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 science journalist 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, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, MIT Technology Review, 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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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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How an Abundance of Fitness Data Keeps Me From Obsessing Over a Single Number
It is the act of recording all this data that has helped me step away from identifying so strongly with it.
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.
The Downside of Radical Honesty
The problem with radical honesty is that we are not transparent to ourselves—we are always biased, and so is the feedback we provide.