, not that I didn’t get it before. If I speak up, I’m a shrill nag. If my weight fluctuates at all, I’m a gross, inconvenient fatty. If my husband cheats, it’s on me. If I try to defend or salvage my marriage, I’m a stupid dupe. Men like Trump and Giuliani have advanced ideas like these so the women in their lives will be cowed, thin and complaint, while if they err, they’re swashbuckling and strategic. The idea that we should trust men who hate us in private to protect us in the public sphere is the ultimate insult to our intelligence.

Also: let women have our angry face and every other face.

I did not know about the subversive conceptual art on Melrose Place.

Ask Polly comes through again, especially with her advice to "stay the fuck away from this person, because life is too short to align yourself with a human dirty bomb." Also spot-on:

This is one reason why, from my casual observations, very rich children often develop incredibly long-lasting addictions: Mommy and Daddy swoop in to save them over and over again, so there is no rock bottom, and the addiction just embeds itself in their veins. There is no moment of reckoning where the addict is sucking cock in a gas-station bathroom for some coke. Instead, there are gorgeously designed spaces by the sea in Malibu where people tell you you have to change, but everything around you says THINGS WILL ALWAYS LOOK THIS GOOD NO MATTER WHAT THE FUCK YOU DO. 

It doesn't surprise me at all that fitness trackers are not helpful. Theories include,

So perhaps the monitors resulted in less motivation to move, Dr. Jakicic says. It is possible, he says, that when those wearing the trackers realized they would not reach their daily exercise goal, they simply gave up, leading to relatively low caloric expenditure on those days, and less weight loss overall than among those not using the technology.

The people using the monitors may also have assumed that, in some roundabout way, the technology removed responsibility from them for monitoring their energy intake, Dr. Jakicic says. “People may have focused on the technology and forgotten to focus on their behaviors” and ate too much, he says.

It comes back to finding food and exercise that feel as good to you as they are for you. I was thinking about this (again) last weekend on my bike ride: I was exhausted that morning and didn't feel like exercising, but I really felt like cycling. However many hundred calories wouldn't have motivated me to get out, but the feeling of being on the bike and amid all that natural beauty, did.