New York Magazine 2/19-3/4/18

1 For New York’s “Spring Fashion” issue, Carl Swanson profiled Mary J. Blige, the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” who received Academy Award nominations for both her performance in and songwriting for Mud-bound (“Mary J. Blige Sees Herself Anew,” February 5–18). Maiysha Kai at the Root wrote of the story, “Just when we think we know the unmitigated glory that is Mary J. Blige, she shape-shifts, leveling up her glamour to unimaginable new heights. This is the only way to describe her latest appearance on the cover of New York Magazine, where she somehow seems to channel both Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, but mostly an iconic diva who is inimitably, undeniably Mary.” And BuzzFeed’s Dionne Grant tweeted, “Her life story has produced some of the most beautiful, relatable and honest…

ON THE SAME FALL NIGHT in 2016 that the infamous Access Hollywood tape featuring Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault was made public by the Washington Post and dominated the news, an Alaska attorney, Moira Smith, wrote on Facebook about her own experiences as a victim of sexual misconduct in 1999. “At the age of 24, I found out I’d be attending a dinner at my boss’s house with Justice Clarence Thomas,” she began her post, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court justice who was famously accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, a woman who had worked for him at two federal agencies, including the EEOC, the federal sexual-harassment watchdog. “I was so incredibly excited to meet him, rough confirmation hearings notwithstanding,” Smith continued. “He was charming in many ways—giant,…

Sukari Hardnett IF YOU WERE YOUNG, black, female and reasonably attractive and worked directly for Clarence Thomas, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female. You knew when you were in favor because you were always at his beck and call, being summoned constantly, tracked down wherever you were in the agency and given special deference by others because of his interest. You knew when you had ceased to be an object of sexual interest—because you were barred from entering his office and treated as an outcast or, worse, a leper with whom contact was taboo. For my own part, I found his attention unpleasant, sought a transfer, was told one “just doesn’t do that,” insisted nonetheless, and paid the price as an outcast for…

THE FOLKS BEAVERING away in the magisterial Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library might be excused for feeling spied upon. What is that thing? they keep asking the guards, pointing at the eerie, radarlike dish mounted on the balcony at the far end of the vaultlike space. Much of the time, the object is unmanned. But every so often, a lanky long-haired young man will squeeze himself into the narrow cockpit, wedging his skull into a white helmet, and start taking measurements, or inventories, or something. He is Trevor Oakes, who, along with his identical twin, Ryan, has been engaged since toddlerhood in a decades-long investigation into the nature of bifocal perception, the way that other identical twins might have evolved a hermetic secret language. “When…

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL, HARDY FLOWER, Papaver somniferum, a poppy that grows up to four feet in height and arrives in a multitude of colors. It thrives in temperate climates, needs no fertilizer, attracts few pests, and is as tough as many weeds. The blooms last only a few days and then the petals fall, revealing a matte, greenish-gray pod fringed with flutes. The seeds are nutritious and have no psychotropic effects. No one knows when the first curious human learned to crush this bulblike pod and mix it with water, creating a substance that has an oddly calming and euphoric effect on the human brain. Nor do we know who first found out that if you cut the pod with a small knife, capture its milky sap, and leave…

GET OUT WAS SHOT IN JUST 23 DAYS on a budget of $4.5 million, but when it opened one year ago, it quickly became clear it was not just another low-budget horror movie. There were monstrous grosses and rapturous reviews, but most important, the film instantly became a cultural phenomenon—the subject of political commentary and social-media memes. The bizarre story of a young black man lured by his white girlfriend to her family home in the country, where they plan to replace his brain with an older white person’s, it immediately introduced into the lexicon terms like “the sunken place”— as in “We’ve lost Kanye to the sunken place,” used to suggest the rapper has lost touch with his black identity. Racial inequity, and the failure of white liberals to…