Many Such Takes: Natural Makeup, Abusive Cars, Baby Insult, and More

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

Welcome to Many Such Takes! For those unfamiliar, this is a free weekly segment (I also do lots of other stuff—you can typically expect 4-5 paid posts a week too!) For Many Such Takes, I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter discourse so you don’t have to.

Also, in case you’re thinking of upgrading to paid, you will get access to CHH CHAT, a chat channel on Substack full of men, women, and people of different political affiliations and sexual orientations who manage to discuss hot topics like sex, dating, parenting, or even politics without killing each other. Join us!!

Great Reads of the Week

• Normally, this section is called “great Substack reads of the week” but this week, I wanted to highlight a piece that isn’t on Substack, which is written by the most talented writer in the world—me. This week I was featured in GQ! Check out my article on what comes after “toxic masculinity” craze of the 2010s here.

• I also liked

  Darby Saxbe
  ’s work on COVID masks and psychology. This is not just another partisan mask article, because she’s very careful not to fall victim to the same team sports-esque behavior that often accompanies this topic. She also brings really cool data-driven points to the conversation.

• Freddie deBoer
  did a great piece attacking the nostalgia debate from the other side. Previously as a guest post on Slow Boring, I covered baseless nostalgia about the 90s, mostly focused on areas of life that are unambiguously better now. Freddie argues a bit of the opposite, in a really interesting way: even if things are generally better now, that’s not a foolproof rule. In particular, he focuses on technology and the fact that over-reliance on phones and other forms of modern technology are not, actually, a “conservative moral panic.”

• Lana Li
  wrote a really great piece on the pitfalls of aggressively filtering for a male partner based on his income, or incentivizing “pay pigs” with things like an Amazon wishlist in your Hinge profile (that’s allowed?? And people….contribute? What?) Anyway, fascinating/terrifying/shocking!

Natural Makeup

A long time ago, I made a comic (actually, one of my first comics) satirizing how oblivious men are to the amount of makeup required for a “no makeup look.” Voila:

Before anyone jumps in to remind me that they naturally have perfect skin and this doesn’t accurately represent them, GOOD FOR YOU, it’s a joke, calm down.

(Oh wait…I just posted this on Twitter and we have several women already doing this.)

Anyway, this week, a guy exemplified this comic by praising his wife (who is quite obviously in fall glam) for “not wearing much makeup.” It was in the context of defending a take where someone else said that hot women don’t need makeup, not just randomly praising his wife’s looks.

Context:

(Note: do not make fun of her/her appearance! She looks lovely and is clearly at an event where heavier makeup is warranted. Just…she’s clearly wearing makeup.)

The women arrive with the fact-check:

But unlike many of the other ratio-receivers on Twitter, this guy engaged in the comments…a lot. You know what? Good. None of this is that serious.

Abusive Cars

After her husband said that cars are anti-family, one of Twitter’s repeat main characters (a trad mom who lives in the woods and doesn’t have a social security number) offered her opinion: not only are cars bad, but they’re child abuse and car seats are even worse. Presenting, the liberal urbanite train enthusiast’s least likely ally:

Although she admitted her baby has left the house in a car several times, she doesn’t believe it’s ideal. In fact, children should not leave the house until *checks notes* age five:

What did she mean by this….curious….

Hell yeah, great mom argument fodder

Later, this discourse was referenced by

Ben Dreyfuss

when he acted as a Small Boob Ally (tm). We appreciate it, Ben!

Anyway, this discourse was great because we finally got a combined “you should have 10 kids” mom with a “you should avoid every source of potential danger to your kids” mom, and I was distinctly told that these people didn’t exist!

Baby Insult

Because everyone is a little insane after having a baby, I’m going to do this woman a favor and censor her name, but this tweet was just really funny so I had to include it. Anyway, this Halloween, a woman had her three-day-old baby with her while she handed out candy. Much to her dismay, the teen girls she saw were only mildly impressed with the baby and not fully fawning/swooning.

People immediately pushed back with the fact that actually, “awww so cute” is a perfectly reasonable response. The OP still seemed incredulous that the rest of the world wasn’t as excited about her baby as she was. And you know what? Silly as it is, I get it! After I had my first baby, I was convinced that my labor and delivery (which was very textbook and not at all unusual) was the most insane thing that has ever happened in the history of the world and that my baby was the cutest baby to ever live. To be fair, I still think my kids are the cutest, but my hormones have normalized and I no longer expect everyone else to think so.

The mom shamers come out because actually, having a 3-day old baby outdoors is DANGEROUS, in a TRIPLE PANDEMIC NO LESS:

Funny Tweets/Other Happenings

I don’t even know what they’re talking about anymore:

This guy who faked his own death but went a step too far and used AI to do it:

This “simple” way to understand polyamory:

In case you missed it…