That is certainly true for the younger end of the Millennials, but J. Crew’s problem isn’t that they’re missing the Forever 21 fast fashion crowd. They’re missing out on the 30 year old woman with a decent office job, who is now spending her money on a $100 Zara dress or a $150 Madewell skirt or $80 Everlane blouse…

I see your bear, and raise you a moose family playing in sprinklers!

It’s crazy when doubling the price of literally everything you sell while halving the quality doesn’t result in higher sales.

“We bought too much of the Tilly, which was a relative of the Tippi”

Not religious, but in 2010, most gowns were still strapless (this was before the Big Royal Wedding), so it was really hard for me to find something - especially one that wouldn’t overwhelm my shape. Ended up with this:

Heterosexual women spend so much time acting as the keeper of men’s feelings. There’s this entire category of emotional labor around their insecurities.

Just as soon as men give up their sanitized, airbrushed, waxed to hell and back Playboy model fantasies. Wake up! She doesn’t exist! Not even the actual model looks like that. And she still doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Thesis: A (romance) alpha is basically a grown-ass adult, the 180 opposite of the man-child so many women get stuck with.

The money is a big part of it, definitely. But usually the alpha is 1) established at the top of his profession/social stratum/coven so he doesn’t need mentoring or assistance in that arena and 2) is competent and decisive in all other aspects of his life so he doesn’t need emotional support there either. To the…

I think you’ve hit on the key word here: competent. While the genre is wide, I think most of the heroes who are classed ‘alpha’ are just competent people at base and as it’s fiction, it’s rare that the mundane details of life get in the way of the story. Most women are (as other posters have said) just so used to…

Aww. Well, if your family’s not close enough for them to even know each other and one’s great-grandparent is the other’s great-great-grandparent, I honestly don’t find it that rednecky. It’s ickier to me to make out with a non-blood-related stepcousin who you’ve known all your life than with a blood relative who’s a…

I tried to count the number of ways that photo is in appallingly bad taste or outright offensive, but my brain felt like it was going to explode, so I’m going to console myself with kittens and red wine and back away slowly.

Hm. They chose a 19th century décor for their “family” photo? There are, like, historical implications to that.

I also think that some of the appeal of the Alpha hero is that he doesn’t need to be cared for. In real life, women still shoulder a lot of the day-to-day physical care-taking the home and the emotional care-taking of their partners. But a guy who is a supremely competent duke/vampire/captain of industry doesn’t…

This looks so fucking comfortable.

They also like to follow you around and check out what you’re doing. They live raisins and will do tricks (okay ONE trick) for them. I like to walk around the yard with one of the hens perched on my shoulder, pretending that I’m a pirate.

I don’t have one specific frivolous item I would buy (except this newly discovered RAVE SHOWER), but I do spend a possibly-unhealthy amount of time decorating the fancy interior of my non-existant fancy house. I consider which Farrow & Ball paints I will use and which custom furniture I will buy. I daydream about…

What’s the baby formula trick.

My father’s friends were like that. I turned down a ride from one of them in the pouring rain. My dad was upset because I didn’t take the ride. But I was 11 maybe? I had no words yet for the huge amounts of heebie jeebies that man gave me. I know I was right.

If you’re a boy writer, it’s a simple rule: you’ve gotta get used to the fact that you suck at writing women and that the worst women writer can write a better man than the best male writer can write a good woman. And it’s just the minimum. Because the thing about the sort of heteronormative masculine privilege,…