The Beauty Myth: What Keeps Us From Seeing Ourselves Clearly?
“What I look like” is not a static picture cut out and placed in different environments, but one that changes again and again.
Angela Chen is a senior editor at Wired Magazine and the author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which was named one of the best books of 2020 by NPR, Electric Literature, and Them. Her reporting and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Guardian, National Geographic, Paris Review, Lapham's Quarterly, and more.
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Writing a Book About Asexuality Taught Me to Look for a Fate Beyond Numbers
I learned to reevaluate the meaning of ‘normal’ in relationships, and also my habit of reflexively turning to data.
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On Being Young, Scrappy, and (Sometimes) Satisfied
Remain forever hungry, or enjoy the tried-and-true? Sometimes, I learned, it’s okay to double down on the life you have.
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Is It Possible to Truly Know Yourself? (Probably Not—and That’s Okay.)
There is opportunity in forcibly rewriting a story, in trying out identities that might not feel true at first.
No Best Friend, But Better Off
Friendship is not about going down a list with some people always first, others second and third. Every friendship is unique.
How I Learned to Reconcile the Distance Between Experience and Memory
As my mother loses the ability to remember, I find myself playing with my own memory.