23 Oct 2015

Weekly Reading: Best longreads on the web

9:05 am on 23 October 2015

Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.

 

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Why #Stepforward Might Be a Step Backward For Mental Health – by Jess McAllen, The Spinoff

“We’ve embarked into an era where we can count our friendships in likes, retweets, and hashtags, so one of the most infuriating things during my major depressive episode in 2014 was people being like “r u ok? sad emoji” and bailing when I told them I wasn’t.”

Homeland,’ Graffiti and the Problem of Only Seeing Squibbly – by James Poniewozik, Artsbeat

“Arguably, this kind of small detail is the greater problem with “Homeland” and other American dramas set in the region: the tendency to use the signifiers of a culture — clothes, music, street urchins, unfamiliar writing — as a kind of spicy Orientalist soup of otherness.”

I Dressed Like Cookie for a Week to Get Over My Imposter Syndrome - by Jazmine Hughes, Cosmopolitan

“The day I wore the leopard-print fedora and dress, I noticed a man giving me a strange look. I'm a woman and I'm alive, so men give me weird looks all the time, but this one was pointed and full of surprise, cast my way as I was walking into the building. The New York Times office is on Eighth Avenue, the only stately thing in the neighborhood; subtle but formidable, a place where Big Things Happen. The man soaked up the sight before him — a flamboyantly dressed black woman clomping her way into the hallowed halls of the Grey Lady — and his look asked, "Who are you to be here?" It was the same question I'd been asking myself since I started.”

What Tony Veitch Should Have Said – by Kanoa Lloyd, Alice Brine and Ben Thomas, Newsworthy

“The real tragedy here is the message that his silence sends. The way his fans rally to support him, and what his audience takes from that. Instead of unequivocally telling his 154,000 fans that domestic violence is always wrong, no matter how “hideous” a relationship may be, he tells them that people who are still angry are “haters” and “sad people”.”

Finding Lamar Odom: Tracking Down the Elusive and Recently Embattled Former Star – by Chris Palmer, Bleacher Report

“Few public figures have absorbed tragedy the way Odom has. Death follows him like a black cloak dangling from his broad shoulders in the wake of his quest for stability. The ensuing grief comes in waves and cruelly congeals around his heart, bent on suffocating the remainder of his fractured spirit.”

'We have to start talking about it': New Zealand suicide rates hit record high - Eleanor Ainge Roy, The Guardian

“Despite millions of dollars of government investment, national advertising campaigns urging people to ask for help, emergency crisis numbers and countless community focused initiatives country-wide the lives lost have kept growing.”

Amber Rose: How to Be a Bad Bitch – by Carrie Battan, GQ

“I have my own house. I have a Ferrari. I have a Jeep. I have an Escalade. I have two Can-Ams. I have a beautiful son, two assistants, lawyers, business managers, management, and access to pretty much whatever I want,” she says. “It does become intimidating for a man. I do feel more comfortable with someone who’s living up to par with me.”

Did we miss something? Tell us about it in the comments section.