Sex And The City sold its Manolos to Beacon’s Closet more than a decade ago at this point, which means that a generation of writers who grew up worshipping Carrie Bradshaw has come of age and are now writing navel-gazing essays of their own. How else—well, beyond a general lack of diverse perspectives in the media industry as a whole, not to mention young, desperate writers being pressured to write confessional essays just to get their first real byline—to explain the incredible week it’s been for bad takes in the world of what are referred to in magazine journalism classes as “women’s interest publications?”
It started over the weekend, with the fun, flirty anti-Semitism featured in The Washington Post’s dating-focused “Solo-ish” section in an essay entitled, “I Am Tired Of Being a Jewish Man’s Rebellion.” In it, writer Carey Purcell, a self-proclaimed WASP who is “blond, often wear[s] pearls, and can mix an excellent, and very strong, martini” says that she is sick and tired of being the shiksa that Jewish men use to rebel against their “extremely overbearing” (her words, not ours) Jewish mothers. This is based upon Purcell’s sample size of—wait for it—two. Yes, two different relationships with Jewish men in this young woman’s life ended, which means that interfaith relationships in general are doomed to fail. Purcell ends her essay with a joke about bacon, because, you see, Jewish people (at least those who keep kosher) don’t eat swine. How charmingly other!
Purcell has since apologized for the column, saying on her website, “I realize now that I touched upon serious issues for Jewish people in America and worldwide.” That statement has its own set of issues to unpack, but at least Purcell actually faced her critics (and there have been plenty, some quite hilarious). Not so for the anonymous woman interviewed by New York magazine’s The Cut, for another sizzling fajita platter of opinion called “What It’s Like To Be A Really Beautiful Woman” published on Monday. Spoiler alert: It’s really hard, because other women hate you for your looks! To wit:
One of the worst things about being beautiful is that other women absolutely despise you. Women have made me cry my whole life … It’s kind of like being born rich, people don’t believe that you feel the same pain. It’s a bias that people can’t shake.