I hate to alarm you, but June is about to end. Precious June!!! The month that brings us summer delights and Pride, the longest day of 2019, and an unsettling reminder that another year is somehow almost halfway through. (How?!) Thankfully, we’ve been blessed with many things to remember this month by, from this viral Meryl Streep tweet to the teeth-brushing debate that divided the office. We also have the 12 stories below, which were all mutually loved by Team MR and our always :sparkleemoji: community this month. Enjoy reliving the magic that was June and then join me in getting excited for JULY. See you there (in the future!).
1. I Dressed Like Pete Davidson for a Week, and I’ll Never Be the Same
“In studying Pete’s singular sense of style, its profundity compels me at every turn: He plays expertly with proportion and color, dressing within an avant-garde palette of soft wisteria purples, Denver Nuggets blues, and hot flamingo pinks. His pant-leg-to-sock ratio is always right, though rarely the same. In his sartorial approach, he’s a little like a raven, collecting and combining shiny objects in ways they were not originally intended but instead coalesce into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. He radiates a yearlong feeling of summer, which is counterintuitive considering it’s the only season that his primary cultural touchstone doesn’t air, but has anyone ever seen him in a puffer coat?”
2. 14 People on How They *Actually* Made New Friends as an Adult
“I‘ve read enough think pieces and essays about making friends as an adult to recognize that any friendship forged amidst the hurdles of work, physical distance, dating, social anxiety, and preconceived notions is—to some extent—unlikely. I also know that it’s this precise element of rareness that makes them so worthy of the pursuit. There’s a wealth of advice for how to conquer the challenge (sign up for a pottery class! DM people on Instagram!), but very little literature on how the implementation of these protocols actually pans out.”
3. The Going-Out Tops of ‘The OC’ Just Got Their Own Instagram
“Spaghetti straps — or, more generally, tops — are a brilliantly niche slice of the show’s deep vault of early-aughts fashion to explore, because they are so indicative of what Style with a capital ‘S’ looked like at the time. It was a wild era in which low-rise and low-cut thrived in equal measure.”
4. The Very Best Swimsuits, According to Team MR
“If you think about it, swimwear is just underwear that’s socially acceptable to wear in public. Sure, it’s made of pool-appropriate fabrics and designed to keep the necessary body parts concealed while you splash around—but really, when you’re shopping for a new swimsuit, you’re shopping for a bra and undies that you’ll feel okay wearing in front of hundreds of strangers. Which is why finding a good one can be so stressful.”
5. What’s Your Most Beloved Budget Purchase? We’ll Go First…
“One of my oldest items of clothing is a striped long-sleeve T from the men’s section of Forever21. I bought it for $10 when I was 19, on one of the many voyages my friends and I took to the store. The space was brand new and a boon to our little college town, with its parking lot-sized retail floor and 30-foot church-like ceilings.”
6. Introducing ‘You Look Moist’: Skin Routines in Exquisite Detail
“My skin is definitely Zoë Kravitz’s character, Bonnie, in Big Little Lies—seemingly placid and chill on the surface, but has been through some heavy *stuff* in the past and is easily triggered into combustion.”
7. Relationship Hindsight: 9 People on Choosing to Stay or Go
“If bad advice could win awards, I’d nominate the utterly meaningless ‘When you know, you know.’ That the right choice could bring with it a sense of existential certainty, of placid unquestioning — that there even is one definitive right choice at all, one we can locate through some kind of gut magic — is, to my mind, a foolish idea at best, and a dangerous one at worst.”
8. 6 AC-Friendly Summer Outfits I Want to Steal From Instagram
“Lately I’ve been better though—about ripping off people’s outfits, I mean—because dressing for warm weather is less instinctive for me, and I’m discovering that imitation gets me much further than feeling it out. As such, I’ve been bookmarking more outfits on Instagram lately and have, on an occasion or three, actually used them.”
9. Olsen Astrology: Your MKA Look, According to the Zodiac
“It’s a little on the nose that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are Geminis. Aside from being literal twins, a thread of duality runs through their public personas: They’ve achieved legendary success in two industries; they made careers of reinventing themselves only to launch brand of quality basics insulated from trend pressure; they don’t use social media but are enjoying a well-documented renaissance on Instagram; even their production company is called Dualstar Entertainment.”
10. I Took 30 Days of Mirror Selfies and Processed a Lot of Feelings
“I turned 30 in December and, in the months leading up to it, started to ask who the hell I am. Partially, perhaps, because I thought I was supposed to. I started to break down every part of myself and try to build back up even though I didn’t actually know what I was building. Whether it was worth breaking!”
11. Instagram Might Take Away Likes & Team MR Has *Thoughts*
“Social capital is a very real phenomenon and has come to represent a newfangled currency that is directly correlated to a person’s cultural relevance. The number of followers that a person maintains can genuinely change your perception of them—you might respect them more, or take them more seriously, feel further inclined to trust their opinion or exactly the opposite depending on whether you’re an anarchist. Or a purist.”
12. We Totally Forgot How Weird the First Episode of SATC Was
“To our nostalgic, cringey pleasure, the first-ever question Carrie poses to no one is, “Why are there so many great unmarried women and no great unmarried men?” If the consistently underwhelming men in the show are any indication, this query would ultimately serve as a tentpole of SATC, which claimed to be about sex but was actually about women.”
Feature photo by Louisiana Mei Gelpi.
