I am going to assume you’ve already titrated your exposure to the Lindy West / polyamory discourse at whatever level you find most effective and desirable in your own life, so I won’t try to recap the entire thing. But after three weeks of critiques, profiles, reviews, takes, counter-takes, and nasty emails, there are a few questions that you might still have which I feel qualified to answer. So let’s just do that real quick. [Ed.: It will not be quick.]
Q: Is the book, Adult Braces, any good?
I haven’t read it, but a few people whose taste I trust say that it is good! This isn’t surprising, since Lindy West is a charming and funny writer and a sharp observer of detail, and most of the book consists of a cross-country van trip which is the perfect stage on which to showcase her talents. Tabs Senior Managing Editor for Graphics Alison Headley reports that it is “really good at describing the lived experience of larger bodied people and how that experience colors everything else that happens to you.” West’s writing is apparently still a bit infected with a 2010-era The Stranger vibe, but since she is the person who largely invented that voice, if she wants to keep using it who am I to say she shouldn’t. Overall, this isn’t an American Canto situation, which is sort of a relief. If we’re going to have weeks of discourse over a book, at least it should be a reasonably good book.
Q: Where can I get a little taste without reading it reading it, if you know what I mean?
Yeah I gotchu. @clapifyoulikeme is posting selected passages in a Bluesky thread.
Q: So the whole thing is about Lindy and her husband Aham, and Aham’s non-monogamy which Lindy sort of agreed to and sort of also didn’t want to think about, but then Aham started a serious relationship with Roya and all of them had to figure out how to live with all this, and whether they wanted to be together or, like, I don’t exactly know how to put it…
I feel like you’re summarizing the book in order to avoid asking a question. Please just ask it.
Q: Ok, fine. What do all these people look like?
Wow, that’s pretty shallow don’t you think?
Q: Fuck off dude, you wondered too.
I mean, I am writing these questions myself. Normally I would say that is none of our business but luckily (?) for us in 2022, Lindy, Aham, and Roya hard-launched their polycule with a twenty-eight minute YouTube video for StyleLikeU (sponsored by “DAME - a leading sexual wellness brand creating game-changing pleasure products for people with vulvas, and DIPSEA – an app where storytelling meets sexual wellness”) in which they perch on uncomfortable looking stools under freezing cold lighting in some kind of Eli Roth raw concrete interrogation room and answer questions from offscreen about their relationship while removing an article of clothing between each question in a manner that is less “sexy striptease” and more “the proctologist will be in as soon as you’re ready.”
[citation needed]
Q: Uh wait can I see the book’s cover again?
Q: This is a war crime.
That isn’t a question, but I agree.
Q: So critics generally say that Aham doesn’t come off great in the book. How are they handling the launch?
Not very well, I’m afraid! The best piece about the book that I’ve read is Scaachi Koul’s in Slate. Scaachi traveled all the way to Bainbridge Island, Washington1 to interview Lindy about the book and her life, and while Scaachi certainly knows how to be mean, this profile is not even slightly mean. In fact she openly cops to being a long-time Lindy West fan:
It feels as if I already know [Lindy’s dog] Barry: I read West’s new memoir, as well as her three other books, and I follow her on Instagram along with 132,000 other people, and on her Substack, Butt News, with 34,000 more. She has written about her dog and the rest of her family so much that it’s easy to feel as if they’re all people I know personally. A lot of West’s readers feel the same way.
Nevertheless after it was published, Scaachi revealed on Slate’s ICYMI podcast, she received an email from Aham which read:
This was such a shitty thing to do, Scaachi. You intentionally skewed this story to fit your own bitter narrative, you wasted my time and all of our time to write an article that was gonna be the same no matter what we said. You absolutely dehumanized me and intentionally diminished my personhood and career. Roya and I were on a “shared project” in Boston??? Or however you worded it??? I was performing 4 shows at the Paramount! and Roya is my producer. I am a person with a life and a great career and a complicated life and you boiled me down to a “cheater” who was on a school project making a diorama or some shit because you are mad about your life. You barely wrote about the book, you just wrote rage bait article specifically designed to direct hate toward me.
You are a shitty fucking person, you’re a bitter, untalented, mean-girl and you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. You fucking suck.
—Ahamefule J. Oluo-
Q: ????????
Yeah, even if the piece had been exactly as Aham describes it here (which it isn’t at all), this is not how grownups act. This is an unacceptable way to speak to anyone. But ok, Aham had a tantrum, we’ve all had bad moments right? We’ve all written things we wish we hadn’t. I certainly have, anyway. But when the ICYMI podcast producers reached out to Aham before the show, they received this in response:
Yes, my email was a typo, what I meant to say was: Free Palestine. Thank you for correcting the record.
For me, this is the sort of thing that leads me to a permanent conclusion about someone. “Free Palestine” deployed as a snide dismissal of a nasty email you wrote to a journalist is pretty far beyond the pale for me. I’m not ok with that. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Roya also responded to Scaachi, in a more classic media mean-girl idiom:
If I’m honest, it just feels like a Slate article. Which no one I know actually reads—and certainly wouldn’t pay to access, even for this…
Wow. 2013 called to say: “sick burn.” I guarantee everyone she knows read this story, though, and for whatever its worth this profile was what finally convinced me to get a Slate Plus subscription.
Q: Is there anything I probably haven’t already seen about this that you thought was good?
Yes! Artist and writer Torey Akers made a Tiktok that I think is very perceptive about the book and Lindy West’s overall place in the “2010s viral confessional essay industrial complex.” Akers says:
This is a book about money, this is a book about CPTSD, and this is a book about the limits of the neoliberal self-optimization narrative in the throes of active fascism.
Q: Ok. Anything else?
Nope!
Q: Should I check out what Helen Lewis had to say about it in The Atlantic?
No, never.
Today in Scientists: Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week. “Should we be worried?” asks The Guardian’s Rich Pelley in a rare anti-Betteridge. A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow 'Organ Sacks' to Replace Animal Testing, reports Wired’s Emily Mullin. At last, we’ve created ChickieNobs from the famous Margaret Atwood novel “Don’t Create ChickieNobs.” “If we can create a nonsentient, headless bodyoid for a human being, that will be a great source of organs.” Should we be worried? Scientists put 792 ants in a particle accelerator. They found out ants are all full of even littler stuff inside them. I already believed that, but it was just a superstition. Now we know it’s true. Should we be worried? Robert Hart in The Verge: No, ChatGPT did not cure a dog’s cancer. Apparently it’s relatively easy to make a genetically customized mRNA vaccine that does not cure cancer. Who knew! Becky Ferreira in 404: Why It's Good to Jack Off Frequently, According to Science. Should we be worried (complimentary)?
Today in Headlines: “Quadruple amputee and cornhole pro accused of fatally shooting man while driving” is the craziest headline since “Charlie Kirk's Mentor Jeff Webb, the Father of Modern Cheerleading, Dies in Freak Pickleball Accident,” which itself was the craziest headline since “Vaginal weightlifter sex coach charged with assaulting census taker who knocked at door.”
Today’s Song: AJJ, “No Justice, No Peace, No Hope”
Today’s Tabs was brought to you by the letter G, which moves in silence like lasagna. You know who loves lasagna, and hates Mondays? Thats right: President James A. Garfield. Thanks to Senior Managing Editor for Graphics Alison Headley for the only original piece of reporting in here, and thanks to you for reading. Aham please don’t email me about this.
If I saved you any time following the Adult Braces discourse and/or exposed you to information you wish I had not, why not become a paid subscriber, and help me create more ASME award nominated magazine writing?
1 Actually a solid hour plus from the Bainbridge Island ferry landing, way down a spit of land that’s more properly part of the Olympic Peninsula, if you were confused by that part of the Slate story.
