2026 roundup

What I've been up to

Life comes at you fast. I blinked and I’m in my mid-thirties, hair threaded with grey, a modest public media career, been with my spouse nearly a decade, Subaru in the driveway, farmer’s market on the weekends, sensible trip to Eastern Europe booked. The Gen Z’s in my life have referred to me in passing as the “adult” or “grownup” in the room, to my surprise and then delight. The real mark of arriving as the grownup in the room, and a wakeup call about my own comportment, is when they pull me aside to ask for life or career advice.

The serious affect that earned teasing as a girl and harassment as a young woman finally fits the moment in time. Adulthood now and forever. I can’t say I’m one for Millennial self-infantilization (“I’m just a girl!”) nor Millennial performative moaning about premature aging (“I love hurting my back and going to bed at 9”). I’m excited to get in better and better shape. I’m grateful for every stage of life. The best is yet to come.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about Botox or coloring my hair - my career clock is ticking and ageism is real. I named this site Kulturtante, after all, for the German/Nordic slang for wacky art aunt. I read reviews of microneedling and brunette rinses and second guess myself. Ultimately, humans are tribal, and so I default to the style entropy of my totebag-class sistren: we opt out. We do not change our names when we get married at 31 or 45, do not dye our air-dryed hair, do not fuck with our faces, do not wear much if any makeup, and with body hair we’re either lax, or we wax. I’m from the tribe of sensible shoes and bare nails, Dr. Bronner’s soap and lentil recipes. We have no microwave and our TV, uncabled and unstreaming, is dusted off about once a month to play a library DVD with subtitles. Our sensible hatchback boasts stickers from our East Coast colleges. We are unchurched, the secular “nones.” These class and cultural markers signal the tribe of Bourgeois bohemian or “bobo,” per David Brooks. Here in Alabama, “bobo” is slang for bumpkin. In DC, where I’m from (spiritually, if not by birth) you call someone a “Bama” to slangily indicate that they are bobo in the Bama sense. Confused yet?

It’s tricky to write about life down here without sounding in my head like an arrogant Yankee [redacted], even though I have family roots in Alabama that precede its incorporation as a state. In the Northeast, not spending a lot of time or money on personal care indicates seriousness, the life of the mind and tasteful frugality. Of course, you should still be put-together, slim and athletic, just don’t look like you try too hard. Here in the Deep South, crunchy minimalism can read as slovenly, unprepared and careless. I blow out my hair and wear foundation and puffy sleeved maxi-dresses from Quince when the occasion calls for it as a visual signal toward respectful cultural alignment. I don’t mean it ugly.

Alabamians often wince when I casually describe my upbringing as “secular” and “around a bunch of communists.” It took a few discreetly suppressed shudders from people for me to realize those words are pejorative in a Y2K Christian context. I have no youth group upbringing to deconstruct: 20 years ago, the Internet feminists who formed my emerging worldview were calling purity pledges and abstinence only education creepy and patriarchal. Rather, my burdensome mindset to deconstruct is the Washingtonian striver demon that whispers I should be more successful (stupid, useless, worthless, downwardly mobile) and that I should probably try running again.

Still, my stubborn refusal to get with the program is my greatest asset along with my greatest liability. I’ve missed quite a few destructive, foolish trends simply because my default is to opt out— not just stylistically (the aforementioned Kulturtante roll call) but as a lifestyle.

Reading

I devoured The God of the Woods and El Dorado Drive, constantly craving literary thrillers by women, starved for the one or two good ones that publish per year. I’ve been hoovering memoirs by women founders and musicians (Even the Good Girls Will Cry, Jo Malone and Still Bobbi are standouts). Bread of Angels is the only Patti Smith memoir I held out on, finally rectifying. Famesick lives up to the hype, and beyond. Putting myself on library time-out to finish the stack of books by my bed— I’ve been happily spending more on books lately. A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry was incredible.

Watching

The Devil Wears Prada 2 was so depressing on an aesthetic and soul level it took days to recover. I saw the original in theaters three times- not even because it was exceptionally good, but because going to the movies for fun was just something you did in 2006. I think I watched Marie Antoinette 3x in theaters that year, too. I went to see The Third Man at Film Forum with my dad and was struck by how much it was like a mirror negative of Casablanca. Went into Maddie’s Secret knowing nothing and really enjoyed the meditation on ingenue of John Early’s performance.

Wearing

The cheeky bastards at Quince have done it again. I bought a slip dress and a spaghetti strap bodycon, ever striving for minimalism. I got a vintage Norma Kamali turtleneck black dress, and a Jungmaven hemp black t shirt dress serves as a useful uniform. My denim jacket is giving out and I can’t find a good new one, so I lurk Poshmark. I bought one more tentlike black dress from LOFT.

A well-dressed woman at a conference once tipped me off to renting dresses for conference— something I never would have thought to do except for formalwear. Still can’t pull it together to find the FarmRio frock of my dreams. For a long time I didn’t realize that I liked fashion, because I hate to shop so much.