Summer clams, the cost of having friends, and is it okay to be patriotic?
Jess Graves selects her top Substack reads
This week’s digest is guest edited by journalist, early blogger, and fashion and beauty writer , who publishes on Substack. Jess’s most popular posts include “Hot Girls in the Hamptons,” “I Resolve to... Care For and Repair,” and “The Rise of the Edfluencer, the Relatability Trap, and What Creators Actually Owe You.” If you enjoy Jess’s selections today, be sure to subscribe to her Substack.
Substack felt like home to me right away. As a kid, I would publish a newsletter for my family and send it out in the mail. As an adolescent, I ran an online zine on AOL. As a teenager, I wrote a LiveJournal my entire high school devoured like it was Deuxmoi. In college, I started my first real blog, which kicked off a long career in fashion publishing, both online and off.
When the industry pivoted to platforms prioritizing images over the written word, I lost my way for a while. I didn’t know where I belonged or what I had to say. I contributed to magazines occasionally, but the pitching process wore me down, and the ideas I got across the line were always watered down and underpaid. It wasn’t until I ran across a friend’s newsletter on Substack that something clicked again. I started my newsletter that night, and now, three years later, I’m amazed at the opportunities being on this platform continues to afford me. In April, I made my newsletter my full-time job.
I grew up in the American South and now call New York City home. To me, there’s nothing quite like an East Coast summer. The air gets so heavy that the sweat won’t evaporate off your skin. The hydrangea bushes explode with blooms, and it becomes perfectly acceptable to have chicken salad for lunch and dinner. More rosé? Yeah, sure. Every white banister gets dressed in bunting, and the fireflies come out at sunset to flicker and put on a show.
I think of childhood summers spent strapped into a bright orange life jacket on my uncle’s fishing boat. I lived my life streaked in Water Babies sunscreen, scooping fat little periwinkles out of the drippy Florida sand and screaming with delight as seagulls swooped in to steal bits of my sandwich. That’s the magic of this time of year: no matter how old and weary we’ve grown, summer always promises a carefree undercurrent of youth. (If you don’t believe me, try plowing down Montauk Highway in a top-down Jeep; it will knock 10 years off your spirit faster than any neurotoxin.)
But summer isn’t perfect. With it comes a litany of annual challenges: affording vacations, body issues triggered by swimwear, tricky summer houseguests, and the weird vibes around the Fourth of July these days.
When I put together this edit for Substack Reads, I wanted to pull in great work in the spirit of the season, lumps and all. I hope you save this to read from your favorite stoop, park, rooftop, beach chair, or sun porch. Like me, these writers found a new home on Substack. In a world that feels so very uncertain, being able to depend on something is important—and summer will always roll around to be our muse.
DESIGN
“Ali LaBelle is a creative director and the genius behind Pasta Girlfriend, a pasta appreciation project that hosts gorgeous events in the name of gluten. Her newsletter, À La Carte, is a visual calling card and a peek into her aesthetically pleasing way of seeing the world. She shares beautiful mood boards, charming essays and missives, and clever product roundups around themes like sailing and aperitivo. She’s a gifted world-builder and created a bit of a Wonderland with her newsletter. I fall down the rabbit hole whenever I open her emails.”
Summer A to Z
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M — Martinis. Really, really cold ones.
N — Not nautical, but not not nautical. I have an odd fixation with sailing culture, even though I’ve not once been on a sailboat and I don’t necessarily plan on getting into the world of boating anytime soon. But this girl loves a half-zip sweatshirt and a Breton stripe and that is just the truth.
O — The ocean. Do I want to go in it? No, not really. Do I want to drink a frozen drink from a sunny deck that looks out over it? Absolutely.
P – Poplin, head to toe.
PERSONAL FINANCE
“Summer is a very social time. It can seem like everyone is in Europe or on some fabulous rooftop guzzling spritzes. But having a social life is expensive, and sometimes our friends aren’t operating on the same financial plane. Maybe they want to go to Mallorca and your budget is more Milwaukee. It can be a tough thing to navigate without hurting the integrity of the friendship. I love Linsdey Stanberry’s thoughts on how to do exactly that. In fact, her entire newsletter is wonderful—she tackles the often uncomfortable topic of money in a way that feels like you can do it too.”
The cost of having friends
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As with any kind of personal relationship, money can make things super weird! It can bring up bad feelings of jealousy or resentment. You might find yourself trying to keep up with your better-paid friends and spending money you simply don’t have. Or, on the flip side, you might find yourself trying to hide your success to avoid making your friends feel bad.
CULTURE
“Writer Bonnie Morrison is kind of a legend in my industry, and her Substack is just as substantive and cool as you’d expect. In it, she explores the true authority of the internet’s armchair experts and thinkiest think pieces, asking ‘Is it okay…’ to internalize the noise when content erosion is so fraught. Here, she takes the temperature of the American ‘brand’ and why we might feel some kind of way about patriotism these days.”
Is it okay to be patriotic?
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But then there’s the Fourth of July, where you kind of can’t get away from the Big U.S. Energy no matter what you do; whether you’re a stan or a hater, pro or con. I don’t know about you, but for the last few days, every time I consulted my feed, I found myself wondering if a post featuring Robert Mapplethorpe’s “American Flag” was meant to be sentimental or ironic, or if the person chronicling their fabulous time in a place with an Old Glory–bedizened Main Street is ignorant or smug. Is it really appropriate for activist types to pose in front of the Stars and Stripes?, I asked aloud (to no one), or maybe a sign of progress that some people are letting themselves enjoy a red-and-blue-fruit-adorned cheesecake without worrying about causing offense?
FOOD
“I had the pleasure of meeting Colu Henry at a New York Substack meetup, and we struck up a friendship over a common love of cooking and entertaining. Her newsletter is a gold mine of great recipes in her signature ‘back pocket, easy-fancy’ style: elegant but simple. Think: Alison Roman’s from-the-hip vibe married with Ina Garten’s elevated but inviting style. I cook from this newsletter often. If you want to go deeper, she also has two cookbooks I give as gifts and recommend constantly.”
Two summery recipes for clams
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This recipe was something my Nonni created, and I’m not sure what inspired her to add the tuna in addition to the clams, but it’s absolutely wonderful. Growing up, we ate it at least once a week. Trust me on this one.
BEAUTY
“Sometimes I worry that information consumption has completely abandoned nuance. Have we forgotten that we can disagree with one another respectfully? Jessica DeFino’s newsletter always challenges my thinking about the beauty industry, and while I don’t always agree with what she has to say, I think she’s an incredible writer with a whip-smart point of view. Just a reminder that if you don’t want to be trapped in an algorithmic k-hole echo chamber of confirmation bias, Substack is here to surface the voices of dissent and disruption who do so with immense responsibility. Jessica is one of those. Here, she discusses where we’re at with body hair, an especially timely topic during swimwear season.”
The state of the bush
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…I came of age in the early 2000s: the era of low-rise jeans, whale-tail thongs, and belly shirts. Girls were going wild, Carrie Bradshaw was getting a Brazilian wax, and internet porn was at our Hard Candy-painted fingertips. Yet for all those mons pubis sightings, the only female pubes I saw as a young teen—not counting a cartoon in The Care & Keeping of You, that classic “body book for girls”—were my own.
How could I not internalize the idea that hair down there was unacceptable, unattractive, unsexy? How could I blame boys for feeling the same? Hairlessness had become the norm. I soon traded my burgeoning bush for a razor-burned bikini line dotted with spots of dried blood and ingrown hairs. Ah, yes. Much sexier.
TRAVEL
“Summer is travel season! Window Seat is an info-dense luxury-travel newsletter packed with intel on far-flung locales from a woman actually traveling them. On an internet where travel planning can feel like dreadful homework, I love the way Tori Simokov has editorialized the topic and made it fun to consume. I loved this letter on travel souvenirs and how to collect them thoughtfully.”
The art of the travel souvenir
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I’m very much a subscriber to Little Treat culture, which manifests as me searching for treasures to take home every time I travel. I deeply appreciate having something tangible to transport me straight back to a time and place, a moment, a memory. These things can be as small as a pad of stationary from a hotel I finally got to stay at after having it on my vision board for years. Or a hand-drawn postcard from a tiny, family-run shop in Kyoto’s Gion district. Or an ink pen we used to sign the check at the romantic restaurant from my wedding night dinner. I adorn my home with these innocuous objects as a way to signal who I am, what I care about, and where I’ve been.
FASHION
“My friend Laurel Pantin is a seasoned fashion journalist, and her Substack reflects that experienced point of view but, even better, her vulnerability and goofy sense of humor. Her newsletter is always the one I recommend when someone asks me, ‘If I like your newsletter, whose else would I like?’ She does an ongoing series called ‘Saturday Snack’ that’s essentially a shopping roundup around a certain theme. And while this sort of market piece is a pretty standard content vertical for everyone on Fashion Substack, Laurel’s always feels especially refreshing, well-considered, and funny.”
Travel picks: things that multitask
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It can’t all be serious multitasking basics all the time. Sometimes you want something kind of stupid! Like a pair of rhinestone sunglasses, a Pucci scrunchie, or a Bottega rubber belt. You know? Variety! The spice of life.
PODCAST
“Summer is full of etiquette conundrums, and I can think of no better authority on the matter than the descendants of Emily Post herself. I really appreciate the earnest, considerate way the authors approach modern manners. In this podcast, they talk about being a good houseguest, a position you may find yourself in if you have friends at the beach. Another good post about ‘vacation house dibs’ here as well.”
Big friendship guests
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and in
Notes from our guest editor
Inspired by the writers featured in Substack Reads? Writing on your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and this week’s edition was curated by Jess Graves, who writes The Love List on Substack. Substack Reads is edited and produced from Substack’s U.K. outpost by .
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
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Substack needs to stop emailing me stuff I don’t care about…
Jess! Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm so glad the newsletter resonates with you!