We're Bringing Shaming Back 🎵
  February 19, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, Yesterday, Cardi B teased a new haircare line, and while I enjoy a tease as much as the next gal, my daughter is scheduled for a wash day this weekend, so we can’t wait for April. Give us the goods, Cardi!  In today’s newsletter, we are visited by the ghosts of misogynists past. Plus, we kick off a new series, The One Who Got the Story, with a conversation with journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Adding to cart, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONFear and loathing: You may have heard that blatant misogyny is making a comeback. You may, in turn, have gotten used to people with an incredible level of power and influence saying wildly sexist things without consequence. Last week was no exception: White supremacist and far-right livestreamer Nick Fuentes, who has dined with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago, went on a tirade about women that seemed extreme even for him, calling for “all women” to be “sent to the gulags” and dubbing women America’s “number one political enemy.” Since it’s my job to trawl for news about women, I clocked these shocking comments. But did mainstream outlets? Did you? The episode, and the general shrug with which they were met, clarified something for me: The way we react (or don’t react) to public declarations of misogyny has changed. Allow me to take you back to 2012, years before the student-led campus rape movement, Trump’s election, and the seismic shift ushered in by #MeToo. The “war on women” was on the rise, yes, but so was the “fourth wave” of feminism. The missteps of prominent men were meticulously covered by a thriving feminist media ecosystem. Jezebel’s page views regularly surpassed those of its parent blog Gawker. In February of that year, rightwing talk show host Rush Limbaugh went on a screed that, compared to Fuentes’s vitriol, seems downright restrained in retrospect: After Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke testified before Congress about the onerous costs of birth control at her university, Limbaugh devoted a sizeable chunk of his talk show to calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” who “wants to be paid to have sex.” He then advised the women at Georgetown to put aspirin between their knees. With the help of Fluke’s sharp public response, the fallout was swift and bipartisan: Limbaugh’s comments were “misogynist” and “vitriolic,” said Georgetown’s president. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx.) called them “over the top”; Sen John McCain (R-Ariz.) said they were “totally unacceptable.” President Obama placed a supportive call to Fluke. Limbaugh’s show lost 45 sponsors, even after he posted an apology (of sorts) on his website.  FLUKE DURING HER TESTIMONY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Later that summer, another powerful white man said another awful thing. Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), a vehemently anti-abortion politician who had just won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, explained on a St. Louis TV station that rape from pregnancy is rare. “If it's a legitimate rape,” he said, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Again, there was immediate backlash from all sides. Everyone from the Washington Post editorial board to leading health experts to then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney condemned Akin’s comments and clarified that “legitimate rape” is not a thing. Mainstream media covered every move of the controversy. Despite multiple apologies, Akin ended up losing his Senate race by 16 percentage points. Can you imagine any of this happening today? These two incidents were early examples of the willingness of women to call men out during the 2010s, a process that set the stage for #MeToo in 2017. One way to interpret our current moment of male supremacy is that it’s happening despite all that valiant earlier activism. But, looked at another way, it’s also happening because of the successes of this period. Men of all stripes—not just lunatics like Nick Fuentes but more genteel types like Ross “Are Women Ruining the Workplace?” Douthat—are pissed about exactly the kind of influence feminists started to have, and now they’re on their revenge tour. That tour isn’t powered by victory; it’s powered by fear. Feminist philosopher Kate Manne, who charges Douthat with “sanewashing” these men’s anger, describes Fuentes’ rhetoric as an “openly hysterical expression of patriarchal fear”—fear that women will speak up, get ahead, and take away men’s long-afforded privileges. They reflect a desire some men feel to remain shameless and unapologetic, a feat neither Akin nor Limbaugh achieved (although the latter continued his career and was eventually awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by guess who). It’s the same fear of being humiliated many women saw when they watched Renee Good’s murder at the hands of an ICE agent: the laughter of Good’s wife to his face, the three bullet wounds in Good’s body, the “fucking bitch” out of the agent’s mouth. Men’s fear can be deadly, but it also reveals the extent of women’s power. Demanding accountability worked in 2012. It worked in 2017. It can work again. —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 THE ONE BEHIND THE STORY“I wanted to make sure she knew she had autonomy.”Lulu Garcia-Navarro on interviewing Gisèle PelicotBY NONA WILLIS-ARONOWITZ  GARCIA-NAVARRO AND PELICOT AT AN APARTMENT IN PARIS. (SCREENSHOT VIA THE NEW YORK TIMES) Lulu Garcia-Navarro, co-host of the New York Times podcast “The Interview,” has covered harrowing circumstances all over the world for the Times, NPR, and the Associated Press. She’s reported on everything from the war in Iraq to the Arab Spring uprisings to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But her recent interview with Gisèle Pelicot, she told me, was one of the hardest she’s ever done. In our new series, The One Who Got the Story—where we catch up with a woman or non-binary journalist who was behind a major story of the week—we ask Garcia-Navarro how she prepared to interview a woman who endured some of the most shocking sexual abuse one can imagine. Pelicot, whose husband secretly drugged her and invited dozens of men into their home to rape her, made the extraordinary decision during the trial to waive her right to anonymity and allow media in the courtroom. And yet, she’d never truly told her story—until now. On the occasion of her new book, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, Pelicot, 72, sat down with Garcia-Navarro for her first interview with an American outlet. It’s a sensitive yet unflinching conversation about pain and renewal. Here’s how Garcia-Navarro did it. I noticed in the beginning of the interview, you asked Gisèle how she’d like you to refer to her rapist (she answered, “Monsieur Pelicot”), and that struck me as a question specifically tailored to someone who’s gone through trauma. What kind of preparation did you do before talking to her? Because she had never spoken [to the media] outside of the confines of the trial, I didn't know what I was going to get. Some victims of trauma really have trouble articulating their interior life, how they might have felt about things, their recollections of things. So we just prepared by being extremely careful. We made sure that where the interview was going to take place was going to be a very intimate environment. [The crew rented an apartment in Paris for the interview.] The majority of the crew was female. And then I wanted to make sure she knew she had autonomy and she had her voice. [Asking her what she’d like to call her abuser] was a way for me to signal that this was something she had agency over. You were extremely careful, but you also didn’t shy away from the awful details. At one point you quoted a graphic passage of the book in which Gisèle notices that a crown in her mouth was loose, which she learned later was a result of, as she wrote, “the violence of penises being repeatedly forced into [her] mouth.” Can you explain more about the reasoning to include this? I know that there's great concern about retraumatizing people and I understand that. I also do feel that sometimes, in trying to protect the victim, we do a disservice to the audience in not really showing the full scope of the horror that somebody went through. I asked for her permission [beforehand]; I said I was going to quote directly from the book, and she said that that was fine. I tried to be as sparing as I could. I just used one line, but it was a line that really haunted me. It said so much about the dynamic between her and her ex-husband, how he gaslit her, how he manipulated her...I felt it was really important for people to know. You’ve reported amid conflict zones and revolutions, but how does this interview rank in terms of difficulty? I mean, 100 out of 10. It's one of the hardest interviews that I've done because I think it's just really hard to get right. And if I did, I'm grateful for it. A consistent theme is that people said that they went in bracing for the worst and thinking this was just going to be a tour of horror. What they found instead was her beautiful ability to explain her own experience. This interview has been condensed and edited.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Sinister World of Looksmaxxing
  February 17, 2026 Happy Monduesday Meteor readers, Anyone else spend all of yesterday binge-watching and then emotionally recovering from the America’s Next Top Model docuseries? I saw all three episodes, but you know what I didn’t see? Anything resembling accountability from Tyra Banks. We were all rooting for you, ma’am. In today’s newsletter, we look at a troubling Senate race in Kentucky. Plus, we ask what everyone’s been asking the last few weeks: what the hell is looksmaxxing? Writemaxxing, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONSo it can get worse: As we all know and appreciate, Senator Mitch McConnell is not running for re-election this year. When he announced his retirement last year, it filled me with peace to know that his specter will no longer haunt the halls of government. But that peace is gone after watching a campaign commercial for Andy Barr, one of the three men in Kentucky vying to be the Republican candidate for McConnell’s seat. The ad is what the young people call ragebait—intentionally designed to make people angry with statements like, “DEI stands for dumb evil indoctrination.” And at the midpoint of Barr’s commercial, he says, “It’s not a sin to be white, it’s not against the law to be male, and it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be a Christian.” Those are words with a history, journalist Judd Legum points out. “The language used by Barr is a variation of the phrase 'It’s OK to be white,’” Legum writes. The phrase, abbreviated to IOTBW, dates back to 2017 when it spread on the "notoriously racist message board" 4chan. The term went on to be adopted by neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, who put up flyers with the term. One would like to imagine that proudly updating a neo-Nazi slogan for a political campaign would be disqualifying. (Although, to be fair, posing in front of a Confederate flag and weakening the Voting Rights Act didn’t end McConnell’s career.) It turns out Barr is just part of a trio of horrifying candidates in a campaign that has become “a racialized cage match revolving around convincing White people which candidate hates Black people the most,” according to professor Ricky L. Jones in the Courier Journal. “It’s a disgusting spectacle to behold.” The other two Republican candidates—former Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron and businessman Nate Morris—have both played up their anti-DEI bona fides and subtly vowed to protect white Kentuckians and stay loyal to Donald Trump. Cameron, who is Black, even went so far as to claim that systemic racism is a myth, and that he was proof. (Early polling from the New York Times shows that Cameron is ahead of his colleagues and will go up against either Charles Booker, a progressive who has lost two previous primaries, or the more moderate Pamela Stevenson, who was the first Black woman to lead a legislative caucus in the Kentucky General Assembly.) So what’s the moral here? It can, in fact, get worse than Mitch McConnell. Now’s a great time to check out who’s running against guys like these in your own state’s midterms and decide how the next few years of our collective lives are going to go. AND: 
 Three Questions About...LooksmaxxingMegan Reynolds explains what the menfolk are up to now. A MAN! (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Bubbling up recently from the putrid waters of the manosphere is a thing called “looksmaxxing.” On the surface, looksmaxxing is a language dodge by men who want to achieve a perfect aesthetic without having to use feminine terms like “plastic surgery” or “nose job.” Harmless, right? Probably not if legacy media is devoting so much ink to introducing us to someone named Clavicular—a man I’d happily go my whole life knowing nothing about. To understand the latest trend clogging our FYPs, I turned to author and chronically online elder millennial Megan Reynolds, who has a talent for demystifying internet rabbit holes. What exactly is "looksmaxxing" and how did this particular corner of the internet claw its way into the light? Looksmaxxing is the act of “optimizing” your appearance towards the traditional aesthetics of masculinity, via a wide range of methods, from working out and eating well to various surgeries, steroids, hair transplants, and the like. For the men who participate in this subculture, the focus is generally on the skin, muscles, and, for some reason, the jawline. (Think Gaston from Beauty and the Beast or the phrase “a jaw that could cut glass.”) A looksmaxxer's final form is a Chad—an archetypal "hot" man, the strapping and handsome stereotype of masculinity, idolized by incels. Chads get Stacys, which, as you may have surmised, are essentially their female counterparts—attractive, sexually available blondes. Looksmaxxing has been around since the 2010s, in the more red-pill, incel-adjacent corners of the internet, where distorted and dangerous thinking flourishes. We can thank TikTok and social media in general for the fact that we’re even discussing what this is today. If we want to look for a deeper answer [of why it has become more mainstream], I think looksmaxxing is also about a sense of control, especially in a world where young men feel like they’re in a state of crisis that is seemingly unsolvable, born out of the ballyhoo around the loneliness epidemic. [Also] I would say that Scott Galloway, the NYU professor/pundit/podcast host, who recently published the book “Notes on Being a Man,” is stoking the fires here just a touch, too. In an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast in December 2025, Galloway suggests that when looking for someone to have sex with, women are looking for men who can “signal resources” (i.e. make money), and while he is careful to not say outright that women want a man who is physically attractive, that is certainly implied. “I worry we are literally evolving a new breed of asexual, asocial male,” he said in an interview with The Guardian in 2025. Galloway’s entire thing is that men are here to “protect, provide, and procreate.” To my mind, presenting this rhetoric to a group of people who are feeling a bit left out in the first place is pouring gasoline on the fire.  A MAN WHO SPENT A MONTH TRYING TO BE MORE MAN, FOLLOWING THE GUIDELINES OF LOOKSMAXXING. TO BE CLEAR, THIS PERSON IS NOT CLAVICULAR, WHO WE ARE DECLINING TO SHOW BECAUSE HE DOES NOT DESERVE THIS MUCH ATTENTION FROM WOMEN. When we think about the manosphere, we think about guys out in the wild, chopping wood, trying to assert dominance over all things through strength. But "looksmaxxing" sounds like the antithesis of that. Are the bros embracing a wider scope of masculinity, or is it really all a net negative? It’d be nice if this was a gesture towards enlightenment, but what lies at the heart of looksmaxxing is desire—specifically, the men who are trying to mold themselves into the aesthetically ideal men are doing so in order to attract women. The manosphere is powered by the fumes of men who, like many, many people on earth, have faced rejection, either romantically, professionally or otherwise. What’s sinister about this is not rejection, as that is a simple fact of life, but the entitlement that men feel when faced with rejection. And it’s what people do with that entitlement that makes this entire situation alarming, to say the least. The TikToker who is sort of resurrecting looksmaxxing is a 20-year-old named Clavicular who associates with the likes of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. What's the connection between a sharp jawline and the right? Ugly guys can be fascists too, no? If we must trace the connection between the far-right and a jaw that could cut glass, we have to go back to the Nazis and their demented and incorrect views on beauty and the aesthetic ideal. The ideal Aryan man is blonde, blue-eyed, and muscular, the perfect specimen of physical fitness, absent any trace of racial ambiguity. Fascism, too, is about control—and if looksmaxxing is a means of seizing control over the one thing a young man actually can control, then it makes sense that these movements are inherently connected. It’s important to note, too, that Clavicular is doing what he does for the clicks—attention, in this economy, can lead to fame, financial gain. He and his compatriots are just a flash in the pan, but the real issue here is the thinking behind it.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
My Personal Black History
Four Black women on the moments that made them
By Rebecca Carroll
When you think about Black history, you may think of stories and lore from the long ago and far away past. But the small details of our personal experiences as Black people in America in the recent now comprise the same nuanced Black history made by our ancestors. So we asked a few Black women in The Meteor collective to share memories themselves. Black history in the making.
“In that sacred space, Black history was not abstract”
A year before my mother, Dr. Willa Alfreda Campbell Wilson, passed away, we traveled to Orangeburg, South Carolina, the town where I was born and where my parents devoted years as professors at South Carolina State University. We were there for a dear friend’s wedding, joyfully reconnecting with our community, but it was essential to my mother that we visit the memorial honoring those killed by state violence during the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. Standing there with my father and my husband, Mom paid tribute to friends she had lost and shared what she had endured and survived during the massacre and in those years: being beaten, jailed more than a dozen times, chased by police dogs, and hosed down for demanding basic human rights. She spoke about how Black women’s bodies were deliberately targeted, how she was kicked repeatedly for sitting at a lunch counter, and how violence was used to threaten dignity and suppress the movement.
In that sacred space, Black history was not abstract. It was personal, embodied, and still reverberating through our family. That moment affirmed why I do the work I do. As a storyteller and amplifier of cyclebreakers and truthtellers' stories, I understand that documenting our narratives is an act of love, resistance and preservation. My mother taught me that silence enables erasure, and that bearing witness is both a responsibility and a form of protection for future generations. Honoring our ancestors means telling the truth about what they endured and ensuring their sacrifices are neither minimized nor forgotten.
—Jamia Wilson, Random House executive editor and author of Young, Gifted and Black and Make Good Trouble
“She was showing me that we could make our own platforms”
My mother was an artist, a teacher, and an entrepreneur. When I was a child, I used to go with her to sell t-shirts and other apparel she made through her silk-screen printing business. She’d make drawings and create designs particular to Blackness, and print them herself. [Her life] was her—a single, independent woman—her daughter, and her work. At the time, it felt ordinary, but now I see it as Black history happening in real time.
Sitting beside her at those events, watching her build something from her own creativity, taught me what Black entrepreneurship, Black womanhood, and Black artistry could look like. She was showing me that we could make our own platforms, our own economies, our own images. I ain’t really realize it until recently, but I carry that with me in my own practice now. My work feels like a continuation of that history she started.
—Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, artist and cultural worker
“I wish I’d known then what I was looking at”
My father, Rev. Ronald B. Packnett, pastored a historic Black church in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. Among the responsibilities of the pastor’s daughter was to accompany him on his visits to those on our church’s “Sick & Shut-in” list every week, after school and during the summer break. And at 6 or 7, it wasn’t always the most welcome experience.
One day we stopped by a nondescript house on St. Louis’ North side—the forgotten side of the city—where storied brick houses that have been in Black families for generations stand buttressed against the white flight, urban blight, and systemic neglect of a city determine to choke off the very people who made it great. An old man opened the door of the house; he wore a white t-shirt and suspenders, slippers and a slight smile on his face. He was glad to see us darken his door, and was kind to me. I was polite, because I had home training, but I knew what was coming: boredom.
Sure enough, I sat. I waited. I waited more. I wandered. While my father and the old man in the white t-shirt talked, I happened upon some photographs. I wish I’d known then what I was looking at, and would have then known what to ask the man who owned them. I would have asked how it felt to watch the great Jackie Robinson break the color line. I’d ask him if it was true that Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were even better than Jackie, and if the Negro Leagues would have beat up on the MLB as badly as we all think they would have. I would have asked him what he thought of Ozzie Smith, our backflipping hometown hero, who was as successful as he was popular with the Black folk and white folk in our still segregated city. I would have asked him if, given the chance he should have gotten, he thinks he would have beaten the greats, been a Hall of Famer, and retired wealthy in Ladue, instead of his well-kempt home full of love and care on the forgotten side of St. Louis.
That day, I was in the home of the legendary James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell, who played for some of the greatest baseball teams in Negro League history. And before I left, he gave me some caramel candy and a kiss. Because that’s how we do. Our heroes strive because they love us. And we owe them our love in return. May the makers of Black history be elders who live bountiful lives of dignity. And like Cool Papa and my daddy, they become our ancestors to remind us to be free.
—Brittany Packnett Cunningham, podcast host and interdisciplinary strategist
“An emotional blueprint”
As a Black woman who grew up without Black family, it has been imperative for me to create my own Black history, every day throughout my life. And as a mother, that has meant hanging Black art on the walls of our home, stacking our shelves with an abundance of Black books, listening to Black music on our Bose speakers, and cultivating community and traditions with our chosen Black family. Perhaps as meaningful, if not more so, it has meant pouring my love of Black culture, and my dedication to honoring its representation and impact, into my son, openly and often, providing him with an emotional blueprint that will help to shape the future of his own Black history.
—Rebecca Carroll, writer and cultural critic, editor-at-large for The Meteor
Worker’s Rights, But Make it Fashion
  February 12, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Love is Blind is back, and frankly, I could stay in the pods forever with this batch of weirdos. But duty calls! In today’s newsletter, we tell you what’s extra-special about this year’s New York Fashion Week with a little help from former model and activist Sara Ziff. Plus, a quick check-in on the Olympics. Chilling in Ohio, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONWalk the walk: There’s something different about the fall/winter New York Fashion Week this year, which officially kicked off yesterday in Tribeca. Its models will be protected by a new labor law called the Fashion Workers Act. The law guarantees protections so basic that they wouldn’t be notable in many other industries: access to their own contracts and agreements, overtime pay, meal breaks, limits on fees and expenses charged by their agencies, and recourse around late payments, harassment, and retaliation. These bedrock rights have been denied to models (who are often minors) for decades. The law is the result of years of tireless work from advocates, including Sara Ziff, the founder and executive director of the workers’ rights nonprofit Model Alliance. Ziff started modeling her freshman year of high school, landing jobs in places like Seventeen magazine and the Delia’s catalogue, both basically bibles for girls (okay, me) in the late nineties and early aughts. As her career and education progressed in tandem, she became aware not only of the well-publicized problems with the industry—like its obsession with extreme youth, thinness, and whiteness—but the conditions that scandals like the Epstein files have made clear: It’s also a hotbed for widespread financial and sexual exploitation.  SARA ZIFF AT WORK IN 2005 (VIA GETTY IMAGES) “People often see models as being privileged and don't picture bad working conditions,” Ziff tells The Meteor. Most people don’t know, for example, that it’s commonplace for modeling agencies to hold power of attorney over their talent (even those over 18), which keeps models in the dark about their pay and scope of work. Models often end up in debt to their agencies; Ziff recalled to The New York Times how agencies would front wages that were late, then charge her 5 percent interest for the delay. And until the passage of the FWA, models had few legal avenues to fight back. Not that models haven’t tried. For decades, the fashion industry has fiercely pushed back on calls to improve labor conditions. Attempts to unionize have fizzled, a Diane Sawyer exposé failed to inspire concrete changes, and Ziff herself has been fighting for these protections since she founded Model Alliance in 2012. She chalks the resistance up to sexism, and an undervaluing of women’s work. “If you had middle-aged white men complaining about not being paid their earnings or being sent to castings and told to take off all their clothes,” Ziff says, “I don't think anyone would stand for that.” So can we feel better watching NYFW’s runway shows knowing the models are protected? Well, it depends on how much they know. Ziff says the success of this law depends on spreading the word. “There are multiple layers of enforcement built into this law,” she says, like the ability for models to sue their agencies, a safe way to file complaints with the labor commissioner, and penalties for violations. But that enforcement “requires the models themselves to understand their rights and take action if they feel their rights have been violated.” Those rights go beyond compensation. Ziff has long understood that being young and financially vulnerable leaves women and girls in the fashion industry exposed to sexual abuse, too. “In light of the MeToo movement and ongoing news about Epstein,” she says, “people are starting to connect the dots that this almost entirely unregulated industry has been a breeding ground for abuse.”  That abuse has propelled Ziff’s advocacy years before the Fashion Workers Act became law. The Model Alliance was also instrumental in passing 2022’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave sexual assault survivors a one-year window to sue their assailants regardless of preexisting statutes of limitations. The law is responsible for high-profile cases like E. Jean Carroll’s claim against Donald Trump and Cassie’s lawsuit against Diddy, and has helped kickstart a MeToo 2.0 of sorts. Ziff filed her own claim in 2023, accusing Fabrizio Lombardo, a former Miramax executive and a close associate of Harvey Weinstein, of rape. (The case has since been resolved.) Ziff sees the Fashion Workers Act and the Adult Survivor’s Act as important first steps, but she’s not declaring victory anytime soon. “Patriarchy is alive and well,” she says. “We're finally developing the language and the consciousness to try to dismantle it. But sadly, this is a life's work and it's probably going to take many lifetimes before we level the playing field.” —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 PROTESTORS OUTSIDE OF STONEWALL IN MANHATTAN SHORTLY AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE FLAG WOULD BE REMOVED. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 WEEKEND READING 📚On the grass people: Meet the woman behind this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. (Paper) On mother knows best: New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani wouldn’t be anywhere without the brilliant Mira Nair. (Vulture) On frenemies: Women on the right have a new name for women on the left that they hate: AWFULs (affluent white female urban liberal). Talk about white-on-white crime, damn. (Vox)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Scary Bill That Will Not Die
  February 10, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, Good evening to this woman and this woman only. Everyone else, you’re just going to have to settle for an average evening. In today’s newsletter, we try to understand the GOP’s obsession with long-shot voter fraud legislation. Plus, a quick way to check if your state has a law that could criminalize your miscarriage. Bye Mia, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONBack from the dead: The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) has been reintroduced for a third time, with the House scheduled to vote on it this week. If you’ve forgotten, the SAVE Act would require proof of U.S. citizenship to become a registered voter, including a birth certificate with a name that matches your photo ID. It would also require mail-in voters to prove their citizenship in person before casting a vote. It’s estimated that these requirements could disenfranchise as many as 21 million Americans—a Florida-sized chunk of voters!—including millions of married women who have taken their husbands’ names. It’s all in service of what Republicans claim is an effort to prevent voter fraud. “It’s a solution looking for a problem,” explains Julie Womack, the head of national programs for the political organizing group Red Wine and Blue. “We know that there is really no problem with voter fraud in this country.” (In an analysis of six swing states’ results in the 2020 election, for example, the Associated Press found just 475 potentially fraudulent ballots—less than .002% of the more than 25 million cast.) The GOP trying to solve a problem they invented out of thin air? Doesn’t sound like them. Democrats and voting rights groups have raised alarms over SAVE’s ID requirements, which would require people to provide birth certificates or naturalization papers and a form of government-issued photo ID to register to vote. Anyone who has ever been to a DMV knows that this is the start of a long day, particularly for married or transitioned people who have changed their names.  For all those reasons, the first two times SAVE was introduced in 2024 and 2025, it didn’t go further than the House. And there’s evidence that the onerous requirements would actually affect more Republican voters than Democrats. All of which begs the question: Why do Republicans continue to trot out this losing horse? Because the SAVE Act may very well hurt the GOP’s own voters, but there’s one guy it would impress: Donald Trump. His administration has endorsed the SAVE Act repeatedly; just last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it as “common-sense.” And the timing of this latest attempt does not surprise Womack. “There's so much going on in the news…it’s a time when a lot of people are distracted. I think [the GOP is] going to try more tactics like this, like doing it really quickly under the radar.” Womack says that the ultimate goal is to suppress votes in any way that works. “They can definitely do a watered-down version where it's just a voter ID law at the polls, or they could maybe put a restriction on voting hours or early voting or how many drop boxes,” she says. And part of the long game may be to inspire copycat laws: As with state-by-state abortion restrictions, “a lot of the states are taking these [causes] up now too. I live in Ohio. There's a [statewide] version of the SAVE Act in the Ohio legislature.” The best way to push back on all these measures, Womack says, is to call your representatives and get involved with voting rights organizations, like the Brennan Center for Justice or Fair Fight. In the meantime, let’s hope that the Republicans heading into the office to vote this bill forward can’t find their birth certificates that morning. AND: 
  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
"This Changes Everything"
  February 6, 2026 Happy Saturday, Meteor readers, We’re coming to you with a special treat from the archives today, in honor of the 100th celebration of Black History Month this February. Four years ago, our colleague Rebecca Carroll sat down with author and historian Imani Perry to discuss the surprising origins of Black History Month and its current role in the American story. When we first published this piece, we noted that legislators were trying to strip Black history lessons from school. Some of those efforts are now law, but advocates, educators, and avid readers remain undeterred. And I suppose that’s the history lesson in and of itself—the harder you try to erase it, the stronger it becomes. Love and power, Shannon Melero  “This Changes Everything”What Imani Perry taught me about Black History MonthBY REBECCA CARROLL  THE INCREDIBLE IMANI PERRY WAS HONORED AT THE 2025 WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER FOR HER BODY OF WORK (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Years ago, when I was working at a mainstream media corporation, I was called into a marketing meeting for my ideas on how to best package Black History Month in ways that would boost ad sales and sponsorship on the site. I suggested, in all seriousness, because I genuinely believed what I was saying: "What if we didn’t package Black History Month at all? What if we took a break from selling this idea that Black History is something we should only think about for a month every February?" I was promptly dismissed from the meeting. The thing is, I was coming from a place of profound (and uneducated) cynicism, based on the belief that Black History Month was created by white folks. And I know I’m not alone in thinking this. Thank heavens for historian and author Imani Perry, whose book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, covers this terrain, and who went ahead and set the record straight for me—because honestly, I simply did not know. Rebecca Carroll: Given that I was adopted into a white family, raised in a white town, and then went on to spend the bulk of my career in white media spaces, Black History Month has always seemed exploitative and commercialized to me—but I was so curious to learn from you that Black History Month actually has its origins in Black culture. Can you explain? Imani Perry: Black History Month was an outgrowth of Negro History Week. In the early 20th century, Black history programs and curricula were organized in segregated Southern Schools. They happened in February because that was the month of Abraham Lincoln's birth and Frederick Douglass's chosen birthday (he didn’t know his exact birthdate, having been born in slavery). In 1926, historian and organizer Carter G. Woodson formalized these practices and established Negro History Week [in February].  A COLORIZED PORTRAIT OF CARTER G. WOODSON, THE FATHER OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Negro History Week was an extension of a very deliberate effort that began immediately post-emancipation to document Black history…and resist the false claim that people of African descent had contributed nothing meaningful to human history or civilization. Negro History Week, which became Black History Month in the early 1970s, was focused on young people…and became a robust tradition. There were Negro History Week curricula—books on Black U.S., Caribbean, and African histories and historic figures; essays, documents, plays, pageants, and academic exercises along with the ritual singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Often, these school-based programs invited the entire community to participate, and so these were collective celebrations, as well as opportunities for people to learn. It wasn’t really until the late 1970s that white Americans even began to have any significant awareness of Black History Month, and much of that came through consumer culture. So, [as with] Kwanzaa, a ritual that was developed primarily within Black communities made its way to the larger public through advertising strategies intended to compel Black buyers rather than [achieve] substantive political transformation. So we get fast food companies celebrating Black History Month in ways that mean close to nothing or, at times, are even offensive. But despite that, there continue to be institutions in which Black History Month is rooted in a tradition of Black people writing themselves into history in ways that reject the logic of white supremacy and give a more expansive reach to the story of Black life both in this country and globally. And so what does Black History Month mean to you, both personally and professionally? Personally, Black History Month is one of those traditions, like Emancipation Day or Juneteenth or Watch Night, that I cherish because it anchors me in tradition and ritual. Professionally…because I’m very invested in ensuring that my students know the history of Black institutional life, I teach the ritual as an outgrowth of one of the most important periods of intellectual development in African American history. Traditionally, historians describe the Jim Crow era as the "nadir" of American race relations, the phrase used by historian Rayford Logan. And by that, he meant the lowest point, that horrifying period when the promises of Reconstruction had been completely denied. What is remarkable about that time is that Black people got to work despite the devastation. There was exceptional growth in African American civic life in this period. People were building organizations and networks, writing books and developing social theory, building schools, and churches at every turn. And so, even when society shut the door to opportunity and treated Black people with horrible brutality, they kept dreaming, doing, and creating. For me, that is not just a key point for understanding African American history, but it is an incredible daily inspiration for my own work. Do you think it's ever more necessary in this current cultural climate to uphold BHM, and if so, to what end? I don’t think of Black History Month as more or less important based on the political moment. I guess I would say it will be important indefinitely because we live in a white supremacist country and world, and counter-narratives that value freedom and dignity and resilience will always be necessary as long as stratifying people on the basis of identity is the norm. Surely you’ve had experiences where (almost always white) people will say something that is just all kinds of wrong regarding BHM—I’m sorry to say I have had several—or there is this unspoken sense of "We’re giving you this whole month, can you just be grateful?" Can you recall such an experience, and how you responded/flipped the script for your own sense of sanity? Thank goodness I've never had a white person say to me that they’ve given Black people Black History Month. It would frankly be something that I'd laugh at for a long time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Black people created it for Black people, and particularly for Black young people, and have been gracious enough to invite others to participate. They should feel fortunate.  ENJOY MORE OF THE METEOR Thanks for reading the Saturday Send. Got this from a friend? Don’t forget to sign up for The Meteor’s flagship newsletter, sent on Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
Three Questions About…This Year’s Winter Olympics
The trailblazers to watch, and the ICE of it all
By Shannon Melero
Jamie Mittleman has the kind of job that, if it were explained in a Netflix rom-com, would sound entirely made up: She talks to Olympic and Paralympic athletes all day. Fine, it’s more than that; she’s the CEO and founder of Flame Bearers, a media company centered around women Olympians and their stories. But the fun part of her job is working with athletes and traveling to the Games.
The summer Olympics usually get all of the shine, but this year, the roster for Team USA is, as I think the kids say, bussin’. Two-time gold medalist Chloe Kim is back chasing a third podium. Figure skater Alysa Liu is out of retirement at the ripe old age of 22 and skating better than ever. Lindsey Vonn plans to compete on a totally destroyed ACL (girl, please don’t do that) and, of course, we’re all ready to get our Heated Rivalry on and cheer for the women’s ice hockey team captained by the incomparable Hilary Knight.
Ahead of her travels to the Milan/Cortina Olympics, Mittleman took some time to talk to us non-Olympians about what to expect.
The Olympics have always had political undertones. As someone working closely with so many women athletes ahead of Milan/Cortina, are there themes you’re seeing pop up?
A major theme I’m hearing from athletes is access. Who gets into winter sports? Who can afford it? Who sees themselves in it?
Winter sports remain some of the least diverse athletic spaces in the world, and athletes are acutely aware of that. They talk about the cost of equipment – how expensive is a ski pass? Hockey gear? A bobsled? [Plus] the lack of local facilities. Do they have to drive to get to the track? What if they don’t have a car? Nobody from my community competes in this sport…and how all of these compound over time.
There’s also a strong thread of athletes wanting to use their visibility to widen the doorway for the next generation. I’ve now worked with just shy of 400 Olympians and Paralympians from 55 countries, and many are navigating being “firsts” in their sport—first from their country, first openly queer, first Black athlete in their discipline. They’re proud, but they’re also very aware of the weight of representation they carry. It’s a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility they didn’t necessarily sign up for.
Speaking of firsts, Team USA has two major ones on the roster this year with Amber Glenn, the team’s first openly queer figure skater, and Laila Edwards, the first Black woman to play ice hockey for the U.S. What are you hoping viewers can take from watching them compete?
Seeing Amber Glenn and Laila Edwards on this stage matters far beyond medals. I hope young viewers see that there is no single mold for who belongs in sport. In her "Making It To Milan" interview, Hilary Knight mentioned, "There is a place for everyone in sport.” You can be openly queer and compete at the highest level. You can be a Black woman in a sport that has historically excluded you. You don’t have to shrink yourself to fit into a system.
For many young people watching, this may be the first time they see someone who looks like them, loves like them, or comes from a background like theirs on Olympic ice and snow. That moment of recognition matters. It’s often the first spark of belief: Maybe I belong there too. That belief is why my company exists—to make it clear that you do.
It’s also important to mention that just as many “firsts” exist in the Paralympics, which begin immediately after the Olympics—and I highly recommend tuning in.
We recently learned that ICE is also going to Milan with Team USA—which as an Olympic fan, fills me with embarrassment during a time I’d normally be feeling a rare moment of national pride. Does that change the viewing experience for you at all?
ICE traveling with the U.S. delegation is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Olympic Games, a hollow stunt of performative power. While hidden under the guise of ‘protection’, this move reads less as a safety measure and more as a PR maneuver—an attempt by the Trump administration to reclaim international relevance and authority at a moment when the US is increasingly isolated and losing credibility. Coming on the heels of Davos, where international leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signaled clear resistance to Trump’s agenda, ICE’s presence is an attempt to project strength at a time when US influence has clearly decayed.
Outside the US, the context is very clear: ICE is not relevant, nor wanted. The International Olympic Committee has said their presence is ‘distracting and sad.’ The Mayor of Milan explicitly said they are not welcome. Since the announcement of their presence, several organizations have moved to disassociate from the word “ICE.” The Milan hospitality suite, once called the “Ice House” has already been renamed.
[But their presence] reinforces why the athletes’ stories—and their humanity—matter even more. The athletes are showing up to compete after lifetimes of work. This is about them. Their journeys. Many come from immigrant families, from underrepresented communities, from places where sport was their pathway to opportunity. The geopolitical backdrop is real, but what I see up close is athletes trying to hold onto the purity of why they do this in the first place.
A Bigger, Badder, Bunnier Bowl
  February 5, 2026 Hey there Meteor readers, Nona and I both woke up this morning with fevers and intense cases of the daycare schmutz. So this newsletter is brought to you by Tylenol, Ricola, and some nasty-ass ginger tea.  Today, we’re going full Sporty Spice with some emotional prep for Bad Bunny’s halftime performance this weekend. Plus three questions about what athletes are facing at the Winter Olympics. Achoo 🤧, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONDomingo Gigante: Last weekend, during his Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year, Bad Bunny opened with a vastly underappreciated line: “Puerto Rico, créeme cuando te digo que somos mucho más grandes que 100 por 35.” If you haven’t gotten your Duolingo minutes in today, that’s “Believe me when I tell you, we’re so much bigger than 100x35,” which are the land measurements of Puerto Rico’s main island. The rest of his message, delivered mostly in Spanish, touched on perseverance. But the idea of being bigger is what’s stayed with me these last few days, particularly in a political moment where the best thing anyone can be is unseen. Unseen by ICE agents lingering in train stations. Unseen by trigger-happy police officers. Unseen by right-wing extremists. Stepping out of my house every day, my greatest desire is for my family to go completely unnoticed and make it back safely. But throughout his career, Bad Bunny has defied the idea of being small, of asking permission to enter a space as his authentic self. He just shows up. He simply is, and he does it loudly, boldly, and sometimes in a fabulous gown. He’s done so in a way that his musical forefathers—DY, Marc Anthony, Tego Calderon—never could because they were either trapped in the Latin music gilded cage, or chose to avoid politics until much later in life. For all their fame, they were also kept smaller by (mostly) American audiences and an industry that sees Latin music and people as separate from the American identity. But in the words of another great, Residente, “América no es solo USA, papá.”  HOW WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO BE SMILING THIS SUNDAY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Of course, the ability to make yourself more or less visible is rooted in privilege. White and light-skinned artists can take a step back *cough* JLo *cough* in a way that protects them from the ire of entire administrations. After all, Turning Point wasn’t running counter programming in 2020 when JLo and Shakira headlined the halftime show. Conservatives did, however, have a ton to say after Kendrick Lamar’s performance last year. (I guess a Black, California-born Pulitzer Prize winner just isn’t American enough?) And despite making no noise over Green Day, who are performing on Sunday as well and have an entire album devoted to political criticism, conservatives have been spending the last few months proselytizing about how un-American it is to have a Spanish-language artist take center stage at the Super Bowl. (Let’s all be honest with ourselves for a minute, y'all don’t want most of these songs translated. I promise you chocha is not going to hit the same in English.) Which is why Bad Bunny’s choice to use his privilege to step into the fray rather than avoid it is so important. His pride is not a performance piece he takes on and off when the mood suits—and that kind of authenticity encourages others to walk in pride. It’s bigger than a 15-minute set we won’t remember a year from now. It’s bigger than 100x35. It’s a call to know who you are—your history, your symbols, your land, your people—and to stand tall, whether or not you are acceptable to the powers that be. Especially when you’re not. AND (promise a sports break):
 PENNY THE DOBERMAN PINSCHER, THIS YEAR'S BEST IN SHOW. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  Three Questions About...This Year's Winter OlympicsThe trailblazers to watch and the ICE of it all.BY SHANNON MELERO  LAILA EDWARDS (FRONT, BLUE) AND TEAM USA HOCKEY FACED OFF AGAINST CZECHIA THIS WEEK, AND SECURED THEIR FIRST WIN OF THE GAMES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Jamie Mittleman has the kind of job that, if it were explained in a Netflix rom-com, would sound entirely made up: She talks to Olympic and Paralympic athletes all day. Fine, it’s more than that; she’s the CEO and founder of Flame Bearers, a media company centered around women Olympians and their stories. But the fun part of her job is working with athletes and traveling to the Games. The summer Olympics usually get all of the shine, but this year, the roster for Team USA is, as I think the kids say, bussin’. Two-time gold medalist Chloe Kim is back chasing a third podium. Figure skater Alysa Liu is out of retirement at the ripe old age of 22 and skating better than ever. Lindsey Vonn plans to compete on a totally destroyed ACL (girl, please don’t do that) and, of course, we’re all ready to get our Heated Rivalry on and cheer for the women’s ice hockey team captained by the incomparable Hilary Knight. Ahead of her travels to the Milan/Cortina Olympics, Mittleman took some time to talk to us non-Olympians about what to expect. The Olympics have always had political undertones. As someone working closely with so many women athletes ahead of Milan/Cortina, are there themes you’re seeing pop up? A major theme I’m hearing from athletes is access. Who gets into winter sports? Who can afford it? Who sees themselves in it? Winter sports remain some of the least diverse athletic spaces in the world, and athletes are acutely aware of that. They talk about the cost of equipment – how expensive is a ski pass? Hockey gear? A bobsled? [Plus] the lack of local facilities. Do they have to drive to get to the track? What if they don’t have a car? Nobody from my community competes in this sport…and how all of these compound over time. There’s also a strong thread of athletes wanting to use their visibility to widen the doorway for the next generation. I’ve now worked with just shy of 400 Olympians and Paralympians from 55 countries, and many are navigating being “firsts” in their sport—first from their country, first openly queer, first Black athlete in their discipline. They’re proud, but they’re also very aware of the weight of representation they carry. It’s a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility they didn’t necessarily sign up for. Speaking of firsts, Team USA has two major ones on the roster this year with Amber Glenn, the team’s first openly queer figure skater, and Laila Edwards, the first Black woman to play ice hockey for the U.S. What are you hoping viewers can take from watching them compete?  EDWARDS AT A WELCOME EVENT IN MILAN MAKING BLACK HISTORY DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Seeing Amber Glenn and Laila Edwards on this stage matters far beyond medals. I hope young viewers see that there is no single mold for who belongs in sport. In her "Making It To Milan" interview, Hilary Knight mentioned, "There is a place for everyone in sport.” You can be openly queer and compete at the highest level. You can be a Black woman in a sport that has historically excluded you. You don’t have to shrink yourself to fit into a system. For many young people watching, this may be the first time they see someone who looks like them, loves like them, or comes from a background like theirs on Olympic ice and snow. That moment of recognition matters. It’s often the first spark of belief: Maybe I belong there too. That belief is why my company exists—to make it clear that you do. It’s also important to mention that just as many “firsts” exist in the Paralympics, which begin immediately after the Olympics—and I highly recommend tuning in. We recently learned that ICE is also going to Milan with Team USA—which as an Olympic fan, fills me with embarrassment during a time I’d normally be feeling a rare moment of national pride. Does that change the viewing experience for you at all? ICE traveling with the U.S. delegation is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Olympic Games, a hollow stunt of performative power. While hidden under the guise of ‘protection’, this move reads less as a safety measure and more as a PR maneuver—an attempt by the Trump administration to reclaim international relevance and authority at a moment when the US is increasingly isolated and losing credibility. Coming on the heels of Davos, where international leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signaled clear resistance to Trump’s agenda, ICE’s presence is an attempt to project strength at a time when US influence has clearly decayed. Outside the US, the context is very clear: ICE is not relevant, nor wanted. The International Olympic Committee has said their presence is ‘distracting and sad.’ The Mayor of Milan explicitly said they are not welcome. Since the announcement of their presence, several organizations have moved to disassociate from the word “ICE.” The Milan hospitality suite, once called the “Ice House” has already been renamed. [But their presence] reinforces why the athletes’ stories—and their humanity—matter even more. The athletes are showing up to compete after lifetimes of work. This is about them. Their journeys. Many come from immigrant families, from underrepresented communities, from places where sport was their pathway to opportunity. The geopolitical backdrop is real, but what I see up close is athletes trying to hold onto the purity of why they do this in the first place. You can listen to Flame Bearers' full Making it to Milan series here.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Formula for Equal Parenting
  February 3, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, I made croissants this weekend. From scratch. I’m not saying that I’m better than y’all now, but I am typing this with my nose up a little higher than usual.  In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz upsets all the granola moms. But before that, we take a look at the DOJ’s latest blunder. Butter fingers, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Indefensible”: Like manna from the depths of hell, another bundle of Epstein files was released to the public last Friday, six weeks later than promised. The drop included millions of documents and redactions to the nth degree, but as we quickly learned, not everyone got the same level of black-box protection. The New York Times first reported that the DOJ published several images of naked women, some of whom may have been teenagers, while covering the faces of Donald Trump and other unnamed men who are seen in photos with well-known figures (Steve Tisch, Elon Musk, and Casey Wasserman, to name a few). As ABC News reported over the weekend, names of and identifying information about victims that had not previously been made public were also exposed in this drop. The images were later corrected after the Times alerted the DOJ to the errors. But, for those whose names and identifying information were left unredacted for hours on Friday, the damage had already been done. Lawyers representing over 200 accusers requested that the documents be taken down altogether so the DOJ could redact the documents properly. Another group of survivors released a statement, which reads in part, “This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve. The scale of this failure is staggering and indefensible.” It couldn’t be any clearer who the DOJ truly wants to protect, which is probably why survivors are calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer for these failures when she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11. What happens now? According to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, “There’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him,” he said, “but that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.” He also added that with the release, everyone could check the documents themselves and “see if we got it right.” My law degree from the academy of Dick Wolf Productions doesn’t exactly qualify me to double-check the work of the Department of Justice, but it’s safe to say that telling victims to DIY their own cases against the richest and most powerful men in the country is a non-starter. Meanwhile, Bill (who appears in several photos in the latest files) and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee. It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one if, after their testimony, the DOJ suddenly decides prosecuting Trump’s biggest enemy is a top priority. AND:
 A Feminist Love Letter to Baby FormulaIs it the key to a more equitable partnership? The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz makes the caseBY CINDI LEIVE  NONA'S PARTNER, DOM, AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR) Two days ago, in The New York Times, my colleague Nona tossed a lovingly crafted, deeply researched grenade into one of the more passionately held beliefs about parenting: that breast is best. The title of her piece, “The Secret to Marriage Equality is Formula,” argues exactly that, but it goes further—Nona argues that formula (often a source of raised eyebrows in feminist circles for some very good reasons) can also be the secret to less stress and happier parenting for women in or out of partnerships. The piece struck such a nerve that the comment section is now closed. But after breast-feeding two babies myself, and feeling guilty whenever I used formula, I had questions. First off, for those who didn't read the piece, how did you personally discover that the secret to marriage equality is baby formula? I discovered this the hard way. The first time around, with my daughter Dorie, I breastfed because it seemed like the default: Everybody assumes that if you can breastfeed, you should breastfeed. While breastfeeding was a very nice way to bond, the experience was also very intense: It led me to desperately want to control the feeding realm. I was learning so much about her, which led me to push my partner, Dom, out of the space (he didn’t exactly argue—socialization runs deep!). Meanwhile, I was sleep-deprived, isolated, and resentful. I felt like I hadn’t signed up for being Mom-In-Chief with a hapless underling as a co-parent. My husband and I fought constantly, which wasn’t good for any of us, including the baby. So, when we had a second daughter, Pearl, we figured we should try to prioritize equality, even if it undermined breastfeeding. It seemed like a small price to pay for a harmonious experience, and for my baby to genuinely have a wonderful bond with her father from the get-go. And you know what? It worked almost instantly. I breastfed exclusively for two weeks just to establish breastfeeding, and it was like PTSD—all of the bad feelings came flooding back. But as soon as we started introducing formula and Dom started doing overnight feeds, the vibe in our household totally changed.I felt so much closer to him, I felt so much happier to see my baby in the morning, and he really learned Pearl in a way that he didn't learn Dorie until she was a toddler. As we used more formula and bottles, he was just as good at soothing the baby as me. The comments on your piece are copious and mostly very positive, from women saying thank you, we should have options. There were two other strains of responses I wanted to ask you about. First, from people who say: Just pump! And second, from people noting that the scientific evidence shows that breastfeeding is medically superior. Let’s start with the idea that pumping breast milk could solve the equal parenting issue.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A Feminist Love Letter to Baby Formula
Is it the key to a more equitable partnership? The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz makes the case
By Cindi Leive
Two days ago, in The New York Times, my colleague Nona tossed a lovingly crafted, deeply researched grenade into one of the more passionately held beliefs about parenting: that breast is best. The title of her piece, “The Secret to Marriage Equality is Formula,” argues exactly that, but it goes further—Nona argues that formula (often a source of raised eyebrows in feminist circles for some very good reasons) can also be the secret to less stress and happier parenting for women in or out of partnerships.
The piece struck such a nerve that the comment section is now closed. But after breastfeeding two babies myself, and feeling guilty whenever I used formula, I had questions.
First off, for those who didn't read the piece, how did you personally discover that the secret to marriage equality is baby formula?
I discovered this the hard way. The first time around, with my daughter Dorie, I breastfed because it seemed like the default: Everybody assumes that if you can breastfeed, you should breastfeed. While breastfeeding was a very nice way to bond, the experience was also very intense: It led me to desperately want to control the feeding realm. I was learning so much about her, which led me to push my partner, Dom, out of the space (he didn’t exactly argue—socialization runs deep!). Meanwhile, I was sleep-deprived, isolated, and resentful. I felt like I hadn’t signed up for being Mom-In-Chief with a hapless underling as a co-parent. My husband and I fought constantly, which wasn’t good for any of us, including the baby.
So, when we had a second daughter, Pearl, we figured we should try to prioritize equality, even if it undermined breastfeeding.
It seemed like a small price to pay for a harmonious experience, and for my baby to genuinely have a wonderful bond with her father from the get-go. And you know what? It worked almost instantly. I breastfed exclusively for two weeks just to establish breastfeeding, and it was like PTSD—all of the bad feelings came flooding back. But as soon as we started introducing formula and Dom started doing overnight feeds, the vibe in our household totally changed.
I felt so much closer to him, I felt so much happier to see my baby in the morning, and he really learned Pearl in a way that he didn't learn Dorie until she was a toddler. As we used more formula and bottles, he was just as good at soothing the baby as me.
The comments on your piece are copious and mostly very positive, from women saying thank you, we should have options. There were two other strains of responses I wanted to ask you about. First, from people who say: Just pump! And second, from people noting that the scientific evidence shows that breastfeeding is medically superior. Let’s start with the idea that pumping breast milk could solve the equal parenting issue.
Pumping is not the same as formula! First of all, it involves joyless labor from the lactating parent—time I could be spending with my baby or my older child. It also still creates that executive/employee dynamic, where I give my husband this precious breast milk that he better not waste. He once likened it to borrowing the company car and being told to return it without a scratch on it. Pumped breastmilk isn’t a total responsibility transfer.
One of the most revelatory findings of my research was a 2009 piece by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker that questioned our society’s promotion of breast pumps. “Should I take three twenty-minute pumping ‘breaks’ during my workday, or use formula and get home to my baby an hour earlier?” she asks pointedly. When we tell women to obsessively focus on the liquid itself rather than ways to better bond with their babies, it’s a Pyrrhic victory.
[She also writes] that many of the proven benefits of breastfeeding are social and emotional (“smiling and cuddling”), rather than nutritional. Which brings me to your second question: The medical benefits of breastfeeding are often overstated. The data shows that there are immune benefits [over] formula in the newborn stage, but they amount to, like, one fewer ear infection a year or slightly fewer GI issues. As economist Emily Oster puts it, these benefits are “real, but modest,” and some advertised benefits, like a higher IQ or protection from obesity, are more about correlation than causation: People who can breastfeed are wealthier and more educated. They often have more time off. There's all sorts of other factors affecting their babies’ lives that have nothing to do with the nutritional makeup of their breast milk.
Your column wasn’t about politics, but as you’ve noted, this is a political subject. RFK Jr.'s MAHA program has included breastfeeding as an official recommendation and been quite derogatory about the insufficiency of formula. So the government is encouraging women to breastfeed based on what you’re saying is insufficient medical data. Why do you think they are doing that and why was this an important column to write right now?
First of all, exclusive breastfeeding requires maternity leave. We don't have guaranteed paid maternity leave in this country, so asking any woman to exclusively breastfeed is implying that she shouldn't work. So let's get that out of the way. But there's this deeper assumption that women will sacrifice anything—their mental health, their career opportunities, their marriage, their sleep—for their baby. So even if there is a slight benefit to the nutritional makeup of breast milk, that still doesn’t justify pushing women this hard to breastfeed. It puts a huge amount of stress on a lot of women. And I think the message of the MAHA movement is, “You should prioritize your family, your baby. And if that means you can't work or have any time for yourself, well, that's just your role as a woman.” It couldn't be more clear.
Furthermore, the contrast between all the information we get about breastfeeding and the dearth of information we get about equal parenting—which upwards of 85 percent of parents claim they support—is one of the most insidious forms of sexism I can think of. All these parents are saying they want to split the load, and yet there's very little guidance on how to do that, which leaves it up to individuals (very sleep-deprived individuals) to figure it out. Before we had children, my partner and I agreed on a feminist partnership in broad terms, but we didn't talk about what that would look like day-to-day when we had a baby. We just assumed that I would breastfeed unless it didn't work. I didn't even know the term combo-feeding at the time. It would have been great to discuss this before the newborn scrum.
This could even start during the two-day period after birth, when experts are coming in and out of your room every few minutes. A lactation consultant or somebody else should also be educated on how to administer formula and why. I asked a lactation consultant a couple of months after Dorie’s birth, when breastfeeding was killing me, "How do I introduce formula while still breastfeeding?" And she clutched her pearls and said, "Oh, I don't know anything about that. You're gonna have to refer to the CDC website." The American Academy of Pediatrics has a lot to say about breastfeeding; they should also have information about formula and its benefits to families. And there should be more studies commissioned about combo-feeding—I found, like, two studies about it, as opposed to approximately one million studies about breastfeeding.
After your column came out, one of our colleagues, who had breastfed her child for two and a half years and was a self-described “breast is best” advocate—said that she felt you had unintentionally, but effectively, read her to filth.
[Laughs] That was absolutely not my intention. There can be lots of benefits to breastfeeding, and if you enjoy it, then by all means, do it. What I would like is for people to go into the very hard work of breastfeeding with their eyes open, knowing that this will likely impede domestic parity. It's just a fact. Some women (like our friend) may choose to exclusively breastfeed, anyway, because they want to. But if equal parenting is a priority for you, I invite you to consider other options—without shame or guilt.
