5 Things to Read: Week of August 23
Debt for Disney, Sephora tweens, and faux fromage.
When I first saw a TikTok video of a literal seven year old doing her morning skincare routine, I thought it was a joke (I didn’t even know face wash, let alone serums and oils, existed as a kid). The inimitable Jia Tolentino on Sephora tweens and what they tell us about beauty, femininity, and our deep desires.
Prejudice in book cover designs — and how it permeates into the larger book publishing industry.
Disneyland is the land of magic, dreams, and… families going into debt? I’m a sucker for theme parks and have to fight back tears whenever the Disney castle shows up at the start of movies but shelling out $6,000 to $15,000 for a family of four is wild.
Vegan cheese is apparently tasting more like the real deal thanks to, you guessed it, technology. Most of the faux cheeses I’ve had have tasted like plastic, but I’d give the newer iterations a shot.
Throwing in a little fiction for you this lovely weekend: If you know me well, you might know one of my favorite books is, controversially, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It’s less so the disturbing plot, but more so how Nabokov uses language to tease, persuade, and enchant. You can get a taste of that in this semi-autobiographical short story about young love and boyhood.