Top 5: What is the "aftermath"?
Plus, momfluencers and the famine in Yemen
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“Aftermath” (Griffith Review)
Because this is a beautiful, lyrical reflection on the concept of “aftermath” and how we process big, life-changing events and how external influences shape what comes after a crisis or disaster.
In the aftermath, narrative matters. A 2005 study published in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews shows that media framing and reporting of -disaster contributes to the medium- and long-term health impacts after the event. The repetition of images, separation of mental and physical health outcomes, and coining of new disorders such as ‘World Trade Center syndrome’ can produce psychosomatic illness and compound traumatic response…In the aftermath, survivors of tragedy and catastrophe are told they will never be the same again. They will be transformed – stronger perhaps, but also new. Survival becomes a utopian ideal. I read this rhetoric in the news after the fires and during the pandemic. I could see, of course, how this kind of hopeful framing might be helpful, but it rankled me. I thought of all the communities who have worn their damage for years. Borne ‘toxic corrosions and violent accruals of colonial aftermaths’ with strength but not without trauma, anger, scars. Aftermath insists there are end points; it ignores that which is not yet over. Aftermath, it strikes me, is not an ethical construction.
“Both his children were dying. Yemen’s crisis forced him to choose only one to save.” (Washington Post)
Because Yemen has been in a civil war and experiencing famine for several years now, but journalists aren’t often allowed insight into the country. This first-hand account of starvation, poverty, and death is heartbreaking.
“Kyle Rittenhouse and the New Era of Political Violence” (New York Times Magazine)
Because this essay explores the events, people, videos, and Facebook posts that led up to 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse shooting three people in Wisconsin, killing two in August 2020. It shows the complicated layers of Rittenhouse’s actions, like how he had once been a super-fan of the police, yet on the night of the shootings, he was running alongside Boogaloo members who are usually anti-police.
“The Ideological Battlefield of the ‘Mamasphere’” (Substack - Culture Study)
Because Anne Helen Peterson interviews Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a scholar researching the Mamasphere of Instagram and how it influences how we see motherhood, and how the moms who participate in Mamasphere are adapting to rapid changes in trends and social media. The interview references Jezer-Morton’s latest post on the felt letter board trend, which I also recommend as a super interesting read.
Interviewing momfluencers has changed my perspective on their work completely. Without exception, the momfluencers I’ve spoken to are very deliberate in how they post, and they speak about it as work that they undertake strategically, as professionals. Representing motherhood puts you in a double-bind because audiences expect you to be “authentic” because you’re representing this foundational — even sacred — social relationship between mothers and children, but at the same time, you’re under enormous pressure both from brand partners and the audience to look a certain way. So to disparage them for having a false consciousness to me feels very dismissive.
“The horror century” (Vox)
Because it’s Halloween and ever-popular Hollywood horror movies are snapshots of time, culture, and society in American history.