Many Such Takes: Mitch McConnell, Jack Antonoff, Lena Dunham, and More
The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free
Welcome to Many Such Takes, my occasional (monthly? bimonthly?) roundup of Internet drama, funny tweets, and current events too obscure (and in some cases, stupid) to put on the news.
This week I’m trying something a bit new. Usually, MST is very image-heavy, which could make it harder for some readers to experience if they are used to listening to my articles on audio. This time, I’m going to include more text/commentary and fewer images, with links to where topics originated so you can catch up on Twitter (or elsewhere) if need be.
Onwards!
Surveys to Take
This week, I’d like you to fill out my super short anonymous sex survey mostly focused on hypotheticals (no experience required.)
In Case You Missed It…
Picky eating was in the discourse this week (because we took a break from age gaps, I suppose) and it spurred me to try and investigate what the hell “picky eating” looked like before the modern era. Was picky eating even a thing before kids’ snack foods? What about feeding disorders? And how did parents handle these obstacles, if in fact they did exist? I get into all of that and more in a more heavily-researched article, which you can read here. For another similar article that asks a weird question and answers it with tons of extremely bizarre research, check out my free article on what happens to male gorillas who can’t get any pussy.
[FREE] The Incel Gorillas
![[FREE] The Incel Gorillas](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1699089959237-b1d174387e57?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw5fHxnb3JpbGxhfGVufDB8fHx8MTc1ODY4MDgxNHww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)
This article used to be paid (like most of my 5/weekly articles) but per tradition, it’s the weekend, so I will be removing the paywall. Enjoy, and consider becoming a free or paid subscriber while you’re at it!
What Happened to Picky Eaters in Olden Times?
My brother was a severe picky eater, for his entire childhood. Every day, my parents would provide his safe foods for him—cereal for breakfast, often a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and either pizza or unseasoned baked chicken breast and steamed broccoli for dinner. I can still vividly recall my mother fashioning a mini baking sheet out of aluminum foil for his nightly bone-dry chicken, a defeated look on her face. And my first thought was,
Baby Registries
Last time you all read MST, one topic was wedding registries and why we should abstain from purchasing gifts for couples who got married later in life since they didn’t need anything new—with one person saying she would never buy a wedding gift for a couple that already owned an expensive espresso machine. Well, this wek, not much has changed, except replace “wedding” with “baby.”
One Twitter user issued her own hot take on baby registries: she did not want to purchase baby gifts for couples who had “waited too long” to have children, giving the apparently real-life example of some forty-year-old friends of hers who put a $3,000 baby stroller on their registry despite already having good jobs. She contrasted this with a (presumably fictional) couple who were younger and needed to pay for fertility treatments. When one person said that you don’t know everyone’s fertility story, OP responded that she actually knew the exact month that the forty-year-old woman removed her IUD.
Other Twitter users joined the conversation by, essentially, asking why these people are friends at all.
While I agree that nobody “needs” a $3,000 stroller, let alone someone who already has the means to buy a nice stroller for themselves, I agree with ashley ray (per usual) on the topic:
Lena Dunham: Why Do Women Like Her?
I actually have quite an issue with the title alone, because as far as I can tell, lots of women still don’t like Lena Duham, but I’ll be honest and concede that Lena Dunham is having a moment right now. Not to make it all about me, but it kind of feels like how I went from being a social pariah in the seventh grade to, miraculously, becoming popular my last week of eighth grade right before I switched schools thanks to my solo performance in the spring chorus. Okay, fine, I’ve made it all about me, but I think Lena Dunham would understand.
Her newest memoir Famesick has been wildly successful, and despite spending a great deal of the 2010s repeatdly apologizing for missteps at the hands of the Internet mob, she appears to have come into her own and turned some (but not all) haters into fans. I’ll admit, as someone who did not have strong opinions about Lena Dunham (and mostly still doesn’t) I didn’t expect that I’d ever see her as a fashion icon, and yet…I kind of love this look.
But alas, not everyone appreciates her appeal. A Twitter user this week asked why women like her so much especially given that she is “ugly, fat and tattooed.” When a top comment replied that women like her because she’s talented, OP responded, “I love talented women, but not when they're all of the above mentioned things.”
Obviously, some trolling is at play here, but this embodies a phenomenon that’s bothered me for a while.
When we talk about “beauty standards” we often talk about a particularly unattainable ideal for dating—and this doesn’t make much sense to me, because refusing to date people based on their physical appearance is actually perfectly valid, and women do it all the time too. A man having particular dating standards—shallow as they may be—is his prerogative.
The problem, as I see it, are statements like the idea that Lena Dunham’s talent is obliterated by her fatness, or more generally, that women who exist in the public eye must be attractive to justify that existence, even if their work has nothing to do with their looks. It’s not a double standard for men to refuse to date fat women (because, of course, many women feel the same way about fat men, or short men, or whatever) but it is a double standard for men to tolerate or even enjoy fat (other otherwise not conventionally attractive) men in the public eye—actors, directors, writers, podcasters, etc—but demand that any woman in those positions must be hot.
But speaking of not-hot men…
Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley
This week was a real treat for those who just read Famesick—not only did we get some Lena Dunham discourse, but her ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff, who was featured heavily in the book, just announced a divorce from his wife Margaret Qualley—a divorce which, according to The NY Post, was initiated by Qualley.
I never had a particularly strong stake in this relationship, but after Antonoff was portrayed unflatteringly in Famesick, it seems that people are eager to celebrate the demise of his marriage in a way that feels slightly too parasocial, specifically zooming on on inappropriate looksmatching between him and his ex-wife and the rumors that he cheated on Lena Dunham with singer Lorde when she was of questionable age (presumably over the age of consent, but barely- time to ring in some new age gap discourse, baby!)
But by far, people seemed the most invested in making fun of him for not being hot enough for his wife—a funny juxtaposition, given that Lena Dunham wrote that she felt he was out of her league. But apparently he’s pulled baddies before, and dated Scarlett Johansson in high school? How the hell do you people know this shit?
The looksmatching issue still seems to be plaguing the Internet, as apparently a previous relationship with Lena Dunham makes it impossible to “handle” Margaret Qualley.
And this is how I discover that Adam Driver “hasn’t been seen in weeks”
And speaking of people who haven’t been seen in weeks….
Where in the World is Mitch McConnell?
Is Mitch McConnell dead? Well, it’s complicated. He’s, arguably, more dead than Adam Driver (who is probably not dead) but less dead than Lena Dunham, who is definitely not dead.
He was admitted to a hospital on June 14 and hasn’t been seen since, stemming from what appears to be an incident at his home when he became unconscious. Some folks think he’s dead because 911 records show that CPR was administered, other people think he’s alive because it would be hard to conceal a death for this long.
If I absolutely had to guess, I would venture that he’s not dead, but on some kind of life support, which is a theory supported both by the CPR news and the fact that nobody’s heard anything from him or his team. And others have speculated that we’re in the middle of a Weekend at Bernie’s situation.
It also seems that several Republican senators are tweeting the same potentially fake copy-paste story about speaking with Mitch McConnell over the phone. Yeah, sure, I spoke to “Mitch McConnell”—he goes to another school in Canada and he’s an Abercrombie model!
Naturally, this became a new copypasta:
Betting markets have approximately 56% odds that he “steps down” from the Senate before his term ends in January 2027, although they’ve been careful to include “other reasons” alongside formal resignation.
Part of a data partnership with Polymarket
Funny Tweets/Other Happenings
This tweet actually made me guffaw out loud:
Just when you thought Biden saying there were “at least three” genders was his all-time best moment, an old video has resurfaced of him jovially blaming Elton John for government spending on HIV.
Donald Trump is on Truth Social posting photographs of walls:
I'm pretty sure there was a second Republican who had a "20 minute talk" with McConnell, though his name escapes me, but I think you got got by the Jack Kimble account. It's a parody account (there is no 54th district in CA, and I'm gonna say I doubt the guy sponsored Poe's Law.)
I love Lena because she just feels like a messy blogger type girlie who got the big break the other blogger type girlies didn't get. (I hate saying "girlie" but who am I to argue with the current lingo?) I've read so much stuff that's like "why does she think everyone needs to know so much about her life?" and like duh, that's what the majority of Substack is! We're all oversharing on the internet, it's kind of a thing?
The Jack Antonoff looks thing is a bit mean. However, I must be on a different algo to you, because I've seen/heard lots of people saying how attractive he is, which I am very confused by. To me he looks like Buster from Arrested Development. Not hideous by any stretch, but not a man I'd describe as "very attractive," either.
Also, he looks so different with all that hair in the ScarJo pics. That's a different man, I'm sure of it. (Would love to hear from Scarlett on how he was when she dated him!)