7 Essays To Read: How Money Affects Love, Muppet Sex, And What's Wrong With That Taylor Swift Video

This week, six women share their stories about how income disparity affects their relationships. Read that and other essays from Pacific Standard, Racked, The Offing, and more.

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1. "White Supremacy and Taylor Swift's 'Wildest Dreams' Video" — Pacific Standard

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Critics slammed Taylor Swift for glamorizing colonialism and for using Africa as a backdrop in her "Wildest Dreams" music video. For Pacific Standard, Aaron Brady explains how the video — said to contain "no political agenda — is actually an embodiment of Hollywood's long-standing tradition of nostalgia for black subjugation. "The white fantasy that Swift is selling is the idea that you can play around with racism but not get your hands dirtied by it," he writes. Read his essay at Pacific Standard.

2. "I Gave a Speech About Race to the Publishing Industry, and No One Heard Me" — BuzzFeed Books

Will Varner / BuzzFeed / Via buzzfeed.com

At an event attended by scores of young publishing professionals, Mira Jacob gave a speech about race — one that no one bothered listening to. Jacob shared that very speech with BuzzFeed Books, urging writers to create narratives that represent the world we live in and not to ignore writers or readers of color. "You will ignore us at your own peril — to the industry’s peril," she writes. Read her speech at BuzzFeed Books.

3. "How Money Changed My Relationship" — BuzzFeed Ideas

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"More money, more problems" rings true when it comes to even the healthiest relationships. It turns out, income disparity reveals insecurities and threatens progressive gender norms. For BuzzFeed Ideas, six women share stories about how money affects their relationships. Read them at BuzzFeed Ideas.

4. "Are You Still Married?" — Hazlitt

Lesley Buxton / Via hazlitt.net

After the death of Lesley Buxton's daughter made national news, strangers had no problem asking Buxton about the state of her relationship. In a heartbreaking essay for Hazlitt, Buxton writes about this perplexing recurrance, caring for and losing her daughter, and how she and her husband have grieved together. Read it at Hazlitt.

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5. "Accusing Black Americans of Appropriating African Clothing Misses the Point" — Racked

Driely S. for Racked / Via racked.com

In response to a writer who accused Black Americans of appropriating African clothing, Nadra Nittle reminds us all that not every African American has the privilege of knowing his or her roots. "Thanks to the peculiar institution of slavery ... the average African American can’t trace her roots to a particular tribe without the help of a DNA test," she writes in a Racked essay. In it, she asks us to rethink the notion of cultural appropriation, and how for Black Americans, wearing African clothing has always been more complicated than taking aspects from another culture. Read it at Racked.

6. "The Muppets Should Not Be Having Sex, People" — The Cut

Andrea McCallin / ABC / Via nymag.com

For The Cut, Rebecca Traister wrote a hilarious essay imploring her fellow journalists to write about the Muppets as puppets — not as sentient creatures engaged in love and sex. "I love the Muppets. I love Kermit. I do not need to imagine his felted member encased by hog flesh," she writes. Read the essay at The Cut.

7. "Dispatch from the Floor of the Model Minority Factory" — The Offing

Eadweard Muybridge / loc.gov / Via theoffingmag.com

In a piece for The Offing, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis reflects on his earlier profession helping college-bound kids to improve their SAT scores at a center owned by an immigrant family. In it, he writes about the contradictions of higher education and how he loathed working at what he calls a "model minority factory." An excerpt: "This was not teaching, not learning, not education; it was sales. It was recoding everything as commodity and transaction. It meant asking our prospective clients, the parents, to re-understand themselves and everyone around them, most especially their children, in terms of success narrowly understood in terms of education narrowly understood in terms of value." Read the entire essay at The Offing.

Want to read more?

In response to Michael Derrick Hudson's co-opting of the Chinese pen name Yi-Fen Chou, Jenny Zhang wrote about yellowface — and how it's part of a long history of white voices drowning out those of color in the literary world. Alex Ronan interviewed parents who lost their children — and then watched as their grief and their deceased daughters and sons became viral on the Internet. Kirsten King showed us what someone with anxiety actually experiences through illustrations by Charlotte Gomez. Anna Pulley created a helpful guide to flirting with queer girls without making a total fool of yourself. Kitty Stryker explains why she uses Pinterest to make porn. And finally, Jacob Tobia wrote about how his long fingernails make his femininity more visible to others and to himself.

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