Extracurriculars: Words

Oh, hello, fancy running into you here.

My name’s Leah. I’m a full-time human, writer, and florist in Brooklyn, New York.

Passions include: big ideas, tiny details, and really, really good olive oil.

1. What’s in store? - 2026

What's in Store?

An essay about malls and everything else you’re feeling.

An ice rink where the Sears was

I recently heard someone say that nothing ordinary can ever hold what you're feeling.

It's been a weird few days, weeks, months, even. And in all of this, I'm finding myself drawn toward the mall, the way you find yourself driving past your high school during a short trip home. Something unresolved pulling you back to where you left it.

My hometown mall has an ice rink now. It used to be a JCPenney, or maybe a Sears; I can't remember which one. One of those stores where you could buy a washing machine with a lifetime warranty and it meant something. That this thing would live forever and ever, and so would the store that sold it to you. You were building something that had a future attached to it.

The ice rink is fine, I suppose. I have feedback on their branding, but that's just because I grew up and moved to New York. My hometown people, my family, seem to be enjoying it just fine. But I think about standing there in the atrium and I feel the specific wrongness of a place becoming a different version of itself.

This is an essay about malls. That's what I'm telling us both.

A short man from Vienna

The mall was invented by a guy named Victor Gruen, a short man from Vienna. He came to the United States right before World War II, spent his first few years here as part of a theatrical group, then pivoted to designing stores. Make of that what you will.

The story goes that he was on a layover in Detroit when he looked around and thought the city seemed messy. Personally, I think a city isn't a city if it isn't a little frazzled. But Gruen wanted order and ease, so he got to pondering. What he arrived at was something genuinely radical for the time: a two-story, air-conditioned, inward-facing shopping center rooted at its center by a light-filled square with fountains, trees, and a fishpond. The Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. I have no proof, but justice for those fish.

Here's the part worth holding onto: Gruen didn't want a shopping mall. He wanted a town square, something closer to the covered bazaars of the Middle East and the public markets of Europe — a place where people would run into each other, feel like part of something. The shopping was supposed to be secondary. A close second, but a second nonetheless.

Investors, however, had a different vision.

Malls were feeding America's new suburban population and turning out huge sums of sweet USD, and investors hoping to pull out as much as possible through short-term depreciation weren't particularly interested in fishponds. They were interested in anchor stores and incredibly sexy leasable square footage. The vision and the execution separated almost immediately, and Gruen spent much of the rest of his life publicly frustrated by what his idea had become. He called it, at one point, a "bastard child."

The first betrayal happened before most of us were born. True of many things.

Everything you need is here, and you can afford it

The first shopping mall opened in 1956. I'm not sure what anyone's supposed to do with that information other than know it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was bombed that year. Grace Kelly got married. My parents were, I'd have to check, probably not born yet.

What followed was a wave. Then another wave. By 1975, there were 30,000 malls in America, accounting for more than half of all retail dollars spent. The number of malls grew more than twice as fast as the population between 1970 and 2015. Consider that sort of an Orange Julius gold rush.

For a while — genuinely, actually, for a while — it worked.

The mall became the town square Gruen had imagined, even if by accident. It was where you went after school and on weekends and the Saturdays leading up to Christmas. It was where the nail salon was, and the portrait studio, and the food court where you could secure a Panda Express and a Cinnabon and the best stomachache of your life all in one go. (I'd like to take this moment to say RIP to my retainer, accidentally thrown away via food tray at Madison, Wisconsin's West Towne Mall.)

There’s something I keep turning over: in my memory, the mall was affordable. The stores were for families, old people with enthusiastic elbows, and teens sniffing lotion at Bath & Body Works. The mall was the great democratizer of aspiration. You didn't have to be rich to walk through it and feel like the world was set up right in front of you.

I've been trying to figure out if that was true or if I was just a child.

The honest answer is probably both. But the feeling was real because the stores were designed for middle America's income bracket. You could want one thing — really want it, search for it, find it — and that desire had a shape to it. A beginning and an end. The payoff meant something because the wanting had taken time. The mall taught you how to want in a way that felt completable.

That's not a small thing. That's, um, sort of everything.

The morning after

To get a washing machine with a lifetime warranty.

I'm fixated on this. The warranty's promise, extended equally to everyone who walked through the door, that this thing would be there for you. That your life was stable enough to need it there for you. That there would be a home to put it in and mornings to wake up in that home and laundry to do because you lived there, continuously, in a life that held.

The mall at its height was selling that feeling as much as it was selling eyebrow threading next to Auntie Anne's. Come in, everything you need is here, and you can afford it. The future is available to you today, and you can take it home tonight.

Childhood at the mall was the feeling that the world was legible. That it had been arranged, at least in part, with your family in mind. That stability wasn't something you had to locate and fight for alone; it was ambient and baked into the architecture. You walked in through the anchor store, and the whole place said: someone built this for you.

The middle class and the mall rose together. Neither knew what was coming. Duh-Duh-Duhhhhhnnnnn.

More than could reasonably be justified

The commercial real estate industry built too many malls. More than could be justified by population growth, retail sales, or any economic indicator that a reasonable person would consult. They cannibalized each other, spreading across suburbia like a franchise of a rapidly thinning dream.

In 2007, one year before the Great Recession, no new malls were built in America for the first time in fifty years. Which means the industry already knew, on some level, before the crash made it undeniable.

The Great Recession — a name I remain fascinated by, as though recessions come in quality tiers — did what recessions do: it sorted people. The middle class, squeezed between declining real wages and rising costs, stopped shopping at Macy's and went to Target. Stopped going to Sears and went to Costco. The anchor stores that upheld the whole structure began declaring bankruptcy and vacancies spread like you wouldn’t believe (or, you probably do, because you probably lived it).

Real estate experts have a clinical vocabulary for this. A mall with 10–20% vacancy is in trouble. Twenty to forty percent is unhealthy. Forty percent or more is dying. By 2014, nearly 3% of all American malls were considered dying. The fundamental problem, experts said, was gluttony. An over-retailed nation that had simply built more shopping than the country could sustain.

Some economists will tell you the retail apocalypse — yeah, real term alert — is a market correction more than anything, and that the phrase is misleading. These economists are technically not wrong. I just don't particularly want to hang out with them in my free time.

The malls that shuttered had been the largest taxpayer in most of the municipalities where they sat. When they closed, the tax revenue closed with them. The jobs closed. The nail salon closed. The weird Spencer's Gifts that was funny as a teenager and stressful as an adult closed. The community that had organized itself around having somewhere to go found itself without one.

We were all trapped inside stacking our Peloton classes

Yeah, we have to talk about COVID-19. Sorry!

Malls closed because we were all inside trying to remember how to hold conversations and discovering, with some relief and some horror, that we could have everything delivered. The e-commerce acceleration was so inevitable it barely qualifies as a plot twist. What it did was finish something that was already in the process of dying.

At this point, it was more surprising when a mall was open than when it had become a ghost town.

Shopping malls had been providing billions in local tax revenue annually, typically the single largest taxpayer in their municipalities. These were not abstract losses. In a very literal fiscal sense, malls had kept the lights on in certain communities. When the mall went, something structural went with it. And the stores inside that were too small to survive the overhead of a mall that no longer had foot traffic went too.

Private shopping rooms

Here’s what the mall became instead.

Elite malls, situated in high-income areas, hosting runway brands. Experiential malls with proper restaurants and IMAX and laser tag, trying to give you a reason to make the trip that has nothing to do with needing something. Planet Fitness where the anchor stores used to be, which is either genius or horrific; I haven’t decided yet. And luxury brands — expanding their footprints, curating personalized experiences, building special rooms for people who want to shop privately.

Why go to a mall to shop privately? The whole point of the mall was that it was public.

The luxury pivot is more of a replacement than a natural evolution, in my opinion. You know, since you asked. It’s a different social contract dressed up in the same building. “Today, we’re hoping to offer an emotional connection,” someone making $20/hour says with bloodshot eyes. Some board told some marketing team told some retail team that emotional connection is a service and not something that the mall wasn’t always, first and finally, about.

Is that why malls are so expensive now? Partly. It's because the stores that were affordable left or died, often in that order. Because lower foot traffic means remaining retailers raise prices to maintain profits on fewer customers. Because higher operating costs, inflation, and a shift toward luxury all get passed to whoever still walks through the door. The mid-range stores are gone. The middle class that shopped there has been squeezed into a different income bracket entirely. What's left is the high end and the parking lot.

The people who can afford today's mall were never the mall's original audience.

I keep turning over a question I can't fully answer: were things actually more affordable then, or did I just not yet know what things cost? I think the answer is yes, both — and also that it's not really about the prices. It's about who the place was built for. The mall used to feel like an extension of the family. It doesn't say that anymore. It says something conditional now, to a different kind of person.

The affordable stores left, and somehow the mall got worse and more expensive at the same time. That's just what happens when something stops being for you.

Or is that a cult

There's another version of this story.

A dead mall is an enormous piece of land, usually in a suburban area, usually with solid road access, surrounded by the kind of sprawl that makes people feel like they're always driving and never quite arriving. Some people look at that land and see an opportunity that has nothing to do with retail.

What would happen if we tore it down and built something else? Dense, walkable, mixed-use — housing and retail and employment all connected, so that you didn't need a car to get to work or the grocery store or your neighbor. Something that looked, loosely, like a town where people knew each other.

"The big design and redevelopment project of the next fifty years," said Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture and urban design at Georgia Tech, in 2010, "is going to be retrofitting suburbia."

The dead malls aren't only a retail problem. They're a design problem, a community problem, an American-individualism-cosplaying-as-freedom problem. Shopping centers in much of Europe and Asia are largely thriving, which raises a question we don't love to sit with. Robert Putnam spent a career documenting the collapse of American civic life, the way we stopped joining things, showing up for each other’s stuff, being present in shared spaces, yada yada. Whether the mall was a symptom of that unraveling or one of the last places holding it off is genuinely hard to say.

Maybe the question isn't whether we can save the mall. Maybe it's whether we're willing to admit what we actually wanted from it all along.

I find, I’ve found, I’m working on it

I find myself living in an apartment that drains my bank account. Where the ceiling falls down and a cursed ex-lover kicks a hole in the wall for a stranger to patch up.

I find myself buying five coffee tables in three months, trying to sort out which one feels like home to me now.

I find, I've found, I'm working on it.

The mall and I are, it turns out, in the same position. Both of us are trying to figure out what we're supposed to be now. Hollowed out in certain places, with a Planet Fitness where something else should probably be.

I went back to the mall last time I was home. Through the back entrance, the one I've always used, the one that drops you directly into the food court. And the food court was exactly the same. I don't know how to explain what that does to a person — to find something that has held its shape while everything around it hasn't. Same smell. Same light. I didn't go near the ice rink. I forgot it existed.

I went to the alterations lady. She always confuses me with my mom, but she remembers nonetheless. Her work is impeccable, and so is my mom.

Nothing ordinary can hold what you're feeling. I do believe that to be true. But I also believe that sometimes you need somewhere to go. Somewhere that says, without much hoopla, that you can stay as long as you need.

I'm worried, by the way. But that's not meant for this.

This was about malls, and that's the way it is.

Good night, Walter Cronkite.

Sources:

https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2021/10/12/the-great-american-shopping-mall-past-present-and-future/https://www.icsc.com/https://www.icsc.com/uploads/about/shopping-in-the-age-of-ai-redefining-stores-for-a-new-era_FINAL.pdf https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1993/05/271-5/132641481.pdf https://www.worldfinance.com/markets/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-us-mall https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-02-25-2025/card/retailpocalypse-now-read-our-new-look-markets-a-m-newsletter-4tH3t6ZFXheL9H54EVNl https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/death-and-rebirth-american-mall-180953444/https://www.modernretail.co/operations/the-secrets-of-americas-thriving-luxury-malls-whats-working-to-attract-high-end-brands-and-high-net-worth-shoppers/https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2022/q3_economic_history https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2020/11/04/turning-dead-malls-into-community-assets/

2. Big Olive Oil - 2023

BIG OLIVE OIL

Hoarding aesthetically pleasing cookbooks does not a chef make. This becomes painfully true in the confines of my not-so-confidential kitchen where I’ve gone viral for being unable to make a waffle. So when, bored out of my mind on a Tuesday, I asked my friend for an essay topic and she said, “olive oil!” I felt the tectonic plates of my life were about to shift. Is that dramatic? Yes. So is the world of Big Olive Oil.

Chat credit: Maral Chouljian Moldow

MEET ME UNDER THE OLIVE TREE
Once upon a time, in a land quite literally here and now, because it's Earth and I am looking at two bottles in front of me, olive oil existed. Predictably extracted from the fruit of the olive tree (Olea europaea, if you're feeling fancy), olive oil is a staple in Mediterranean cuisine, a topic of conversation regarding health benefits, a symbol of resilience and peace for you AP Literature freaks, and a tool widely used in various cooking styles.

SET IN STONE (FRUIT)
Olive oil comes in different grades depending on quality and production, with the two most common types being virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil. The former allows for the use of heat or chemicals during the pressing of olives, resulting in slightly higher acidity levels and a milder flavor. This is what you're using for sautéing, roasting, frying, and baking. (Canola oil, appreciated for its high smoke point, serves as more of a general-purpose cooking oil and is irrelevant to our discussion in this essay. We wish it the best.) The latter, that scrumptious extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), maintains its purity by rejecting heat or chemicals. EVOO is renowned for its rich flavor, green color, and low acidity. Now, we're talking salad drizzles, bread dips, and low-heat cooking to capture all the complex goodness in its most natural—and expensive—form. (Note: While it's possible to make extra virgin olive oil at home, that's not the focus of our discussion here.)

Chat credit: Elsa Flike

The power of pure extra virgin olive oil is tough to overstate. Rife with polyphenols (antioxidants that destroy free radicals and are believed to prevent all kinds of cancers), oleocanthal (thought to prevent Alzheimer’s), and other anti-inflammatory compounds, I would not be surprised if Gwyneth Paltrow herself bathes in EVOO.

QUALITY CONTROL WITH A SIDE OF CRIME
The earliest written mention of olive oil, on cuneiform tablets at Ebla in the 24th century B.C., describes teams of inspectors touring olive mills doing some quality control on behalf of the king. Fast forward to the Romans, who established an international trade in olive oil, allowing certain emperors to rise to power on olive oil wealth. With this new way to earn unfathomable amounts of currency, assurance and control was everything. Every shipment of olive oil was paired with handwritten notes in black or red ink that recorded all kinds of information: the locality where the oil was produced, the name of the producer, the weight and quality of the oil when the amphora was sealed, the name of the merchant who imported it, the name of the imperial functionary who confirmed this information when the amphora was reopened at its destination in Rome, and so on. These meticulous records were intended to prevent the siphoning off of oil en route, or the substitution of an inferior product. And reader, they were onto something with that last point.

In the classic historical leap we all take from Roman times to the 1980’s, let’s chat about the Spanish toxic oil syndrome of 1981 when non-edible rapeseed oil was sold as olive oil. It had an additive in it called aniline, a severe neurotoxin. This consumption caused one of the worst food catastrophes and food poisoning events in world history, killing 1,200 almost instantly, sending 25,000 to the hospital with neurological damage, and causing a severe musculoskeletal condition in around 20,000. The product’s impact is still being monitored today.

One would assume that such a cataclysmic event would spark new industry practices. However, that assumption would be incorrect. Let's delve into some fraud. In 2015, Italy's anti-fraud police squad examined whether seven well-known olive oil brands—Carapelli, Bertolli, Santa Sabina, Coricelli, Sasso, Primadonna, and Antica Badia—had been selling lower-quality virgin olive oil as 'extra virgin' olive oil, often with a 30-40% price increase. In a predictably conventional response, the allegations were rejected, with the argument that the oil had undergone careful analysis by both internal and external laboratories. In response to these doubts, Italian agriculture and customs initiated their own testing, revealing that nine out of every 20 bottles these producers sold in the country or exported were indeed tainted.

Between September 2016 to December 2019, research gathered from the Joint Research Center (JRC), the internal scientific service of the European Commission, and several food fraud databases, such as the E.U.’s RASFF system, and surveys to professionals and other members of the olive oil sector, recorded 32 cases of fraud with overlapping offenses in the global olive oil industry, with 20 of those cases in Europe: 16 cases involving the substitution of olive oil with other oils, 11 cases concerned with mislabeling olive oils, 4 cases involving false use of a geographical indicator, 5 cases concerning the distribution of counterfeit products, 6 related to the dilution of olive oils with other oils or inferior grades, and 1 case of theft. One EU anti-fraud investigator said olive oil fraud is “comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” and I think that is hilarious.

A personal favorite fraudette, which is what I will be calling fleeting moments of fraud from now until forever, sets us in Larissa, Greece, located in the northern province of Thessaly, in a workshop with a fleet of luxury vehicles a few years ago. Here, police arrested seven people and charged them with adding green dye to sunflower oil and marking it as half-priced olive oil, claiming direct-from-producer. The oil was packaged into pallets, each weighing a ton, before being exported. They’d already shipped 5 tons and had 12 ready to go. Four family members and three other relatives were charged with defrauding the state, issuing false documents, and money laundering. Authorities said they were also involved in criminal gang activities, but that’s none of my business.

There was also a 2019 bust of a criminal network selling fake olive oil in Germany and Italy, resulting in the arrest of 24 individuals and the seizure of 150,000 liters of fake olive oil in Southern Italy. Among those arrested was the network’s leader, who is considered to be the most important olive oil counterfeiter in Italy, and to that I say, give his name and WhatsApp immediately.

Today, the most common international Big Olive Oil infringements are marking virgin olive oil as extra virgin olive oil and selling blended olive and vegetable oils as pure olive oil. Brazil prefers to get crafty, mixing olive oil with lampante or soybean oil. To each their own fraud.

Leonardo Marseglia, the managing director of a big oil conglomerate who spoke to an actual outlet that is not me, suggests that only 2% of the world’s olive oil qualifies as extra virgin, that 8% is “good,” and 9% is “decent.” Much of that 90% is referred to as lamp oil, and is not suitable for human consumption until refined. Which, as you remember from a billion paragraphs ago, is not how the Romans nor Gwyneth want their EVOO. He warns where this fast and loose industry behavior could lead, posing a question about people with a soybean or peanut allergy who have been exposed to adulterated oil that’s been mixed with their allergen. “This is all ironic, because real olive oil is one of the healthiest foods that we know of,” he stated.

It is also ironic because technology has never been better, which means the product has never been more fresh, complex, and varied, and arguably more accessible with skyrocketing demand. Yet, a massive output of low-grade olive oils is pushing many small purveyors to the edge of bankruptcy in the face-off against formidable competition.

OIL ME UP
Quality extra virgin olive oil can be easy enough to come by if you know what you’re looking for. The best case scenario is putting your patooty at a mill where you can see the fresh olives turned into oil. You could get to know the miller and live the full EVOO fantasy. If that’s not available to you for whatever reason, let’s talk about the grocery store. At the market, your best bet, though not a guarantee, is to look for: harvest date (as opposed to a meaningless “best by” date), a specific place of production and producer, mention of the cultivar of olives used, dark glass bottles (light degrades olive oil), a D.O.P. seal on European oils, and a California Olive Oil Council seal on oil made in the U.S.

AT YOUR SERVICE
My favorite part of products that come with hopes that you have a mill nearby and give a multi-step framework for how to make sure the thing you bought is actually the thing you bought is that it comes with groups of people who slurp the product for a living.

Right now, the only approved method for quality control in international olive oil grading, when completed in tandem with physicochemical lab analysis, is through a formal panel accredited by the International Olive Council (IOC). Structurally, an olive oil taste panel consists of eight tasters plus a panel leader. They meet regularly to train their palates to recognize the 17 official sensory flaws listed by international regulation and identify the characteristics of high-quality oil.

Before we even get to the score sheets, we must recognize the IOC's detailed standards, methods, and guides for members of the panel. Parameters like the number of tasters in a panel, maximum tasting sessions per day, maximum number of samples per session, limits on consumption of foods, beverages, or smoking, the ideal time of day to taste, required length of breaks to avoid sensory fatigue, and having a “calm state of mind” are all required. The room itself must be “ambient” in wall color, absent of noise, a certain temperature, and other technicalities. All of this said, I pose the question: Who’s to say that the panel couldn’t be bought by Big Olive Oil for a better rating? I could not find a documentary on an olive oil tasting panel, but by God I expect to see one on Netflix by 2026.

There are three primary olive oil tasting sheets: The official IOC Organoleptic Profile Sheet, the Mario Solinas Quality Award Sensory Assessment Sheet, and the University of California Cooperative Extension Tasting Sheet. The IOC’s sheet is the most widely recognized; when a taster perceives an attribute, they mark a line according to intensity. Upon completion, the marks are measured in centimeters, aggregated amongst the panel, and then bam, that’s the score. The Mario Solinas sheet is closely tied to competition and is much more subjective, having tasters score qualities in harmony and complexity. A perfect score is 100 with up to 35 points awarded for aroma, 45 for flavor (yes, including retro-nasal aroma, you animals), and 20 points split between complexity and persistence in mouth-feel. The University of California sheet balances objective scoring of attributes with subjective designation of oil descriptions. Basically, it’s a blend of the two tests above.

Image Cred

No one has power in this world quite like the IOC, so let’s dig a little deeper here. As the taster goes through their six steps of pour, swirl, sniff, taste, swallow, record, they are studying these elements like it’s their last test on Earth. First, the sensory panels use a line scale to rate any given olive oil’s intensity on three positive attributes: Fruity, Bitter, Pungent. Within these, they’ll mark for aroma and taste, sensations perceived on the sides of the tongue, and biting sensations in the throat upon a swallow. Then, the panel will mark for negative attributes. The five most common defects according to the IOC are a muddy sediment, musty/humid/earthy, winey/vinegary/acid/sour, rancid, and wet wood. And I agree, none of those five things sound good.

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME
An industry defined by thoughtfulness, nuance, and purity could only mean one thing: artificial intelligence is on its way. Last year, a group of researchers in Italy trained artificial intelligence to identify the provenance of extra virgin olive oil samples based on phenolic compounds and sterols — the presence of phenolic compounds being the real health benefits of olive oil. Using 408 samples of Taggiasca Ligure extra virgin olive oil collected over three harvest seasons, and the cooperation of local producer associations, the researchers labeled every sample with coordinates and built an AI system that was able to recognize chemical parameters with 100% accuracy, and a flexible enough dataset to handle distinguishing olive oil blends, too. If implemented, this technology would make it easier to better track olive varieties planted outside of their territory of origin and understand what implications, if any, this move would have on product quality and characteristics. It would be a deeper, more consistent understanding of an ever-elusive purity.

Speaking of science, let’s talk about what researchers are not-so-delightfully calling the e-nose. This powerful tool with analytical capabilities is able to differentiate perceived aromas of virgin olive oils across varieties. Results provided by the tasting panel and the volatile compounds matched the near-instant classification provided by this device. This proves that, combined with chemometric tools and as an additional tool for a tasting panel, the e-nose is a fast, simple, reliable, and low-cost method for product quality control at scale. Now, will the e-nose replace the panel? It could. It might. It probably will.

THE FINAL DRIZZLE
In the world of culinary adventure, olive oil stands as a symbol of resilience, health, and flavor. Its journey from ancient civilizations to modern dining tables is rife with tales of quality control, crime, and innovation. The sheer complexity and nuances of this liquid gold leave us both fascinated and cautious. As we strive for culinary excellence, let's remember that not all olive oils are created equal. Whether you're dipping bread, dressing salads, or sautéing vegetables, choosing the right olive oil can elevate your culinary creations to new heights. So, let the olive tree guide you, and may your kitchen always be graced with the finest extra virgin olive oil.

Sources available upon request. There are several, and I forgot how to use APA.

3. Marco Polo for IKEA - 2023

MARCO POLO FOR IKEA

Large cabinets make me irrationally upset, so do plates. The former is always too pointy and the latter too flat. In my humble opinion, the bowl-plate is the perfect container for any food. Put soup in there and let it breathe. Have enough room to compartmentalize your girl dinner according to color. Place a single, perfect chicken nugget in the center of the bowl-plate and smile. Long live the bowl-plate sitting free-range atop an open shelf—perhaps the exact opposite of how to handle anything porcelain.

I did not realize that I had such strong opinions about miscellaneous kitchen characters until a friend requested to learn more about porcelain. What is it? Where does it come from? Why do grandmas hoard it untouched behind bulky glass? Is it trinkets or plates or both or neither? If porcelain were on Drag Race, what song would it use to lip sync for its life? These are all equally important questions, and I will get to the bottom of all of ‘em.

Hold on tight to your precious porcelain. We’re going on a ride.

Elsa Flike, serving bowl.

WHAT IS PORCELAIN?
Valued for durability and delicacy (same), porcelain is often referred to as “white gold” by people with too much time on their hands. Traditional (Hard Paste) porcelain is made from two essential ingredients: kaolin, a silicate mineral white china clay for plasticity and structure, and petunse, or china stone, a feldspathic rock ground to powder for translucency and hardness. If heat can be considered an ingredient, all 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit required to fire true porcelain matter a whole bunch. If made and fired correctly, there is nothing thinner, no other clay that possesses such luminosity and strength, than queen porcelain. There’s also a less chic version of porcelain—”Soft Paste” or artificial if ya nasty—that’s a mixture of clay and ground glass requiring a less extreme firing temperature. This stuff can be cut with a file; the hard paste cannot. If you ever want to figure out which version of porcelain you have, I suggest throwing it on the ground. Both will shatter and you will not get your answer, but it’ll be fun.

Hard Paste Porcelain plate; Soft Paste Porcelain set.

SO…IT’S…CHINA?
Yeah, sorta. Porcelain products are often referred to as china, lowercase c, in English-speaking countries. Keep in mind that we’re not talking about bone china, which is a different thing, in this research because I simply cannot handle yet another deep dive into this corner of the world. That said, know that Hard Paste porcelain is preferred in Europe, whereas bone china is preferred in Britain and the United States because God forbid we all agree on something.

Left: bone china; Right: fine china. I went to actual China once and had a blast.

SUS SYMBOLISM
When we use our big, beautiful brains to think about deeper meanings, there seems to be this general consensus that porcelain symbolizes beauty, destiny, love, desire, escape from reality. (There are also notes of greed and death sprinkled in there, but YOLO I suppose.) The Chinese believed porcelain held powerful magic with the ability to negate poison or detect it when it was present in the vessel. I will say, my noggin was particularly drawn to the undercurrent chatter around porcelain purity and status in whiteness. Porcelain got its start in Asia but mostly ended up in the hands of white people owning all of this beauty, often scooping up rare items and putting them on display for themselves. We’ll get to it shortly, but European royalty worked tirelessly (read: trapped people with a lock and key to work on their behalf) to solve the secret craft of porcelain so they could have an abundance of these breathtakingly beautiful objects staring back at them without needing to pay exorbitant prices or hop on a waitlist that confirms our little princes aren’t that special. What does this fetishization of a purity-centric object and colonization of a craft reflect on the (mostly) men admiring its power and privilege? Sorta sus, fellas. Sortaaaaaaaa sus. Let me draw a direct line to Real Housewives here, too.

WHEREFORE ART THOU, MY HUMPS?
There are three famous white hills where porcelain hails. I’d put photos of the hills here if my laptop wasn’t at 6%, but trust me when I tell you they look like three average hills. Jingdezhen is the porcelain capital of the world, no cap.

Jingdezhen, Porcelain City

Meissen, Germany, houses the second famous white hill, and first in Europe. More on this later. And though this is the middle child hill, it's still a big deal; Queen Elizabeth II received a Meissen porcelain service as a wedding gift. Big slay for her.

Thirdly, it’s in Plymouth, England, where a Quaker named William Cookworthy broke down the production ratio, and where the fine-china company Wedgwood was established. Your granny gets her porcelain from here, and we love her for that. She’s my Queen Elizabeth II.

Potentially your grandma.

DYNASTY DOIN’ IT TO ‘EM
The exact date some crafty human created porcelain is unknown because the internet was not around during the Han Dynasty. In fact, I’m finding conflicting reports about when porcelain first jumped on the scene at all. When I acquire my time machine I will secure this clarity for us all. So far as we, the porcelain community, can tell, the earliest type of porcelain was produced during the Han (206 BC - 220 AD) Dynasty. The first Western reference to Chinese porcelain appeared in 851 AD when a merchant Suleiman wrote, "The Chinese have a fine clay of which they make drinking vessels as fine as glass; one can see the liquid contained in them,” presumably in their diary because no one can tell me otherwise. By the Song (960 - 1279) Dynasty, pure white porcelain was perfected and became one of the most admired Chinese inventions by anyone with mf taste. Fast forward to the Ming Dynasty in which porcelain became a source of imperial pride. The Yongle Emperor erected a white porcelain brick pagoda in Nanjing (My friend Laura is from Nanjing. Hi, Laura!), securing a smooth-glazed type of white porcelain as his sorta trademarked slay, if you will. ‘Twas in the Qing Dynasty in which the Jingdezhen porcelain really reached its peak.

Qing Dynasty porcelain, known for elegance, grace, and fine detail.

EUROPE’S HOTTEST DROP OF THE 14TH CENTURY
Marco Polo, a man who I just assume was 5’2”, first brought porcelain from China to Europe: a small gray-green jar amid his bounty of silk brocades, spices, and musky scents. Polo called it porcellana, a nickname for the cowry shell’s shiny, white surface. In the 16th century, the Portuguese and the Dutch established their commercial trade routes to the Far East, thus creating a robust market of export ware. Porcelain was on the move like never before, made in China for Europe. During the last long Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty (1664 - 1912 AD), there was a temporary halt on porcelain production. Emperor Kangxi reorganized Jingdezhen because he was in his Marie Kondo era I guess. Rulers and other wealthy peeps from around the world would then send in portraits, statues, and designs requesting to be reproduced in porcelain. This sorta gives me Joann Fabrics or Michaels energy if I’m being honest. Anywho, enamel-painted porcelain became mainstream, along with elaborately painted porcelain for the Qing imperial court. Chinese porcelain remained highly prized for its artwork, bright and beautiful colors, durability, and utility, and for being relatively cheap for those allowed in the scene.

LOOKED THIS UP AFTER THE FACT AND I WAS OFF BY ONE INCH. THANK YOU, INFO FAMOUS PEOPLE.

35,798 PIECES OF PORCELAIN
European royalty was fkn pissed they couldn’t figure out how to make porcelain on their own. The routes were pretty steady, but things still broke, mistakes were still made, and gosh diggity darn it, they just wanted to be able to do it themselves. Enter: King Augustus the Strong. A self-confessed shopaholic who had what he called die Porzellankrankheit, or “porcelain sickness,” sought out to crack the formula the way any ruler would, by locking two experts in a basement. Mr. King Augustus the Strong selected two German pals for his mission: supervisor Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, a gifted mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher, and supervisee Johann Friedrich Böttger, alchemist and apparent asshole fraud (fun fact: his own biographer said he had a “childish demeanor” which was a major dig in the 1700’s). They nailed the secret of hard paste porcelain in 1707 at the Meissen factory in Saxony. Just as the duo produced their first solid porcelain—a jar is described as being “half translucent and milk white, like narcissus”—Tschinhaus died. There was a robbery, papers went missing, and Böttger kept the operation going, eventually refining the formula to a level that could be reproduced and porcelain thus manufactured.

Augustus the Strong, c’mon curls.

In 1733, Augustus died at the honorable age of 62, his kingdom a financial ruin, with nine children from six different women, and a collection of 35,798 pieces of porcelain. That’s our guy.

SPECIAL SPARKLE’S NOT SO SPECIAL NOW, HUH?
By the middle of the 18th century, an industry was born. Porcelain became bourgeois, a status symbol for more than just the aristocrats. Holy Roman princes founded mercantile manufactures that became rivaled by private entrepreneurs eager for profit. The price of porcelain obviously plummeted because of a flooded market. Ugh! By the 19th and 20th centuries, porcelain became essential to bourgeois dining, and also acquired new functions in insulator tubes, shell casings, and teeth. The latter makes me uncomfortable.

Thank you, no :)

TODAY’S PORCELAIN TRADE
Listen, porcelain is great and fine. Today, some people smash porcelain at weddings for good luck. According to medieval times, the noise from the broken plates wards off evil spirits. The more shards, the more luck for the couple. Other people have weird little trinkets or a bunch of plates they never use as a status symbol. Most of my circle—married, relationship, situationship nonsense, or single; Boomer, Millennial, or Gen Z—couldn’t care less when IKEA exists.

Sources available upon request.

4. BeenReal - 2022

BeenReal: The Age of Inauthentic Authenticity

The premise of this app is now so well-known it made its way into an SNL sketch that made my parents laugh. Once a day at a seemingly random time, this mystical, magical, and revolutionary app sends a push notification to users alerting them it’s “time to BeReal.”

Created in 2020 by a video producer Frenchman (hot) at GoPro (less hot) obsessed with how to capture action as it happens (ok, hot again), BeReal is an “ad free” and algorithm free social platform — anti-Instagram, if you will. Once a day, users receive an alert that they have two minutes to take and upload a snapshot using the front and back cameras for a simultaneousish, seemingly 360 view of reality. The alert times are not random, but rather intentionally diversified to help with the whole authenticity thing. If you knew the notification came at 10 am every morning, you’d structure your behaviors accordingly.

If a user misses that two minute period, never fear; they can still open that notification, post to the platform, and receive the scarlet letter of being marked as a late upload. Maybe you were busy during the alert, or maybe you were saving your post for when you were doing something better—whatever that means. If you take your photo more than once, people can see that, too.

Once a user’s posted, their connections can comment and leave reactions via “RealMojis” — tiny snapshots they can take and retake again without repercussions — of their face.

And people like this. It’s the second most-downloaded social networking app on the App Store behind TikTok. I, however, hate this app with a passion. Stick with me.

A few years ago, I watched a YouTube video of professional hairstylist, entrepreneur, OUAI founder, and general Cool Lady Jen Atkin perform a ponytail atop Kendall Jenner’s head. I know anything can be reduced to nothing, but believe me when I say it took over 40 minutes to achieve a tight-yet-loose, self-described simple high pony, and God forbid that one piece of naturally wavy hair doesn’t “naturally” wave slightly in the other direction, that was so alarmingly average. It was the “no makeup makeup” of hair, and all these years later, I still cannot believe the content I consumed. This paragraph deserves to be unpacked like nobody’s business, but that’s not why you’re here. Instead, I will say that the thin bobby pin holding this all together is the very notion of: I’m better than you, even when I’m at my most “real” which, of course, is anything but. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Authenticity will forever be capitalism's greatest conquest, and therefore the golden ideal for any social platform since the most authentic existence would be one offline. Therefore, the very fact that one is online already creates complications. Maya Mann, a Los Angeles-based artist and programmer, told Vox: “I view every single thing you post online as contributing to this distributed internet avatar that you’re performing [with] a mediated audience in mind, even if you’re posting on a private account.” In looking at BeReal specifically, the argument here is that being told to post in the moment with both cameras and being held accountable to timing, times taken, and filter-less angles is as humble, small, and boring as possible. Okay, sure. If one must be online, then this would be the best way to do it. That’s why there’s a very real Vice article outlining eight key takeaways for how to Look Good on BeReal. Let me save you the read: turn off your push notifications, take advantage of golden hour, know your angles, don’t post when you’re too drunk, create intrigue, master the thirst trap, clean your space, and still save your best photos for Instagram.

Now that you’ve mastered how to pretend like you aren’t mastering anything, it’s time to see how your unreal reality stacks up to your friends. BeReal is a deeper, stronger comparative culture precisely because users are convinced it is the opposite. Seriously, you don’t have to look much further than the app’s clearly stated mission: “Discover who your friends really are in their real life.” Not to send anyone into a spiral here, but what is ‘real life’ and who gets to remove all empathy and claim it for others?

And while we’re discussing watching over each other, let’s talk about panopticon theory, voyeurism, and privacy. For the fastest history lesson imaginable, an 18th century philosopher named Jeremy — I remain shocked this name was around at that time — came up with the idea for a prison layout that constituted a clearly visible guard tower with an unverifiable internal presence looking over a large number of prisoners who, you guessed it, would be directed to perform profitable labor. So, if you were a prisoner under this structure, you would always see the tower and assume someone of power is in there watching you, though you’d never really be able to tell, and therefore would be less likely to break the rules as a form of non-violent correction; your group may have the numbers, but they have the power.

20th-century thinker — and problematic fella for actions not related to this paragraph — Michael Foucault considered this asymmetrical surveillance structure through a psychological lens. He saw this power dynamic as a clear shift from violence to discipline and considered its impact on modern society — effectively promoting docility rather than creativity and freedom. Are you living a little bit more each day in anticipation, or are you holding your breath worried when you’re in bed?

When it comes to BeReal, this extends beyond a “random” notification or seeing everyone as they are in a given moment. It is the very notion that users consider any form of social media to be ethical at all, and therefore leans into the app’s demand of being on alert at all times for a looming invasion all while thinking the power resides in the prisoner as if users aren’t as docile as ever, flipping their phone screenside up at dinner just in case the notification pops up.

As someone who has experienced Berlin in her 20’s, I’d love to talk about voyeurism. Though typically tied with the kink of watching other people during sexy time, it’s also the general idea of reveling in observing the distress of others but they don’t necessarily know it. Through a BeReal lens, this is the feeling of scrolling through everyone else bored in their bedrooms, sad at work, or even on the toilet. The voyeur sees these unfiltered moments as proof that life isn’t always a European summer and, in fact, the average day is often, well, average. It’s enforced mediocrity with the ability to shame and be shamed from every angle.

We live these realities. Why do we need reassurance that other people do, too? It’s a problem of our own making of a hyper-online society, and the BeReal solution is a repackaging of the same ol’ thing. Real Life magazine editor Rob Horning posits: “An even more real version of BeReal would just give your friends access to your cameras and microphones without you knowing it, so they can peep in on you and see how you act when you think no one is watching.”

Craving authenticity is nothing more than a more digestible way to grapple with the ever-expanding and frighteningly dynamic state of surveillance. Mann, through her project Glance Back in which a Chrome extension snaps a candid photo of you at random when you open a new tab, asked it best: “Why are we so willing to document ourselves to prove what we already know?” With every piece of content created online, data is collected — name, phone number, email, time, location coordinates, who you’re with, who engages, your typical routine. Now, imagine if all of this information was collected at strategically dispersed times throughout the day for an extended amount of time. Whoever housed this, uh, hypothetical data would then have a strong understanding of you, your habits, your friends, your friends’ habits, your connectivity points between pocket groups online, and ultimately have painfully strong predictions for future behaviors and how to influence you accordingly. Is that photo so worth sharing that you sacrifice your privacy — the only thing we really have as humans — for the sake of selling a piece of yourself? *Shares the EU’s GDPR-compliant BeReal post to Mark Zuckerberg’s lawless Instagram Stories*

Of course, social media cannot exist without performance, which leads me to wonder if we’re in the age of post-postmodernity. What does it mean to have an ironically real online aesthetic — lo-fi with the latest iPhone, mid-blink in a seemingly-casual-yet-meticulously-sourced carousel, beauty filters turning real people into AI and back again. Writer Maeve Browne told BuzzFeed News that the “fake authenticity is worse than acknowledging curation,” calling BeReal “disinterested voyeurism at best” that is “cosplaying as the solution to wasting time online.”

The question then becomes, if I stop being annoying and accept that humans will be humans online, how should they do it in a way that won’t make this piece insufferable? The short answer is that I have no idea. The slightly longer answer is that humans should protect the privacy they have, acknowledge what they give up when they’re Being Real, and consider living in the moment a little bit more by turning off all notifications and posting what they want when they want without putting themselves in the position of being the prisoner seeing themselves look up at the panopticon and around the room at everyone else trying to find their best angle in two minutes or less. Capitalism will find a way, and your friends will make you feel shitty, and your life isn’t as interesting as you want it to be, and everyone’s an asshole. That’s real life. Put your phone down.

4. Title - Year

This is some text inside of a div block.

Quisque tristique justo nisi. Donec non ligula et elit mollis pharetra eget vitae elit. Ut ipsum nunc, facilisis ut egestas ut, iaculis id magna. Vestibulum semper dui eu elementum commodo. Vestibulum suscipit neque vel arcu vehicula tempus. Duis finibus sem ex. Nulla nec luctus ex. Nulla gravida lectus lorem, eu fringilla nulla suscipit eu. Nunc sit amet ex dolor. Praesent imperdiet fringilla auctor. Aliquam condimentum odio nibh, nec tincidunt urna viverra non. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque dictum, sem nec tempor pretium, erat nisi molestie odio, id imperdiet lectus felis vitae ex. Vestibulum eu mi pellentesque, vulputate arcu pulvinar, cursus lorem. Duis dignissim erat in ligula elementum commodo. Sed egestas vel risus nec ultrices.

Donec blandit, sapien quis ultrices dictum, mi arcu pharetra sem, id molestie tellus dui in magna. Nam laoreet tincidunt magna in fermentum. Vivamus sed nulla turpis. Nullam porta porta gravida. Donec et blandit libero. Nullam porttitor volutpat commodo. Donec venenatis vitae nunc rutrum laoreet.

Image Cred