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Teen girl crushes and belonging

Plus: proMommes, 'neopatriarchy,' kidnapping Tobey Maguire, why dating sucks, 2025 divorce memoirs, and more in the weekend roundup.

Tracy Clark-Flory

Aug 18

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Apropos of the link below about teen girl obsession and fandom, here’s a sketch I drew circa 1997 of some designs for fan web sites for Leonardo DiCaprio and David Blaine(?!).

This week, I went on Myisha Battle’s advice podcast How’s Your Sex Life? to answer some listener questions.

There was a question from a young man who was enjoying “no-strings” sex but felt conflicted about his own resistance to long-term committed relationships. Another question came from a woman distressed by her boyfriend’s remark that their sex life was “vanilla,” when she thought of it as wild and edgy.

Anyway, give a listen. In retrospect, I wish I’d dug into the second question-asker’s fear that if she didn’t satisfy her boyfriend’s non-vanilla desires he would cheat on her (because, boy, so much there about sex as labor).

Very occasionally I give advice in this newsletter on questions like these, but also more broadly about any of the other topics I cover (pop culture, feminism, gender, motherhood, writing, etc.). Have a question you’d like me to tackle here? Just reply to this email or ask anonymously here.

To the links!

Speaking of, here’s Myisha Battle on Slate’s Today, Explained podcast on why “dating sucks right now.”

I really wanna watch this play about a teen girl who kidnaps her celebrity crush, Tobey Maguire. (Obsession! Fandom! Teen girl desire! So deeply my shit.) The playwright says of online fandoms: “Everyone is like, ‘Oh, they're just silly girls who are obsessed with this boy,’ when in reality, it's about community, it’s about belonging.”

You can pre-order ProMomme, a guide to parenting for sex workers (and civilians, too). A few months ago, I interviewed Kim Ye, the multidisciplinary artist who helped make it a reality. The guide promises to cover everything from the wife/whore dichotomy to talking to kids about sex to postpartum bodily changes. Sounds amazing. Looks beautiful, too...