Welcome back to our fortnightly round-up of the long reads on the web that are worth the investment. If you want to make sure you don’t miss future Global Comment content, don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter right at the bottom of this post.
Before we start, don’t miss one of our most popular posts from the last week: Machu Picchu and the shameful behavior of tourists and make sure you’re following us on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest so you don’t miss a thing.
To support the site and your favourite writers and content, consider supporting us with a one-time or recurring donation. We are reader supported and every donation helps.
Now, the links you’re here for:
Baby we’ll be fine (Emma Berquist, Self / Medium)
The first thing people usually want to know is what getting stabbed feels like. The answer is that it feels like getting punched really hard. Or at least, I assume it’s what getting hit feels like. I’ve never been punched. I have been stabbed six times.
What would you say to the men who killed your mum? (Rebecca Henschke and Endang Nurdin, BBC News)
Sarah, 17, is dressed stylishly in a black headscarf, striped shirt and long trousers. She takes selfies throughout our journey and, like many teenagers, is glued to her phone.
But when she talks about why she is doing this, her eyes fill with determination.
“I hope this meeting will make the terrorists think, and that they beg for forgiveness from Allah. If they truly regret what they did, then it can influence others and hopefully it will never happen again.”
Sarah has a burning question, one she has waited years to ask.
“Why did they do it? That’s what I want to know.”
Tampon wars: the battle to overthrow the Tampax empire (Sophie Elmhirst, Guardian)
Tampax is reckoning with the possible fate of any long-time ruler: the rising howl of revolution, a potential coup. Over the past few years, an array of new tampon brands and period products have appeared on the market. Obeying some unwritten law, they all seem to have cute, single-word names – Lola, Cora, Callaly, Ohne, Freda, Flo, Thinx, Modibodi, Flex, Flux, Dame, Daye. And they all want to topple Tampax, offering women what they see as more ethical and ecological options to replace Tampax’s single-use plastic applicators and a marketing strategy that often emphasises discretion, as though a period should be something to hide. “It’s ripe for the taking,” said Celia Pool, co-founder of Dame, about Tampax’s hegemonic grip on the market. “A brand like Tampax has dominated for so long with such hideous messaging and hideous products in such a personal area of a woman’s life which they use every month.”
Infinite jerk (Laura Marsh, New Republic)
The work itself is invigorating. Miller declares her faith in “vibrant, necessary fiction” and quickly starts working through the Rolodexes she photocopied and stashed away while at GQ. But there are lots of pitfalls, and people are not very forgiving when she steps into them. She approaches Mailer, for instance, at a public event and tries to solicit work from him for Esquire. His answer is, “I don’t care.” When she relates the episode to Dave Eggers back at the office, he sweetly calls her a “dork.” (She soon finds out he is making twice her salary in a comparable position.) If she were a young man, she wouldn’t have to justify herself so relentlessly; her lack of a proven track record, rather than counting against her, would indicate promise, potential. She’d be a wunderkind.
The secret history of page six (Kate Storey, Esquire)
For Page Six, Trump had long been the trifecta: boldfaced name, tipster, and anonymous source. Reporters could call his personal assistant, Norma Foerderer, and within minutes he would call back personally. When contributor Jared Paul Stern called him about a story he was working on concerning Trump’s January 2000 breakup with Melania, he told Stern on the record, “It’s bullshit. It’s not correct.” But the item was peppered with supporting quotes from “one friend” of Trump’s and a “source close to Trump.” Stern says those quotes all came from Trump himself—a practice other former gossip columnists have confirmed Trump employed. Trump, disguised as a friend, said about himself, “He doesn’t care. It’s not like he’s married. . . . [Melania] is a great girl, but Donald has to be free for a while. He didn’t want to get hooked. He decided to cool it.”
Image credit: Paul Williams