"Whenever celebrities say that they're just getting nude as a form of self-expression... I have a question."

"How often are they just walking around their house nude, like by themselves, or are they just wearing PJs like a normal person? Like, as as a normal part of self-expression, do you just like walk around nude... do you walk nude to the grocery store as a form of self-expression? You know, just walking around in public nude... Would you be walking around as a form of, you know, just knowing yourself? Would you be walking around naked?"

Ben Shapiro — listening to Miley Cyrus talk to Monica Lewinsky — asks, rhetorically, because he's very sure the answer is no.

 

But maybe you yourself or somebody you've known does walk the face of the earth nude because that's who they really are.

I know I've said this before and maybe I was quoting someone else, but I just spent an absurd amount of time searching for that, unsuccessfully, so I'm just going to try to say it again, though I'm quite convinced I said it better that other time: Nudes have virtually no role in human history.

"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"[H]er husband forgot her 50th birthday.... said Ruchi, who asked to use only her first name because she is in the process of negotiating her divorce."

"'You’ve put all these things aside because you’re a mom and you’re taking care of a family,' she said.... 'Then you think: Is that all I am good for? When did I stop being a person?' Menopause lent a kind of fury to Ruchi’s midlife turmoil. 'I actually thought I was crazy, because I was irritated at everything,' she said.... 'There was a time when I was like, "Oh my gosh. How are we going to do this? How is this going to work? What is my family going to say?"... I am a strong person. I am a capable person. My family is very, very, very important to me, but I am more than my kids and my husband. I think I kind of forgot that.'"

From "Older Adults Are No Longer Staying in ‘Empty Shell’ Marriages/Rates of gray divorce have risen sharply over the past few decades — and experts have a few theories as to why" (NYT). That's a gift link because there are so many interesting comments over there.

1. When her husband forgot her birthday, the wife remembered that she had forgotten that she was a person.

2. Do you get much anonymity by limiting the NYT to using only your first name when your first name is as unusual as Ruchi? (I did look it up, and I can see that in India, it is a very common name.)

3. From the anecdotes in the article, I get the impression that when these long-term marriages dissolve, the man finds another woman (to take care of him?) and the woman embraces independence. 

4. From the comments over there: "This article contains the second reference I’ve seen recently to menopause as the cause of women becoming intolerant. I feel like that’s a slippery slope. I offer for consideration the fact that many, many women in our society are expected to carry loads that are unreasonable. I think that might contribute to 'intolerance' more than any hormonal shifts. And I believe such intolerance is valid."

The proposed rule would impose "a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family" that "privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians."

I'm reading "Presbyterian Church faces revolt after proposing clergy must be in monogamous relationships — and critics blame white privilege" (NY Post).

The headline is miswritten. The rule doesn't require a relationship. Clergy can still be single. They just can't have more than one partner. It seems that clergy can have sequential sexual relationships — with no commitment at all — as long as they follow a one-at-a-time approach. 

The Presbyterians on both sides of this controversy are relying on progressivism. Opponents tap into racial critique — that "lived realities" discourse. 

Proponents deploy feminist critique. They're "arguing that the practice of polyamory or polygamy can create 'power imbalances, emotional harm, and spiritual confusion,' particularly for women, children, and historically marginalized persons."

It seems that no one wants to get caught invoking tradition. History is that place where persons were marginalized. It's something to be undone. 

***

I love the stock photo the Post chose to illustrate this story. It's like an ad for fabric softener:

Which one is supposed to be the Presbyterian clergyperson?

"Hey everyone, it’s Amy. Um, I wanted to make a statement today and—oh, sorry, I’m getting eaten by bugs."

"Um, I wanted to make a statement today in response to a couple of news articles that are out there about my marriage to Graham."

A message from my wife Amy: pic.twitter.com/dbDqjssevp

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) May 30, 2026

"Um, if anybody knows me and Graham personally, you know that we got married in 2023. Um, we live in Sullivan. We’ve got two dogs and we love each other deeply. So it makes me really angry, um, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on—like healthcare and education and childcare. Um, I’m walking up and down my road right now and this is like my 20th take. This is very hard to do, but um, I just really wanted to make sure that everyone knows that Graham and I have a great marriage. Um, being married is hard.  Being newly married is hard. Being newly married and going through infertility is hard. Being newly married, going through infertility, and a Senate campaign is hard. Um, I don’t even know if I have the right words to describe what we’ve been going through, but um, our marriage counselor helps. Uh, my personal counselor helps. Graham’s personal counselor helps. Um, and we work on our mental health every day. Um, no marriage is perfect and I—I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage and I want to be married to Graham. Sorry, blackflies. Um, I knew the man that I married is wonderful and dynamic and probably a genius. Um, I knew the man that I married had been through an immense amount of violent active combat and um, he’s been in therapy for years. I just—I admire the fuck out of him.Um, so when there are news articles about our marriage, it’s just extra shitty. Can I say that online? I hope I can. Um, it’s extra shitty because people in Maine want affordable gas. They want to be able to see their doctor when they’re sick. Um, they want to be able to send like their kids to a nice school, uh, a nice daycare facility, um, and raise families the way that they want to. So I think I’m feeling angry today. Um, and I don’t normally make public statements, but it’s really important for me to tell all of you out there—especially people who are voting in Maine—that I think it’s shameful behavior to spend time and energy and resources on negative ads and negative stories on Graham when all he’s trying to do is improve the lives of people who work for a living. Um, and that’s it. He doesn’t have any other agenda, which is what I think people are trying to dig up. Um, and this is a long video, so uh, I hope my editing team isn’t too frustrated with me. Um, I hope that everyone’s having a good Saturday. Graham and I really care about the state of Maine. We really love it. We were born and raised here and I think we deserve better. I think Mainers deserve better. And I don’t know what else to say. So if you’re editing this video, I’m really sorry. Thanks for watching."

Check the box that's closest to your reaction.

That felt raw and honest and kind of beautiful.

It was evil to force her out there like that, stammering through repeated takes, pestered by insects, subordinated to her man, who... what kind of man is he who won't stand up for himself but sends out his wife, a wife who's obviously fragile and in need of a warm embrace and masculine protection?

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Over oysters and soft cheeses — things she wouldn’t be able to eat while pregnant — she raised a glass to her 'tribe' and the awesome strength of women."

I'm reading "They Started I.V.F., Then Split. Now Who Gets Custody of the Embryos? For 47-year-old Erin Millender, this will likely be her last chance to become a mother. Her husband no longer wants to have a child with her" (NYT).

That's a gift link, because you've got to read the details. I had a strong opinion based on the headline, but then my sympathy shifted, more than once, as I read the article. The story — the details about this particular woman and man — gets really complicated. 

"The British wife of a death row prisoner screamed 'I love you' as her husband was executed in Texas last night...."

"James Broadnax, 37, protested his innocence in his dying moments, saying 'Texas got it wrong,' as his wife, Tiana, spread her arms against the execution chamber window and had to be helped out of the room. 'My husband suffered so bad from the lethal injection that he had a nose bleed and bruising on his neck,' said Tiana, 31, on TikTok. 'I’m going to expose everyone. The fight didn’t end here, it got worse. You killed Mr Broadnax, but you ain’t killed MRS BROADNAX.'"

From "James Broadnax’s British wife shouts ‘I love you’ as he is executed/Death row inmate who had been convicted of double murder died by lethal injection in Texas even after his cousin had confessed to being the killer" (London Times).

Tiana met Broadnax after finding his story on the website writeaprisoner.com and writing to him. She married him 2 weeks before his scheduled execution and never touched him. She did use an old T-shirt of his to experience his smell.

"Lauren Sánchez Bezos... and [Jeff] Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek..."

"... an exclusive private island in Miami.... They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads 'Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,' his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. 'He looks good, doesn’t he?' Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, 'He looks good.'"

For some reason the NYT has a long article about Lauren Sánchez Bezos. It's called, inanely, "Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? As half of an unfathomably powerful couple, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves."

I skimmed most of the article, but I'm blogging it because I can't imagine someone with all the money drinking coffee from a mug that says "Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again" and making her husband drink from a cup marked "HUNK." And, sorry, I just don't believe "they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for" — whether they allow themselves to repeat items or not. Supposedly, you wake up sexy, and then you do the 10-things list, which is more like a New Age religion substitute, and just not sexy at all, even if you're listing things like I'm thankful I'm so sexy, I'm thankful my husband is sexy, I'm thankful I wake up sexy, I'm thankful I know how to derive multiple thankfulness items from the concept that I am sexy, I'm thankful for the sexiness with which I woke up yesterday, I'm thankful for pickleball, I'm thankful my husband is the third richest man in the world, I'm thankful for the New York Times, I'm thankful for our unfathomable power, and I'm thankful to have reached #10 on our daily thankfulness list.

"I can’t think of one person in a relationship that I would want for myself. I’ve done it before and prefer focusing on me and my own needs."

Says a 33-year-old Toronto woman, quoted at the beginning of a NYT article called "Why Marriage, for So Many, Is Less Appealing Than Ever/From Gen Z to Gen X, a pause in the march to the altar, or a decision to skip it altogether, is becoming more common."

There's also this from Shani Silver, 43, host of "A Single Serving Podcast": "[A]s millennials, we got to the age where we were promised all these things would happen, and they never did.... [We] worked on ourselves throughout our lives to become the desirable partners we were told to become... But the men didn’t rise along with us. They’ve stagnated. There are imbalances in domestic labor responsibilities, emotional labor responsibilities, in running a household... If you marry a man you’re settling for, I don’t see a lot of relationship longevity."

"During my second pregnancy, rats began clawing their way up our sewage pipes. For months, we found them in our toilet bowl."

"When I began peeing in the bathtub, my husband insisted it was time to move to Providence. He had grown up there — and he’d be able to run his family business. 'The kids will have more space,' he said. 'And if we don’t like it, we can always come back.'... As soon as we purchased the 'beautiful Dutch Colonial,' I was seized with panic. My husband already knew about, and barely tolerated, my penchant for returning things. The most Thoreauvian person I know, he purchased almost nothing in the first place. We were all burdened by our possessions; like Thoreau, he believed we had become 'the tools of our tools.'... [W]hat was it that made me want to reverse our decision...?... It was because the neighborhood wasn’t walkable and I, a New-Orleanian-turned-New-Yorker, didn’t know how to drive well.... [T]he nearest playground or coffee shop a mile away...."

Writes Jackie Delamatre, in "I Had Buyer’s Remorse. It Almost Ended My Marriage. When you can’t agree on the right city to live in, home can be more hell than haven" (NYT).

The way to avoid buyer's remorse is not to buy anything new. But you can't be peeing in the bathtub because of the rats in the toilet.

"I've got nothing but respect for Don Lemon's husband."

"Do you see that man's face?"

"The most new York couple is: very sweet man that everyone loves with a wife way out of his league that he’s obsessed with."

That's the top rated comment on this TikTok about Rama Duwaji, the wife of Zohran Mamdani:

"I used to love feeling her body, her big body next to me in bed, the softness of her body — you know, the extra tummy and the extra booty, you know, next to me...."

"I miss that — that voluptuousness — being able to, you know, lean up next to her and feel her — for lack of a better word — draping over me. That's no longer an option. Now it's, it's cuddling and it's cuddling as tight and closely as we can — or as I can. And that's, that's the extent of the intimacy. I'm at a loss for why there's no physical intimacy. There hasn't been any...."

Said a man who's wife lost a lot of weight on Ozempic, in "Marriage and Sex in the Age of Ozempic: An Update," today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily." (Link goes to audio and transcript at Podscribe.)

"Looking out on a pool of less marriageable men, young women are turning their backs on the institution, bolstered by cultural messaging..."

"... from academia to Hollywood that remains critical of more conservative lifestyles. While the country rightfully spent recent decades boosting the educational and economic prospects of women, it deindustrialized, axing and outsourcing jobs in heavily male industries, and leaving men and women increasingly out of step with one another. Efforts to make the workforce and education system more friendly for girls have led to emphasizing literacy and verbal skills, a hemorrhaging of male teachers, and the decline of shop classes and vocational programs.... The trend line of women reporting a declining desire to marry may indeed reflect pessimism about their prospects rather than the institution itself — and not for ideological reasons so much as practical ones...."

Writes Emily Jashinsky, in "A marriage gap is growing — and it could spell disaster/The 'war on boys' could be resulting in some women shunning marriage" (WaPo).

Jashinsky, as a 7-year-old girl, was one of the kids portrayed in the Christina Hoff Sommers book “The War Against Boys,” which came out in 2000, and she also worked as an intern on the re-release of the book in 2012.

It seems that both men and women regard the members of the opposite sex as unworthy of marriage. 

"I think the doom is coming primarily from women in their 20s and early 30s who would historically be looking to marry or to have children."

"And the exhaustion and the sense of pessimism is coming from not seeing a path forward to those things in the structures that have been presented as the traditional ways to approach both. And I don’t fault them for that."

Said Glynnis MacNicol, in "Why Is Marriage Less Attractive Than Ever? The era of relationship discontent" (NYT).

"I think with online dating — even in my experience of it — the gamification leaves you with this sense of, you know, I don’t like this one; I’ll move on to the next one.... Previously, there was no comparison. The only avenue to happiness and satisfaction was through marriage and motherhood. Anyone outside of that was the lonely spinster aunt in the attic.... And then you add to that, in a country that does not provide child care or much support for women who do want to be parents, you hear a lot of stories about that path in life and how punishing it is. And in comparison to the alternative, when the alternative for the first time in history is starting to look far more enjoyable, I think contributes to this sense of, well, what is the point of this?"

I'm giving this my old and seldom-used "paradox of choice" tag.

"She called The New Yorker 'School' and treated it as such. She studied hard, reading back issues and writing notes to her boyfriends, a trio of married writers..."

"... she nicknamed Europe, Mr. Normalcy and Personality Plus, who all wrote back to her. This made her a less-than-attentive receptionist... Inevitably, she was fired. At home in her apartment, she began to write. At first she played amanuensis to [George W. S. Trow, the acerbic cultural critic best known for his essay 'Within the Context of No-Context'] in a pairing encouraged by Charles McGrath, then an editor at The New Yorker.... 'Yield to it,' Mr. McGrath told her, referring to Mr. Trow’s mind. 'Let it wash over you.' Together, she and Mr. Trow produced Talk of the Town pieces, the short... slice-of-life stories that helped define the magazine. He told her, 'Glimpse genuine joy, in a way, in the middle of world horror.' (She was on her way to interview a dog groomer.)... It was Tina Brown... who encouraged Ms. Rose to write about her romantic life. 'How I Became a Single Woman,' an elliptical coming-of-age tale, appeared in April 1996. (One of its more memorable lines: 'The truth is, it can be a form of actual day-to-day social torture to pretend not to notice the little dishes of poison that married people offer you all the time.') The piece caused a minor ruckus at School. Despite their nicknames, the married men were easily identifiable...."

From "Alison Rose, The New Yorker’s Femme Fatale, Dies at 81/She started as the magazine’s glamorous receptionist and became one of its more singular writers. In one of her last articles, she memorialized her time (and lovers) there" (NYT).

ADDED: Now, I'm reading "How I Became a Single Woman." Excerpt:

"Yes, she’s pregnant. Yes, it’s his. And yes — if you must know how they conceived — in Greenstone’s words, 'we birds’d and we bees’d.'"

From "He’s gay. She’s straight. They’re happily married./A new crop of couples are making content about their mixed-orientation marriages, divorced from sexual attraction but not love" (WaPo).

Spot the error in the People magazine headline: "Woody Allen's Ex-Wife, Mia Farrow, Shares Tribute to Diane Keaton Despite Complicated Past."

 Link to article.

"Charlie always believed that God's design for marriage and the family was absolutely amazing.... Over and over he would tell all these young people to come and find their future spouse..."

"... become wives and husbands and parents, because he wanted you all to experience what he had and still has. He wanted everyone to bring heaven into this earth through the love and joy that comes from raising a family.... My husband laid down his life for me, for our nation, for our children; he showed the ultimate and true covenantal love.... I honestly have no idea what any of this means — I know that God does, but I don't — but Charlie, baby, I know you do too. So does our Lord.... The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God's merciful love. But... if you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and in this world. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.... The movement my husband built will not die.... No one will ever forget my husband's name, and I will make sure of it. It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever...."

Said Erika Kirk last night.

"I think what you look like is a standard poodle and I love standard poodles."

A model for a perfect husband, revealed in "My cool cancer story/A year after losing my hair and self image to cancer, I put on my $5,000 prescription wig and look at myself and say, 'THERE she is.'" (WaPo video, free access).