Adulting, The Cheesecake Factory, New Year New Weird Body Stuff
Instead of becoming a better version of myself this year, I will be trying a new dish at the Cheesecake Factory.
Featuring crosswalks, Diane Keaton, and king flop George Santos
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Literally Just Something I Think Is Funny (Saying Goodbye to Adulting)
The word “adulting” haunts us all as part of the most cringey aspects of the past 15 years - infantilizing and annoying all in one made-up word. Popularized by a book literally titled “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps,” there’s no word more millennial than “adulting” save for “girlboss.” The Cut did a very good retrospective on the book, having a frank discussion with its author about the unhinged individualism behind the concept, and the way we should all be thinking a little harder about how to be a part of community instead of radically self-reliant.
As a cultural document, Adulting sums up the anxiously self-reliant ethos of early-aughts millennials as accurately as the Whole Earth Catalog summed up the back-to-the-land fantasies of early 1970s boomers. Any self-help book reflects the nervous fixations of a group, and Adulting is a reminder that, during the Obama years, millennials were on the hook for everything the boomers had squandered, and they hadn’t started talking back yet. We were pieces of shit back then, remember? When were we going to get our acts together?
…
Our modern understanding of childhood was invented in the late 19th century, and I wonder if our contemporary idea of what it means to be an adult emerged out of that same definitional project: being an adult is to be a not-kid. Kids are dependent on others and need constant care. Therefore, adults are independent and can look after themselves.
A Less Serious Item (Get in, loser, we’re going to a Cheesecake Factory in a Fancy Mall)
The Cheesecake Factory is the it girl of chain restaurants in America. Haters might say it’s Cracker Barrel, but there is no fancier capitalistic experience than a luxurious sit down at a Cheesecake Factory in a fancy mall. Normally I’m not a huge fan of mainstream media trying to explain why an extremely popular thing is “actually” good (see: Eater’s evaluation of why a Margaritaville resort in the middle of Manhattan is “actually” fun!), but this Vox breakdown of what contributes to the mysterious and lasting appeal (established in 1978!) of the Cheesecake Factory is all wonder and no condescension:
There’s something uncanny about the chain. The very combination of words “The Cheesecake Factory” evokes the idea of a humble, blue-collar dessert diner, yet every Cheesecake Factory looks like what would happen if a time-traveling Italian artisan drew ancient Egypt from memory. Somewhere between the chicken samosas, the Skinnylicious section, and the Americana Cheeseburger Glamburger®, between the towering columns, overstuffed booths, and the free refills on soda, the veil between sense and nonsense, lucidity and lunacy, and good and bad dissolves.
The article also gets into the origins of Cheesecake Factory’s 200+ item menu, a business model that should not work for a chain restaurant, and yet:
The expansion [of the menu], according to the Cheesecake Factory’s origin story, happened because of owner David Overton’s unwillingness to let any other local restaurant compete. As he told Thrillist in 2018, “I didn’t want another restaurant to open down the block and take my business away,” and so began adding anything someone might want to order. The more dishes — Mexican food, different kinds of pasta— that they added to the original 26, the more people responded positively.
Overton told Thrillist in that same interview that he wouldn’t have made the menu so big and expansive if he had known more about the industry and how restaurants are supposed to operate. But what he created was the Cheesecake Factory’s lasting legacy.
This Week’s Theme: The Weight-ing Is the Hardest Part
Happy new year! And furthermore: happy weird-messages-about-your-body season!
Content about weight and diets is incoming, so if you don’t like that, feel free to skip this section!
I have a few choice selections for you this week on the topic of body expectations and weight myths and such.
First, we have an appropriately searing column from Autostraddle responding to a reader question about what to do about no longer to being attracted to your girlfriend because she got fatter. The columnist responds pretty emphatically (and correctly) with “your girlfriend should break up with you unless you get right about your conceptions of weight gain!” With one of my favorite titles of the year “You Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful Girlfriend,” may we all remember that love in its most unconditional form does actually include loving people even when they get fat:
…gaining and losing weight, over and over and over, is part of nearly everyone’s life. It is so inconsequential in the vast tapestry of existence, and if getting fatter over the course of nine short months throws you into this kind of tailspin where you find yourself not only unattracted to her, but you feel honor-bound to tell her so, how are you going to handle it when the really hard stuff happens? When one of you gets sick or disabled? When one of you becomes consumed by seemingly endless grief after the death of a loved one? When one of you loses your job? When money trouble strikes? When you lose your home? When one of you unearths a trauma you hid away even from yourself? When you become responsible for a dying family member? When one of you is unable to free yourself from the dense fog of depression or anxiety? When one of you is in an accident? When your bodies simply get old, the way all bodies do?
Next, I quite enjoyed this short profile of weight-lighting coach Casey Johnston, who has built a following through a newsletter hosted on a platform called Ghost. Johnston’s approach to weightlifting is simple: how to lift a weight or multiple weights safely with the idea of getting stronger. She’s not trying to help anyone to get thinner or bigger because she herself has already tried exercising to be skinny, and it didn’t work out for her! So now she espouses advice on how to start weightlifting, for people who are intimidated by the big barbells they see at the gym.
Finally, I want to recommend a podcast episode! The podcast is called Maintenance Phase and it’s hosted by columnist Aubrey Gordon (who write a popular column called Your Fat Friend) and journalist Michael Hobbes (who also hosts popular podcast You’re Wrong About). The episode I’m recommending is about Weight Watchers, and it gives a very interesting history of the program and its (questionable) beginnings. Basically, the Weight Watchers program is based off a woman who had been bingeing cookies every day going on the weight watchers diet and then losing seventy pounds. So yeah, the diet works! If you had just recently been bingeing cookies every single day
May we all have fat hearts in 2023.
P.S. Don’t worry, this section was scribed while fretting over whether or not I should go to barre class today.
Politics (Crosswalks Going Off-Book)
Who gets to paint a crosswalk? It's supposed to be a municipality's job, but citizens in Seattle and LA have decided to take matters into their own hands and paint crosswalks for themselves in areas where their cities have failed to take action. In the face of increasing road deaths across the country, well-organized citizen groups who are concerned about traffic safety don't want to wait around for the city to get around to implementing crosswalks. These "guerilla" crosswalk painters are making headway, too, because even if their crosswalks get removed, they draw attention to the issue at hand. Besides, what kind of city has the manpower to remove a crosswalk but not paint one? I'm calling this one a political win for the people. I'm especially impressed by LA's "Crosswalk Collective," whose quotes for the article go toe-to-toe with LA's Department of Transportation.
A Celebrity Thinger (They’re Getting Skinny Again!)
The new hot thing in show biz is to be skinny again! We had a cute few years where everybody wanted a big, huge ass, but we’re back on the “low-rise jeans, flat flat tummies” trend and many celebrities have started taking a diabetes drug (Ozempic) to get skinny! I’d almost let the celebrities celebrity in this case, except it turns out that Ozempic’s popularity among celebrities and normies who do NOT have diabetes is leading to shortages of the drug for people who DO have diabetes. Not cool!
Here’s The Cut on the trend and also some nasty side effects that users of the drug (who do not have diabetes) have experienced while trying to lose weight.
Flop Link! (of the Week)
Brought to you by the fabulous Justin Crosby.
George Santos: Alleged Drag Queen, Confirmed Loser - We’ve got just one flop link for you today because this particular flop has been taking up a lot of space in the headlines and in our hearts these past few weeks. He is yet another shadowy political figure who has gone by many names over the course of his illustrious infamous career, but right now he is most commonly referred to as George Santos - one of our newer Republican members of the House of Representatives who also happens to be gay! Already sounds like fun.
Over the past few weeks, it seems like not a single day has gone by without some outlandish scandal involving Santos hitting the headlines - proving that gay people can be just as treacherous in the political space as their straight counterparts. I mean, even the most notorious villains in movies avoid stealing from dying dogs. That kind of sounded like a Lana album title, right?
This, in addition to a laundry list of scandals that have followed Santos since he entered politics, shows he’s messier than the messiest of gays. But, what really gave this narrative a much needed twist of irony were the recent reports that Santos may or may not have once had a flop drag career under the name Kitara Ravache. Naturally, Santos quickly denied the busted queen allegations, but almost as quickly, several drag queens from Rio provided video evidence of someone who looks eerily similar to Santos in drag - all for your viewing pleasure. So enjoy the mess and remember, all politicians are bad! But some are also camp.
A Recommendation (Streamer of the Week? It’s Hulu!)
January is a dark and cold month, so I'll be recommending a light and warm movie on Hulu called Mack & Rita. The movie stars the girl from the first season of You as a 30-year-old named Mack, a woman whose convinced she's an old soul. Mack goes on her friend's bachelorette trip to warm and sunny Palm Springs and instead of going to see a surprise Bad Bunny concert with her friends, she checks out a woo-woo guy's tanning bed and wakes up as the person thinks she is - a woman aged up 40 years who's played by Diane Keaton. You'll just have to watch the movie to find out if Mack ever learns how to be comfortable in her own skin, and you'll definitely have to watch to find out if Diane Keaton gets to kiss her 37-year-old love interest.
If this image interests you, you should 100% watch Mack & Rita.
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