“One tragedy of social media is girls not seeing their unique beauty and all starting to look the same.” So says Freya India, one of our newest Free Press columnists, and the author of the brand-new book Girls®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything. Freya has spent a lot of time thinking about what the internet, and social media, has done to girls. The answer, in short, is: nothing great. But it’s worth listening to the longer answer, which she elaborates upon in the conversation I had with her on my podcast this week.
We spoke a lot about the apps that allow you to modify your body to make it look better on the internet, as well as the endless stream of products we’re sold to make ourselves firmer, smoother, younger, and glowier. But Freya thinks it’s not just about physical upgrades—it’s our personalities too. We’re all “being dragged by that algorithm toward an eventual end product where we all become much more similar,” she said. In other words, the future is ruled by women who all, on some level, want to look like the Kardashians, who talk like the same few influencers, and who are trying to shop or medicate their way out of insecurity.
“Whatever vulnerability she has,” Freya told me about women like this, “there is a rabbit hole she can go down.”
Freya and I spoke about eating disorders, the benefit of stigmas, women’s fear of aging, men’s anxiety around their looks—and how various corners of the internet, from OnlyFans to podcasts about how men suck, have warped sex and intimacy. Somehow, she insisted that doing the research for her book didn’t make her depressed—quite the opposite. Listen below to find out why Freya, despite believing that Big Tech has hurt Gen Z women more so than the patriarchy, is hopeful:
Eat Thy Neighbor’s Sourdough
Gabby Golden believes that God gave her the bakery, or at least the idea for it, so that she might bring in some extra income while still being able to stay home with her kids.
If so, she’s not the only one. There’s a quiet revolution sweeping America’s kitchens. Cottage foods—which is food, usually baked goods, prepared in private homes but sold to the public—have taken off. “It’s like everyone is posting ‘Hey, welcome to my home bakery,’ ” Golden told me.
Of course, producing and selling things like bread or jams from someone’s house has been around for thousands of years. But this latest cottage foods craze is animated by distinctly modern trends: side hustling to stave off inflation; skepticism of health guidelines handed down from the government; a worship of unprocessed, small-batch foods; and the on-camera appeal of removing steaming scones from the oven while toddlers and pets pad around nearby.
But lately the idyllic notion of selling chocolate chip cookies from your porch has been crashing into the reality of public health inspectors, commercial bakery owners, and legal liability. “We’re talking about food in people’s mouths,” Rachel Smith, a bakery owner in Wisconsin, told me. She told me she thinks it’s unfair for women like Golden to sell their fare with no oversight, while bakers with storefronts like her are subject to inspections, fees, and permits. Not to mention: In many states, cottage bakers don’t have to do any food-safety training. “If it’s in your kitchen, you should know how to handle it so that the end consumer is safe,” Smith added.
I spoke to cottage food producers, farmers, a public health official, and commercial bakers for my story about this trend. I learned that states have different regulations when it comes to cottage foods; there are differences in how each defines nonhazardous, for example, while various states have special carve outs for pickled foods, or tamales, or fudge. Many states have updated their books, or started doing so, to either loosen or tighten the rules around not just cottage foods but also raw milk and prepared meals. And that’s not to mention the cottage industry that’s sprung up around cottage foods: apps to keep tracks of sales and inventory, microbakery coaches, and conferences to learn about how to handle cheese safely.
On the surface, it might seem like a story about some moms selling bags of snickerdoodles to help bring in some extra cash—and in part, it is—but it gets at some of the most controversial topics in America right now. Like, who benefits from the gig economy, and who loses out? And who gets to decide what you do in your own home? This is a tale about the benefits and drawbacks, and the risk we take on, when we trade safety for more freedom.
Read my piece on cottage foods:
Here’s What Else I’m Thinking About
If you know anything about the Amish, perhaps it’s that they live life the old-fashioned way: They avoid electricity, churn their own butter, and drive horse-drawn carriages. But their new obsession is something all too new: They’ve fallen in love with AI. New York magazine went deep into the communities where TV is banned, but ChatGPT is as common as straw hats.
For a brief moment in the 2010s, Tiger Moms ruled the world. After decades of gentle parenting, moms who obsessed over their kids’ chess classes, charity work, and early SAT prep were all the rage. Now, it seems the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction: “Beta moms” are in, and they’re shrugging their way through parenthood. The Wall Street Journal heard from one mom about her 13-year-old that “she usually won’t know precisely where in Los Angeles he is.”
Last week, Canadian rapper Drake dropped not one but three new albums. The new songs are filled with pettiness, and retribution—some have speculated that even the release itself is an attempt to get out of his record deal—but, more importantly, some of them are the fun, dancy kind you will be hearing nonstop. As my Gen Z colleague put it this week: You know it’s gonna be a good summer when it starts with a Drake album. Luckily for us, we have three.
Our favorite polymath Andrew Ross Sorkin sat down with Jeff Bezos for an interview at the Florida Rocket Park factory of Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company. The conversation is full of juicy takeaways about everything from data centers in space to the future of tax policy. Jeff’s views on the AI economy are beyond optimistic: “You’ve been digging out a basement for your house with a shovel. And somebody’s about to hand you a bulldozer. You should be so happy!” Here’s hoping!
