The She's A Beast StrongList of Important Things, 2024
Last year, I published a list of some of the best and worst pieces I read in the previous year, called the 2023 StrongList. As I wrote then:
I feel that we, I, spend too much time with my head fully submerged in the rushing stream of Content, when I need to be pulling it out once in a while to have a look around.
I also have certain subjects I want to read about—personal health, body science, wellness, our relationships to ourselves and food and movement and how they are mediated by institutions of power. But all these year-end lists I read all tend to cover the same subject-matter areas: business, culture, music (technically culture but they get a breakout because, who knows), film (ditto), tech (technically business), very occasionally “science, broadly.” Sports used to be a big one, but has basically died off. EYE I am always looking for a list of good reads about health stuff, wellness stuff, “offbeat” athletic stuff, but EYE can never find it. Why?
Despite that these health/body/fitness stuff meaningfully intersects all of the previous list’s areas, it constantly gets shafted. Despite that personal health touches every single one of our lives, coverage of it is not considered as serious of journalism as everything in the previous list. I suspect this has something to do with the reason that I don’t and have never hawked CBD gummies or alkaline drink powders or on Instagram, yet people continue to insist on calling me an “influencer.” Something, something, ladies’ concerns.
So this is the result of me pulling my head out of the stream, and looking around, and trying to identify this year’s health/body-related topics hat will remain significant. It is also, maybe more crucially, things that we will probably forget happened in a “doomed-to-repeat-history” way, that I think we could stand to make an effort to more clearly remember and take a moment to say, “hey, that sucked.”
Casey Johnston
So again this year, I went back through all the pieces I read or consumed in the last year—some 1,531 Pocketed items—and picked the best (and the worst). January and February are often kind of a slow time for stuff to read, so hopefully this helps.
The 2024 StrongList of Great Pieces
My Unraveling, NYMag Intelligencer. Wonderfully written piece by Tom Scocca on his experience with a set of mysterious medical maladies and the nightmare that ensues.
Plot Twist + other installments, Ann Friedman Weekly. Ann Friedman’s series of essays on her decision to become a parent that I’ve thought a lot about since. (This link goes to the last installment, which contains links to all the earlier installments at the top).
When I Call I Need to Know You’ll Be Home, Welcome to Hellworld. Reading Rax King’s essay on Priscilla and Priscilla Presley’s relationship with Elvis reminds me how uneducated most people (read: film critics who are snide about Sofia Coppola) are in the language of abuse, especially abuse that is largely not physical and often not even outright mean or cruel.
It’s Time To Give Up Hope For A Better Climate & Get Heroic, Noema Magazine. “’Without hope, all is lost.’ But is it? Or does this claim effectively retcon human history, which is full of battles fought sans hope?”
No Flipping, Eternal Exile. “What is named ‘boredom’ [in our time of constant scrolling] is perhaps better described as an induced compulsion to consume… ‘Boredom’ may not be a condition unto itself but an inadequate, evasive description of other emotional states — frustration, distraction, disappointment, inhibition, dissatisfaction — that works to protects them from being confronted directly.”
What’s the Price of a Childhood Turned Into Content?, Cosmopolitan. These chickens are long overdue to roost.
How Supplement Companies Gain Influence Through Sponsoring Podcasts, The Vajenda. What I’d give to never hear about an athletic green or any other kind of green ever again. (Related honorable mention to this random LinkedIn post that told the whole story of how supplement company Care/Of shut down abruptly after selling for hundreds of millions of dollars. None of this is real in terms of things you or I need to care about; it’s all a weird arbitrage game for people controlling inconceivable amounts of wealth!)
How the self-care industry made us so lonely, Vox. The hyper-individualism of American culture has tricked us into thinking that the only way to care best for ourselves is to be alone.
How to Rewild Yourself, Psyche. I name-checked a book called Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism a bunch of times this year, and this piece is a great primer on its themes. When we’ve grown up in a very capitalism-driven world, it came be hard to envision a rich life that doesn’t consist of buying and consuming stuff. But as humans, we actually are very fulfilled by experiences and settings and situations that cost only time, effort, and patience, if we care to pursue them.
Stumbling Can Be Lovely, Longreads. One person’s trials of learning to ride a bike as a grownup has learnings for us all.
Ilona Maher 2024, Sports Illustrated. Not so much a “read” as a “behold,” but Ilona’s performance in the Olympics followed by this photo shoot followed by a run on Dancing With The Stars? I say more Ilona in 2025.
The 2024 Penalty Box for Bad Trends and Misplaced Enthusiasm
Ozempic Hype House Backfires in Weight Watch Brand Misstep. We started the year like this, and ended the year with people wanting to “microdose” Ozempic, whatever that means. I begrudge no one their personal journey and everyone has different needs and responds to these things differently, but these are red flags at the systemic level.
Time to Say Goodbye to the BMI? I’m calling it now, the “body roundness index” will contribute nothing to society.
75 Hard Has a Cultish Following. Is It Worth All the Effort? No. I mean, do whatever you want forever and always, but no.
The Truth About the Birth Control Misinformation Flooding Social Media. It’s always important to remember that social media usually represents a tempest in a teapot. The surge of women backlashing birth control was a difficult story to even talk about, because so much of it was pot-stirring by, I’m sorry, dumb idiots who believe idiotic conspiracy stuff about hormones and cycles and are often transphobes. The short of it is that the upsides of birth control are overwhelmingly great and the downsides are often none.
However! Pursuant to the IUD pain management issue, there is a kernel of truth to the idea that women bear an undue burden of sometimes-kinda-subpar birth control options. Nothing can improve if no one is allowed to even mildly complain about it. That said, since the publication of this piece, many political things have changed and there’s never been a worse time to not be on some from of birth control.
How evidence-based is the "hashtag ADHD test" (#adhdtest)? Not at all.
Raw Milk and the Collapse of Consensus Reality. I’m tired of hearing about raw milk, the rare health trend that has only risks and downsides and yet people won’t shut up about it.
What If You Hadn’t Frozen Your Eggs? Especially if you spend a lot of time online/on social media, egg-freezing starts to feel like a completely reasonable why-not and a useful stopgap to postpone a life choice. But it’s expensive, taxing, and the eggs often end up not being used and/or not working.
Social-Media Influencers Aren’t Getting Rich—They’re Barely Getting By. Everything about the influencer/social media economy reeks.
Trends of note
Slow. This year, I endorsed slow living, uneventful vacations, boring problems, doing nothing, doing some nonsense together, post-growth alternative hedonism, writing with a pencil, working with your hands, taking the train instead of the car, taking a bike instead of the car, and glowing down. I used to be a staunch defender of swimming in the contemporary “times we live in” stew, no matter how rank people claimed it was. It was important to be up on every discourse, to optimize, to get everywhere quickly and see the most possible, and so on. But I had not tried living the other way.
Now, I’ve tried both. I pick whittling a toothpick or watching paint dry over scrolling Instagram one more time. (This doesn’t mean you’ll never know what’s going on the world or be entertained again. Trust me, even if you try to do the least possible, everything you need, and then some, will still find you. Try it!)
Strength training is the new gold standard of “exercise.” At the beginning of this year, I wrote that cardio had fallen and that strength training was now the gold standard of “exercise.” Not even for optimal health, but to get the best fitness bang for your time buck, for the busy lady or gentleman on-the-go who wants to work out as little as possible. This year, new studies found that women who strength train live longer and have a lower risk of death from heart disease, and that people who exercise have healthier fat tissue (just another point in the column of the point of exercise doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be, losing weight, per se). The American Heart Association even recommends it now.
Lifting weights enables movement and activity more than cardio alone, so people of old age who lift tend to do more of both (cf. This lovely LIFTOFF student, 70-year-old Angela, who shocked her physical therapists with her strength and speed of recovery when she fractured her pelvis!). Lifting weights seems to specifically help with dementia and Alzheimers, more so than cardio does. Gen Z loves lifting weights, and I’m not personally fan of taking lifestyle guidance from our nation’s youth, but that does work on some of you. In a world where there is much to distrust and be cynical about, “throwing some heavy shit around” is one of the few objectively good things that remains and has virtually no downsides.
Turn it off. Related to the first point, I also used to think it was important to know the news as soon as possible from Twitter, which memes were going around Instagram and TikTok, and so forth. I felt my career depended on it. Again, I had not actually tried it the other way.
Now, I love the idea of getting a pocket knife instead of a cell phone and deleting all of social media from your phone (and really, all the apps—you’ll understand soon). The Surgeon General issued a warning on social media (as well as parent stress, which results at least in part from social media). Is that a bit silly and, as we might say in social media parlance, “doing it for the clout”? Maybe. But what exactly are we holding onto so tightly? I have yet to hear of anyone managing to silo themselves off from their smartphone and/or social media and, as a result, becoming more miserable. That feels significant.
The Expanded Highlights Universe
Quit It, Slate. Quitting things is as important as starting things.
Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find, 404 Media. We will look back on this time as a big transition for a lot of central internet services, I think.
You Are Not A Commercial For Yourself, Blackbird Spyplane. Young people want to know what life was like before smartphones, and this was a big part of it.
The Silencing of Sylvia Plath, The Nation. Domestic abuse is a big and under-considered part of her picture.
The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel, Jenny Nicholson. Yes this video IS four hours long and [Obi-Wan wave of one hand] you will watch all of it.
Suburbanites Will Flock to This 15 Minute City and Like It, CityNerd. This video, on the other hand, is only 13 minutes long, but it makes a fairly revolutionary point, which is that many or even most Americans already love the “15-minute city” that is feared and abhorred by conservatives, because that’s effectively what most resorts and cruise ships are.
Some of my favorite pieces that I wrote in 2024
To Reclaim and Redefine ‘Salad.’ It should be hefty.
What to Think About When You Think About Lifting. Translating the “values”—speed, distance— that many of us have internalized from cardio, to lifting weights.
You’re Not Lazy; Your Brain is ‘Exercise-Sparing.’ Nothing wrong with efficiency!
Offline Edition: In Which I Finally Get Wellness-Scammed. I tried to treat myself to an unusual massage, and things went… not how I expected.
The Bravest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Running Without a Bra. The Guardian even interviewed me about this later.
Against Bringing a Friend to the Gym. The power of self-reinvention in a new environment.
‘Diets Don’t Work’: What Dietitians and Others Do (and Don’t) Mean. I’m sure it’s fun to construe things people say to argue with them, but there is a specific meaning here.
Why Can’t A Human Body Go to Mars? I’m Glad You Asked. It’s insane this is taken so seriously as a prospect, because of two words: space cancer.
What Is So Wrong With Wanting a Ballerina Body? Negotiating the space between agency and rationality.
What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About ‘Eat Less to Live Longer,’ Again. It didn’t work the first time, and doesn’t work this time, either.
Some of my favorite Ask A Swole Womans I wrote in 2024
A Primer For Lifting While Pregnant. I started my foray into parenthood last year, which meant I finally got to start exploring its intersections with pregnancy.
Collagen Sits on a Throne of Lies. Oh my god, please don’t spend your hard earned dollars on this gruel.
If I Lift, Can I Keep All My Body Fat? This was not the only time I wrote about the relationship between body composition and lifting. But the short answer is, you are not required to be pursuing any particular body shape or size. Lifting adapts to different bodies better than a lot of sports, in my opinion.
How to Defeat Your Mom’s Outdated Notions About Nutrition and Exercise With Facts and Logic. How do you stop believing that which you didn’t choose to know about in the first place?
‘I Want to Lift, But Don’t Want to Use My Brain About It.’ If you hate experimenting and titrating, can you still lift? (Yes.)
But I’m a Runner! How Do I Strength Train? Pairs well with Why are all the lifters running now?
The Last Article You Will Hopefully Ever Have to Read on Bracing Your Core, Amen. It’s less tricky than it sounds, but it does take practice.
That’s a wrap on 2024! Already 2025 is surging down the pike. I can’t believe the year my new book, A Physical Education, comes out is finally here. Thank you for subscribing to and reading this newsletter, I cherish each and every one of you and your opened emails and your shares with friends and your letters to me and your PRs and your bulking meals.
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